nurse’s salary as she could, knowing she wouldn’t make squat while she was doing her midwife apprenticeship. She’d had a cushion. Only the cushion turned out to be a lot thinner than she’d thought.
At least Eli was letting her stay rent-free in his house until he was ready to sell it. Otherwise she honestly didn’t know what she’d do, she thought as she dug her checkbook out of her vintage Coach bag—a thrift shop score from five years ago—and flipped open the register. But alas, the Money Fairy hadn’t made a stealth deposit in the middle of the night.
Shutting her eyes against the bright fall sun, Jewel stuffed the checkbook back in her purse, so distracted and disgusted and discombobulated she didn’t even notice Noah standing on her roof until he called her name. She looked up, shielding her eyes, deciding she’d really be in a bad mood if the sight of all those muscles in a black T-shirt wasn’t cheering her up. “Thought you said you’d send somebody over?”
“Lost the coin toss. So where’s this leak again?”
“Right in the middle of the living room. And it only happens when the rain comes from the south.”
Noah vanished and Jewel went inside, moping, listening to Noah’s work boots stomp-stomp-stomping overhead. Then back. Then the sound of the metal extension ladder creaking as he climbed back down. A minute later, he knocked at the open door. Sitting at the small dining table in the kitchen, her head in her hands, Jewel looked up from the electric bill and its cousins, trying not to feel like a Grade A loser.
“Found the problem,” Noah said. “It’s not supposed to rain for the rest of the week, so I’ll get back to patch it up in the next day or so. Although …” He dug his fingers into the back of his neck, shaking his head.
“Problem?”
“Yeah. Every time I come over to fix something, I find another issue.” He crossed his arms. “I doubt even Eli realizes how much work the place needs. If he wants to sell it for more than two bucks, at least.”
Jewel frowned. “I’m not in any danger of the roof caving in while I sleep or anything, am I?”
“You might want to make sure your bed’s under the support beam … just kidding,” he said as she sagged back in the chair. “Um … you okay?”
This said in the manner of someone facing a potential bomb. Jewel almost smiled. “Other than feeling like this house? I’m fine.” She wriggled her mouth back and forth a moment, then said, “Y’all wouldn’t need some secretarial work done or anything, would you?” At his silence, she looked over. “What?”
“Jewel? I don’t want to be mean or anything … but you really need to give this up.”
“Give what up?”
“You’re sweet and all, but I’m not … interested.”
A laugh popped out of her mouth, only to almost immediately turn to tears. Much to her profound annoyance.
“Ah, hell, honey … I tried to let you down as easy as I knew how—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Noah,” she said, grabbing a napkin off the table and honking into it, “I got that message loud and clear some time ago, okay? I’m not asking if you’ve got work to get closer to you, I’m asking because I’m broke.”
Cautiously, Noah came farther into the house.
“Really?”
“God’s honest truth,” she said on a harsh breath that released a flood of words. “The thing is, it’s not like I didn’t know going in how tight things were gonna be for a while until I got my license. And even then delivering babies is never gonna make me rich. And basically I’m okay with that—as long as there are thrift shops and beans and corn-bread, I’m good. Only I didn’t count on breaking a tooth on a piece of hard candy, and the dentist is threatening to send the bill to collections even though I’m paying him what I can, and if I don’t find a way to make some extra cash I might have to give up on being a midwife altogether. Bad enough my mother thinks it’s a cockamamie idea. Oh, Noah—I can’t fail, I just can’t!”
She blew her nose again, then took off her glasses to wipe the lenses. “Sorry. Sometimes my emotions kinda get the best of me. What?” she said when Noah kept looking at her funny.
“Actually, I meant …” He pointed between the two of them. “You’re really, um, over me?”
Wondering if the man had heard a single word she’d said, Jewel did a mental eye roll. “No offense, but worrying about starving to death kinda knocked you to the bottom of my things-to-think-about list.”
“Oh. Okay. Just checking. Because I don’t do—” he made air quotes “—relationships. Not in the way that most gals mean the word, at least. I have …” His forehead puckered. “Dalliances.”
A soggy, oh-geez, laugh burbled from Jewel’s mouth. “And you think I don’t … dally?”
The puckering intensified. “Do you?”
“Guess you’ll never find out now. I mean, you had your chance, but …” Her shoulders bumped. “That particular window of opportunity is now closed. But I really do need a job. So could you use some extra help? I’ll do anything—scrub toilets, haul trash—I’m not proud.”
Finally, he seemed to relax. “Damn, Jewel … we just hired on Luis’s wife part-time. Sorry. Wish you’d said something sooner.”
“No problem,” she said, sighing. “Not your fault. Anyway. Thanks.”
He gave her a last, lost look—men were good at that—then nodded and left, the door clicking shut behind him. With a groan Jewel let her head drop onto her folded arms, hearing her mother’s voice as clear as if she’d been standing right there, going on about how silly Jewel’d been to have let Justin go, that if she’d married him she wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
Maybe so, Jewel thought, lifting her head. Except for the small issue of her not wanting to get married. To Justin or anybody else. Not then, not now. Maybe not ever. But at twenty-five? No way. Not when she had all these things she wanted to do. To be.
If she sometimes yearned so much for what had kept eluding her as a child she thought she’d lose her mind, she supposed that was the trade-off for the peace that came with knowing that whatever choices she made, the only person she could hurt was herself.
And that nobody could hurt her, either.
She bet, if she had the nerve to ask him, Silas Garrett would understand where she was coming from. Shoot, ask anybody, they’d talk your ear off about his resistance to his mother’s attempts to fix him up. And the look on his face when Jewel’d asked him about the boys’ mother? Yeah, there was somebody who was more than happy with things the way they were, she was guessing. So if it was okay for Silas—who could probably use another set of hands and eyes to help him with those two rascals of his—to stay single, why wasn’t it for her?
Never mind the bizarre ping of attraction to the man, with his soulful green eyes and killer mouth and the ten kinds of take-no-prisoners, sexy authority he exuded. A thought that, okay, got her hormones just the teensiest bit hot and bothered. So sue her, it’d been a while. But please—the last thing she needed
