Turn My World Upside Down: Jo's Story (9 page)

Jack broke his cookie in half and watched the melted chocolate stretch out.

Everything was different now and he didn’t want it to be different anymore. Oh, he had sisters now, and mostly, Jo was okay, and there was Emma to play with, and sometimes Jonas Candellano came over, but most of the time he just wished he could go back to the way it used to be.

Just his mom and him, living in their house in San Francisco. He used to like it when his dad came to visit. But living here was hard. He still didn’t feel like this was his place. Like he belonged here.

His heart ached at the thought and he frowned as he bit into another warm cookie. The chocolate chips got all gooey, which was really cool, and he licked the strings of chocolate off his fingers and Nana didn’t even yell at him, so that was okay, too.

She was nice.

She was also
really
old.

And, she kept looking at him a little funny. Like she was trying to see inside him, and Jack wondered if old people could really do that. Maybe when you got old, you got superpowers—and wouldn’t that be cool?

“My mommy’s having a brother for me, he’s in her tummy and she says he’ll be really, really nice and love me a lot.” Emma Hendricks took a bite of her hot chocolate chip cookie, and while she chewed she kept talking, as her sneaker-clad feet beat against the rungs of her chair. “And I told Mommy that I wanted a sister but she says I’ll like a brother too and I like Jack”—she shrugged—“so maybe I will.”

Jack sighed with the patience of a ten-year-old for a
much
younger nine-year-old. Emma was okay mostly,
but she was always talking about the baby. He didn’t care about babies. He wanted to talk about baseball or about how Cash had taught him how to throw. And how maybe now the kids at school would let him play on the team and then maybe things wouldn’t be so hard here anymore.

“Jack,” Nana said, stroking one hand along the back of his head. “You want some more cookies?”

He liked the feel of Nana petting him. It was nice. As nice as warm cookies.

“I can have more?” he asked, lifting his gaze to hers.

She smiled, and her eyes smiled too as she clucked her tongue and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Growing boys need cookies. Issa good for you.” She shook her head. “Also haircuts issa good.”

“Aunt Mike says haircuts can make you stupid.” Emma nodded solemnly.

Jack snorted a laugh. “That’s dumb.”

“Yeah, I think she was kidding.” Emma shrugged and grabbed another cookie. “Are you gonna stay here for a long time, Nana?”

Jack stiffened and under the table Bear snorted. He wasn’t sure what kind of answer he wanted Nana to give. Before, it had been just him and Jo living in his father’s house while Papa was gone. But people kept coming and going out of his life so much that he’d really like
somebody
to stay.

The old lady sat down in a chair at the head of the table and reached out to lay her hands atop one of theirs. “Long enough,” she said, giving each of them a pat. “Now. You wanna help make calzones for supper?”

Jo took her frustrations out on the Santiagos’ new deck. Thankfully, there were plenty of nails that needed pounding into the soft redwood planks. The zing of the hammer jolted up her arm, and with every strike, she felt a little bit better.

What kind of personality was it, she wondered, when hitting something was comfort food? Italian? She smiled, set another nail into place and held it with her thumb and forefinger as she swung the hammer again. Two even strokes and the nail was home and she was moving on to the next one.

The growl of a saw hummed in the background, and to Jo it was like music. It soothed her as thoroughly as a lullaby did a cranky baby. And damned if she wasn’t feeling a little cranky at the moment.

Jack was alone with Nana and who knew how that was going. Plus, now she knew that Stevie—and who knew how many other people in town—was wondering about her and Cash.

“So, Jo.” Eva Santiago walked across the lawn and stopped just below the edge of the new deck. “The weatherman’s promising rain by the weekend.”

Pausing in her work, Jo rested the hammer on her lap and turned her face up. Clouds scuttled across the deep blue sky, pushed by a wind racing in from the nearby ocean. Rain. Well, April in Chandler usually meant plenty of rain.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, smiling at the woman, who had been one of her mother’s best friends. “We should be finished in a couple of days, but if we’re not, we’ll cover it all with a tarp.” Pain in the ass, but part of the job.

