in her life lately had been this easy. When she’d read the ad for this position on the Internet, it had read like a dream come true considering her suddenly changed circumstances—seasonal, middle of nowhere, starting immediately.
She’d applied on her first day in South Carolina and the second she got the e-mail from Gabe asking her to come up for an interview, she’d packed Josie into the car and driven north.
Gabe finally shrugged. “Truth is, we haven’t had that many applicants. Not many people are excited about living in the Catskills in the middle of winter.”
That made her laugh. She wasn’t all that excited about it, either. And she certainly never would have come here if she didn’t have to. But it would be the last place anyone would look for her. She was a Southern woman, with blood as thin as sweet tea.
“But,” he was quick to state, “even if we’d gotten the résumés I do believe you’d still get the job. You’re a good fit—I could tell when you walked in. I have instincts about people.”
You and me both, buddy. She just hoped he trusted his more than she did her own.
She clenched her hands a bit tighter behind her back to stop herself from throwing her arms around him.
“I suppose you’d like to know the particulars?” he asked, and she pretended to be interested.
“Of course.”
“On paper the salary isn’t much but it includes room and board. Tips, of course, are yours. You need to let Chef Tim know of any dietary problems—”
“That’s great.”
“As per your request, you’ll be a contract employee. So no health benefits. Taxes will be your problem. Checks will be made out to Delia Johnson.”
“That’s no problem.” As a contract employee they wouldn’t need her social security number and since Delia Johnson didn’t have one, that seemed altogether best. She could wait to cash the paychecks—living on tips for as long as she could. She could take a paycheck in and get an ID made, maybe. God, she’d never had to worry about this before.
But with food and lodging covered, all she really needed to pay for was gas and the odds and ends that she and Josie required.
Delia shook her head. She didn’t need any more. A roof, food for her daughter, someplace safe for her to catch her breath and figure out what to do next.
“It would be a real pleasure to work here,” she said. “A real—” relief, blessing, gift, godsend “—pleasure.”
Gabe held out his hand and Delia put her clammy palm into his. “Welcome aboard, Delia Johnson. We hope you’ll stay awhile.”
Not likely, she thought, but shook on it anyway.
MAX SHOOK the snow out of his hair and stomped his boots on the rug at the front door. Gabe hated when he used the front door, tracking in snow and mud from outside, which was pretty much why Max used it.
The winter months were slow. All he had to pass the time was building his shed and irritating his brother. And the snowstorm outside was making the former impossible.
I’m thirty-six years old, he thought. I should have more in my life.
He looked up and found the little girl, Josie, staring at him as if he were a wild animal coming in for dinner.
He almost growled just to see what she would do.
“Hi,” she said after a moment.
Max looked around for the mother bear but didn’t see her. Should she see him talking to her daughter, chances were not good she’d welcome that.
He didn’t blame her. Since the shooting, mothers seemed to have a sense about him.
But this little girl looked so forlorn and small sitting at the big table that he decided to risk the wrath of Mama Bear.
“Hi, again.” He stepped over to her table and pulled off his gloves, taking a look at the book she had open in front of her. “Sudoku, huh?”
“Yeah.” Her lip lifted in a half smile and her hair—hidden earlier under her pink hat—fell over her shoulder. Red. Like her mother’s, only a bit more blond.
Max was at loose ends. It was snowing too hard to work. There were no repairs that needed to be done. No point in shoveling snow while it was still falling. Dad had left yesterday for downstate to talk to his lawyer about something. Alice was lying around with her feet up. And his brother must be checking in Josie’s mother, so he wasn’t around to annoy.
“I’m bored,” he said, the words popping out before he’d finished thinking them.
“Me, too.” Josie’s sigh was long-suffering and pained.
“Yeah?” He pushed out a chair with his foot and sat. He liked kids and he especially liked kids with attitude, which Josie had in spades. “Want to hand me one of those puzzle books?”
“There’s only one,” she said, and tossed him a different book from the stack. “You can have this.”
“A Barbie coloring book?” He opened it and grabbed a crayon from the box between them. “My favorite.”
Josie smiled and bent over her book of math puzzles, but watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye.
He worked diligently on Prince Charming’s military jacket.
“So?” he said, coloring over the medals pinned to the cartoon’s chest, saving him the pain of the memories required to have earned those medals. “Where you from?”
Josie stopped looking at him, focused on the puzzle, running her pencil over the six she’d written until it was black. “We move around a lot.”
Warning sirens wailed in Max’s head.
“You sound like you’re from the South.”
“Texas,” she said.
“Have you ever seen this much snow?”
She shook her head.
“What do you think of it?”
She wrinkled her nose and he grinned then, changing tactics, he held out his hand. “I’m Max Mitchell. I live here.”
“I’m Josie G…Johnson.” The sirens wailed louder. Something wasn’t right. “And I think I live here, too.”
He blinked. “You and your mo—”
“Josie?” Mama Bear was back and she was not happy. Max put down his crayon and turned to look at Delia standing, all her feathers ruffled, beside Gabe.
“Hi, Mama,” Josie said, looking like a kid caught stealing.
“Max.” Gabe stepped neatly into the fray. “I want to introduce you to Delia Johnson. She’ll be
