Three

Ed felt an overwhelming urge to reach out and take her hand, to assure her he was trustworthy.

He would never do anything to hurt any client, especially her. In the short time he’d known her, his protective nature had kicked into high gear.

“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t trust you?” she asked, her voice low and unsure.

“No reason at all, Jill. C’mon—let me show you what we have to do.” His voice cracked.

Jill’s eyes grew rounder as she followed him from room to room.

“This is going to cost me a fortune, even if I’m only charged for materials,” she said with a groan. “And I’m sunk.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “It’s not as bad as it seems. The only thing you have to remember is to let me do my job. As a builder I get construction materials at wholesale.”

She finally sighed and nodded. “Okay, do what you have to do. I have to trust you.”

Ed felt his chest constrict. He wanted her trust more than he’d realized.

Less than an hour later Matt showed up. “Finish it quickly,” Ed quietly told him. “Keep in mind Jill’s getting a little nervous about all this. Whatever you do, don’t let on how much it costs. Just give me the bill, okay?”

Matt grinned. “She’s your new pet project, huh?” Ed’s friends had always teased him about wanting to rescue people in distress. Matt leaned back, looked at the woman with the wild curls piled on top of her head, then glanced back at Ed. “Not bad, Ed. She’s really cute. You could do much worse.”

Ed knew Matt couldn’t possibly understand the conflicting feelings he had for Jill. Even he didn’t fully understand them. Yes, he was attracted to her; but, no, he wasn’t about to act on his feelings.

But he wasn’t able to get her out of his mind, either, even when a wall stood between them. Her innocent and trusting expressions chipped away at the shield he’d placed over his heart after his wife died. He tightened his jaw. Being around Jill evoked a feeling he hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

Each time he caught a whiff of her spicy fragrance, he found his mind drifting into territory he’d been avoiding since Marcy died. After all he’d gone through with losing his wife, Ed felt it was best to guard against any chance of losing his heart again.

“Ed!” he heard Jill holler from the front room. “I hate to bother you, but could you come in here a minute?”

He propped the sheet of drywall he’d been working with against a stud and rushed to see what she needed. When he got to the door, he saw her standing dangerously close to the edge of the top rung of a stepladder, reaching as high as her arms would go, but still not high enough to get the ceramic rooster off the top shelf.

“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to stand on the top step?” He offered her a hand.

“I really need that rooster,” she said as she took his hand and cautiously stepped down.

“Okay.” Ed helped her down, then moved the ladder to one side.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she asked. “Even you can’t reach that without a ladder.”

Ed moved quickly to the back room, grabbed the taller ladder, and hoisted it into place. “If you’re gonna stick stuff up that high, I suggest you get the equipment you need.”

“You’re the one who put it back up there.”

“Only because you wanted it there,” he replied as gently as he could.

She placed her hands on her hips and watched him. Her eyes showed a combination of emotions besides frustration—anger, relief, and maybe even a little admiration—as he grabbed hold of the rooster and began to descend the ladder.

“Hey, be careful with that. That thing cost me a fortune.”

Ed chuckled. “Who woulda guessed?”

As soon as Ed offered it to her, Jill reached for it. “Don’t pass judgment on something you know nothing about,” she said as their fingers touched.

The tight sensation in his chest should have served as a warning to keep his distance, but the look in her eyes held him captive for a few seconds—just long enough for him to lose his breath.

Jill glanced down at the floor as she took a step back, nearly falling over the basket that lay on the floor behind her. Ed caught her just in time.

“Whoa there,” he said as he cupped his palms beneath her elbows.

He refrained from saying anything about the clutter on the floor. That wouldn’t serve any purpose at the moment, and he knew it.

To keep her from falling, he instinctively pulled her to him. She was still hanging on to the rooster, which slammed him in the chest.

“Ouch!” he said. He let go and inhaled deeply. “That thing’s lethal.”

Jill tilted her head and glared at him. “You’re determined to make me feel stupid, aren’t you?”

“Why would you say that?”

She backed toward the counter and carefully set the rooster down. “First of all, you tell me I can’t build sturdy enough shelves to hold my excess stock. Then you tell me this place is falling apart and that my investment is worthless. And now you’re making fun of what I sell. I’ll have you know—”

Ed held up his hands to shush her. “Stop right there, Jill. I’m just here to do a job. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“But you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sniffed. That protective feeling still hadn’t left Ed. He shuffled his feet and tried to redirect his thoughts.

