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It had taken ten minutes for Momma to remove the rags in Molly’s hair and another ten minutes to stiffen the ringlets which crowned her head and shoulders and fell over her brow. She wouldn’t dream of hurting her mother’s feelings by stuffing her corkscrews beneath a hat, but if she’d had a hat on her, she’d have done so the minute she hit the You Are Now Leaving the Happy Hamlet of Hopeless sign.
She blew three corkscrews out of her face but they were so thick they hardly bounced. Great. Not only had her mother humiliated her in front of her first employee by employing him before Molly did, her employee had what could only be termed a smirk on his face as he waited for her to load her bicycle onto the back of Momma’s pickup.
He nodded at the handlebars. “Nice tassels.”
Oh, shut up. Her first employee ever, and he was laughing at her. It certainly took the sparkle off of his dirty good looks.
“Do you want all of these on the back?” he asked, picking up the first plant pot of a dozen Momma was donating for the hacienda.
The terracotta pot had to weigh forty pounds. Add the soil, and the two-foot high yucca and it equaled one strong guy. I need that roof. “Yes, please.” She turned to tie the bike to the side rail of the pickup.
He shooed her out of the way when she jumped off the back. “I sold my car,” she said. “That’s why I’m borrowing my mother’s.” He didn’t appear interested. “Where’s your car?”
“I sold mine, too.”
“Is that why you’ve taken the job, because you need the money?” She hoped not.
“Are we still in the interview?’ he asked, a little gruffly. He flipped the tailgate up, and latched it with a slap.
A shadow crossed over Molly’s head.
She took a breath, and turned. “This is Saul Solomon,” she told Davie.
Davie had his arms crossed over the bulk of his chest and his dark eyes narrowed in a ferocious glare aimed at Molly’s employee.
Saul stepped forward, holding out his hand.
Davie ignored it. “Good afternoon,” he said, glowering.
Saul let his hand drop. “Just trying to be polite, buddy.”
“Eos es un buen comienzo,” Davie said.
Her employee paused, gauging Davie, a twist to his mouth that didn’t say he was pissed, and didn’t say he was happy. Men stuff.
“Sí,” Saul said at last. “Parece que se está.”
It was definitely a good start if he could speak to Davie in Spanish.
“Molly, get in the truck.”
“Oh, please!” Molly gaped at Davie.
“Now.”
Molly groaned, her shoulders sinking as she turned for the pickup. She yanked the door open, threw herself into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, feeling excessively pissy about being protected in this manner. She shot a narrowed gaze to the idiot men.
Davie indicated Molly with a flick of his thumb, and said something in a low tone.
Molly leaned closer to the closed window. Damn. She couldn’t hear a thing but her employee turned on a smile, full beam, and nodded. He leaned forward slightly and spoke.
Damn! She pressed the window button. “What’s going on?” she asked as the caught the tail end of Saul’s response and a word that sounded like espantado. Scared of what?
Davie grunted a laugh and when Saul held his hand out for a handshake, this time Davie took it.
There was a lot of extra-firm-grip going on. Saul had the edge on Davie, height-wise, and he was built with muscle—she could tell even with his shirt on—but she wouldn’t like to bet who’d beat the other up first if it came to a brawl. Saul would be faster, but Davie knew some tricks. They released each other’s hand and stepped apart.
“All good in the eyes, Molly,” Davie said.
“Thank you,” Molly said in a tight voice. “I could have sussed that out myself.”
“Yeah, but it might have been too late by then. Drive safely and watch the transmission. I just fixed it.”
Molly pulled a face. Men.
“You’ve got a few people looking out for you,” Saul said as he eased into the passenger seat.
“Wait until you meet my grandmother.” She put the pickup into reverse and sped out of the parking spot with a squeal of rubber, without glancing in the rearview to see what Davie thought about that.
“When do I get the pleasure?” Saul asked as his hand shot forward to grab the dash when she straightened the pickup in a tight turn.
