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The next morning Saul walked across the lodge house courtyard, then across the hacienda courtyard, and round the back. Molly must have gotten up earlier than he had, and that surprised him. He’d thought it might take at least an hour to curl her hair. But she’d left him a note on the dining room table, saying breakfast was ready in the hacienda kitchen whenever he was.
A number of things had played on his mind throughout the night and woken him more than once. Crazy Alice. She was a fortune-teller, of course. Hence the sign of where to find her, no appointments necessary. Presumably because she could predict a customer’s arrival.
He hadn’t gotten the feeling she was a ripoff artist. Far from it, he’d felt comfortable talking to her. He’d gotten the same sense of being valued, and of being valuable, that he’d taken from his grandpa and his mother before he’d been forced to make the decision to leave home. Or the home he’d believed he belonged to.
But what the hell had Alice meant by saying she’d thought his arrival might not happen this decade? Maybe he shouldn’t think too hard about what shouldn’t concern him. Maybe he should concentrate on what breakfast might consist of.
He halted when he turned the corner.
Molly sat on the arm of a rustic wooden bench beneath the kitchen window, a mug in her hands, her knees together. Her pale orange flannel shirt was unbuttoned, showing a white tank beneath. Her shorts revealed bare, slim legs. She had her toes rested on a crate, with sandals on the ground beside her.
A knot of pure attraction, hot and fast, arrived in his belly. Even more astonishing than the rush of desire was her hair. Waist length, rich brown—and not a curl in sight.
“Oh, hi,” she said, taking her toes off the crate. “Hungry?”
“Something smells like bacon and pancakes.”
She grinned. “I forgot to tell you, I make a mean breakfast.”
And someone had forgotten to tell Saul he wasn’t looking for female companionship, but, hell if he didn’t want to walk up to the woman, swing her into his arms, and kiss her.
He was inclined to dismiss his initial thoughts that the Mackillops were a whole lot crazy, and worse—that they were needy—because something in his gut told him they weren’t. Still, it would be good to remain detached, especially at times like this when his attraction to M. Mackillop the younger kept taking him by surprise.
“So can we go eat?” he asked, and made his way into the kitchen, trying to concentrate on his hunger for food and not his appetite for Molly. It was an ordinary, girl-next-door kind of name but he couldn’t conjure up Doris Day or Reese Witherspoon. For a start, she wasn’t blonde. But she did have the same fresh, outdoor look. The breezy, desert-in-bloom aroma of Molly’s perfume reminded him of the natural and wondrous smells of nature. Like freshly cut hay from his youth, or newly-mowed grass on his mother’s front yard, back on the ranch she ran with the help of her other sons and her daughter. He hadn’t had a sense of this familiarity with what had once been home since he left Colorado.
He stuffed the sensory memories back into the recess of his mind. No point dredging those up.
“So you can cook,” he said, taking a plate off a stack on the counter and helping himself to three strips of grilled bacon and four pancakes.
“Of course. I just prefer not to. But I usually have a decent breakfast, because I forget to eat as the day goes on.”
She poured two coffees. “How do you take it?” she asked with raised eyebrows.
“As it is.” He took the mug off her and paused. She spooned three sugars into her mug and added cream. He looked down to her hips and those long, fine legs. “Got a sweet tooth?”
“Only in the mornings. Come midday I cut out the sugar.” She pulled back her opened shirt and slapped her slim hips. “It works.”
Didn’t it just.
He waited for her to take her stool at the counter before sitting opposite her. “So I’ll do dinners, and you do breakfasts,” he offered as he grabbed a fork.
“No need. I’ll go see Momma this morning and pick up some supplies. We’ll have oven-roasted brisket with mashed potatoes and garlic-roasted asparagus for dinner.”
He gave her another quick appraisal as she ate her pancakes, then decided it would be best if he didn’t do that. His man equipment might get the wrong idea. We’re not hanging around, buddy. But he was bewitched by her hair. Shorter, shoulder-length sections fell around her face as the rest trailed temptingly down her back. Right down to the curve of her best asset.
