In The Stranger's Arms

“I know you will,” she told him as she led the way through the side garage door.

He looked around carefully, muttering to himself and making notes with a pencil stub, while she trailed after him. Perhaps the damage looked worse than it really was.

“What’s the bad news?” she asked as soon as they got back outside.

He studied his clipboard with an unreadable expression. “Remove the limb and haul it away, repair the roof, fix the water damage to the inside, repaint…”

“I’ll do the painting and whatever else I can,” she said quickly. The last thing she needed right now was a huge bill eating up the money she had painstakingly scraped together.

He jotted down another note before sticking the pencil back into the pocket of his faded flannel shirt. “This is really rough, you understand. I’ll have a better idea after I make some calls and run the numbers, but replacing those cedar shakes won’t be cheap. You know they won’t match the rest until they have a chance to weather. There are some composite shingles on the market that look authentic, if you want to put on a new roof instead.”

He glanced toward the street. “No one would really notice, not with the garage sitting this far back.”

“I’d notice,” Pauline replied. “Just figure the cost of patching it, okay?”

“Sure thing.” He scratched his chin and named a figure that unhinged her jaw and made it drop. “If I find more damage behind that soggy plasterboard, the cost will climb,” he cautioned.

She groped for something positive to head off her mounting hysteria. “At least I can burn the wood.” Heating oil was expensive, but the big old house was blessed with working fireplaces in nearly every room.

“Sorry, hon, but cottonwood burns too hot for an indoor fire,” he replied. “It wouldn’t be safe.”

Muscles flexing in his arms and shoulders, he loaded the metal ladder onto the white truck that was parked in the long gravel driveway. Lindstrom Construction, it said on the door in plain black letters, followed by a local phone number.

Already the sun had dried up the puddles she’d stepped over earlier.

“Figures,” she grumbled, fiddling with her chunky beaded bracelet. This setback was only temporary, but she wouldn’t let it derail her plans.

He closed the tailgate and walked around to the cab. “I gotta tell you up front that I don’t know when I can get to it.”

When he opened the door of the truck, she noticed that the passenger seat was littered with papers. An empty coffee cup sat in the holder on the dash and a badly faded tassel from two years behind her own graduation dangled from the rearview mirror. “I’m slammed with work and I just lost my best guy to a builder in Bremerton,” he added.

Anxiously Pauline scanned the horizon for signs of another storm moving in from the Strait. All she could see was an endless expanse of bright blue sky. But dark rain-swollen clouds could roll off the Olympics or blow down from Canada at any time, just as they had last night.

Steve must have noticed the direction of her gaze. “I’ll send someone over to tarp the roof. Be sure to open the windows so the inside will dry out.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said as he tossed the clipboard into the truck and got behind the wheel.

She wondered whether he ever thought of Lily now that he was divorced. He never asked Pauline about her—not that she would have much to tell him if he did.

“Either Brian or the new guy I hired will be over later,” he said through his open window.

Brian was a gangly teenager who had mowed her lawn every summer until he’d graduated from the local high school and begun working full-time for Steve.

He started the engine, then glanced around at the garage. “Don’t you worry about the money.” He flicked the point of his shirt collar with his finger. “Maybe you could monogram these for me in trade.”

The idea of a monogram on the faded material made her smile. “I’d be happy to.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a class in half an hour, so I’d better get going. Thanks so much for coming.”

“No problem.” With a wave, he pulled out his cell phone as he went back down the driveway and turned onto the street.

Pauline thrust aside her concerns and hurried across the gravel to her SUV. The last thing she needed was a group of cranky old blue-hairs clustered on the sidewalk in front of her shop, bad-mouthing her for her lack of punctuality.

Wade Garrett had just driven straight up from San Francisco to Crescent Cove. Nearly swaying from fatigue, he was in no mood for jokes as he stared down at the short man with the bad comb-over who stood fidgeting in front of him.

Wade fixed Kenton Wallingford with a look he’d been told was intimidating enough to make an enemy spy rat out his own mother. “What did you just say to me?” Wade asked softly.