“She’ll find you. When she’s ready—or when she needs to.” Molly shut up. It would be foolish to explain the more complicated side of Crazy Alice a few minutes after he’d met Momma Marie and Davie. She’d never get a roof on the hacienda.
“Who is he?” Saul asked, looking behind him at Davie.
“Davie Little. My bodyguard.” She chanced a quick smile. “What was all that talk about being scared of something?”
“We were discussing your beauty and my fear of women.”
Doubtful, although a small part of her liked the idea that they had been discussing her beauty. But in this get-up? Chances were slim to nothing.
She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth and checked the slight stain of pink left on her skin. Kiss-proof lipstick. Blast proof, more like.
“I’m looking forward to sleeping under a roof for a few days,” Saul said, getting himself comfortable on the seat. “I’ll make a start as soon as we get there.”
“There’s actually quite a bit of roof making to be done,” she said cautiously. If he worked until sundown it still wouldn’t put a roof on any part of the hacienda’s single story.
“Think I might enjoy my stay in Hopeless after all,” he said, and something persuasive in his tone made her look at him.
Her skin prickled. He was checking her thighs. Then he ran his eyes up her body, the same appreciative look on his face. Then he reached her head and grinned.
“After all what?” she asked, shifting her bottom on the seat and concentrating on the road. She couldn’t blame him for the check-out-the-chick routine. She’d checked him out pretty thoroughly, especially when he was hefting those plant pots.
“I’m just looking forward to the rest,” he told her, folding his arms over his chest.
“Fixing a roof isn’t a rest.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Putting a few roof tiles in place beats hauling lumber.”
Uh-oh.
“I like your mom, by the way. Cool lady.”
“Thanks. You were a ranger?” she asked.
“Most of my adult life.”
“Why?”
“I’d been a ranger in Colorado. When I got here, it was the obvious thing to do.”
“Did you like it?”
“I didn’t mind it.”
“So why did you leave?” Like, did you suddenly decide to kill someone?
He paused a fraction too long and her already overactive brain broke into a run.
“Time was right,” he said at last.
Time would be right if he was on the run after killing some little old lady and her dog. Why those questions about cell coverage when he already had a working sat phone—not that he’d taken the call when it had rung—and what about the part where he noted that not too many people wandered in and out of town? That was downright disturbing. Plus, he was too good-looking to be real. Way better looking than Jason, and given what she knew about handsome men to date, perhaps he was on the take like the thing had been. If she didn’t need a roof... And why was he walking through the canyon? Why had he come to Hopeless, Texas’s forgotten town? Keeping himself hidden, that was why.
“Are you wanted by the law?”
“No. Are you?”
“I don’t think so.” That little issue with the laxatives and the Donaldson people wouldn’t be considered unlawful, would it? Maybe Saul the hot ranger would know.
“I did once assist someone”—she wasn’t going to name Davie in case she got him into trouble—“and helped him—I mean, this person—make arrangements to—” How could she put it? “Coerce some mean people out of town.” That wasn’t illegal, was it? She glanced at Saul for a reaction.
He studied her for a while, then lifted the side of his mouth in a smile. “Were they hurt?”
“No! But they might have spent a lot of time in restrooms.”
“Well, then, I don’t think you need to worry your curls into a tizz. Why did you do it?”
“To protect the valley.”
“From what?”
Molly chewed on her cheek. He wasn’t staying long. Maybe only an hour once he saw the hacienda. But if he did stay and build her roof, he’d go into town some days. Momma wouldn’t keep her mouth closed, she’d set him up with a slice of sponge cake and tell him all about it. She might even try to rope him in and ask him to hold hostage any Donaldson people who showed up again.
“Are you armed?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“If Momma asks you to do something illegal, just tell her you haven’t got time.”
He shook his head and turned his face to the windshield.
“We’re a bit of an oddball family,” she told him.
“Is that right?” he said reflectively.
Molly bit her tongue. Don’t answer. You’ll get yourself into more trouble. And anyway, they were about to turn up the dirt track that led to the roofless hacienda.