“Apology accepted.”

“You asked me to help you get something down off the top shelf. If you want me to stay away from you, just tell me right now.”

She blinked a couple of times, but to his surprise she didn’t say anything.

❧

Jill couldn’t remember the last time she’d shown her emotions in front of a man. Her father had forbidden her to shed tears, because he said it was a sign of weakness. After practicing keeping a stiff upper lip, Jill couldn’t imagine letting her fears be known to someone she’d only met yesterday.

This business was what she’d dreamed of all her life. Her grandmother had had a house filled with knickknacks and fun little figurines that delighted Jill from her earliest memory. Moving around from one military base to another had prevented her from collecting all the items she’d loved as a child. So she’d promised to surround herself with pretty and fun things when she was grown. Her own collections had inspired her desire to be in the collectibles business, where she could talk to and help people with common interests all day long.

Opening the Junktique Shoppe had been like a dream come true, until she realized she wasn’t capable of doing everything that needed to be done around here. Her underestimation of the cost of a business could ruin her before she had a chance. She’d had no idea how much utilities were before she’d actually had them turned on. All she’d figured on was the price of the building and purchasing items for resale. Going into business for herself was like being doused with a bucket of ice water when reality kicked in.

Being self-employed beat working for someone else. But it wasn’t nearly as much fun as she’d thought it would be because of the hard, cold, money issues.

Now her handyman—her kindhearted, great-looking handy-man with the penetrating eyes that could see through her facade—was trying to save her from herself.

She’d put everything into this business. A nice, elderly woman from the Greater Atlanta Small Business Administration had given her some advice and helped her to work up a plan. She would do her best to stick to it, despite the bad news about the building.

“The biggest reason businesses fail is that the owners don’t make plans and stick to them,” the woman had said. “You’ll have to tighten your belt, but if you can get through the first couple of years, you’ll do just fine.”

But what if she wasn’t able to make it through the first couple of years? Everything her father had left her would go down the drain if the Junktique Shoppe failed. And if she kept throwing her profit into fixing this dilapidated house, she was certain to face bankruptcy in no time.

Maybe she should have stayed in her apartment in Dallas, kept her receptionist job with the small advertising agency, and invested her inheritance money for retirement. That would have been the safe thing to do. Much safer to her heart, at least, than facing this man every day for the next few weeks. But she would always have felt a pull to the place her mother loved and wanted to return to until the day she’d passed away.

Her mother used to tell her about Atlanta and how wonderful it was. She had talked about the people from all over who came together in the sprawling metropolis, the beautiful terrain, the shopping, and the Varsity, which at that time laid claim to being the biggest fast-food restaurant in the world. When she got to Atlanta, the first thing Jill did was go to the Varsity and order a frosted orange and some onion rings.

Fearful of having Ed look at her again, Jill turned away from him as she said, “Thanks, Ed.”

“No problem.”

The sound of his boots on the hardwood floor let her know he was walking away from her. Now she could relax and get on with the business of figuring out the error in her checkbook.

Jill chewed on the tip of her mechanical pencil, studying the rows of numbers in the bank book, still confused over where ten dollars could have gone. She was so deep in thought, she jumped when she heard the sound from the other side of the counter.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “Having a problem?”

“Uh, yeah,” she admitted. After all, it had to be obvious she wasn’t having fun.

“Mechanical pencils aren’t made for gnawing,” he said with a half smile, one corner of his lips lifted in a make-my-day tilt.

She blew out a breath. “I just hate when my books don’t balance.”

A snort escaped Ed’s lips. “I never would have figured you for the balanced-checkbook sort of gal.”

“What?” She looked at him with a squint.

Right when she was ready to defend herself, Ed glanced down, then looked back up at her. “Sorry,” he said. “That was totally uncalled-for. Sometimes I stick my foot in my mouth and say stupid things.”

All the fighting wind had been blown from Jill’s sail. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I understand.” And she did. Everything else in her life was in chaos. Why wouldn’t he think her checkbook would be, too?

Nodding toward the checkbook, Ed said, “Mind if I take a look at that? I’m pretty good with numbers.”

She hesitated for a moment then pushed it toward him. What harm was there in letting him see what she had—or didn’t have—in her business account? He wasn’t blind. He could see she was struggling.

