Once Around (8 page)

The one thing she didn
't need right now was to bump up against one of Robert's thieving pals. Or, even worse, Robert himself. Although the odds of seeing Robert in a pickup truck were a million-to-one.

There was nobody in the vehicle. That didn
't surprise her. The thief was probably inside trying to pry up the nails on the wall-to-wall. She parked the Jeep in her driveway and was about to climb out and track down the perpetrator when Rafe Garrick rounded the side of the house. He had a loose, long stride that reminded her of the cowboys she'd seen in the movies when she was growing up. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs—she had to battle down the surge of heat building inside her chest.

"
Hello again," she said, walking toward him.

He nodded at her.
"I was checking out your backyard."

Her brows drew together in a frown.
"Do you mind if I ask why?" She didn't like the idea of a stranger, a man, poking around her home when she wasn't there. Especially one who made her feel like a stranger in her own body.

"
The fence needs repair, your deck's rotting out, and your lawn's the worst one for miles around. And that's just for starters."

"
Aren't you the bearer of glad tidings," she said, bristling at the criticism.

She noted the tight look of his jaw. She didn
't particularly care if she'd insulted him. He was a stranger. He had no right to be there uninvited.

"
I'm here to help you," he said.

"
Who asked you?"

"
I have your money. It's the least I can do."

"
No, the least you can do is respect my privacy. Nobody asked you to prowl around my house."

"
I wasn't prowling."

"
You weren't invited."

He looked at her for a good three or four seconds.

"You're right," he said. "I wasn't."

"
I thought you were a thief here to take the carpeting."

His
expression softened. It annoyed her to even no tice. She didn't care about his feelings. His feelings were irrelevant. This was about the sanctity of her home. She didn't have much else left but she still had the right to pick and choose who spent time there.

"
Why would I take your carpeting?" he asked. His voice held a faint note of amusement.

"
Why would Robert take my furniture?" she tossed back at him. "The carpet is all I have left, therefore it's the next to go."

"
I don't want your carpeting."

"
Good," she said, beginning to soften a bit herself. "Because I'm not in the mood to fight you for it."

"
Fighting's good," he said.

"
If you win, maybe."

"
What does your lawyer say?"

"
He says I shouldn't worry."

"
He'll do the worrying for you, right?"

Heat rose up her throat and into her cheeks.
"Yes," she said. "That's exactly what he said."

"
Bastard."

"
He's actually a very nice man.''

"
Great," he said. "So what's he doing to protect you?"

"
He outlined a few things," she said. "Not that it's any of your business."

"
You'd better make it your
business," he said. "Lawyers are crooks."

"
I don't think Spencer's a crook."

"
Spencer? You call him by his first name?"

"
Why wouldn't I?" She was growing tired of the sparring. "He calls me by my first name."

"
Is there something between you two?"

"
This is about you," she said, "not me. You have no right to be here. I don't appreciate having a stranger on my property. You should have called."

"
I don't have your phone number."

"
Try 555-1212. I hear they specialize in phone numbers."

"
I did. You're unlisted."

"
You're right," she said. "I forgot that."

"
I could've written you a letter." An edgy smile lifted the left corner of his mouth.

She refused to acknowledge either the smile or where she
'd imagined that mouth exploring the night before. "You know I can't afford to hire, you," she said.

"
You can't afford not to hire me."

"
How do you figure that?" She'd seen her bank book. He hadn't. She couldn't afford to hire a mouse.

"
You're already out the money. You might as well get something for it."

She looked at him closely. If there was an ulterior moti
ve behind his words, he hid it well. "Come in," she said after a moment. "I'll give you some iced tea, and we can talk." She laughed bitterly. "We can't sit but we can talk."

"
We can sit," he said.

"
On the stairs," she said

"
We can do better than that." He motioned for her to follow him back to his truck, where he pulled back the canvas covering. "A few things you might be able to use."

"
Chairs!" she exclaimed, astonished.

"
And a table, a few lamps. I can get you a sofa by Sunday afternoon."

"
I can't believe you did this."

"
No big deal," he said, grabbing one of the upholstered chairs and lifting it from the truck.

"
It
is
a big deal," she said. "I don't have the money for this."

"
Just say thanks," he said, starting up the path to the front door.

"
I can't say thanks because I can't accept this."

"
Are we going to waste time on this or can we just cut to the final scene?" He didn't break stride. "I owe you a shitload of money. I don't have it to give back to you. This is one of the ways I can pay down the debt."

"
I don't know—"

"
You're pregnant," he said. "You're going to get more pregnant. If you can't take this stuff for your own sake, think about the baby. You can call it a loan if it makes you feel better."

His words hit her hard. This stranger cared more than the baby
's father. She found herself softening.

It made perfect sense when she thought about it. He
'd pocketed a fair chunk of change for work he wouldn't be doing, and she could see he was the kind of man who couldn't live easily with that. Still she felt vaguely disappointed and wasn't sure why.

