Mr. February (3 page)

“I’m about ready for breakfast,” he said. “If we go a little farther, we can loop back to where we started. I’ll take the lead now.”

Hank shrugged. “Go for it.”

They were cutting through the woods at a more reasonable pace when Calvin woofed. Bred for hunting, he pointed and strained at his leash. In the distance came an answering bark. Rafe recognized that sharp-pitched sound. Pooh.

He gave Calvin plenty of leash, and moments later, Jillian’s cottage and the woman herself, came into view. Wearing leggings and another long, baggy shirt, hair tucked into a baseball cap, she balanced on a folding ladder, wielding a long-handled paint roller over the weathered green siding of her studio. The new color, purple, was exactly what Rafe would have expected. The same hatchback sat parked in the driveway. He didn’t see the ancient van.

“Get a load of those long legs,” Hank murmured appreciatively.

Rafe didn’t like the way he and Gus looked her over.

“Rafe. Hi,” she said, climbing down with a confused smile.

“You know her? Of course you do,” Hank murmured. “Introduce us.”

Rafe preferred not to, but hell, he wasn’t interested in her, so why not? “Jillian, meet Hank and Gus, two of my crewmates. And this is Calvin.”

She greeted his dog with pats and friendly murmurs. When she straightened to her full height, the huge firefighters dwarfed her. They each shook her hand.

Suddenly Calvin pulled hard on his leash. He sized up Pooh, and she did the same. They both growled.

“Easy, boy,” Rafe warned in his no-nonsense voice. As soon as his dog obeyed, he allowed the animal to lead the way.

“Pooh looks a lot prettier than she did yesterday,” he said. So did Jillian. Not that she’d looked all that bad dripping wet.

“She smells better, too, thanks to a bath. What are you doing out here on a Friday morning?”

“We need to stay in shape,” Rafe replied. “And with the weather finally starting to turn nice…” He shrugged. “Plus, I wanted to show these guys where I’ll be building my house. You’re painting your studio.”

She nodded. “I decided to brighten up the place before my first class. You should see the gorgeous lime-green paint I got for the trim.”

“That purple’s bright all by itself.”

“What kind of classes?” Gus asked.

“Pottery. I used to teach at the Artist Cooperative, but the school closed, and I decided to teach here. This will be a class for beginners. It starts in two weeks. I have openings, so if you know of anyone who’s interested… I printed flyers. Who wants one?”

Both Rafe’s crewmates signaled they did. Hank hadn’t dated since he’d joined the department two years earlier. He was dealing with some heavy stuff and wasn’t ready. But Gus, currently single, looked interested. Rafe barely curtailed a snarl.

Oblivious, the clown grinned at her. “Need help painting?”

“I’ll be the one to do that,” Rafe volunteered. His own words and gruff tone pulled him up short. What had gotten into him?

“I expected JR to help, but whenever I need a hand, he manages to be gone.” She blew out an exasperated breath.

“Watch out for this guy,” Gus warned, jerking his thumb Rafe’s way. “We call him ‘stud’ for a reason.”

Rafe rolled his eyes. “Don’t believe everything either of these fools tell you.”

She didn’t comment. “Your jacket is in the dryer. I’d planned to drop it by the station, but since you’re here… I’ll see if it’s dry, and grab some flyers for the pottery class.”

She disappeared inside.

“Loaning her your jacket—nice move,” Hank said.

Gus nodded. “No wonder you’re building a house here. Jillian’s hot.”

That Rafe agreed bothered him. “She’s a free spirit,” he said.

“Then she probably doesn’t want to be tied down any more than you.”

Rafe narrow-eyed him. “I wouldn’t know, and who the hell cares?”

“It’s just an observation,” Gus muttered.

“Rafe has a point,” Hank said. “Dating her would make for a difficult neighborly relationship after the breakup. Because, sooner or later, he always breaks up with them.”

Jillian returned with flyers and jacket, neatly folded. She passed out flyers and then handed Rafe the jacket. “Thanks again for letting me borrow this.”

As he took it from her, his fingers brushed hers. Yesterday her skin had been cold. Today she felt warm, nice and warm.

His body took notice and began to stir.
Damn
. “I need food,” he told the guys.

