A small plane passed overhead, flying low as it headed for the private airstrip on the north side of town. Trent’s gaze was involuntarily drawn upward. He noted automatically that the craft was a Beechcraft V-tail, that the landing gear was already down, the descent slow and smooth. His knuckles tightened around his hammer, and he could almost feel the yoke in his hands.
The plane disappeared behind a line of trees. His memories flashed to the last time he’d flown. And then moved further ahead, images so vivid he could almost smell the smoke again, hear the creak and pop of heating metal, feel the pain of his injuries and the sick certainty that he would die there in the wreckage of aircraft and ego, a casualty of his own recklessness.
“Trent?”
Something in his brother’s voice made Trent suspect it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Are you going to talk or nail shingles?” Trent retorted, chagrined at being caught in one of his frequent daytime nightmares. The ones during the night were even worse, but at least he had no witnesses then.
Trevor sighed and moved to a new spot. “Forgive me for being concerned,” he muttered.
Pointedly ignoring him, Trent went back to work, concentrating fiercely on the task and pushing the memories to the back of his mind.
THERE WAS ANOTHER NOTE on Trent’s refrigerator when he arrived home that afternoon. “Your laundry is folded on the bed,” it read. “I didn’t know if you wanted me to open closets and drawers to put things away. I forgot to ask.”
Again, there was a postscript: “Did you make that big rocker by the fireplace? It’s fabulous.”
Shaking his head, Trent reached into the fridge and pulled out a cola. He drained a third of it in one long guzzle, then read the note in his hand again. Annie seemed to have a thing for his furniture.
Remembering the worn odds and ends of furniture he’d seen when he went in her house to check the ceiling for signs of leaks, he suspected that most of it had been chosen for economy rather than personal taste.
She was definitely an odd cookie, he thought, tossing the note onto the counter. Pretty, but odd.
He moved into his bedroom to put his neatly folded socks and underwear away, and found himself wondering again what her story was. It irritated him to realize that he was suddenly feeling rather protective of her. Working on her roof earlier, he’d had the irritatingly satisfying feeling that he was helping someone who needed him.
As if he had anything to offer Annie—or anyone, he added with a heavy scowl.
THE FIRST THING Annie always did when she returned home on Tuesday and Friday afternoons was to find out what Trent had done that day. It amazed her how much he had accomplished in the three weeks that had passed since they had begun their arrangement. Their only personal interaction during those weeks had been the mornings when she arrived at his house to clean.
She thought she’d done a decent job of hiding her reaction to him during those fleeting encounters. She wanted to think he had no idea that she all but melted every time he looked at her in that sizzlingly intense manner of his. But she wouldn’t be surprised if he suspected it, anyway. A man like Trent had to be used to finding puddles of women at his feet.
His mother had warned her that Trent considered their arrangement only temporary and was likely to end it at any time, but Annie wasn’t worried. Even if he decided today that they’d swapped their last service, she still believed it had been well worth it. Her front step was safe to walk on now, her roof hadn’t leaked during a fairly heavy rain yesterday, he had cleaned out her gutters and unclogged her drains. She didn’t know how many hours he’d spent there—he was always gone by the time she came home—but she knew he’d spent more time working at her place than she had at his.
Determined to repay him, she had worked very hard at his place—cleaning, scrubbing, shining and polishing everything in his house. He’d given her free rein, so she had scrubbed floors, cleaned the oven and refrigerator and washed windows—inside and out. She’d dusted and vacuumed everything that hadn’t moved, but it still didn’t feel like enough.
There was an odd intimacy to spending so much time in his home while he was working in hers. She didn’t feel that way about her other clients, seeing their houses as just rooms to clean and money to earn—but it was different, somehow, with Trent. She told herself it was only because she was aware that he was as familiar with her home as she was with his. There was certainly no more personal element involved between them.
When she walked into her place on the first Tuesday afternoon in March—her fourth week of working for Trent—she was startled to find his big wooden rocker sitting in her living room. No, not his rocker, she realized, taking a step closer. Just as beautiful, but not the same. The color was slightly different, the grain not quite like the other.
There was a note taped to the back of the chair. In printed block letters it said, “You said you like my rocker. This was the first one I made. I broke the arm and had to glue it, but if you want it, it’s yours.” He hadn’t bothered to sign his name.
Her heart in her throat, she studied the rocker more closely. She found the break he’d referred to, eventually. The wood had apparently split when he’d nailed it, but he’d repaired it so expertly that only an obsessive perfectionist could find fault with it. But she was crazy about it, trivial flaw and all.
Hardly able to believe what he had done, she sank into the chair and began to rock, her work-weary muscles almost sighing in relief. Annie had grown up surrounded by beautiful, expensive things, but she had never fallen this hard for any inanimate object.
She could picture herself sitting in this wonderful chair on the cold nights still ahead, rocking, resting, listening to music from the stereo she was going to buy as soon as she had saved enough. Everything her uncle had owned had been sold at an estate auction, by his request, a few months after he’d died, and the proceeds had been deposited into an account for her, so there had been no furniture when she’d moved into the house he’d left her. She’d had to pick up a few odds and ends at secondhand shops to get by until she could do better. This chair was now the nicest piece she possessed. Having this beautiful rocker to relax in would certainly brighten up her evenings.
She had never envisioned herself living alone this way, but there were times when she actually enjoyed it enough to forget about the loneliness.
Had her uncle Carney enjoyed the solitary existence he’d led here? Eccentric and free-spirited, he’d rebelled early against the stringent expectations of his family—something Annie now understood all too well. She hadn’t seen her uncle often, only when he breezed through Atlanta to make contact with his only living relatives—her father and her—a total of only half a dozen times or so that Annie could remember. But he had always seemed fond of her, telling her wonderful stories about all the places he had seen, all the adventures he’d had.
He’d settled in Honoria—for reasons no one but him had ever known—after he’d broken a hip and had no longer been able to travel as he once had. He’d lived here nearly ten years before his death, but apparently hadn’t really gotten to know anyone in this town very well. Annie hoped to make a few more friends here than her great-uncle had. She only wished that she could have gotten to know Carney, himself, better. He would have understood, as no one else could, her need to break away from her parents, her father, in particular.
Her hand still stroking the chair, she glanced at the telephone nearby. Trent wasn’t the type to graciously accept gratitude—he’d always brushed her off when she’d tried to thank him for the work he’d done here—but she couldn’t wait until Friday to tell him how much this meant to her.
He answered in his usual curt manner. “H’lo?”