this one where Holly can sit and do her homework while I make dinner—”
Briskly, he got back to business. It was either that or let her go far enough to sketch out her dream kitchen. “Okay, I get it. You need to be here, and for food like this, I’m willing to go along.”
She laughed shortly.
He paid zero attention to the musical sound of that laugh or how it made her eyes sparkle in the low light. “So here’s the deal. You can stay the month like we agreed.”
“But?” she asked. “I hear a but in there.”
“But.” He nodded at her. “We steer clear of each other and you keep your daughter out of my way.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Not a fan of kids, are you?”
“Not for a long time.”
“Holly won’t bother you,” she said, lifting her wineglass for another sip.
“All right. Good. Then we’ll get along fine.” He finished off the pasta, savoring that last bite before taking one more pull on his beer. “You cook and clean. I spend most of my days out in the workshop, so we probably won’t see much of each other anyway.”
She studied him for several long seconds before a small smile curved her mouth and a tiny dimple appeared in her right cheek. “You’re sort of mysterious, aren’t you?”
Once again, she’d caught him off guard. And why did she look so pleased when he’d basically told her he didn’t want her kid around and didn’t particularly want to spend any time with her, either?
“No mystery. I just like my privacy is all.”
“Privacy’s one thing,” she mused, tipping her head to one side to study him. “Hiding out’s another.”
“Who says I’m hiding?”
“Kaye.”
He rolled his eyes. Kaye talked to his mother. To Joy. Who the hell wasn’t she talking to? “Kaye doesn’t know everything.”
“She comes close, though,” Joy said. “She worries about you. For the record, she says you’re lonely, but private. Nice, but shut down.”
He shifted in the chair, suddenly uncomfortable with the way she was watching him. As if she could look inside him and dig out all of his secrets.
“She wouldn’t tell me why you’ve locked yourself away up here on the mountain—”
“That’s something,” he muttered, then remembered his mother’s warning about hermits and muttering. Scowling, he took another drink of his beer.
“People do wonder, though,” she mused. “Why you keep to yourself so much. Why you almost never go into town. I mean, it’s beautiful here, but don’t you miss talking to people?”
“Not a bit,” he told her, hoping that statement would get her to back off.
“I really would.”
“Big surprise,” he muttered and then inwardly winced. Hell, he’d talked more in the last ten minutes than he had in the last year. Still, for some reason, he felt the need to defend himself and the way he lived. “I have Kaye to talk to if I desperately need conversation—which I don’t. And I do get into town now and then.” Practically never, though, he thought.
Hell, why should he go into Franklin and put up with being stared at and whispered over when he could order whatever he wanted online and have it shipped overnight? If nothing else, the twenty-first century was perfect for a man who wanted to be left the hell alone.
“Yeah, that doesn’t happen often,” she was saying. “There was actually a pool in town last summer—people were taking bets on if you’d come in at all before fall.”
Stunned, he stared at her. “They were betting on me?”
“You’re surprised?” Joy laughed and the sound of it filled the kitchen. “It’s a tiny mountain town with not a lot going on, except for the flood of tourists. Of course they’re going to place bets on the local hermit.”
“I’m starting to resent that word.” Sam hadn’t really considered that he might be the subject of so much speculation, and he didn’t much care for it. What was he supposed to do now? Go into town more often? Or less?
“Oh,” she said, waving one hand at him, “don’t look so grumpy about it. If it makes you feel better, when you came into Franklin and picked up those new tools at the hardware store, at the end of August, Jim Bowers won nearly two hundred dollars.”
“Good for him,” Sam muttered, not sure how he felt about all of this. He’d moved to this small mountain town for the solitude. For the fact that no one would give a damn about him. And after five years here, he found out the town was paying close enough attention to him to actually lay money on his comings and goings. Shaking his head, he asked only, “Who’s Jim Bowers?”
“He and his wife own the bakery.”
“There’s a bakery in Franklin?”
She sighed, shaking her head slowly. “It’s so sad that you didn’t know that.”
A short laugh shot from his throat, surprising them both.
“You should do that more often,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“Smile. Laugh. Lose the etched-in-stone-grumble expression.”
“Do you have an opinion on everything?” he asked.
“Don’t you?” she countered.
Yeah, he did. And his considered opinion on this particular situation was that he might have made a mistake in letting Joy and her daughter stay here for the next month.
But damned if he could regret it at the moment.
By the following morning, Joy had decided the man needed to be pushed into getting outside himself. Sitting in the kitchen with him the night before had been interesting and more revealing than he would have liked, she was sure. Though he had a gruff, cold exterior, Joy had seen enough in his eyes to convince her that the real man was hidden somewhere beneath that hard shell he carried around with him.
She had known he’d been trying to avoid seeing her again by staying late in his workshop. Which was why she’d been waiting for him in the kitchen. Joy had always believed that it was better to face a problem head-on rather than dance around it and hope it would get better. So she’d been prepared to argue and bargain with him to make sure she and Holly could stay for the month.
And she’d known the moment he tasted her baked mostaccioli that arguments would not be necessary. He might not want her there, but her cooking had won him over. Clearly, he didn’t like it, but he’d put up with her for a month if it meant he wouldn’t starve. Joy could live with that.
What