He nodded at Jillian and took off.

*

The exterior of the studio wasn’t exactly huge, but Jillian’s aching arms thought so. Pushing the paint roller over the siding proved challenging—especially the area above her head.

“Why couldn’t you stick around and help, JR, as you promised?” she grumbled.

He and Chelsea had left this morning while she showered, the little sneaks. Jillian had no idea when they would return, but, knowing JR, it would be after she finished the job, probably just in time for dinner.

She couldn’t take much more of this.

Her empty stomach growled. As determined as she was to finish painting today, while the weather cooperated, she needed food, and her arms needed a rest. Lunchtime.

Over a sandwich, she thought more about her brother. If he could find a job, he and Chelsea could move out. He wasn’t looking very hard, and Jillian was beginning to wonder if he even wanted to work. This worried her. Who would take care of Chelsea and the baby?

Why couldn’t he be more responsible? Why couldn’t he be more like Rafe? Yes, Rafe was too meticulous and controlled for her tastes, but he had a good job and seemed a genuinely decent guy.

Plus, he was yummy to look at. She let out a dreamy sigh. He and his two equally buff firefighter friends had no business jogging past her house in shorts and tees.

Since the breakup with Douglas, Jillian had dated her share of men uninterested serious relationships. Until recently, she’d felt the same way.

But now that she wanted a baby, she needed to find a man ready to settle down and start a family. Which meant steering clear of guys like Rafe. Labeled a stud by his own friends.

Jillian didn’t expect to see him again, and there was no point in thinking about him.

She finished the sandwich and returned to the great outdoors to resume painting.

She was maneuvering the roller and trying to hold her shaking arms steady when she heard a car pull up the driveway. The purring engine did not belong to JR’s rattling van. Glanced over her shoulder, she noted Rafe’s BMW pulling to a stop near her sedan.

He’d come back. As she clambered down the ladder, her wayward heart lifted.

In one smooth, graceful motion, he slid out of his car. Faded jeans hugged his muscular legs, and a faded T-shirt clung to his broad shoulders and flat belly.
Firefighters—Cool under pressure
, the words on the shirt proclaimed. Feeling the opposite of cool, she mentally fanned herself.

He leashed Calvin and let him out of the back seat, which he protected with a terry cloth seat cover. Tail wagging, the dog woofed and made a beeline for Pooh, who appeared to be grinning.

“I never expected to see you again,” Jillian said.

He looked surprised. “I said I’d help.”

“I didn’t realize you meant it.” Most of the guys she knew didn’t have the time or interest in painting someone else’s building.

As badly as she needed help, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted Rafe around. He was too darned attractive. “I don’t need any help,” she assured him. “I’m used to doing things by myself, and I’ll be fine.”

“It’ll get done faster with an extra pair of hands. Is it okay to pen Calvin in with Pooh?”

He had a point. She nodded. After Rafe let Calvin into the fenced area, he took the roller from her. “I’ll tackle the high-up places, and you do the window trim.”

Not about to argue, Jillian stepped into the studio to get the trim brush and paint closeted there.

Working with Rafe wasn’t half-bad. He didn’t talk much, and neither did she. The lime-green trim looked great with the purple siding and gave the studio the artsy feel Jillian wanted. She needed to replace the income she’d lost when the school at the Artist Cooperative had closed. Teaching pottery classes here would help.

Before long, she needed another break.

“I’m ready to sit down with a cup of tea,” she said. “How about you? If you’re not a tea drinker, I have pop or coffee.”

“Pop sounds good.”

“Pop it is.”

At the back door, she wiped her feet and waited for him to follow her inside.

Chapter Four

‡

J
illian had been pretty quiet while Rafe had painted with her. Now, while waiting for the tea water to heat, she still didn’t say much. Most women would have chattered away to fill in the awkward silence. Not her.

She seemed comfortable in her own skin, a quality Rafe admired. Who exactly was this woman? He wanted to know. “Tell me about your brother,” he said when finally sat down at the kitchen table. “What’s JR short for?”

“Junior. His given name is David Gregory Metzger, Junior, after our father. But they’re nothing alike.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Both.” She gave a pained look. “Dad has always been a strict disciplinarian and difficult to please. Whereas JR drifts around with no sense of responsibility. You’d think now that he’s twenty-three, he’d be a responsible adult, but he’s still rebelling. He doesn’t have a job or any money. That’s why he lives with me.”