“What do you do in your off-time?” he asked.
She looked up and into his eyes, and he stirred. Geez. That was quick.
“I photograph things. There’s lots of land. You can go hiking in your time off. Keep yourself in shape.”
She didn’t just say that. He glowered. “You haven’t got a roof on your photographer’s studio yet, curly-locks. There won’t be time for leisure activities.”
“I think you’re forgetting that I’m the boss.”
“Okay—boss. I’m going to need help with some parts of the build. Any chance your bodyguard would assist?”
“Davie? Yeah, I’m sure he would, and don’t forget me—I’m up for anything. I don’t want to be the little woman stuck on the ground, calling up orders to the guys doing all the sexy jobs.”
He couldn’t hide the smile that appeared on his face, but he wiped it away quickly. “What do you call the sexy jobs?”
“Up on the roof where all the action is. The dangerous and exciting bits.”
“There’ll be no dangerous parts of this job if I’m in charge.”
She paused in her chewing and threw him a grimace.
“I’m in charge of the roof building,” he reminded her before she could think up something bosslike to say. “So tell me what materials you’ve got, and what you think you need.” He already knew but he wanted to know what she knew, because if he thought something couldn’t be reused, she’d have to buy it new.
She chewed her pancake, then cut into another. “I’ve got masses of clay tiles for the new roof. My grandmother ordered heaps of them six years ago—and they’re okay, or most of them are. But those still on the two-story roof will have to be checked. I can do that,” she added, giving him a pointed look. “I’m in charge of the tiles.”
“Whatever you say, as long as you do whatever I say.”
He ignored her grunt. He’d take a look at the tiles himself and then decide if she knew what she was talking about. “What about the rafters?”
“Most of them are stacked in the house, like you saw. They’ve been covered, too, so I reckon they’ll be good to just put back up.”
She made it sound effortless.
“I’m going to have to check those rafters and figure out the assembly on paper before we do anything. That means every rafter, every hip and every valley, every jack rafter, every broken hip, and every angle.”
She scrunched her nose. “How long will that take?”
“Don’t know yet.” About a day, two at most, if he had his construction calculator and decent graph paper.
Silence fell on them when she didn’t ask any more roof building questions, and Saul caught himself glancing at her hair again. “Tell me about your photography,” he said, changing the subject to something mundane. Anything to get his male equipment back in its resting position.
“Nature,” she said. “Animals, landscapes, still life, and people. Especially fascinating people. Although I usually find something about them to make them interesting.”
“People are part of nature, I guess.”
“Some ought not to be.” She said it with disparity and Saul wondered who’d pissed her off.
Maybe this was the sore point Alice had told him about. Maybe this was her trouble, whatever it involved. Not that he wanted to know.
“Where do you store your photography gear?” he asked.
“My bedroom. Safest place for my valuables.”
Molly had any number of assets. If he found himself in the position of visiting her bedroom, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t want to assess some of her valuables more closely. “You’ll need to wear long pants today,” he told her. “And a long-sleeved shirt. It’s dirty work.”
“I’m going into town first, remember.”
“Don’t take all day. We’ve got a lot to get through.”
“I’m paying you. I’ll take as long as I like.”
“In which case, I might take a long walk out of the valley. Up to you, curly-locks.” He stood and picked up his plate and mug.
“What’s got you so touchy this morning?”
“Nothing,” he said, his voice taking on a gruff tone to mask his qauandary.
Should he make a play? Hell, no. Was he going to listen to sense? Hell, probably not.
“Something’s got you hot and bothered,” she said. “And while we’re on the subject of the job—sorry, the contract—why did you accept it when you’ve got your gear stored? Where were you headed?”
“I was walking to clear my head. Didn’t have a destination in mind.”
