The Way Home

Chapter 14

“I APPROVE OF YOUR NEW HANDYMAN.”

It was almost noon when Jess closed the lid on the ice cream cooler to see Boots walk in.

She looked up at him. “Handyman?”

“Good-lookin’ fella. Struck me as a nice guy. Knows what he’s doing, too. Had a little talk with him outside while he worked on your shed roof.”

She scowled, wiped her hands on a paper towel, and headed outside. “Kayla. Ring up these cones, will you? I’ll be right back.”

Ty had made himself scarce, and it had been a busy morning, so Jess hadn’t had time to give him more than a passing thought. OK, a lot of passing thoughts, most of them having to do with the way they’d spent last night in her bed and how eager she was for tonight to get here so they could start all over again.

In the meantime, she’d hoped he’d gone fishing or kayaking as she’d suggested, but as Boots promised, she found Ty on his knees on the slanted roof of her storage shed, a hammer in one hand, a nail apron tied around his waist, and a square of shingles on the roof beside him. He’d already torn off all the old shingles, laid tar paper, and nailed the new shingles over three-fourths of the roof.

She shielded her eyes against the sun and glared up at him. “What are you doing?”

“A damn fine job, according to your watchdog.” He slammed the hammer down, then dug into the apron. “Boots, right? Now, there’s a character.”

“Get down from there right now.”

“Save that tone for tonight. I love it when you go all boss lady on me.”

“Ty!”

He hammered another nail. “I’m almost done.”

“You are done. I’m serious. I don’t want you working like that.”

He finally looked down at her, then glanced around the parking lot to make certain no one was within earshot. “Afraid I’ll be worn out tonight?”

That grin, she’d learned, could be as infuriating as it was infectious. And the way he looked… his hair and shirt damp with sweat, the veins in his forearms bulging with pumping blood, his worn jeans hugging his hips and thighs and showing a hint of pale, smooth skin where his T-shirt had ridden up… well, as upset as she was, if she managed to haul him down off that roof, she might not stop hauling until she’d led him up the stairs, straight to the shower, and joined him there.

“I don’t want you working,” she insisted, dragging her gaze back to his face. “Period. I especially don’t want you shingling my roof.”

“You’re saying it didn’t need it? Look… I was digging around for a hammer to fix the back door, and I found the shingles inside the shed. Figured you planned on hiring someone to do the job.”

“What I planned was to do it myself when business slows down in the fall.”

“Then that’s all the better reason for me to do it. Gives me a chance to feel all studly on your behalf.”

She grunted. “Spoken like a manly man.”

He laughed. “Consider it payment for room and board.”

As if she was going to charge him. “You’re going to hurt your back.”

“You let me worry about my back. I’ll have this finished by mid-afternoon. Easy peasy. Tomorrow I’ll put that roll of window screen to use.”

She wanted to be mad. But how could she? He’d saved her a ton of work and had probably done a better job than she would have. As for the window screen, she’d bought it two years ago with the intent of replacing the ratty screens on both the store and her apartment windows. Various other projects had always taken priority.

Then again, everything about the store was a project. The building was more than eighty years old. It required constant maintenance, most of which she tried to do herself to save money. Besides, doing things herself was important to her. She didn’t want to be dependent. She particularly didn’t want to depend on Ty, who was not about to become a permanent fixture in her life. And she didn’t him want him to be.

She didn’t want to find it endearing, either, that he liked her dog, was fascinated by the lake, and made her breakfast. And she didn’t want to get used to him “fixing” things for her. Before she knew it, she’d become reliant on him. She’d already, in this very short time, come to count on him to make her smile, to make her feel pretty, to remind her what it was like to be a woman who was attracted to a man—a man who made it clear, without pushing, that he was very attracted to her.

But none of this was about the long term, and if she wasn’t careful, she could end up wishing that it was.

“Did you know that those gorgeous brown eyes of yours actually snap when you’re mad? Hey,” he added softly when she didn’t smile. “Don’t look so mean. I told you. I’m not good at twiddling my thumbs. I like to work. And as Boots and you can both attest, I’m pretty good with my hands.”