“Oh good.” Eva rocked back on her heels, swept one
hand across her neatly styled salt-and-pepper hair, then sighed in pleasure. “I can’t believe the Money Fairy is making this deck possible just in time for Jamie’s big birthday party.”

“Handy,” Jo agreed. The Money Fairy was back at it in Chandler. After taking a month or so off last winter, the anonymous benefactor was back in full swing.

Talk around town was that the Money Fairy was slipping cash into mailboxes all over town. But strange thing was, the fairy left only what was needed—at just the right time. A discriminating fairy to say the least. Take the Santiagos. Not that they were desperate for money, but there wasn’t a lot extra. And somehow, the Money Fairy had found out that Eva wanted to build a deck with a wheelchair ramp in her backyard. Jamie Santiago, sixteen, brilliant, and just recently confined to a wheelchair, thanks to a car accident, would now have the run of the yard.

“Marsha Fielding found two hundred dollars yesterday. Just what she needed to buy some new part or other for her car—” Eva paused to take a breath. “You know how that junker of hers is always breaking down.”

“True.” Marsha’s car was older than Jo. The fairy should have left her enough to buy a new car so the town could hold a tasteful memorial for the old clunker.

But the Money Fairy had been busy lately. Jimmy Harris had found just enough money to pay for summer camp, so he could go with his friends this year. Vicky Fletcher had received the three hundred dollars she needed to pay a vet bill for her ancient cat. And just last week, Terry Summers opened her mailbox to find the eighty-five bucks she’d wanted to buy a fancy pair of shoes for the high school dance.

Whoever the fairy was, he was well informed.

Eva sighed and glanced over her shoulder at the sawhorses set up in the corner of the yard. Cash was there, running the table saw through long planks of redwood. When the older woman turned back to Jo, she smiled and winked.

Jo stiffened. “What?”

Eva leaned in closer and kept her voice to a whisper that could only be heard next door rather than down the street. “I like your young man.”

“You
what
my
who
?”

“Now, Jo,” she said, laying a hand on Jo’s forearm. “No need to pretend with me. Your mother and I were like this.” She held up two fingers, overlapped. “Remember?”

“Yeah, I do but—” Well, that answered her earlier question. It wasn’t just Stevie doing some wondering about Cash and Jo. If Eva Santiago was talking, you could bet that there were plenty of others doing the same damn thing.

Oh man.

“Isn’t he a handsome one, though?” She stole a look at Cash again and Jo followed her gaze. “All that thick black hair and, oh my goodness, cowboy boots on a man are really hot, aren’t they?”

“Hot?”
Jo blinked up at the woman, both fascinated and appalled. Mrs. Santiago thought Cash was
hot
. So wrong in so many ways.

“My Jamie, she’s sixteen now, you know,” Eva said, nodding briskly. “Well, she took one look at your young man and told me he was the definition of hot.”

Jamie obviously needed a cold shower, but that wasn’t really the point here.

“He’s
not
my young man.” And oh God, she really hoped he couldn’t hear this weird conversation over the whine of the saw.

Eva smiled and shook her head. “Oh, you go ahead and keep your secrets, and heaven knows I won’t say a word . . .” She made a motion of zipping her lips closed, locking them, then throwing away the key.

Which didn’t mean a thing. In the gossip chain of Chandler, Eva Santiago was right near the top. What she didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. And what she hadn’t told, hadn’t happened yet.

“Now, don’t you worry about a thing, dear,” Eva said, “I’ll just go see if your young man would like something cold to drink.”

Kill me now
, Jo thought.

The day went downhill from there.

She and Cash had finished up the work at the Santiagos in time for Jo to get home and be put to work by Nana. They’d scrubbed the kitchen and both bathrooms before the old woman had given in to jet lag and gone to bed.