“Clear your head of what, though? It sounds to me like you’re hiding.”
He put his plate and mug into a bowl of soapy warm water and started washing them. “Sounds to me like you’ve got an overactive imagination.”
“I have.”
Her fork hit her plate and her stool scraped across the floor.
“So watch yourself,” she said behind him, “because you never know, maybe I can read your mind.”
“Oh, yeah?” He put the plate on the draining rack, and turned. “So what am I thinking?”
He was thinking he might step forward and get his hands tangled in that long hair. He was thinking he preferred Molly’s shade of green eyes to those of the other Mackillop women. Fern-green, hazel flecks catching the light and showcasing her deeper emotions. He was thinking how he’d make those long eyelashes flutter when he ran the palm of his hand over her...
“You’re thinking that maybe you’d better watch yourself around me.”
Maybe he should.
“Because I’m not the curly-locks girly-girl you thought I was.”
She’d gotten that right.
“And regardless of how great you thought your skills were, you’ve seen the job and you’ve realized that you’ll need more than your hands. I notice you haven’t got your tool out yet. Too frightened, I’d say. In case I discover you don’t know how to use it.”
He smiled as a curl of desire hit him low in the belly. She was way off base with that one.
Molly didn’t know why he was grinning but it obviously had something to do with what she’d just said about his tool.
He went back to his washing up and Alice suddenly popped into her head.
Ask him about the time he left Colorado.
“How long ago did you land in Texas again?”
“Longer than I’m staying in Hopeless.”
Not a giver. Hiding something. “Where are you from originally?”
“Colorado.”
“I’ve been there.”
“I left six years ago.”
Molly shot him a deeper look but he was still washing up steadily. “Really? I left Texas six years ago to the month, and landed in Colorado.”
“Yeah?” he asked, as though he didn’t want an answer.
“November twelfth.”
He stopped washing up and looked over his shoulder. “Same.”
“You’re joking!”
“No.” Back to washing up.
Molly pulled a frown. “Where did you fly out from?”
“Colorado Springs.”
“No!” She sprang off the stool.
“Yes.”
Unreal. “Do you remember what time you flew out?”
He stopped washing a plate, lifted his head and frowned. “About one in the afternoon, I think.”
“I arrived at one in the afternoon. We must have been in the airport at the same time.”
He picked up a hand towel and dried his hands. “Looks like we missed out on the pleasure of meeting by six years, one week, and a few hours. Quite a coincidence.”
A spooky coincidence. Molly knew all about spooky.
She ran her eyes down the length of him and considered what she might have thought about a six years younger Saul Solomon if she’d seen him striding across the concourse. He was probably dirty-hot even in his youthful days.
“I’ll get these dried then get on with it.” He threw the hand towel down and picked up a dish towel.
Molly stepped forward, somewhat proud she’d chosen a first employee who was happy to wash and dry dishes. “I’ll do them. You go and get on with it. The sooner we have a roof, the sooner you can get back to Colorado.” If that was where he was heading. Which might be in a couple of weeks. Which felt too soon.
“I’m not rushing,” he said, scooping up his scarf with his tanned, tough, capable-of-building-a-roof hands and looping it around his neck. “Don’t like to be rushed—and I’m certainly not going back to Colorado.”
Intriguing. What, or who, was back in Colorado? Mom and grandpa. A gay younger brother. And a girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend? Dumped ex-girlfriend? Wife?
Molly swallowed hard. A wife and six kids? A dumped wife and six kids?
“Please don’t let him be a thing,” she said under her breath. Although why she should care, she didn’t know.
Molly threw her tote bag into Momma’s pickup followed by the insulated bag she used to cart the ready-meals.
“While you’re in town, would you take a look around your mother’s salon?” Saul called out from the lodge house door behind her. “I must have dropped my sat phone yesterday.”
“Sure.” She turned, and gave him a smile he probably wouldn’t notice as inquisitive from this distance. “If I don’t find your phone,” she said sweetly, “you can use my cell if you need to call anyone. Like family.” Or the wife and kids.
