Summer Breeze (27 page)

"There is no solution." Her mouth quivered and twisted. "I just felt lonely today while you and Buddy were gone. It made me realize that you'll both be leaving soon, and then I'll be lonely all the time."

The blade through Joseph's heart twisted viciously.

"You see? I told you it was foolish. I've been alone for years. It's certainly nothing new. I can't think why I'm suddenly dreading it so."

Joseph had no problem figuring it out. He'd barged into her world and turned it topsy-turvy with a talking dog, dinner guests, a visiting toddler, poker games, and reading out loud. Rachel wasn't a solitary person by nature. Her life choices had been forced upon her by illness. Now that she'd gotten a taste of sociality, of course it was hard for her to contemplate a return to absolute solitude.

He caught her small chin and tipped her face up. "Are you by any chance thinking that once Buddy and I leave, we'll never come back?"

"Why would you want to? If I could leave, I'd never come back."

The fact that she wanted to leave and couldn't made his heart hurt even more for her.

"I'll be back for some of your great cooking, for starters. I also greatly enjoy your company. Do you have any idea how far it is from my house to yours?"

"No," she confessed thinly.

"Hardly more than a hop, skip, and jump. It'll be a lot closer for me to come here to play poker than to go clear to town. And what about Tom and Huck? I'll never find out what happens to those fool boys if I don't come over in the evenings to read."

"The books won't last forever. By the time Darby comes back, we'll probably have finished both of them."

The stories wouldn't last forever; that was true. But Joseph was coming to believe that the feelings he was developing for her might. "There are lots of other books for us to read, Rachel.

Until you introduced me to novels, I never realized how entertaining they are. I'm totally hooked now, lady. I can't imagine going back to never reading again."

"Truly?"

In all his life, Joseph had never wanted to kiss a woman so badly, not as a prelude to lovemaking, which was usually his goal, but to chase her tears away and make her smile again.

"Oh, hey, you've made a reader out of me for sure, and David, too, I think. And then there's Caitlin, who'll be coming to visit. Now that she's been here once, she'll be pestering you all the time. Mark my words. Also, don't be surprised if she asks you to watch after Little Ace now and again. She and Ace

would like to go places without him sometimes—to have dinner in town or to a hoedown. David, Esa, and I watch him when we can, but we're not always available."

Joseph released her chin and stepped away before he gave in to his urge to kiss her. "Which reminds me. Bubba finished the ironwork to go over all your doors. There's plenty of light left. I should get started installing it."

"Oh, but I was hoping—"

"You were hoping what?" Joseph asked.

"Nothing. I was just hoping we might play cards or something."

"Maybe we can do that this evening. For now, I should work on your doors." He arched an eyebrow at her. "You can't very well have guests coming and going all the time without the proper setup. Now can you?"

Guests coming and going all the time.
The words remained with Rachel long after Joseph left the kitchen. She'd been wallowing in dark despair before he returned a while ago, and now, with only a few words from him, she felt buoyant. Visits from Caitlin? Looking after Little Ace? Oh, how she hoped. But what truly lifted her spirits was knowing that Joseph would come to see her often.

In a very short while, she'd become unaccountably fond of him. He was like a ray of sunshine in her dismal little world that chased away all the shadows.

In order to install the ironwork, he had to go in and out a lot. His frequent use of the archway door kept

Rachel running back and forth to lift the bar and drop it again after he left. She'd hoped to make a custard pie for dessert that night, but with so many interruptions, accomplishing that was nearly impossible.

"I'm sorry," he said as she let him into the kitchen again. "I don't mean to be a pest. Working on both sides of the wall like this is a bugger."

He'd chosen to install ironwork over the porch door first, and Rachel knew that he had to climb in and out the window each time he came or went. "You, a pest? I'm the bothersome one. The job would be much simpler if you could just open the porch door and step outside."

He chucked her under the chin as he walked by. "If just opening the door was an option, you wouldn't be needing the bars."

