“Good, good.” Muriel nodded, then seemed to realize that there was obviously more. “And?”
Lisa spread her hands wide. “And I just looked and he’s not there.”
Muriel glanced out the back window automatically, even though there was no way she could see the area under discussion. In addition, twilight had long since sneaked its way across the terrain.
“When did you tell him to do it?”
Lisa thought for a moment, trying to remember the time. “A little less than a couple of hours ago.”
Muriel’s expression all but said, Well, there you have it, but she added audibly, “Maybe he’s finished.”
Lisa didn’t have to get on the ladder to know the answer to that one. An expert might have completed the job, but Malone was no expert. “I doubt it. He’s not the handy type.”
The smile on Muriel’s lips turned positively wicked as it reached her eyes and made them sparkle. “That probably all depends on what you mean by handy.” The smile widened as Muriel’s thoughts took flight. “He strikes me as someone who could be very handy under the right circumstances.”
Lisa could only shake her head. Muriel spent most of her time here. It was obvious that she needed to get out and socialize more. “Muriel, you’ve been a widow too long.”
The woman’s dark brown eyes met hers. “You should talk.”
This wasn’t about her. Not in any manner, shape or form. “I’m not a widow,” Lisa reminded the other woman. “Casey’s father and I never got the chance to get married.”
Not that there hadn’t been plans, lots of plans. Plans that never had a chance to become a reality because the weekend before the wedding, Matt was struck by a drunk driver. He’d died instantly at the scene.
It had taken her a long time to recover and make her peace with what had happened. Having Casey in her life had helped most of all. But even that caused her to ache a little in the middle of the night. Ache because she had never gotten the chance to tell Matt that she was pregnant. He’d died without ever knowing that they had created a son.
“You know,” Muriel began slowly, running the tip of her tongue along her bright-red lips, “this Ian fellow might—”
“Stop right there,” Lisa warned abruptly, raising her hand like a traffic cop. “You have the same glint in your eyes that my mother periodically gets.” The one that would come into her mother’s eyes when she’d talk about friends’ unattached sons or nephews who just happened to be in town for the week. “And I can tell you right here, right now, that not even if Ian Malone were the last man on earth and tipped in gold would I entertain the idea of hooking my wagon to his star.”
“Interesting way of putting it,” a male voice interrupted.
Caught, Lisa could only look at Muriel’s face. The older woman didn’t bother suppressing her grin as she nodded her head. Malone. Somehow or other, the man had managed to sneak up behind her.
Okay, this wasn’t the time to look guilty. Instead, she summoned the indignation she’d felt when she’d first happened upon the unattended ladder.
Swinging around, Lisa went on the offensive. Her late father, a football coach for a semipro team, had always been a big believer in using offense rather than defense.
“I thought you went home.”
Ian summoned an innocent expression, enjoying himself. “My time wasn’t up yet.”
He might fool Muriel, but he wasn’t fooling her. “Then why didn’t you finish putting up the new shingles like I asked you?”
“You didn’t ask,” he corrected her, “you told. And I did.” Before she could open her mouth to challenge his answer, he had a question of his own. “Did you bother looking at the roof?”
She seemed annoyed, which gave him his answer. “From the ground,” Lisa said grudgingly.
He infuriated her by shaking his head. “Can’t see the new shingles from that angle.”
Ian found the suspicion that clouded her eyes oddly attractive. There was chemistry here, he noted, wondering if she was aware of it. Probably the reason she was snapping his head off.
“So you finished.”
Ian inclined his head and then saluted smartly. “Yes, ma’am, I did indeed.”
She’d believe it when she saw it, Lisa thought, but for now, she let that argument go. “So where were you?”
“I was in the activity room.” He nodded in the general direction of the room he had just vacated. It was also known as the common room and was where everyone gathered in the latter part of the day. “I didn’t realize that I had to ask anyone for permission before I walked anywhere.”
“You don’t,” she shot back, feeling like a shrew even as she went on talking. Muriel, she noticed, seemed content just to stand by the wayside and observe. “But there were other things you could have been helping with.”
“I know,” he said. His eyes shifted toward Muriel and he smiled. “I was.”
Muriel was too softhearted for her own good and she wasn’t about to stand around and watch her being manipulated. So she became the other woman’s champion and challenged Malone. “Like what?”
“I read a story,” he said simply.
Did he think he could just sit back and relax because he happened to be better looking than most movie stars? That didn’t give him a get-out-of-jail-free card. Not in her book.
“You can read on your own time, Mr. Malone,” Lisa informed him. “The court didn’t send you here to entertain yourself.”
“I wasn’t,” he contradicted. “I was entertaining your little friend.”
Lisa narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t the slightest idea what this man was talking about. “What little friend?”
“The little girl you were trying to bolster when I found you earlier.” It took him a second to remember the name the girl’s mother had used. “Monica. She looked lonely when I walked by, I stopped and gave her a book.” A whole stack of worn children’s books sat on one of the tables. The girl had looked embarrassed and had just held the thin book. That was when his suspicions had been aroused. “Except that somewhere along the line, public education failed her because she can’t read.” As quickly as his anger rose, it abated, hiding behind the shield he always had fixed in place. “So I read to her.” He looked at her intently and directed his question to Lisa rather than the woman who was paid to run the shelter. “Or is that against the rules?”
Lisa shifted, feeling uncomfortable. What’s more, she felt like an idiot. Maybe she was being too hard on Malone. After all, she didn’t really know him. His attitude just rubbed her the wrong way and had led her to certain conclusions.
To jump to certain conclusions, she amended, chagrinned.
“No,”