Interesting.
Rafe had assumed Jillian’s parents were more freewheeling, similar to his mom. “How come your dad is so hard to please? What does he do for a living?”

“He used to be a career Army drill sergeant, but now he runs a driver’s ed school up in Seattle. When we were growing up, Dad treated us like recruits. I wanted desperately to please him, and I became the daughter he demanded—the perfect student, the good girl who didn’t make any waves. JR went the opposite direction, making bad grades, skipping school, staying out past curfew, and disobeying Dad as often as possible. You can imagine how that went over.”

Rafe was getting the picture now.

“Mom wasn’t nearly as rigid, and their different ideas about raising us caused a ton of problems. They fought all the time, mostly over how to discipline JR. Things got so bad, they eventually divorced.” She paused. “Do you really want to hear about this?”

Rafe did. “Yeah.”

“Like you, JR also ended up moving in with Dad, who by then had retired from the army and moved to Seattle,” she went on. “It was a bad decision, and as soon as JR turned eighteen, he dropped out of school and took off. No one in the family saw him for five years, although occasionally, he called to let Mom and me know he was okay. Then, in January, he showed up at my door with Chelsea, his pregnant, twenty-year-old girlfriend. Now she’s about nine weeks along.”

“That’s awful young,” Rafe said. “Although my mom was the same age when she had me.”

“I’m happy JR found someone to love, but this isn’t the best time for him and Chelsea to have a baby.”

“I hear that. When my mom got pregnant, my dad was just a year older than JR and fresh out of law school.”

“At least he had an education and a promising career ahead of him. My brother has nothing. No high school diploma or GED, and no way to take care of a family.”

“Bummer. My mom used to call herself a hippie. Heck, she still does. She’s been with a lot of guys, but she’s never married. Not even when she got pregnant with me and my dad proposed. She claims she doesn’t want to be under any man’s thumb.”

“That’s understandable.”

The comment didn’t surprise him. After all, Jillian was also a free spirit. Hell, he felt the same way about letting a woman run over him. “My mom’s choices made things a lot harder than they needed to be. The way we lived… I had a rough time.” Neglected and undisciplined, Rafe had been a real handful. “I picked fights every chance I got and was headed for God knows what kind of trouble. When I was ten and she got tired of having me around, my dad took me in. He gave me structure and order and taught me about self-discipline. Saved my life.”

Fierce love and profound gratitude filled Rafe’s chest. “Everything I am today to him, I owe to him.”

“Living with him was a good choice for you.” Jillian looked wistful. “I only wish things had turned out as well for JR.”

“I lucked out, that’s for sure. Back to you. Growing up, you were the perfect daughter, trying hard to keep the peace in your house.” Rafe pictured Jillian as a little girl, with all that responsibility on her young shoulders, and shook his head.

“How did you know? In the end, no matter how hard I tried and how good I was, it was never enough to make my parents happy.”

Having been there with his mom, Rafe understood. “Putting yourself in charge of other people’s happiness never works.”

She gave a sad smile. “I know that now. Anyway, by the time I started my senior year in high school, things were really tense. Dad threatened to leave, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he and Mom divorced. I couldn’t stand living in that house anymore, and the day after I graduated, I moved out. JR was only twelve, and I hated leaving him behind, but for my own sanity, I had to get away.”

She frowned at a purple paint stain on her thumb, as if she wanted to avoid the judgment in Rafe’s eyes. “Fast forward two years, to about a year after my parents divorced. JR was fourteen and too much for Mom to handle. She shipped him off to dear old Dad. The only reason JR stayed there until he was eighteen was because if he’d left when he was a minor, our father would have gone after him, brought him back, and done God knew what to punish him. End of story.”

“Where did your brother go?”

“He’s never really said.” Although they were alone in the house, she leaned in and lowered her voice. “He’s my only sibling and I missed him a lot, but to tell you the truth, it was kind of nice having him gone. A lot more peaceful for everyone. My mother remarried and moved to L.A., and she and my dad are on speaking terms again. All the same, I’m glad he came back.”