That teasing grin again. And oh, she knew exactly how good he was with those hands.

“Jess?”

“What?” She crossed her arms belligerently around her midriff and scowled up at him.

“As long as you’re out here, I could use another bottle of water. It’s warm up here.”

“Ya think?” Anger seemed her only option. “It’s August. It’s noon. It’s at least ninety degrees outside.”

Her mini-tirade didn’t daunt him. “You forget. I live in Florida. This is jogging weather.”

“You’re going to learn not to tease me, flyboy.” She spun around and headed back to the store for his water. “There will be retaliation.”

“If I said, ‘Oh, goody,’ would I lose my stud card?”

She didn’t turn around, but she knew he was having a good chuckle at her expense as she jerked open the store’s back door. In spite of her determination not to be charmed by everything about him—even his teasing—she smiled as she reached into the cooler and pulled out a bottle of water.

“I’M THINKING YOU made a great nurse. You have healing hands. Very healing hands,” Ty murmured into the pillow as he lay on his stomach on the bed, enjoying Jess’s back and shoulder massage.

It had become a nightly event this past week. One he looked forward to—among other things—at the end of each day. Currently, she straddled his thighs, and even without seeing her, he knew that the straps on her short black silk and lace nightgown were giving her trouble. The thought of that soft, tan skin made it difficult to stay on his stomach. The massage, however, proved great enticement to stay put. She really did have magic hands.

On the second day after he’d returned, she’d finally quit hassling him about fixing things for her. Not that she’d given in easily. They’d more or less agreed to disagree when she’d finally accepted that he was as stubborn as she was. There were so many things that needed to be done that he never ran out of projects. Today he’d found a gallon of paint in her hall closet marked “Kitchen,” so he’d painted the room for her. The woman had too much on her plate. He liked lightening her load.

And she liked pampering him because of it. A win-win any way you sliced it.

“I saw a float plane buzz the store on the way to the lake today,” he said sleepily. “What’s the story there?”

She squirted more lotion on her hands and went to work on his lower back. “That would be Wade Cummings. He flies charters into fishing camps on Crane and Rainy Lakes. Keeps him busy most of the summer and even into the winter. Some of these guys can’t get enough, so he switches out the pontoons with sleds and flies in groups for ice fishing.”

“He the only game in town?”

“He is now. A guy out of Vermillion, about forty miles south of here, ran his own charter, but he retired last year.”

He didn’t say anything else, but he was thinking. A lot. Maybe someone ought to start another charter business. Maybe that someone should be him. Key West Air Cargo might need to diversify. But it was still early in this game. He and Jess were still getting to know each other—at least, she was getting to know him. He knew all that he needed to know about her.

He also knew that he was falling for her. Falling hard and fast, growing more enamored by the day with this independent, hardworking woman who had taken so much on her slim shoulders and bore the weight without complaint or a hint of self-pity over the hits life had given her. She was a survivor. She was a siren. And he hoped like hell that one day soon, she’d acknowledge and accept that there was no need for barriers between them.

The problem was, they seemed to be going backward in that area. She’d let him into her bed, yes, let him into her home, but she’d made it clear—more in deed than in words—that she was determined not to let him into her heart.

In bed, she was adventurous, exciting, and surprisingly trusting. Out of bed was a different story. Instead of opening up to him, she’d started holding back. It was almost as if she’d realized she was letting herself get involved with him and put on the skids.

OK. Fine. If she needed more time, he had time to give. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not even after he’d accidentally discovered what must have been her husband’s truck lovingly covered and stored in the large shed behind the store. He’d looked beneath the tarp. It was a newer-model Chevy, all tricked out, not even two thousand miles on the odometer. Yet she drove a ten-year-old Taurus with more than a hundred thousand miles on it.

Letting go was not something she did easily. Loyalty was not something she took lightly.

“Tell me about these,” she said softly, as her fingers gently massaged the surgical scar tissue on his lower spine. “And this.” She touched his bicep and the scar there.

