The Carpenter's Daughter (12 page)

“Thanks.”

“Thought only women did the cold-shoulder thing.” He shook his head and wandered to the other end of the bar.

I followed his trail with my eyes and found my dad saddled up way the heck down there. Dad glanced at me, his scowl still dark, and then mumbled to Joe. I turned, giving them a view of my back, and pretended to watch the game of pool in progress by the far window.

“Can I buy you another drink?” A deep voice interrupted my concentration on ignoring the two men at the other end of the counter.

Turning only my neck, my eyes landed on Aiden Beck, the most loved guy from my high school days. The boy had played basketball, was voted most likely to succeed in Hollywood, and was probably most well known for his alternating hot and cold relationship with Brenna James, hands down the prettiest girl in our graduating class.

Aiden’s dimpled grin faltered a bit as his sky-blue eyes widened. But only for a moment. His lips spread with full-on charm, and he slid onto the stool next to mine. “Sarah Sharpe, you are looking sharp.”

Original. Clearly he hadn’t been a straight A student.

I’d never actually heard a line directed at me before, so a smile peeked through my prior irritation.

“Aiden Beck, you are looking like…” Oh dear. Had I really attempted to flirt? I didn’t know how to do that. Case in point, I had nothing to finish with.

“Looking like it’s my lucky day.”

Uh, okay, so he was quick on his feet. Cheesy, but not dumb.

He leaned into my space. “So, what are we drinking?”

A throat cleared across the bar. I shifted my attention from Aiden to Joe, who scowled from the other side of the counter.

“What do you want, Beck?”

Aiden glanced to the bartender before he settled that impish grin back on me. “We were just talking about that.”

“Sarah’s already got her drink.” Joe folded his arms over his chest. “Where’s your little blonde?”

Good question. I should have asked that. Last I knew, he and Brenna were still
on
. But like I said, that status changed about as often as the Nebraska weather.

“She’s doing whatever she wants.” Aiden’s look flicked to Joe, and he frowned. “And so am I. Right now, I want a beer, and another…” He made a show of looking at my drink. “Cosmo.”

Joe looked at me, one eyebrow cocked. “You want another Cosmo?”

I’d barely taken two sips of the one I had. “I’m good. Thank you anyway.”

“She’s good.” Joe nodded, his stare hard on Aiden. “Go fishing for retribution somewhere else.”

Retribution? Ah. Now I remembered my place. I slid off the stool and wandered over to the pool table, where the couple who’d been cracking the balls had finished their round. I grabbed a cue stick and racked the balls, ready for my solo night to continue.

“I’ll break.” Dad spoke behind me.

I swiveled my head to look at him. Our eyes connected, and the tension in my shoulders rolled away. Swallowing, I nodded, and he did too. That was as close to
I’m sorry
as we got.

Sarah

My phone chirped from my back pocket. Pushing my hat back, I reached to answer it, wiping the sweat from my forehead while I looked at the caller ID. Unknown. Weird. Only a handful of people knew this number—most clients called the office, and my dad and uncle Dan were in the shop fifty yards away. That left no one I knew to be calling me at noon on a Friday.

“Hello?”

“Sarah Sharpe.” A male’s voice seemed to grin in my ear. “Couldn’t get you out of my head. Girl, you grew up and were looking good last week.”

Who on earth? Where did I go last week?

To the bar. “Aiden?”

“I knew you wouldn’t forget me.” Somehow the arrogant swagger in his tone made me smile. “I sure couldn’t forget you. Got plans tonight?”

Yeah, the usual. Takeout pizza with Dad and Dan, Redbox movie, and a whole lot of nothing else.

“Not really.” I sucked in a long pull of air, eyeing my dad across the shop as he squared up a wall. Seemed my way of doing things on the Kearney project finally settled with him, and he took to prebuilt walls like he’d always done it that way.

What would he think of me going out with Aiden Beck? Probably not much of anything good. Wasn’t sure that mattered to me. Much.

“Nothing that I can’t postpone.” I ran my tongue along my teeth, unsure about what I was doing. I’d missed the whole lesson on flirting.

I glanced over to Dad again. He would be furious. Didn’t have a good thing to say about Aiden, even back in high school. Not that we talked about him much, but Dad liked to keep track of the basketball team, and Aiden had played. I thought Dad called him a punk. Yep, that was it. An arrogant punk who thought he was a one-man show.

“Good. Postpone it, girl.” Aiden had a way of giving a direct order that seemed like a compliment. “You and I are long overdue for a get-to-know-you outing.”

Get-to-know-you…how? I wasn’t up to speed on those kinds of outings. “Where are we going?”

“Dancing.”

Where was that going to happen? Only really drunk people danced at The Crossing. It didn’t matter how charming Beck was—I wasn’t getting drunk. “Dancing?”

