Charity’s cheeks burned, and her mouth competed with the Sahara on the dryness scale, she managed an affirmative noise in her throat. An awkward silence followed until they both spoke at once to break it.
“Hey, I’m sorry—”
“You know, I’m sorry—”
Charity couldn’t help laughing and felt relieved when Rick joined in. As he took a few more steps toward her, she scrambled to her feet. The filth she wiped from her palms to her holey jeans probably came with a dose of perspiration. She resisted the temptation to pat her hands on her loose ponytail. It shouldn’t have mattered how she looked. “I wasn’t bothering you, was I?”
“No. Was my noise bothering you? I didn’t have any music on this morning.” His smile was no less than devastating, that soft-looking mouth incongruous with the hard lines of his cheekbones. A small split tamed the perfection of his straight teeth.
Could her face and neck have gotten any warmer? “Uh…no. Of course not.”
“I really am sorry about the other day. I was obnoxious.”
How tempted she felt to let him take the blame for the whole crazy incident, but she resisted. She took her mission to bring this man to church seriously. To that end, she forced herself to look directly at him and to smile back. The Lord’s work required great sacrifice.
“No, I’m the one who overreacted and berated you about the music,” she said. “I went about it all wrong.”
Stuffing his hands in his pockets as if suddenly more uncomfortable in the situation, Rick pressed his lips into a straight line. That only made more obvious how little about Rick McKinley was soft. Not his features, all sharp angles and hard planes, and not his physique, which appeared as hard as the bricks stacked next to the building.
At her realization she’d been gawking, Charity glanced away from him, ashamed. “I’d better get these planted.”
She sat cross-legged on the ground, digging her fingers back into the earth. To safety. She pulled a few weeds, expecting him to retreat to the construction site. But he stayed there, staring across the field at Andrew and Serena’s house.
“I didn’t expect to see anyone here today,” he said as he dropped to his knees a few feet from her and yanked out a handful of weeds. “I figured everyone would be grabbing that last taste of summer. All of my crew are doing that.”
“But not you.” The words slipped past her better judgment before she could censor them. Her slip and his closeness made her so nervous she dropped the trowel and had to scramble to retrieve it. Now he probably thought she was wondering why he’d come here today and why he remained so close she could smell the sawdust on his clothes. And he would have thought right. “Me, neither,” she added in a rush. “I’m ready for summer to be over. I thought I’d get a head start on fall while everyone else was gone.”
“Do you do all of the gardening work at the church?”
She almost smiled at that. And it pleased her more than it should have that he’d attempted to make conversation when he easily could have left. He probably just wanted someone to talk to, and his crew was off for the day. It wasn’t as if he was interested in her or anything. They had nothing in common, as far as she could tell. Besides, she would never date a guy who quite possibly didn’t even go to church.
“The trustees take care of the grounds, but I’m in charge of the landscape committee. I do what I can with a limited budget and donate the rest.”
He nodded and yanked off his cap, tucking it in the waistband of his pants. Though his hair was sweaty and mussed, Charity could tell he’d gotten a haircut and appeared almost presentable. He resumed plucking weeds, even reaching beside her to borrow the trowel and dig out a few deep roots.
“You do a good job,” he said after a while.
It was the smallest of compliments, and yet Charity felt her insides warm with pleasure. From the way she’d reacted, she would have sworn he’d just dubbed her a master landscaper or something. “It looks bad right now.”
“No, it looks in transition.”
Neither said anything for a while, but they continued in companionable silence until they’d cleared the planting bed. “I have to get more plants from over there in the shade,” she told him. He surprised her by following and helping her carry flowers.
“Thanks, but you don’t need to do that. You’ll probably want to get back to your own work.”
Why had she encouraged him to leave when it was the last thing she wanted? But his nearness felt a little too nice to be a good idea.
“I don’t mind.” He laid the green plastic pots on the ground. “I needed a real break, anyway.”
Charity turned her head away to hide her grin. In her defense, it had been an awfully long time since she’d had an actual conversation with someone who wasn’t her mother, a co-worker or a fellow church member. But this wasn’t about her. This conversation presented an opportunity, and she needed to get busy with church work.
“How is the project coming along?” she asked.
“Now that we’ve framed the walls, we’ll be setting the trusses and sheathing the roof.” He glanced back at the structure and shook his head. “Until the building has a roof, we can’t install windows, doors or flooring.”
“Do you think you’ll meet the November deadline?”
He shrugged. “It’s going to be tight. If all the subcontractors—plumbing, electric, heating and cooling, insulation, drywall and finish flooring—are on time, and that’s a big if, then we’ve got a chance, anyway.”
“Oh, I hope everything moves quickly. That would be great if it would be ready for the Thanksgiving celebration.”
She dug a few holes and indicated for Rick to hand her individual plants to put into them. Once she lowered them into the ground and patted the dirt back into place, she turned back to him. “Have you heard about that event? It’s like a family holiday dinner times fifty.”
“Sounds okay, I guess, if you like things like that. But if anything throws the schedule off, it won’t be happening this year inside the new building.”
“If the project is done, you’ll come to the church celebration, won’t you?”
He made a noncommittal sound and handed her another plant. Well, at least it wasn’t an outright no. She could almost guarantee he’d be a regular church attendee before that next holiday.
She looked back at him again. “How was your Labor Day weekend?”
“Short. I worked Saturday, remember? And isn’t today still part of the long weekend?”
She nodded and took a deep breath before diving in. “Didn’t see you at church Sunday.”
“I wasn’t there. I don’t attend church.”
Now that sounded like a definite no. Her confidence slipped, but it wasn’t like her to give up easily. “You need to give it a chance, Rick. You’d just love Hickory Ridge.