He’d felt the softness of her fingertips on his scars often during the night. Had known these questions wouldn’t hold much longer. Actually, he’d been surprised she hadn’t asked before now. A month ago, the day they’d gone kayaking, she’d asked, but he’d avoided answering. He hadn’t wanted to rehash the injuries. But now she’d asked again. He didn’t miss the significance. If she really wanted to erect barriers to avoid emotional intimacy, she wouldn’t have brought it up again. Which meant he needed to bite the bullet and spill it if there was any hope she’d eventually do the same.

It wouldn’t be easy. Recounting the way a man earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star never was.

“The short of it is, I was flying away from a combat zone with casualties onboard. We were clear, so our air cover had left. Then we weren’t clear anymore.”

Her hands stilled. “You got shot down?”

“Job hazard. An RPG blew the chopper’s tail rotor off. Not the preferred method of meeting the ground from too damn many feet above it.”

“You crash-landed?” She sounded horrified.

“Pretty much, yeah.” With a little maneuvering on both of their parts, he managed to turn onto his back so he could see her face. Her beautiful, troubled face.

He stroked her arms and met her eyes in the dim bedroom light. “Hey. Don’t look like that. I’m here. I’m OK.”

Her hands rested on his chest. “You were hurt.”

“Me and a lot of others. Some more than hurt.”

He’d lost his copilot and his gunner. Wives had lost husbands. Children had lost fathers. She didn’t need to hear that. She’d already lived that.

“Anyway, we had a bit of a hard landing, and the welcome wagon didn’t exactly greet us.”

“And your air support was gone. You had no weapons.”

“We had rifles. And handguns.” Rocks. Pieces of the bird. They’d used everything they could gather to defend their position.

“The scar on your arm. It’s a gunshot wound, isn’t it?”

He felt torn between loving that she felt such empathy for him and concern that she gave too much importance to something that had happened a long time ago. But when a woman had lost a husband to war, there were questions that would always remain unanswered.

“You go to war. You get shot at,” he said, shrugging it off.

Only none of it was as casual as he wanted to sound. He’d survived the crash, but it hadn’t ended there. They’d been sitting ducks. The only reason he was alive today was that the radio hadn’t gone the way of the tail rotor. He’d been slammed through the windshield on impact and thrown out of the chopper. Walking hadn’t been an option—exquisite pain from several herniated discs and a couple of cracked vertebrae made it impossible. So he’d dragged himself back into the cockpit and called in air support. Directed them “danger close”—within two hundred meters with smart weapons and three hundred meters with unguided weapons.

For a while there, he’d been more afraid of friendly fire taking them out than of Saddam’s Royal Guard—although one of the bastards had nailed his arm.

“End result, I herniated a few discs. No biggie. Surgery fixed them, and now I’m good as new.”

More like good as it was going to get, even after two surgeries and months of grueling physical therapy, but she didn’t need to know that, either.

“No biggie? You could have been paralyzed. You could have died.”

“But I didn’t.” He touched a palm to her cheek. “I didn’t die, Jess.”

“No. But your naval career did. The injuries are the reason your career was cut short, aren’t they?”

He breathed deep. He didn’t like thinking about this. “A grounded pilot isn’t much good to the military, and the Navy docs wouldn’t clear me to fly.” Another crash or even a hard landing might cause permanent paralysis. His CO had put the paperwork for a medical discharge in the works before he’d even gotten out of the hospital.

Flying for the military and flying for himself, however, were two entirely different things. He’d had no difficulty passing the physical to get his civilian flight license.

“I’m sorry.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss to the center of his chest.

“For everything there is a season… For every rhyme there is a reason.”

She smiled against his skin. “Making up your own verses, I see.”

Her smile was his cue. Time to lighten things up. For both of them.

“I like making things up as I go. For instance, how about we get rid of this?” He tugged the straps of her gown down her arms. The soft fabric caught on her nipples before spilling around her hips. She was so stunningly beautiful. “Let’s see what else we can make up as we go along.”