“Thanks. And if you can get your hands on a construction calculator—it’d really move things along.”
Some hope. “Maybe you can make arrangements to pick up your gear when I come back. That would move things along, too.” She smiled again, and waited for his reaction, which he seemed to think about for ages.
Then he smiled back. A long, slow smile, acknowledging the sweet barb she’d just thrown him.
Molly found her own smile taking on some warmth. Regardless of the bickering over pancakes, Saul had settled down from whatever had fired him up earlier this morning. But he was still being evasive. He’d mentioned his younger brother last night, but he hadn’t said anything to Momma in the salon about siblings. He’d only mentioned his grandpa and his mom. That was odd, wasn’t it?
“Oh, and Molly? You’re going to have to hire a crane. The job will take forever without one and I haven’t got forever.”
She looked across the hacienda courtyard at the wall where the roof-building was going to start, her stomach knotting in worry. “I can’t afford that.”
“Use one of the smaller firms who hire out. There are plenty of places around.”
“Good idea.” Even the smaller firms would be too expensive. She turned to the pickup, opened the door, and got in.
She needed the money back from Jason. If winter took hold before she had a roof, it would be another six months before she could even think about continuing the renovations.
Fifteen minutes later, Molly flicked aside plastic blinds and strode into the salon. “Momma!” she called, dumping her bags onto the counter. “I need a crane.”
She turned when she received no response.
Winnie came running through the corridor from the takeout, a pinched expression on her face. She rotated her wrist, blinking fast.
“Developers,” she managed. “Got your momma in a tizzy.”
Molly heard her mother’s heels, not so much tapping on the tiles, as possibly cracking them.
Momma came to a standstill when she entered the salon, her brow drawn and her green eyes like minted ice. “Baby, what do you see?” She lifted her arms wide, presenting herself for inspection.
A pale-pink pencil skirt, a strawberry-colored silk blouse, and fury pouring from every beautifully made-up section of her mother’s face.
“I see trouble.”
“Good. Because that’s what they’re getting.”
“What have they done?”
“D’Pee organized a survey and Ty ‘Slick’ Wilson delivered it around the valley. They’re calculating how much money they’ll need to spend if they offer a fat sweetener to those who sell out.”
“They’re already offering below price for the land,” Molly said. “Are they upping the payout?”
“No. But they’re thinking of including an imported SUV, and Bob Smith—whoever he is—came up with the idea of adding a set of mediocre white goods. That’s not all!” Momma added. “Thirty percent of the valley have filled in the survey.”
Molly gasped. This wasn’t supposed to happen. “Once they sell their land at below-cost price, they’ll have to move out of the county altogether in order to buy another property.” It had been their home all their lives—those who were left. Ninety-seven of them.
Molly sank to the hair-chair. Up until today, they’d only been working on deterrents for the developers. Now they were faced with deterring valley residents from looking at the survey, let alone signing a deal.
“D’Pee and Slick know what they’re doing,” Winnie said in her anxious soft voice. “The people in the valley are either older, or adopted into the community—like I was. They don’t understand how bad this could get if they’re kicked out.”
It was the longest speech Molly had heard her aunt make in forever.
“Oh, away with you, Winnie,” Momma interrupted. “You’re as much a part of the valley as I am.”
“But what are we going to do if they get a whole town to sign up?” Winnie said. “Or half a town.”
“She’s right,” Molly agreed. “All they need to kick-start their venture is one town—and, bingo, they’ve got us.”
“We need money,” Winnie said, “to fight them.”
Molly had a fleeting thought about calling her cousins, then dismissed it. Lauren ran a successful pre-loved clothing boutique in California, but currently had some issues with her business partner. Although she didn’t talk about him, something wasn’t right and Molly wasn’t going to be the one to tear Lauren away from this man, in case it was the man. Although Molly had a niggly feeling, like a prickle-jab, that he was the wrong man.
