wife and now a whiskey bottle came too readily to his hand. He’d taught Rose the business and lately he almost never asked about it. He was slipping away from her and life, spending long hours staring out from the house porch at the rose garden his wife had loved.
Maxine Granger had not loved her family enough to stay and raise her daughter, or to deny the passing trucker. He offered her excitement and in time, the world, and Maxine hadn’t hesitated.
When she was ten, Rose had come home from school to find her father crying, Maxine’s goodbye note in his hand. For a few years, there were hurried postcards from all over the world and then nothing. It had taken Rose years to understand that she wasn’t the reason why her mother left in that big diesel truck and why her father’s heart remained broken. As a child, she’d sat for hours at her mother’s vanity table, littered with polishes, creams and an expensive brush for her blond hair. Rose had tried to forget the pain, but she couldn’t. Instead she pasted that heartbreak into a locked chest marked The Past and threw herself into helping her father at the store and at home. In her young mind, when the ache came upon her, she raised her arms to the moon and asked for faeries to love and cherish her. It eased Rose-the-child to fantasize she was being held and kissed and loved by the whimsical creatures who would never leave her alone. Then, at times, the pain curled around her and sucked her back, but she fought her way out by keeping busy and thinking of the faeries that waited for her.
She was thirty-seven now, and twelve years ago her mother had passed away in a flaming truck wreck on the Interstate. Her trucker-lover had sent Rose what little was left of Maxine Granger’s life. The shoe box of trinkets included a picture of six-year-old Rose, just missing her front tooth.
Rose had little illusions about her chances for a one-and-only love. Back in the days when she believed in romance and happily-ever-after, Rose had thought her future husband and children would fill her father’s aching heart. But love hadn’t come to her, and she’d settled into the routine of living with her father, tending him, in the house she’d grown up in.
She rubbed the bruise on her thigh, the result of swinging a paint can from the counter to the floor. Ned’s cousin had been working for an hour in the back room, straightening the gallon and pint cans on the floor. Now he was hefting the odd remnants of carpeting to stand along one side of the wall. He’d towered over her five-foot ten, looking all dark and scowling. There was an arrogance she couldn’t place, just that tilt of his head, that black waving hair gleaming and neatly combed. His deep brown eyes were the color of her father’s whiskey, narrowing and darkening as she talked to him. That line between his black brows and the grooves beside his mouth had deepened as if he didn’t like taking orders—or smiling. His jaw had tensed, the muscle running along it contracting.
She frowned, glancing at him as he easily lifted a box of old carpet samples up to his shoulder—a very broad shoulder. Ned was right; his cousin was “strong as an ox and a bit moody.” He seemed to bristle each time she gave him a task, those whiskey-brown eyes narrowing on her, his jaw tensing.
Then Rose saw Henry, who she had held down and kissed when they were both in the fourth grade. When she’d shared her faerie whimsy with him, he’d laughed, later apologized. He understood Rose’s pain and through the years had become a good friend.
She hurried toward the adult Henry, stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. In turn, he reached to turn her ball cap around, tugging it down on her head. She grinned up at him, a longtime friend and an ex-fiancé, now married to Shirley MacNeil. Rose could always depend on Henry to make her feel better—good old dependable Henry. “New man?” Henry asked as he handed her Shirley’s paint list.
“Bruce. Ned’s cousin. He’s only helping out during the spring decorating season. He’s got a surly attitude and if that doesn’t stop, he’s out of here.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like bossy women. Try a little patience,” Henry offered with a warm, familiar smile.
“No time. Dad didn’t place the orders or check the invoices and now I’ve got to do it.”
“Is he feeling poorly?” Henry asked in his kind way. Everyone in Waterville knew that Maury Granger’s visits to the liquor store were becoming more frequent.
“Sure,” Rose returned curtly. Instead of the usual truck delivery of paints and orders, she’d had to borrow a truck and drive one hundred miles to a manufacturer, pay over price and drive home, unloading the truck herself last Sunday. This Sunday she intended to pamper herself and firmly deal with Maury. He was a good man, but he was sinking deeper into darkness.
By noon, the new handyman had fixed the back door and was straightening the front of the store. He seemed happy until she called him into the back room for lunch, takeout food from Danny’s Café, hot dogs and potato salad. With her feet propped up on the gallons of uncolored paint, and balancing her food on her stomach, she frowned as he prodded the wiener with his finger and sniffed at the bun. He scowled at the food, which nettled Rose, but then she badly needed his help and couldn’t risk offending him over hot dogs. He frowned when he sipped at the coffee she’d brewed early that morning. Rose inhaled slowly and pushed her temper down; maybe Henry was right, maybe she needed to try a little kindness. “So, Bruce, do you think you might want to move up to mixing paint? It’s a matter of checking the color number chart, measuring the pigment and mixing it into the uncolored gallons.”
He nodded slowly, considering her with those unreadable brown eyes. Just then Larry Hershall strolled into the store, peered over a carpet display and sighted her in the back room. She waved him toward her. “How’s it going, Larry?” she asked her former fiancé.
Larry nodded and grinned. “Mary Lou wants me to see that wallpaper sample she picked out for the nursery.”
“Sure. Meet Bruce. He’s helping me out today. He’s about to move up to mixing paint.”
Larry reached to shake the workman’s hand and nodded. “Glad to meet you.”
Ned’s cousin nodded, his dark eyes following Rose and Larry as they moved to the front of the store. As comfortable with Larry as she would be with the brother she never had, Rose showed him the wallpaper sample. Standing beside him, she placed her arm on his shoulder, leaning slightly against his strength for just one moment in a hectic, tiring day.
When she returned to the back room, Ned’s cousin was pouring the rest of the coffee down the paint-stained sink. His food remained untouched on the rough plank picnic table. Rose was starved, and disliking waste, asked, “Going to eat this?”
When he shook his head, she slathered mustard, relish and ketchup onto the hot dog. Rose had balanced a household budget from an early age and did not waste food. “Yummy,” she said when he watched her devour the hot dog.
She didn’t want to ask about his disdainful expression. He was a good workman and she desperately needed him. If she could manage to establish a basic relationship with him, he might stay to help her. “So, Bruce. Let’s put in a hard day here—I’ll move you up to mixing paint—and then if you’d like, you can come fishing with my dad and me. Crappie start biting at the lake just after supper. You might even catch a bass. What do you say?”
He nodded slowly just as the bell over the front door jingled. The delightful Frenchwoman who had come in the previous day smiled warmly over the displays. Rose, followed closely by her new handyman, went to help the customer.
“Ma chérie,” Yvette Donatien said smoothly with that enticing accent. Her blond-and-gray hair softly framed an exquisite face, shaded by a floppy straw hat. A simple cotton dress swirled around Yvette’s rounded body, emphasizing her femininity just
