spooky looking, Daddy,” Paige said, eyes widening. “I looked in the windows before and didn’t see no headless horsemen or creepy monsters, but Jaley says they only come out at night.”
Jaley was Paige’s best friend, a child with a vividly overactive imagination. He could, however, understand why the house had gained a reputation. Peeling paint, sagging doors and filthy dormer windows that looked out like empty eyes through faded black shutters were creepy enough, but the overgrown bushes and vines and the sheer loneliness lent an air of doom to the place. More than one shaky teenager had been caught climbing in through a window on a dare.
But Paige’s comments had scared Lana’s little girl. Small like Lana with kinky curly beige hair, Sydney had stiffened, growing paler with each spooky word. She clung to Lana as if she was now afraid to go inside the house.
Davis put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and squeezed, the signal he used in church to get her to stop talking. Paige hushed, shoulders slouching as her bottom lip protruded. She’d gotten the message.
“The house is not haunted,” he said firmly. “I told you that. Houses get lonely. All this one needs is a family.” And an enormous amount of work.
“Now it has one,” Lana declared, relief in her husky voice, though she tugged Sydney closer to her jean-clad thigh and soothed the child with a pat on the back.
“She’ll need some fixing up,” Davis said. “You know how some teenagers are when they know a house sets empty.”
He’d caught a few of them himself, usually on nights with a full moon or late in autumn just before Halloween when wind and dry, rustling leaves permeated the atmosphere.
Lana blanched, eyes widening as she swiveled her head toward the peeling paint and loose siding and then back to him. “The house has been vandalized?”
Hadn’t the woman considered the possibility?
“I haven’t been inside in a couple of years, since before your mother passed, but things had run down even then.” He didn’t say the obvious. Patricia Ross had two daughters and neither had come home to help their ailing mother. He couldn’t imagine being that coldhearted against your own kin. But then, Lana and Tess Ross hadn’t been the usual girls. Patricia’s brother had come from Nevada to bury her.
“Vandals,” Lana murmured, looking as if the weight of the house was on her shoulders. “Wonder what that will cost to repair?”
Regardless of his doubts about her, Davis’s natural compassion kicked in. He could help her out. He had the expertise. He was her neighbor. He fought the urge, but kindness won out in the end. Might as well give in to it now and save wrestling with his conscience later.
“I could take a look around the place if you want and give you a rough estimate.” That was all he planned. Just a quick walk-through.
“You do that sort of thing?”
The warm autumn wind lifted a lock of her hair and swirled it around until she had a spiderweb of brown matted on top of her head. She brushed at the nest, making it worse. He found the look charming and vulnerable. Davis was a sucker for vulnerable.
Tough-as-nails Lana Ross, vulnerable?
“I can,” he said. “Mostly, I lay tile but I’ve flipped a house or two. I can do a little of everything when the situation calls for it.” His face relaxed in a self-mocking grin. “In tile work, especially around here, the situation almost always calls for it. If I redo a shower, the floor beneath is inevitably rotten. Tile a floor? Bad joists.”
For the first time since his arrival, Lana’s pretty mouth curved. Just a little. “A true renaissance man?”
“Nowhere near that interesting, but I do know my way around a construction site.”
Renaissance man. Huh. Funny. Except when he had a trowel or a hammer in hand, he was as boring as vanilla pudding. Didn’t his sister remind him of that fact at least once a month? Jenny was forever trying to get him out into the world again. The dating world.
“Thanks for the offer, Davis,” Lana was saying, “but I guess we need to get settled in first and then figure out where to go from there.”
“Got it. Good plan.” She was blowing him off, rejecting his offer. Even though disappointment made his smile droop, Davis knew he should be glad about her refusal. He’d have no obligation now, no guilty conscience for not being neighborly to a woman and her daughter living alone.
Which brought him to another subject: Where was Sydney’s father?
As soon as the question settled in like good grouting mud, another followed. She’d never addressed Nathan’s oddball question about being married, and she and Sydney were moving in without any sign of a man. Recalling Lana’s teenage years, Davis thought the chances were very good the two were alone.
Chapter Two
“He was nice,” Sydney said.
Lana absently stroked a hand over Sydney’s frizzy hair as they stood on the top porch step—the only porch step—and watched Davis Turner and his kids recross the quiet residential street. A vanilla breeze danced around their feet, tossing leaves and dirt over their shoes and into a growing pile against the siding.
Davis was nice, but she’d seen the shock in his eyes and felt the temperature drop when she’d told him her name. He remembered.
Nothing she hadn’t expected but still the reaction stung. She’d changed, thank God, the day she’d stumbled into a Nashville street mission drunk as a skunk after getting turned down for an important gig at the Opry. She hadn’t known it then, but both had been her last chance. She’d never sung in public again, but she’d found the Lord and started on a new path.
Lana looked at Sydney, her throat aching with love and guilt. “Maybe you can be friends with Paige and Nathan.”
Dear Lord, don’t make Sydney pay any more for Tess’s or my mistakes. Let this work. Make it work for her sake.
“Will Paige be in my class at school?”
“Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll have to ask. Come on, let’s get the car unloaded.” She thumped the flat of her palm against the center pillar in a show of energy she didn’t feel. They still hadn’t worked up the nerve to go inside the forlorn two-story, but they were here and they would stay. Regardless. Somehow she and Sydney would turn this dreary old relic into a real home, clearing out one room and one old ghost at a time.
“Nathan was nice, too,” Sydney said. She reached her skinny arms into the backseat of the old Ford and dragged out a cardboard box. “He said I could swing on his swing set sometime.”
“He did?” Lana had not even noticed the children talking, probably because she’d been too focused on their handsome father. Boy, did she ever remember him!
“Uh-huh. He did. So, can I?”
“We’ll see.”
“Paige said they have a dog. Can we get a dog?”
“I don’t think so.” When she saw Sydney’s expression, Lana hurried to say,