Ed hadn’t been looking at her checkbook more than a couple of minutes when his friends started to arrive. One by one Jill met them, and she found herself amazed by their kindness and eagerness to get started right away.

❧

At the end of a long, whirlwind day, Ed showed Jill where her checking account error was. The bank had coded one of her checks improperly. It was their error, not hers. Fortunately, catching the mistake was in her favor. “Thanks so much, Ed,” she told him more than once as he gathered his tools and began stacking things while getting ready to leave for the day.

“No problem,” he replied. “I need to get home soon. My daughters’ nanny has to leave early today, and I can’t be late.”

He noticed how she visibly tensed at the mention of his daughters. She didn’t appear wild about children, which was another very good reason to keep his emotional distance from her. Although he was attracted to Jill, he knew he couldn’t get involved with her. He and his girls were part of a package, making it even more difficult to think about getting into a relationship. Not many women were prepared for two very lively preschoolers who could outsmart most adults.

After Ed left the shop he headed straight home. The girls had their noses pressed against the big picture window in the living room. Suddenly their little faces disappeared from the window; then the two reappeared at the front door.

“Daddy!” Stacy said as she flung open the door. She threw herself into his arms, while her twin sister, the more demure Tracy, pulled at his hand. “We’re starving.”

Mrs. Cooper, the nanny, already had her purse hooked over her arm. “Sorry to do this to you, Mr. Mathis, but I really must go. I thawed the ground beef as you asked me to.”

“Thanks,” he told her. “See you in the morning.”

The second she was gone, Stacy piped up. “Daddy, we wanna go to the Varsity for chili cheese dogs.”

“I thought we’d cook hamburgers on the grill tonight.”

“Let’s do that tomorrow,” Stacy said. “I want a chili cheese dog.”

“That okay with you, Tracy?” he asked as he glanced down at his other daughter. She nodded. “Okay, Varsity it is. We’ll cook out tomorrow night.”

“Can I have french fries?”

Ed blew out a sigh. “You can have whatever you want, Stacy.”

“What’d you do today, Daddy?” Tracy asked after he fastened them both into their car seats in the backseat of the cab of his truck.

“Well,” he began, “there’s this really interesting shop I’ve been helping restore.” Then he told them about the Junktique Shoppe while they listened, paying close attention to every word he said.

Finally Stacy said, “Is she pretty?”

Ed squinted. “Is who pretty?”

“The lady. Jill.”

“Oh, her. Yeah, I guess she’s pretty.”

With a quick glance in the rearview mirror, he could see Tracy turn around and look at her sister, a smile quirking her face. “I wanna see her,” Stacy said.

He should have figured as much. “Maybe later.”

“When?”

“How about when I finish the job?”

Ed knew from experience he needed to change the subject quickly, or he’d have to answer more questions about Jill. They took the bait, but he knew this wasn’t the last he’d hear from his daughters.

After they got home from the Varsity he helped them with their baths, read stories to them, tucked them into their beds, and said prayers with them. “Love you, girls,” he said, backing toward the door.

“Love you, too, Daddy,” they said in unison.

Later on that night Ed lay in his own bed, thinking about the progress he’d made at the shop. He had an odd sensation about Jill. Something besides the state of disrepair of her shop was going on with her. What had happened to cause her so much worry?

Maybe the Lord had brought Ed into Jill’s life for a reason other than fixing her shop. He wasn’t sure about much in his life, but he did know one thing: Whenever things didn’t make sense to him, he needed to be quiet and let the Lord take over. He prayed for guidance. Being there for Jill didn’t mean he needed to get romantically involved with her; he’d have to be very careful not to let that happen.

When he arrived at the shop the next morning, two of his friends were there, waiting for someone to unlock the door. “We thought you’d never get here,” Matt said.

“I had to wait for the nanny.” Ed unlocked the door to let them in. “Before we get started I want to tell you guys something.”

They huddled in the corner while he explained his mission and how he suspected Jill needed more than handy work in her shop. They nodded their understanding and promised they’d watch for opportunities to pray for her.

“Just remember,” he said, “we have to be very gentle. I suspect there’s something deep going on.”

By the time Jill arrived, the three men were well into their tasks. She grinned as Ed greeted her.

“Wow!” she said. “You told me you’d be fast, but I had no idea.”

Ed grinned back at her but had to turn away. Her face glowed when she smiled, with the corners of her lips turned up, her eyes sparkling, reflecting the light from the sunshine that streamed in through the eastern window. Before he’d averted his gaze, he’d seen the gold flecks dancing around in those big brown eyes.