He crouched down next to the exterior door and set to work, drilling through the wall with a handheld auger fitted with a one-inch bit. With each turn of the crank, the muscles across his shoulders and along each side of his spine bunched and flexed under his blue chambray shirt.

As Rachel went back to the table to roll out her piecrust, she found it difficult to keep her eyes off him. Hunkered down as he was, his thighs supported much of his weight, and with each shift of his body, she could see bulges of strength beneath the faded blue denim of his jeans. For such a powerfully built man, he moved with incredible grace, dropping easily into a crouch, leaning sideways with perfect balance, and then pushing effortlessly to his feet.

Watching him brought butterflies fluttering up from

her stomach into her throat. She wanted to place the flat of her hand on his back to feel that wondrous play of tendon and muscle beneath her palm. She also yearned to trace the contours of his arms. Her own body was mostly soft except for where her bones poked out, so everything about his fascinated her. When he wasn't watching, she studied the sturdy thickness of his fingers, the width of his wrists, the distended veins on his sun-browned forearms, the breadth of his shoulders, and the way his torso tapered like a wedge down to his narrow hips.

As Rachel poured the custard into the pie dish, she found herself recalling how lovely it felt when he kissed her, and her cheeks went unaccountably warm. She tried to tell herself it was heat from the oven that had her face burning, but she knew better. It was looking at Joseph that was making her feel warm all over. She also felt deliciously excited, as if something wondrous were about to happen.

"I need to go out and shove the carriage bolts through," he told her as he strode to the archway door. "You want to come drop the bar behind me?"

As Rachel followed him to the archway, even his loose-hipped stride drew her gaze.

"I'll only be gone a minute." He flashed her a grin as he slipped out into the dining room. "When I finish tightening those bolts down on the inside of the wall, I'll get to work on the ironwork over the front door and here. Then you'll be set."

As Rachel dropped the bar, she wished that he would forget the silly ironwork and just kiss her again.

When Joseph finished installing all the ironwork, he insisted on Rachel's coming to see Bubba's gift to her. When he opened the archway door, she could barely speak. A sturdy crisscross of bars now covered the opening into the dining room.

"Nobody will get past those without a key or hacksaw," he assured her. "Bubba has Pierce Jackson, the local locksmith, make all his locks. They're the same kind they use at the jail."

"Oh, Joseph, it's beautiful."

He chuckled. "I wouldn't go that far. I gave it a scrub and touched it up with some stove black yesterday. It's made of scrap iron, like I said, and the pile has been sitting out in the weather for going on two years. All the bars were rusty."

She reached out a hand to touch the metal. "Thank you so much."

"Don't thank me, darlin'. Bubba did most of the work."

"And I deeply appreciate all his efforts. But it was your idea." She laughed incredulously. "I can't believe I'm standing here, Joseph. I can see into the dining room, and it doesn't frighten me at all."

His voice sounded oddly thick when he replied, "If it helps, that's all the thanks I need."

"Oh,
yes"
Rachel assured him, and she meant it with all her heart. "I feel as if I've been let out of jail." She no sooner spoke than the absurdity of the comment struck her. "Out of jail, but behind bars. How does that make sense?"

"It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you."

Rachel turned to look at him. In that moment, she

felt certain that she would never forget a single line of his face. "Thank you so much, Joseph.

Looking out and not feeling afraid is a fabulous feeling, absolutely
fabulous."

He handed her two large skeleton keys, pointing out the differences in the notches so she would be able to tell them apart. "This one's for the archway, and this one's for the ironwork over the porch door. I only had one key made for each so you can rest assured that no one else can get in."

When she had studied the keys and nodded to let him know she had their shapes memorized, he handed her six more, all of which were exactly alike. "These are for the ironwork over the front door of the house. You can keep one, if you like, and give out the others to special friends like Caitlin. She'll be able to come in without a fuss that way, and once she's inside, with everything locked up behind her, you can let her into the kitchen through the archway."

Rachel tucked the two kitchen keys into her skirt pocket. Then she offered him one of the six front door keys. "You're my most special friend of all, Joseph." His smile slowly faded, and for a long moment his gaze delved deeply into hers. "Thank you for that. It's a fine compliment."

