about her. You knew where she lived. You knew her name. You knew…”
“Nothing important about her,” Brian interrupted, aggravated.
“Like what?” Michelle asked, her voice challenging.
The debate raged in the darkness of his eyes—reason with her, or put her in a choke hold? Reason won out, but not by much. It was evident he was not a man accustomed to having his authority questioned.
“I don’t even know if she’s married. I don’t know what she does for a living,” Brian said.
Jessica pondered what it meant that he wondered that about her first. She had not had to debate whether or not he was married. He wore no ring, but it was something more that gave away his single status. He looked like one of those men who have developed an allergy to relationships, carrying his independence around himself like an invisible shield. She was willing to bet that his most successful one was with his truck, which seemed to be the same one he had driven in high school.
Not exactly observations that painted him in a sympathetic light, though he also had the look of a man beleaguered. He was absolutely alone with the challenge of his niece, and it showed.
“She’s not married,” Michelle said. “Did you see any signs of a man inside that house? Size ten muddy boots at the back door? Smudgy handprints around the light switches? Dishes in the oven? Laundry waiting to be folded in the living room? Root beer rings on the coffee table?”
“Okay, okay, we get it,” Brian said, and despite Jessica’s desire to be entertained by his discomfort, she was a little embarrassed for him at this unexpected glimpse of his house.
But Michelle was not finished detailing how to spot a single person. “And what do you think her bathtub looks like?”
“I have no idea,” he said tersely.
“I bet there’s not a sooty ring around it.”
“There’s a sooty ring around my bathtub?” he asked, and glared at Jessica as if she had discovered it and chastised him for it.
“Every time you tinker with that ugly old truck.”
“My truck is not ugly,” he said dangerously. “It’s a classic. And to get back to the point, I didn’t look in Jessica’s oven, not that its contents could be taken as an indication of character. And I certainly didn’t look in her bathtub.”
Jessica’s plan to remain detached seemed to be crumbling. In fact, she was finding these tiny glimpses into the personal life of Brian Kemp utterly fascinating.
But only, she defended herself fiercely, because she could feel satisfied he wasn’t living nearly the life she would have thought. What would she have imagined? Ferraris, glamorous women, a whirlpool tub, no rings of soot or root beer. Maybe champagne.
“Well, if you did look in her oven,” Michelle informed him, “there wouldn’t be any dishes in it. Not like at your house.”
“Our house,” he corrected her.
“Whatever,” she said with perfect indifference.
Jessica noticed how the indifference stung him. Why did he send a quick sidelong glance her way? Did he care what she thought about where he stored his dirty dishes? Why? When her character was under question? But apparently he did care because he gave his niece his sternest look.
“Michelle,” he said, “having a conversation with you is like playing Ping-Pong with ten balls on the table at once. You seem to be deliberately missing the point, changing the subject and confusing the issue. It’s not about bathtubs. I don’t know Ms. Moran well enough to let you stay here. Not that you’ve been invited.”
“Can’t you tell everything you need to know by looking around?” Michelle said. “You said yourself it looked like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs could come singing out of the woods at any moment. This is not the home of someone of questionable character!”
“You’re going to be a lawyer,” he groaned. “I just know it.” Jessica noticed he sent another look her way. He was embarrassed, not only by his lack of control over his niece, but also about the fact that he was familiar with fairy tales. Well, it was true that he did look like the man least likely to be familiar with magical princesses.
Considering how much she had planned to relish his discomfort, she found her plan backfiring. She felt a little sorry for the man. Not much. Not enough to damage her resolve, just a thimbleful of pity.
“Even if Dopey or Snoozy or Sneezy or whatever comes forward with a character reference, you have not been invited. So…”
“A character reference?” Jessica repeated. He’d used up his thimbleful mighty fast. Of all the nerve! “May I remind you, you came here? Expecting a miracle? What kind of person wants a character reference from somebody they think can work miracles?”
She realized that, despite her vow to remain detached, she was feeling a passionate desire to pick up one of her garden shovels and clunk him over his handsome head.
“Nothing personal,” he said, as if that would take the sting out of it. “My job makes me cynical.”
“This is not the type of place an ax murderer lives,” Michelle informed him. “I bet she gardens for a living. Right?”
Maybe a shovel murderer, Jessica thought. “I’m a horticulturist.”
“You don’t know the first thing about murderers of any kind, Michelle,” he responded, coolly.
“And you have the inside track ’cause why? Handing out speeding tickets and eating doughnuts has made you an expert?”
Brian went very quiet. Jessica could see the muscle working in his jaw again, and she knew instinctively he was counting to ten.
Michelle seemed to realize she had overplayed herself, but her confrontational tone softened only slightly. “Are you worried she might be growing a little hemp among the roses? Is that it? Are you going to shine your flashlight in her eyes and say, ‘are your pupils dilated?’” She turned to Jessica. “He did that to me, you know.”
Jessica knew that to give Michelle the sympathetic reaction she was looking for might be a mistake, but she let her annoyance at Brian cloud her judgement. “Really?” she said indignantly. “That’s horrible.”
Brian shot her a look that was not the least bit hard to interpret, and then he returned his attention to Michelle. Despite herself, Jessica was beginning to find his restraint admirable, which was unfortunate, since she really didn’t want to find anything about him admirable.
“I said I was sorry I did that to you. Don’t you let go of anything?” he asked.
Not if it could be used to her advantage, Jessica realized. She found this interchange very telling, but she was annoyed by her own less-than-stellar ability to detach. She was not sure how she could want to hit Brian on the head with a shovel and feel just a wee bit sorry for him at the same time, but she knew it was the kind of complication that spelled danger for her quiet little life.
Still, he just had it so wrong. Michelle wasn’t the kind of girl who would unquestionably accept his authority.
