The New Man

“Trouble with acne?”

He pictured his son’s face. “Uh…some.”

“I have just the thing for him.” She’d gone into saleswoman mode. “We’re not selling it yet because I haven’t made enough, but this soap has eucalyptus, aloe and peppermint. It’s really good for oily complexions.”

“I’d love to buy a bar.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll get you one.” She flapped a hand and headed into what he presumed was the kitchen.

Emma looked at him. “It really works.”

Her delicate porcelain skin didn’t look as if anything as unsightly as a pimple would dare mar it.

“Devlin will appreciate it.” Alec had pretended to be irritated but had actually been amused when his soap disappeared and he found it in the kids’ bathroom. So, his son had taken to browsing Dad’s bathroom for personal hygiene products.

“The soap in our shower smells girly,” Dev had groused, when Alec mentioned the case of the missing bar.

“That’s good stuff, isn’t it?” Alec had asked, and gotten a surprisingly enthusiastic response.

“Yeah, it lathered great and it smells really cool.”

Maybe, Alec thought, he should suggest the boy star in a TV ad for Kathleen’s soaps. He could see it, Devlin scrubbing his underarms and grinning disarmingly at the camera.

“Smells cool and lathers great. Any guy my age would love it.”

Right. Nice picture, except Dev didn’t smile very often these days. He’d apparently forgotten how.

The two women returned from the kitchen, Kathleen with a grocery sack in her hand.

“Here’s several bars.” She handed it to him. “Compliments of the house.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“The green one is for your son.”

“He’ll appreciate it.”

“Shall we go?” Helen asked.

The heat hit them the minute they stepped outside.

“Doesn’t that feel good?” She raised her face to the sun. “I swear, I’m cold most of the time.”

“Maybe you should move to Arizona.”

“I’ve thought about it, but then I’d be freezing all the time because everyone cranks the air-conditioning up so high. Besides…I like a green landscape. So let me enjoy this rare summer heat wave.”

“And get sunburned,” he added.

Reaching the sidewalk ahead of him, she looked back with a guilty face. “I can’t resist basking just a little. Why can’t I have a skin that likes to brown?”

“Because—” he flipped one of her curls “—it wouldn’t go with this.”

“You know, there are no redheads in my family?” She sounded outraged at the genetic betrayal. “Not one. Dad still teases my mother about having a changeling. But, she insists his great-grandmother looks like her hair is auburn, too, in a couple of old pictures.”

“Which are black-and-white.” Alec stopped beside his car, unlocked the passenger door and opened it for her.

“Mm-hmm. And if my great-great was a redhead, she didn’t have freckles either.”

Helen was buckled up by the time he got in.

“This is nice.” Helen stroked the leather seat. “I’ve never been in a Mercedes before.”

“I felt like I’d arrived when I could afford one.” She could see the boyish pleasure he felt owning the luxury sedan. “I’m not a car guy, but growing up, I used to look at them and think, now, that’s status.”

Her big brown eyes held curiosity. “I didn’t think to ask what you do for a living.”

“I manage a small company working on wind turbines.”

“Wind?” She sounded as mystified as if he’d said he made thingamajigs.

He’d gotten the same reaction often enough to have a practiced explanation. “Same concept as windmills. Have you been to eastern Washington lately? Seen the rows of turbines on ridges?”

“No.”

“I’ll have to take you,” he said absently, backing out of the parking spot. “They’re quite a sight. Some people think they’re ugly. I don’t. In that barren country along the Columbia River, they seem to belong. There’s something spare and clean about them, like the landscape.”

“I vaguely knew that the utility companies were buying some wind power. I guess I hadn’t thought about how it was generated.” Her brow furrowed. “And your company builds them?”

“We don’t actually install them. Or manufacture the tower. What we’ve done is to design a turbine with flexible, hinged blades that reduce fatigue, so the turbine can be quite a bit lighter and therefore cheaper.”

“Are you an engineer, then?”

He shook his head. “Financial management. I have degrees in economics. I’m a C.P.A.”

“Oh, dear.” She cast him an embarrassed look. “Our little business must seem like awfully small potatoes to you.”

“All businesses start small.”

“Did your wind company?”

“We had big financial backing, but we faced a lot of the same challenges. We needed to manufacture our turbine and then prove it worked as well if not better than existing ones. It was several years after start-up before we actually had any commercial success.”

“You mean, before you sold one?” Helen sounded horrified. “Several years?”

Alec laughed. “That’s normal, believe it or not. The investors were gambling. We could have spent all that money and never made a sale.”

“Good heavens.” She gazed at him in awe. “How terrifying.”