Now, with both Nana and Jack sound asleep, Jo finally had the chance to relax a little. Sitting on the darkened front porch of her parents’ house, Jo leaned her head against the newel post and stared up at the stars. A clear night, the sky was black and the sweep of stars shone like, well, like diamonds. Funny. A few months ago, she’d looked up at those same stars and cursed them because of the stupid astronomy class she’d been flunking at the time.

Then Cash had sent her a book,
Astronomy for Dummies
. Now she knew more about the stars and less
about Cash. For so long, she’d been sure she knew just what he was about. Fast talker, smooth lines, women falling at his feet.

Now, though, she just didn’t know.

Oh, he was still irritating. That she could depend on. But he was also being . . . helpful. And . . . God help her,
nice
.

Why?

Cash’s reputation had become legend in Chandler as every woman he slept with up and left town immediately after. They’d all “seen the light” or whatever and had trotted off to do good works. Now, whether that was just a strange coincidence, or Cash was some sort of hypnotist or—

“Right. A hypnotist.” Shaking her head she focused her gaze on the Big Dipper and tried to line her thoughts up again in an orderly manner.

But they just wouldn’t fall into line.

No surprise there.

Cash was slippery. And probably devious. And definitely sexy as hell. So why was she thinking about him at all?

Because it had been too long since she’d been with a man.

That’s all it was.

And she’d get over it.

As she shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden steps, a distant movement in the shadows caught her eye. Wind rustled the leaves on the trees and draped a long strand of brown hair across her eyes. Carefully, she pushed it back and turned her gaze to the house across the street.

Mrs. Sanchez, a widow approximately a hundred and eighty years old, lived alone and went to bed as soon as the sun set. Her house was dark. Quiet.

Another shadowy movement from the hedges at the edge of Mrs. Sanchez’s yard caught and held Jo’s attention. She held her breath and waited. Yes. Someone was moving around the yard. Someone who didn’t want to be seen.

Who the hell would be sneaking around an old lady’s house in the middle of the night? Fear rippled through her, but she moved on instinct. Mrs. Sanchez was alone. She was a neighbor. A friend. Jo didn’t need to think beyond that.

Moving as quietly as the shadow across the street, she slipped up to her truck, parked in the driveway. Shadows within shadows. No moonlight, just the quiet night and a sky filled with stars.

Wincing, she reached over the edge of the truck bed and quietly, carefully, lifted a heavy pipe wrench. Clutching it tight in her right fist, she started across the yard, stepping carefully, silently.

Her gaze locked on the intruder across the street and her mind raced. She should have called the police. Tony Candellano, the sheriff, could have been there in five minutes. Maybe ten. But by then, she reasoned, whoever was sneaking around the Sanchez house could be long gone.

Nope.

She gritted her teeth and crossed the street as quietly as a tall woman in work boots could.

The shadow was close to the porch now, slipping out of the darkness to climb the short flight of steps to the
house. Fury rushed through her and Jo let it surge as she charged the last few feet separating her from whoever was sneaking around Mrs. Sanchez’s house.

Raising the pipe wrench high, she warned the man in a low-pitched growl, “Whoever the hell you are, you’d better get gone fast.”

“Jesus Christ!” The shadow’s voice came low and rough and was way too familiar.

“Cash?”

“I’d just as soon you kill me with that pipe wrench as
scare
me to death,” Cash muttered, scraping one hand across his face and glaring at Jo.

In his black jeans, black T-shirt, and black leather jacket, he’d convinced himself he was damn near invisible. Apparently not. He’d never even heard her come up behind him. In the stealth contest, she was a winner.

God, she looked like an avenging angel. Stepping out of the dark, one shadow among many. Her pale eyes were wide, astonishment clear on her features. And as his thudding heart dropped from his throat back into his chest where it belonged, he could enjoy the sight of her.

He’d known going in that taking money to Mrs. Sanchez would be risky. With the Marconi house right across the wide street, he was taking the chance of being seen. Recognized. But there wasn’t much choice in the matter. The old woman needed this money to pay her property taxes. She’d been in the house for fifty years, and while Cash had never known continuity like that, he could appreciate it. And not want to see it end.