“I brought muffins,” she told them. “Take a break and help yourself.”

They all helped themselves, then returned to work. Jill followed Ed to the back, nibbling on the edge of a muffin, her eyebrows knit in a frown.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I guess,” she said with a shrug.

Ed paused for a moment before he decided to take a leap and ask a question he knew could elicit either a cold stare or her fury—but he was willing to take a chance. “Would you like to go to our church sometime?”

She paused and stared at him for a moment. “Uh, maybe sometime.”

“How about this Sunday?” he asked, looking directly at her.

Jill squirmed. “Not this Sunday.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, Ed. Maybe later, okay?”

“Sure, that’s fine. I just figured you might want to visit our church. We have a lot of nice folks there, and the preacher has a great way of sharing the gospel.”

“I think I’ll just stick to reading my Bible for the time being. Back when my father was alive, he made me get all dressed up in stupid, stiff dresses he picked out for me. Then we had to sit quietly in hard, wooden pews while some preacher droned on and on about how bad we were. Then, when we got home, my father told me that if I didn’t behave I’d burn in hell. I hated every minute of it.” She paused and swallowed hard. “I know Jesus died on the cross for me, but I don’t want to be miserable all the time feeling guilty.”

That certainly explains a lot, Ed thought. He’d seen other Christians who worked the guilt angle on other believers, and he didn’t like it, either.

“Did you ever listen to the message?” Ed asked.

A pained expression crossed her face. “Look, Ed—I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but you’re making me very uncomfortable. I read my Bible, and I’m a believer. You don’t have to convert me.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Time to step back.

“I’ll find a church in my own time,” she added. “Just don’t rush me.”

The bell on the front door jingled as a customer entered. “My break’s over,” Jill announced, jumping up to help the woman who was already perusing the shelves. “Go ahead and finish off the muffins. I’m done.”

Ed sat there and stared after Jill, wondering what to do next. He didn’t want to try to talk Jill into going to his church, but he did want her to come with him at least once. Even if she was getting the Lord’s Word regularly through reading scripture, she still needed to worship somewhere.

❧

“Look, man. You gotta let go and let the Lord work through you,” Joe advised Ed later. The three men were sitting in the small café down the street eating sandwiches for lunch. “You can’t force things.”

Ed nodded. “I know.”

Matt turned to Joe and snickered. “I think Jill’s wormed her way into Ed’s heart.”

Not denying it, but also not admitting anything, Ed said, “As I already told you, Jill needs help in more ways than one, and I’m not a guy who shirks responsibility.”

“Let’s get back to work, then,” Matt said as he stood up, pulled out his wallet, and dropped a couple of dollars on the table for the tip. “The little woman’s waiting for us.”

The shop was crowded when they got back, so the three men went right to work. Jill was constantly surrounded by customers, and she handled them beautifully. Ed again saw that she was in her element, which reinforced his resolve to help her as much as was humanly possible.

Several hours later Jill came back to see how he was doing. “Can I get you something?” she asked.

“Nah, I’m fine.” Ed finished hammering in the nail and stopped, turning to face her. “Business is good today, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s fair. I can’t complain.” She had a questioning look in her eyes, but she didn’t ask anything.

“Look—I’m sorry if I upset you earlier.”

“Upset me?” She tilted her head, forcing one huge lock of curls to flop out of her clip.

“About church. I didn’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m okay.” Her voice was tight, so he knew she wasn’t okay. “I’m used to people trying to drag me to church. As soon as people find out I’m a Christian without a church home”—she snapped her fingers—“they start working on me.”

That comment annoyed him. “I’m not trying to drag you to church, Jill.”

“You weren’t? Are you saying you don’t want me to come to your church?” Now she was challenging him.

“Of course I want you to come to my church.”

She grinned and let out a little chuckle. “Better make up your mind.”

Now he realized she was teasing. Ed was grateful she’d finally relaxed around him.

As soon as she went back to her customer, Ed squeezed his eyes shut and prayed silently. I’m ready to do Your will, Lord. Please show me how best to serve You and act according to Your plan. I want to do everything to Your glory and in Your timing.

When he opened his eyes, Jill was staring at him, her eye-brows raised. “Sorry if I interrupted you,” she said, “but I have a question about something upstairs.”