The Touch (Healer Series) (4 page)

  
AJ smiled, said thank you, and took a bite.
It tasted scrumptious. The French toast was perfect, and he could barely finish
chewing long enough to tell her so.

  
“Delicious. Every bit as good as they told me
it would be.”

  
And he meant it. Helen was delighted and
watched for another moment before heading over to start cleaning up.

  
AJ finished up, thanked her again, and helped
to wash dishes even though she put up an argument. It gave Helen a chance to
grill him with the same questions everyone had been asking him - what he was in
town for, where he came from.

  
Then she asked something no one had in a very
long time.

  
“What about your mother? Do you need to call
her? We have a phone here you can use any time you want.”

  
“That’s very kind,” he said, not wanting to
ruin the smiles they were sharing with a sad story. “I’m going to go head on
out and find Matthew if he’s around. Said he’d point me in the direction of a
job. It’s awfully nice of you all to do.”

  
“Anything to help a friend.
He’s probably out in the garage, tinkering around with that truck again. Now
that it’s working, he’ll want to make it into a sparkling, new race car or show
car or something, just you wait and see.”

  
AJ found Matthew and together they headed
into town to see about getting AJ that job as a mechanic. Bob the mechanic was
nice enough although he seemed a little disgruntled at hiring an outsider –
especially one from a big city. He threw a couple questions and quizzes AJ’s
way. When he was satisfied enough with the answers, he grunted and muttered
that the job was his. AJ couldn’t help but think the guy probably didn’t have
much of a choice since no one had volunteered for the job anyway.

  
AJ agreed to start first thing the next
morning, and when Matthew offered him a ride back to the B&B he said he
preferred to walk around and get the feel of the town a bit. Matthew headed
back, and AJ started walking down the street, taking in the shops and the
people. It was a Saturday and the kids weren’t in school, so they were running
around and heading in and out of some of the shops. He headed in to the little
grocery store to pick up some snacks for his room. He knew Helen would be upset
if she knew, yet he felt guilty for eating all their food even if he was paying
rent. They asked for so little money. He knew she’d never let him help buy
groceries.

  
As he came out of the building with the brown
paper bag in his hands, the warmth of the noon sun hit him and reminded him
jeans were probably a bit much to wear this time of year. He saw her out of the
corner of his eye as she kicked the truck and let out a word he assumed most
ladies down here wouldn’t utter in public. She had already proven she wasn’t
most ladies.

  
He walked towards her, sandwich in hand and
half smiling at her feisty nature. His groceries rested nicely into the back of
her truck.

  
“Need some help?” he asked, leaning one
strong arm against the red metal and taking a bite of his sandwich. “We’ve got
to stop meeting like this.” He couldn’t help but smile around her. Even angry
she was, as he called it, intriguing.

  
“Is it your job to rescue damsels in
distress? Because there’s none of those here or are you just following me
around and hoping to rescue me like a stray puppy?”

  
Her voice was agitated. She took a deep
breath, looked at the ground and sighed.

  
“Sorry, AJ, just a bit frustrated.
Didn’t mean to be so rude.”

  
“You didn’t answer my question. Do you need
some help?”

  
AJ was going to make her swallow her pride
and ask. He didn’t know why, but it was fun to watch her squirm. He’d long ago
stopped looking at people as people, instead seeing each person as another
manikin with the same look and feel. It felt good to see beyond the figures of
people and begin to really notice them again.

  
“Yes. Please, and thank you sir. Is that what
you want to hear?”

  
She hated saying it. She was exhausted and
only wanted to get home and take a nap. She was tough. It was like she was
challenging him to back down.

  
AJ just looked at her for a moment with the
smirk still on his face which only seemed to irk her further. Before she could
change her mind he slapped a more serious look on his face.

  
“Let’s take a look.”

  
He set the sandwich on top of his groceries
and walked to the front of the truck. Addie stood near, her brown hair pulled
back now into a messy bun and her face pink from a mixture of anger and the
sun. Arms crossed in front of her chest, he could tell she wasn’t happy.

  
“You can call, what’s his name, Joseph? You
can call him instead if you want.” AJ couldn’t help bringing the asshole up. He
wanted details.

  
“Lot of good that would do
me.
The only thing he’s good at is eating.”

  
She laughed a little. They both did.

  
“No, really, he couldn’t fix a car for a
million bucks.”

  
AJ just watched her. He liked the way she
smiled, the way her hair fell in her face and the way she tucked it back behind
her ear. What he wanted to ask her was why she was with him then, but he held
back. It almost slipped off his tongue before he was able to stop it. He knew
asking her such a personal question wouldn’t result in a good outcome.

  
He fiddled around under the hood for a few
minutes before spotting a loose spark plug and quickly resolving the issue, at
least that one. He noticed that the truck was pretty beat up inside and would
need more repairs sooner rather than later.

  
“This should get you home. You’re probably
going to need some real work on this pretty soon, or it won’t be running at
all.”

  
“That’s why I don’t take it to mechanics,”
she responded, walking away from him towards her door. “They always tell me
something I don’t want to hear. Like something that is
gonna
cost me money. I can’t pay when I don’t have it!”