Wallingford took a step back as the toothpick in his mouth bobbed from one corner to the other. “I, uh, I said I can’t rent you the cabin after all.” The slack muscles in his wrinkled neck quivered visibly when he swallowed. “My sister showed up a couple of days ago with her two kids and a black eye,” he whined. “What was I supposed to do, send her back to that bum I warned her not to marry ten years ago, so’s he can knock her around some more?”

Frustrated, Wade rubbed his temple where a headache had begun keeping time with the throbbing bass pouring out of a car stereo idling out on the street. He felt like marching over and ripping it out with his bare hands.

“How long will they be here?” he asked with a longing glance at the cabin he’d leased over the Internet and where he’d planned on sleeping tonight. A kid’s tricycle was parked in the driveway next to a pair of tiny sneakers.

Jeez, maybe he could rent a motel room for a few days.

“Until my sister gets on her feet or that no-good husband of hers sweet-talks her into going back to him.” Wallingford lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I’m betting on the latter. Carol’s too damned lazy to support herself.”

His dry chuckle made Wade want to haul him up by his greasy collar and shake him. It was probably a good thing Wade didn’t have the energy left for anything that strenuous.

“Good luck finding a room anywhere around here, what with the Arts Festival this weekend.” Wallingford hitched up his sagging pants. “Busiest damn time of year, and I’m not collecting a dime in rent,” he added morosely.

Wade couldn’t scare up a lick of sympathy for the little toad’s plight. All he wanted was to shower off the travel dust, fall into bed and sleep for fifteen hours. “Life isn’t fair,” he drawled.

Suddenly he remembered the folded paper in his shirt pocket and his mood brightened. “Well, I’m sorry about your sister,” he said, fishing it out, “but you faxed me a signed copy of the lease. I sent back a deposit.”

Wallingford’s smile turned crafty. “Read the fine print,” he replied around the toothpick as he jabbed a finger at the form. “Like I already said, it’s a family emergency.”

Wade skimmed the lease. When he reached the cancellation clause at the bottom, he swore under his breath.

It was uncharacteristic for him to ignore such important details, but he wasn’t used to dealing with such an annihilating defeat as he’d recently experienced. All he had wanted when he’d left California was to put the ruins of everything for which he had worked so hard behind him. Apparently he was paying the price for his haste.

“Look, I’m not fussy.” The desperation and the resignation he could hear in his own voice made him wince. “Can’t you find me somewhere to bunk, at least for tonight?”

Maybe Wallingford had a couch that pulled out or a damned lounge cushion on his back porch that Wade could borrow. At six-two, he was too damned tall to sleep in his car.

“You can deduct it from what you owe me,” he added. Had Wallingford hoped Wade might forget about the healthy deposit he’d paid? Not a chance.

The other man spread his hands in a gesture of helpless regret. “I’d put you up in the spare room for nothing, I swear, but my daughter’s home from Wazoo, over in Pullman.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Concerning the refund of your deposit—”

“I know,” Wade cut in, smothering a yawn. “Read the fine print. Now you read my fine print and hand it over.”

As soon as Wallingford pulled out his wallet and handed over a stack of bills, Wade jammed them and the useless rental agreement back into his pocket. He stalked back to his car, wondering if he should buy a sleeping bag and camp on the beach.

He was about to open his car door when Wallingford called out to him. “There’s a garage apartment behind one of those old Victorians on Cedar, a couple of blocks over. I didn’t hear of it being rented out.” He pointed in the direction of a stand of tall firs. “The house is blue with purple trim and a big weeping willow tree in the front yard. You can’t miss it.”

Wade felt a twinge of hope. “Have you got the address?”

By the time Pauline had closed up her needlework shop on Harbor Avenue and driven back up the bluff to her house, her earlier anxiety had turned to dull resignation. She had no choice but to have the damage repaired as soon as Steve was available, no matter what the ultimate hit on her precious nest egg.

Mayfield Manor had been in her family for three generations before she and her younger sister had inherited it. Even though Lily had obviously abandoned the family home as well as her only living relative, Pauline felt a deep obligation to maintain it. In addition to her strong affection for the old house, she still clung to her dream of someday replacing her female boarders with a family of her own.