Pepper might come home. She didn’t have a man in her life. Didn’t want one, she said. Nobody mentioned the fact she’d been unlucky in love a few times before making that pronouncement. Anyway, Molly couldn’t drag Pepper away from Arizona and her upcoming online gourmet food and herbs business.
Her cousins had done much better than Molly had. They had jobs they loved and were making their way in the normal world. She couldn’t ask them to come home to face a curse they didn’t believe in.w What if Molly discovered it was real?
That would mean none of the cousins were likely to find a good, decent man to fall in love with. One who’d stick around...
“Oh, and by the way,” Momma said. “About your stranger—”
“He’s not mine.”
“You’re to be sweet as honeysuckle, but don’t let people see you together too much. Keep him out of sight.”
“Why?”
“He’s a good-looking man. People might think you’re using him.”
“For what?”
Momma shared a glance with Winnie, then turned back to Molly. “If they discover he’s here, there could be trouble. The developers are already saying your intentions for renovating the hacienda are based on greed, and that you intend to make money off the backs of the valley residents.”
Molly’s jaw dropped. “That’s ridiculous! And what’s it got to do with my employee?”
“He’s helping you for next to nothing. It makes you look greedy.”
“Greedy? The valley people know I’m starting the photography business for the good of the towns. I’ve got some of them lined up for jobs.” With hopes for more business propositions, too. Businesses the valley people could start, and run.
“It only takes one bad rumor,” Winnie said.
“Well let’s hope there isn’t a second!” How could a woman who’d worked hard for herself, and paid bills for her ex-fiancé, be considered greedy?
“You need to sweeten up that big gorgeous man working on your roof,” Momma said. “We need to get Through the Lens up and running before he leaves.”
“You sweeten him up,” Molly said.
“We need him,” Momma said. “And I trust him.”
“I trust him, too,” Winnie said.
“I don’t.” Something bit into Molly’s gut for saying that out loud.
Maybe she was doing him a bit of an injustice. Things didn’t wash and dry dishes. The thing Molly had left didn’t even stack dishwashers. The thing couldn’t even hammer a nail, let alone build a roof.
“Now,” Momma said, “you need to play this carefully. Don’t let on to Saul about our town troubles. Nothing puts a man off more than a female looking for help.”
“Did Alice say I had to be sweet to him?”
“She said you weren’t right for him, Molly,” Winnie said, and that bitter pill hit Molly’s female essence. Hearing it spoken aloud so often didn’t do much for a woman’s pride.
“I thought I’d clarify,” Winnie said, blushing. “In case you thought your momma was asking you to you-know-what with him.”
No, Molly didn’t know. Oh, hang on—yes, she did. “Thanks, Winnie, but that won’t be happening.” Because she wasn’t right for him.
She wasn’t his type, whatever his type was. Fast and easy, probably. Well, he wouldn’t be getting a quick bedroom grope from Molly.
But she needed that roof. “All right,” she said to her mother. “Bake him a chocolate cake.”
“Did that first thing this morning, then I got sidetracked by what Davie told me about the survey, and your greedy nature. But we’re going to turn this whole greediness thing around.”
“How?”
“I’ll think of something.”
Molly glanced around the empty salon. “Where are your customers?”
“I cancelled them,” Momma said at the same time Winnie said, “They cancelled.”
“Oh, Momma—it’s Saturday. Your busiest day. People cancelled because of the rumor about me making money on the backs of my own people?”
“Don’t worry about it. I needed the break.”
Molly blinked hard. She’d be no use to anyone if she allowed all the worry to boil over. Alice had said last night that she had trouble coming. But that had been about Jason and the money he owed her. Not about her reputation. Or had Alice meant she might be seen as too greedy by demanding her money back? It was so difficult to understand Alice when she spoke in riddles. Honestly, for a soothsayer, she ought to ensure her clients at least understood her.
“Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let anyone harm you or your reputation.”
Molly looked up, but before she had the chance to ask how Momma had known what she was thinking, Winnie spoke.
“Unless they come up with a second rumor that’s worse than this one,” she said, wringing her hands.
What could be worse?
“At least my greed problem has gotten the great-grandfathers’ curse off our minds,” Molly said, with a forced laugh.
Momma and Winnie gave her a look of astonishment.
Molly shivered. “Just saying.” The Mackillops arrived in Texas in 1850, but the stories about the battles between the Mackillop women who started turning prosperity around in the valley before the second world war, lingered uppermost in everybody’s minds. 1939—the curse of the great grandfathers.
“Let’s not go there,” Momma said. “We’ve got enough to deal with, with the people who are living.”
“I don’t believe in the curse,” Molly said in a challenging manner, while half expecting the roof to cave in.
“I don’t give it much thought,” Momma said, then glanced at the ceiling.
“I do,” Winnie said.
Molly shivered a second time. “So what do we do first?” she said, getting the subject back to the one with priority. She’d have to rely on Momma coming up with some brilliant hair-brained idea to turn the greed rumor around while she concentrated on her business—and the roof.
Maybe all this was her punishment for having kept her family and all her spooky connections a secret from the thing and then having to admit to her family that she had an ex-fiancé.
“We need money,” Momma said.
Molly sighed. She had some—but it was in Colorado.
Saul ran the back of his hand over his mouth, and reviewed his efforts of the last couple of hours.
He lifted the hem of his T-shirt and wiped his face. He’d gotten all the rafters he needed outside and had made a start on the rubble in the fountain.
He pulled the large wheelbarrow to his side and began to fill it for the third time.
He’d been thinking a lot about leaving in the past few hours. He’d been thinking about staying, too. Molly needed help around here, but he couldn’t stay and see it through, so why was the decision to leave so hard to make?
Some might say he’d left home six years ago without finalizing the whole sorry issue. Saul would say he’d left because there wasn’t anything to finalize. He’d been dumped. Not by a girl, but by his family. Or those he’d thought had been his family.
But maybe he was overthinking. He’d been doing that a lot these last few days and could anybody blame him? He was supposed to be getting out of Texas and now he had a job, and an ex-girlfriend who had never been his girlfriend who was saying he was about to become a father.
As soon as he got his sat phone—he was pretty sure he’d dropped it at the salon yesterday—he’d consider what to do about Sally-Opal. Maybe he could persuade her he was a lost cause—or that she was downright loopy. In which case, it wasn’t her fault. Most likely she was simply looking for someone to care about her, or maybe just notice her. Not like the case of Belle Solomon six years ago.
He didn’t want to dwell on that issue, but it was stuck in his head. His mother had lied to him, which hurt enough without going into the details of the family derailment that followed. Love. What a waste of emotion. He’d never given it to a girl or a woman in all his thirty years. Not in the romantic sense. But he’d given it unconditionally to his family, not knowing there was any other way to think about them or feel about them. Twenty-four years of his life and his feelings had gone to the people who’d turned out not to be his blood kin after all. Except for his mother, Belle, and her father, Saul’s grandpa.
Best thing he could do now, since he was stuck with the Sally-Opal problem, plus a false claim that he intended to build Molly’s roof, was approach all issues calmly. He’d fix things with Sally, he’d stay long enough to find another builder for Molly, and get himself out of this mess without hurting anyone—especially himself.
Maybe while he was fixing all these issues, he’d find out exactly what it was these engaging Mackillop women were after. He was being drawn into whatever their problems were, and he felt a need to help if he could, although any assistance he gave would be on his terms, and in his time.
He’d play it cool and calm for the next few days. But like his commander had reminded the rangers each and every morning, “Stay safe out there and keep your head on a swivel.” He’d be doing just that. Because something about this place was giving him the heebie-jeebies.