Saul swallowed a sigh as his employer bumped the pickup over a ridge at the base of an incline and headed up the hill. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a good driver, he just preferred to power his transport himself. Driving, or on his own two legs. He bit back his third desire to tell her to watch it with the sharp turns.
He ducked his head when she drove beneath a low, crumbling, partially rendered arch.
“We fit,” she said, not looking at him. “Four inches to spare. I measured it.”
“One small landslide and four inches is grinding the alloy off the cab roof.”
Speaking of roofs... Saul pushed into his seat, and squinted at his workplace which was appearing fast before them.
She drove up the track, following a curve. They were high enough to take in a stunning vista but it wasn’t the scenery that was creating the muscle spasm at the side of his eye. The area by the house was more or less cleared. A washhouse or staff quarters to the right. An old toppling fountain in the courtyard in front of the hacienda. Two-story on the right with a pitched roof, and single-story on the left, and up the top of the single-story—
“Looks like a flat roof from here.”
She didn’t answer.
“Thought you said it was a pitched tile roof?”
“It will be.”
“Hold on.” Saul straightened and slapped the dash. “Pull up.”
She pulled over and sat looking out the windshield, a determined set to her full mouth. “Let’s be pleasant about this. I didn’t lie.”
“You didn’t exaggerate, either. There’s no roof on that single story section, is there?”
“Look...” She swiveled to face him, still holding the steering wheel tightly with both hands. “You didn’t give me a chance to explain the exact requirement of the renovation.”
“You had every opportunity. I asked if the roof was flat or pitched.”
“But you didn’t ask whether the rafters and the tiles were, as yet, actually up at roof height.”
He turned on his seat to face her. “I said something about not having to haul lumber.”
“You don’t have to haul more than thirty rafters—and all the other smaller bits that fit together.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“We can use the pickup to drag them.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’ can use the pickup?”
“I’ll help. I’m not going to sit around knitting sweaters while my employee—”
He held up his hand, palm facing her. “First off, we end the employer-employee relationship right here. If I stay—and it’s a really tall if—you’ll pay me, but you will not refer to me as an employee. If I stay, and I’m doubting it, lady, it will be as a contractor.”
“They’re usually more expensive.”
“Now you’re getting real.”
“I’m not going to give you an upfront hefty payment just because you want one,” she told him, going close to cross-eyed in astonishment. “I don’t trust you.”
“You think I trust you? If I stay, I’ll take a weekly cut from my contractor’s all-up payment—which, I must inform you, has just risen by twenty-five percent. So take that deal or go without a roof.”
“If you stay,” she told him, determination sweeping astonishment off her face as she leaned closer. “You’ll get a ten percent hike on the original weekly wage.”
“Twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
“Eighteen—and if I stay,” he said, moving close enough to feel the warmth of her breath of his face. “You do as I say.”
“But I’m the boss.” Her eyes were so green they’d ignite if the sun settled on them for too long.
“Not anymore,” he said. “You’re an ordinary person at the whim of a disgruntled contractor who could fire your ass any hour, any minute, any second of any day. Get it?”
“No. You get this,” she said, pushing her nose at his. “Both parties can fire at will, at which point, said verbal contract is over, and the contractor hauls his ass off the hirer’s property and never comes back.”
Saul paused. Her eyelashes were long, and they were real. He’d thought them fake but they were goddamn real.
“I really ought to run now,” he said softly, unable to help the tug of a smile.
He nearly tipped his face to one side and kissed the gutsy slant off her pink mouth, but managed to halt the temptation. There was something extraordinary about her but he couldn’t figure out what, and he never went around kissing women just because he was tempted to.
He pulled from her and slapped the dash. “Okay. I’ll take a look.”
She turned fast and put the truck into drive. She shook her ringlets, drove the short distance on the remaining driveway, concentrating with a frown. Raw energy and worry came off her in waves.
Saul sighed. I should have run.