“Yep. Kearney. I’ll pick you up at six.”

I laughed. “It’s four, and I’m at the shop, with sawdust clinging to my skin.”

“Oh.” His groan prickled gooseflesh on my arms. “I could help with that.”

Oh dear. Instinct said to hang up on him. But defiance—or something—kicked in, and I didn’t. “No thanks. I can’t be ready by six. I work until then. And I don’t need picked up. I’ll meet you there.”

“You don’t know where we’re going.”

True.

Dad stopped firing nails into the studs and turned to look at me. Heat flooded my face, and his eyebrows drew together. I looked away.

“Tell me where and I’ll meet you.”

“Sarah,” Dad barked, “who are you talking to?”

I waved my hand at him while Aiden talked. “Nope. But I’ll compromise with you. I’ll meet you at The Crossing, and then we can head north. Seven. Not a minute later.”

This probably wasn’t a good idea. I opened my mouth to turn him down.

Aiden spoke before I got the words out. “Don’t stand me up.”

Click.

I looked at the screen—
call ended
lit up in red. Great. Now what?

“Sarah, are you going to stand around for the next couple of hours?”

I turned back to Dad. His suspicious glower didn’t help the fire brewing in my stomach.

“I pay you to work. Get after it.”

Jesse

I pulled up to the local hotel and sighed. Last hotel I’d stayed in had felt…empty. Not that I ever shared a room with anyone, but knowing that Sarah had left early because of my ill-conceived plans carved a pit inside me that seemed to affect my surroundings.

Maybe I had too much on my mind, and that blew everything out of proportion. Avery had dropped a load of bricks on my shoulders this weekend.

I replayed that conversation, which happened on Wednesday evening when I’d been a part of her regular Bible study—something I was usually excited about when I got the chance to go.

“Pastor was telling me about a project his brother-in-law has his hands in out in Omaha.” Avery snagged a mitt and opened her oven door. Out came a perfect golden-brown pie, oozing red.

I couldn’t resist a long whiff. Oh, so good. My tongue dripped with anticipation. Good thing my mouth was closed. It was hard to think about whatever it was we were talking about, but I forced my mind, and my tongue, to behave. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“A project in North Omaha.” Ken, Avery’s pastor, spoke as if that should mean something.

I wasn’t connecting any dots. “I’m not sure what that means.”

Ken nodded. “Neighborhood’s kind of rough. Not the money hot spot, if you know what I mean. Several churches in Omaha have put a fund together. They bought a block of houses.”

“A block? Like a whole city block?”

“Exactly.” His wife, Sharon, jumped in, all smiles.

“Okay.” I tried to do the math. There seemed to be some variables missing. And I wasn’t good with math. “What’s a group of churches going to do with a city block of houses?”

“They were crack houses,” Ken said.

Wow. Even more intriguing. Still not following.

“Oh, just tell him the whole story, and then say what you’re thinking.” Avery set plates around the table, each one covered with a monstrous portion of flakey pastry goodness. Did I have to wait to dig in until the conversation worked all the way through?

Sharon spoke before I could push. “They want to convert the houses to something useful, something good. Shelters for single mothers. A recovery house for addicts. Ministry that meets the needs of people who are often overlooked by the church.”

“Good plan.” I smiled, purposely looking to both Ken and then Sharon, not to the pie that called to my squealing taste buds. “I like it. It involves me how?”

Ken cleared his throat. “The houses are in pretty bad shape. They need renovating.”

Aha. I dug my fork into my slice of cherry heaven, which suddenly looked more like bribery baked in pastry. I laughed. “Spit it out, Avery. Whatchya got cooking inside that head of yours?”

“You, Jesse.” She grinned. “You’re perfect for this project.”

Not so much. I wasn’t my dad.

Exhaustion slid over me. Not normal. I was a hyperactive person. I woke up early, stayed up late, and work somehow acted like a battery for my already high energy level. But that night, I felt tired.

After checking in, I showered and flopped on the sagging bed. We would start another job in the morning. I knew a few of the people around here. Thankfully, none of them were female. No more of that variety for me. I hadn’t realized the extent of their…uh, hope concerning me. Not until the fiasco at the Fultons’. They’d pinned me as their knight. Maybe I should’ve been; heaven knew that baby girl should have a daddy, and I liked Laine, but it didn’t seem right. Not with the way my mind always seemed to drift back to Sarah.

Pretty, a worker, smart, and so very vulnerable. That last part had me intrigued. The combination of the first three qualities should have led to confidence, but she wasn’t. I got that there were people out there who weren’t crowd lovers, but Sarah seemed to shrink inside herself. It was more than shyness, almost like she was lost.

Lost. Yes. She knew exactly what she was doing when it came to building, and she did it well, but even in her element, her eyes held a wandering quality. Like she didn’t know who she was.