She pushed the key at him. "Then take it, please." He reached into his jeans pocket and plucked out a duplicate. "I already confiscated one. Once I board your window back up, I'll be needing a way in." He slipped the key back into his pocket. "I plan to use that front entrance a lot, by the way, even
after
Darby comes home. The next time you start thinking how lonely you'll be when Buddy and I leave, think again. We're gonna pester the daylights out of you, and that's a promise."

"A promise I hope you'll keep."

His eyes went so dark they looked almost indigo. "I never break a promise, darlin'. If I give you my word on something, you can count on it."

Rachel hurried away before he could see the tears in her eyes.

The following day, Joseph got up early, tended to chores while Rachel cooked his breakfast, and directly after he ate went to work on a new, much thicker wooden door for her archway. Using two makeshift sawhorses that he fashioned from boards he'd found in the barn, he set up shop in Rachel's back dooryard, only a few feet from the porch so he could keep a close eye on the house.

So far, no attempt had been made on Rachel's life, but it was never far from Joseph's mind that the killer might simply be waiting for an opportune moment. He couldn't afford to forget that and let down his guard.

At around eleven, Joseph heard a creaking sound and glanced up to see the thick back door open a crack. His heart soared, for he knew what it had cost Rachel to lift that bar and disengage the deadlocks. He doubted she'd opened that door in years.

"Joseph?" she called. "Are you there?"

He knew very well that she'd probably just seen him through the peephole, but he answered, all the same. "Right here, darlin'. You've got your bars to

protect you. Open on up and enjoy the sunshine. It's a gorgeous morning."

"Oh, no," she said, her voice faint and trailing shakily away. "A crack is fine. I thought maybe we might talk while you work."

Joseph grinned as he grabbed his tape measure. " 'Drink to me only with thine eyes.'"

"You've read Jonson?" she asked incredulously.
Uh-oh.
The lady knew her poetry. He used his square to mark his cutting line. "Actually, no. I just memorized certain lines of poetry to woo the ladies. I got them from Ace. He was always the reader in our family. Named his stallion Shakespeare, after a black, leather-bound volume my pa gave him. Damned fool actually
read
it, and I think he memorized half of it. Then he went on to read everything else he could get his hands on, and memorized great lines that he likes to spout all the time to make himself sound learned. I found only a very few to be useful."

"Meaning only a few to impress the ladies? For shame, Joseph Paxton. Poems are ballads for the soul."

"My soul is fine. I know plenty of poems, darlin'."

"Do you now? Recite something then."

" 'Little Bob is a fool, for he don't go to school, and

never at work is he seen. And because he don't look

inside of a book is the reason he's so very green.'

There's some poetry for you."

"That isn't poetry, Joseph. It's a child's rhyme." "Go ahead. Make light of it. I'll bet you don't know

any."

"'Come here, little kitten,'" she recited back, "I know you love me. I shall put down my sewing, and then we shall see, how smart you will look, when you play and you caper, all over the room, with your round ball of paper.'"

"You like cats?" he asked.

"I love cats, especially kittens. They're so darling when they play."

Joseph filed that information away for later. One of his barnyard cats had recently given birth to a litter of kittens. " 'There was an old woman. And what do you think? She lived upon nothing, but victuals and drink. And though victuals and drink were the whole of her diet, this naughty old woman would never keep quiet."

She burst out laughing. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

"Nah. If your new archway door comes out slanti-ndicular because I measure wrong, it makes me no nevermind."

"Perhaps I should be about my business, then." She released a shrill little sigh. "I need to make bread sometime today. We're almost out."

"Don't run off. I won't mess up on my measurements. I was only joshing you."

"But what about the bread?"

"Make a pan of cornbread. That'll do us until tomorrow."

"Are you certain?"

" 'Old mother Ro, she was always so slow that she couldn't even wink in a hurry,'" he said in a singsong voice. " 'But dear little Dick, he is so very quick that he keeps all the folks in a flurry.'"