She walked ahead of him and unlocked the front door.
"Where do you want it?" he asked as he stepped into the foyer.

"
The living room," she said. "Near the window."

"
Not bad," he said. "Good thing you have white walls, Everything goes with white."

Almost everything
,
she thought. The green-and-white plaid club chair might be pushing the envelope, but she didn't say anything. She was grateful to have something other than the floor and the staircase to sit on.

"
Go do what you have to do," he said. "I'll bring in the rest of the stuff."

"
How about that iced tea?"

"
Sounds great."

He worked like a dog
, dragging chairs and tables and lamps into her previously empty living room. By the time he was finished, her living room and dining room looked positively livable. They weren't going to make the pages of
Architectural Digest
but they were cozy and comfortable, and she was embarrassingly grateful.

By the time she brought out a tray of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a pitcher of iced tea
, he was sprawled in the green-and-white chair with his eyes closed.

An odd feeling came over her. She didn
't know the first thing about the man. She couldn't even remember his name. Yet there he was, sleeping in her living room on furniture he'd dragged in on his extremely broad back and shoulders. Yes, she'd noticed his body. She'd have to be dead to miss those powerful forearms and huge football player's hands. He was as tall as Robert and around the same age, but that was where all similarity ended. There was nothing familiar about him, the way there was with Spencer. His accent, the way he walked, that faraway look in his eyes—he wasn't like anyone she'd ever met.

For one thing he hadn
't even tried to make a pass at her. He treated her the way you'd treat a maiden aunt, with respect and a certain distance. Most men she met made at least a token effort at flirtation, even if it was nothing more than a twinkle in the eye or a smile of recognition. She'd been fending off advances since she bought her first bra. It was as natural to her as breathing. What wasn't natural was being overlooked.

Not that she was compl
aining. If the man was going to be working around her house, it was better for both of them if he found her as appealing as poison ivy. Still, it seemed odd. Robert's defection had badly damaged her self-confidence. When she washed her face in the morning, she found herself staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to see herself through Robert's eyes, trying to understand why he'd left.

Because it had to be her fault. Happy husbands didn
't leave their wives. It was that simple.

She placed the tray down on the small end table and tried not to notice the way the right-hand corner had been chipped away over the years. The table was a lovely burnished walnut that had probably seen many
years
of use. She touched the dent with her index finger, then ran her hand across the scarred surface. The wood felt soft inside and smooth. Not at all what she'd expected. She stroked it lightly, wondering at its velvety texture, the faint scent of lemon.

She
'd never lived with used furniture before. Her mother had always prided herself on owning fresh-from-the-factory furniture that had no history but the one they created for it. There was something lower class about old furniture, her mother believed, as if the ghosts of the past could reach out and pull her back to old ways and old times. Even when Molly and Robert were starving students, their furniture had been brand-new. Nobody else's broken dreams or sorrows had ever touched it.

It hadn
't made a difference, though. Not for her mother and not for Molly.

Chapter F
our

Rafe opened his eyes to find Molly Chamberlain watching him. She was sitting in the maple rocker he
'd found a year ago when he first moved to the area. The sight hit him like a kick in the gut. It was the one thing he'd brought that hadn't belonged to Miriam. He'd been hauling away junk from one of those pricey mansions up around Alpine when the rocking chair caught his eye—soft maple, badly scratched and gouged, but curved into a shape sweet enough to make you cry. He worked on it at night when he couldn't sleep, when the old demons rose up in the moonlight to remind him he was nothing, had always been nothing, would be nothing all the days of his life.

He
'd worked hard on that rocker, sanding, smoothing, carefully healing the ugly battle scars and wounds. He stained it, waxed it, set it near the window in his carriage house. He didn't use the rocker. He didn't try to sell it. The rocker sat there, day after day, waiting.

Long ago
, when he and Karen first got married, he'd bought a rocking chair. It wasn't much of a chair, a cheap Kmart job with brittle wood and a cotton cover, but it held a lot of dreams. "I'll put it by the fireplace," he'd said to her. "You can nurse the baby there." Karen was four months gone at that point and angry. She'd turned away without a word. Nobody had ever used that rocking chair.

The sight of Molly Chamberlain in this refinished wonder unsettled him all the way to his core. There was something deeply right about the sight of her sweetly pregnant body cradled in the chair
's curves and hollows. He felt as if he held her in the palms of his hands. Late afternoon sunshine spilled through the window and made her hair shine coppery gold. Autumn leaves, he thought, spun through with gold. Her clear blue-eyed gaze was focused directly on him. She had this way of looking at him, as if she could see past his defenses.

He knew that was crap. It had to be. The only thing she wanted to know about him was why he was asleep in her living room.

"Damn," he said, dragging his hand through, his hair. "Sorry about that."

"
Don't apologize," she said. "Obviously you were exhausted."