That was strange, because I felt like I knew her. I stared at the ceiling. How could I really know a woman who didn’t know herself?

My phone chirped from the bedside table. My heart did a goofy little hop as I reached for it, unreasonably hoping to see
Sapphira
on the screen. I’d called her last Friday night when I didn’t see her truck in the hotel parking lot. She hadn’t answered, so I left a message. Short and simple.
I’m sorry.

She didn’t call me back.

Maybe that was why I was so engrossed with her. I hated the idea that anyone wouldn’t like me. Too much of a people pleaser, that was what Shane said.

The phone chirped again, and I grabbed it. Mack. My chest caved in, but I made my voice sound like my normal, upbeat self. “Hey.”

“Did you make it?”

“Yep.” I scanned my room. “Gotta say, Mack, this place is a dive. Even for me.”

“I told you to book a room in Kearney.”

“Yeah, I know, but I was tired.” I pushed a hand through my wet hair. “This’ll do.”

“Tired?” Mack’s gruff chuckle scratched over the phone. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard that one from you. Kearney’s only a half hour down the road.”

Walked into trouble there. I swallowed, not knowing what to say.

“This has everything to do with the tangled web you managed to get caught up in last week, doesn’t it?”

For a guy who generally kept to work and not much else, Mack was getting nosy about this.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Mack didn’t respond immediately. Awkward.

“You worked by yourself the rest of the weekend and took off for Valentine as soon as the sun went down Sunday. You don’t even sound like yourself now. I’d say something was a big deal.”

His fatherly tone touched on an ache that had mostly healed. My dad had been quite a guy. Oddly, I found Mack’s reminder of him irritating. Not only was I lying in a crappy hotel room brooding about a woman I couldn’t pursue, now I missed my parents.

“Look. It’s nothing.” I came off the bed and stalked to the window. “Maybe I’m coming down with something. Who knows? I’m just tired.”

Mack cleared his throat, and my shoulders slumped. Tired. Defensive. Snappy. Yep, there was definitely something wrong with me.

“Did you call her?” His tone sounded soft. Very strange.

I rubbed the back of my neck and allowed my mind to pass over the week again. I loved Avery’s house, and her offer for me to land there during a lull had been well timed. It was like visiting a grandparent, and I’d adopt Avery as a grandmother anytime. But always lingering had been the hope that Sarah would call me back.

“Yeah, I called her—apologized.” My hand fell to my side.

“Good.” Mack’s characteristic bark returned. “Is she coming this weekend?”

Ha. That would mean that she’d actually talked to me. “Not that I know of.”

You couldn’t really pull off casual indifference after a dip into the deep side of a conversation. The air on the line seemed to stretch tenuously.

“Then apologize again.” Still the commander in chief. “I need her skills, so fix it.”

He hung up. Mack literally hung up on me. No one had ever hung up on me. I wasn’t the guy people hung up on. Was he seriously upset that Sarah had ditched us because of me? Maybe that hadn’t been fatherly compassion hemming his voice.

Then again, maybe all of it had been exactly that.

Sarah

I brushed the hair out of my eyes and glanced, for like the ten-millionth time, into my rearview mirror. The made-up face of a woman stared back at me. I liked the way she looked. Didn’t like the way she felt though.

Lying to my dad—that was new, and it fit like a belt that was two sizes too small. I should’ve left, gone home. I had no business waiting in The Crossing’s parking lot for Aiden like some sneaky, rebellious teenager.

Rebellion?

No. This was a journey. Boys didn’t normally look at me like a girl they’d be interested in. They looked at me like a contracting consultant, which was what I was. But there must be more to me than that.

Rocks crackled beneath the weight of a vehicle as a tricked-out Jeep Wrangler pulled up beside my truck. Sitting tall on its lift kit, the bright-orange paint job screamed
I need attention
to anyone near the vicinity.

Was that what my makeup said?

I didn’t expect you to turn into her.

I didn’t want to be
her
. That was the last thing I wanted. I needed to figure out
me
.

A door smacked closed, reminding me that I wasn’t alone, and in the next heartbeat Aiden was leaning on my truck.

“Hello, gorgeous.” He spoke through my open window, drawing out the
hello
like he was a game-show host.

The image of a vulture blipped through my mind. I ignored it.

“Hey. I was thinking maybe we could play a round of pool here.” I gripped the bottom of my steering wheel, looking at my hands. “I’m not much of a dancer.”

“Not a chance.” Aiden leaned through the window, seriously invading my personal space. “Always a first time for everything.” His whisper tickled my ear. He moved back and opened my door. “I’m a great dancer. You’re in good hands.”

The hairs on my arms stood straight as warning bells blared in my ears. That was ridiculous. Was I a woman or some thirteen-year-old girl who couldn’t even look at a guy without blushing?