  
“Luckily, you’re talking to the town’s newest
mechanic. And I just happen to live next door, so it seems like we could work
something out.”

  
“I wasn’t asking for a handout!”

  
She found AJ aggravating. She spent most of
her time shying away from most people in town as they seemed to think of her as
a leper for having a baby as a teen. The last thing she wanted was pity on top
of the looks and gossip she already contended with.

  
“I’ve taken care of myself and my little girl
for as long as I can remember. I don’t need some stranger to fix things for
me.”

  
“I wasn’t implying you needed a handout.”

  
He was beginning to remember why he hadn’t
struck up conversations with people in so long. Everything he said seemed to be
misconstrued thanks to his penchant for joking around.
 
He walked over to her door and leaned on her
window, the same way she had on that dirt road the day before.

  
“Maybe I need something from you and I was
trying to work out a fair trade, so I don’t look like a beggar.”

  
“What could you possibly need from me?”

  
She let a smile loose, this time genuine and
not forced. She wasn’t sure why this stranger was so enticing to her. He made
her angry, happy, and a myriad of other things all rolled into one and she
didn’t understand it.

  
“How about a tour of town?
I don’t know anyone except for you.
Kind of.
Might be
nice to get a little tour and meet some people.”

  
“We’ll see.”

  
She turned the key in the fluttering ignition
and listened as the engine turned. She had to admit, it was a tempting deal.
The truck needed a lot of work, and an entire year’s worth of toil in the field
probably wouldn’t cover the costs even if she had no other bills to pay.

  
She turned to look at him, and her hair fell
forward across her face again. AJ reached in and tucked it back behind her ear,
his fingers brushing lightly against her skin, causing a flash of images in his
mind that were far too fast to see and make sense of. He pulled back, and she
looked at him with confusion. She couldn’t comprehend exactly what she had just
felt because those surges hadn’t rushed through her since Rose’s father. It
scared her a bit. This man was a stranger.

  
“Better go,” she said.
“Time
to pick up Rose, so I guess I’ll see you around.”
She sped off down the
road.

  
AJ watched her pull away – a sight he was
beginning to find familiarity in - and then turned in the opposite direction
towards his temporary home. He thought about asking Matthew for a ride but
figured the walk might do him some good. It was only a couple miles, and the
run earlier hadn’t worn him out. It felt good to get some exercise again.

  
He realized it would have been nicer with his
sandwich, which was still in the back of Addie’s truck, along with his other
snacks.

  
He smiled. Just another reason he could go
talk to her.

**************************************************

  
Addie pulled up to her grandmother’s house to
pick up Rose. Only 25, she had lost her mother years ago. She didn’t talk about
it much because in a small town, everyone knows everything about everyone. It
was no secret her mama was a bit of a loon and had passed away while locked up
in a psych ward. Mostly, Addie didn’t talk about it because she was scared that
those genes would be passed onto her and Rose. She figured not saying it out
loud would keep it from happening. Plus, if she didn’t talk about it, it just
didn’t exist.

  
Her grandmother Jane, a young 70, was out
watering her flowers with little Rose at her side. She couldn’t remember a time
when her grandmother hadn’t taken care of them. She was more of a mother than
her birth mother and Addie loved her as such. She stood and watched for a
moment from the car window before she opened the door and swung her boots onto
the dirt and up to the house.

  
“Where’d you get those shorts, Woodstock?”

  
Gram proudly displayed the smirk on her face,
her gaze never straying from the flowers she was watering. She loved giving
Addie a hard time.

  
Addie leaned in to kiss her on the cheek,
grasping both her shoulders as she did so.

  
“Love you too, Gram. And yes, I thought the
ones from this decade weren’t nearly short enough, so I took my magical pickup
truck back in time to a place where they were.”

  
“Smart ass.”

  
“Mom, Grandma Jane let me pick some flowers
for you!” Rose said excitedly, bouncing up and down before running towards the
house to get them. “They’re in the vase, I’ll be right back!”

  
“The flowers are gorgeous out here, Gram.”

  
Addie admired the spread. Each year, Gram’s
garden grew bigger and better with the blue, pink, purple and red flowers
blending together into a beautiful living painting.

  
“You always have the best garden in town.”

  
“That I do,” Gram replied with a wink. “It’s
all because of the mud and fertilizer, my own special mix.”
 

Turning
to look right at Addie, she broached a subject that tended to make both their
skin crawl.

  
“Speaking of mud and
fertilizer,
how’s Joseph?”

  
“Give it a rest Gram. He’s fine. He’s a good
provider.” He wasn’t, but those were the only words that came to mind in her
defense.

  
“You’re a good provider. You don’t need him.”

  
“He’s good company. Why do you want me to be
alone? I don’t want to be lonely.”

  
“Being alone does not make you lonely, dear.
Look at me. I’ve been without your granddad for 20 years, and I’m happy as a
lark!”

  
“Don’t tell me you don’t miss him.”

  
While Gram was one of the happiest people on
the planet, Addie knew she missed his love dearly. Preparing for a lecture of
some sort Addie boosted herself up onto the brown stone wall surrounding the
garden, kicking her legs as if she were eight years old again.