reached through the open doorway to accept the bag. It was stuffed with papers.
“I’m sorry about this. I usually take better care of business.”
“I just hope there aren’t any overdue bills in there,” she said dryly.
“Naw, I try not to have any of those.”
“We all try,” she quipped wryly, but he detected a troubled note.
“Not all,” he said, wanting to reassure her somehow. “You’d be surprised how many people make no attempt to pay their bills.”
“Maybe they can’t.”
“Maybe,” he admitted, “but if they try, we work with them.”
She tilted her head and her brows bounced up and down at that. “Cutler Automotive, you mean.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Huh.”
After a second or two it became apparent that she wasn’t going to say anything else, and he couldn’t for the life of him think of any way to rectify that. He shuffled his feet in place.
“Well, you have a nice evening.”
She reached for the door. “Yeah, you, too, if you can with all that to go through.” She nodded at the sack in his arms. “If any more comes, I’ll send it on your way now that I have a good address.”
“I don’t mind coming after it again,” he assured her quickly, “if you’ll just call.”
“I’ll send it,” she stated decisively.
Defeated, he nodded. “Okay. However you want to handle it.”
“That’s how I want to handle it,” she said flatly, backing up to push the door closed. “So long, Vincent Cutler.”
He put up a hand. “Wait a sec. I’d like to know your name, at least. I mean, if you don’t mind.” He shrugged. “Seems strange bringing flowers to a woman whose name I don’t even know.”
She considered a moment longer then said, “Jolie.”
“Jo Lee,” he repeated carefully.
“No.” She rolled her eyes. “Jolie. J-o-l-i-e.”
“Ah. That’s pretty. Jolie what?”
She flattened her mouth, but then she answered. “Jolie Wheeler. Jolie Kay Wheeler.”
He smiled again for some reason. It just sounded…right. “Jolie Kay. I’ll remember that.”
“If you say so.”
His smile stretched into a grin. “Good night, Jolie Kay Wheeler. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“I doubt it.”
He didn’t. He didn’t know why, but even as that door closed to him once again, he knew somehow that he hadn’t seen the last of spunky, pretty Jolie Wheeler. Strangely enough, that thought was quite all right by him.
Jolie reached into the cabinet overhead and brought down a big pickle jar to serve as a vase. After filling it with tap water, she turned to the counter where the tightly budded roses waited. No one had ever brought her flowers before. Figured it would be some goofball like Cutler. First he doesn’t bother to have his mail forwarded, and then he strolls right in as if he owns the place, as if an open door is an automatic invitation to invade the premises.
The good-looking ones were always like that, thought they had a right to the whole world just because they were easy on the eyes. He was easier than most, with that pitch-black hair, lazy, blue-gray eyes, square jaw and dimples. More polite than most, too.
He had immediately apologized yesterday for invading her space, but her heart had been slamming against her rib cage so violently that she hadn’t found enough air to reply. Then embarrassment had taken over, and she’d mulishly let him stand there and wheedle until he’d given up and gone away.
Actually, he seemed harmless enough. Now.
The day before when she’d looked up and found him standing there in the middle of her apartment as if sizing up the joint, he’d appeared eight feet tall and hulking. Today, of course, he’d been his usual six-foot—or thereabout—self. She hadn’t imagined those broad shoulders and bulging biceps, though, or the slim hips and long legs. The truth was, she had panicked, which wasn’t like her, but then she didn’t know what she was like anymore. Nothing was as it had been. Without Russell.
She pushed away thoughts of her nephew, rapidly blinking against a fresh onslaught of tears.
This was getting to be a habit. She’d be okay for a while, and then something would remind her of that sweet baby face, that milky, gap-toothed smile and little hands that grasped so trustingly, coiling themselves in her hair and shirt. The loss still devastated her. More, it made her angry, at herself as much as at her sister and brother.
She should never have let herself love little Russ so completely. She should have treated him as nothing more than a foster child, his presence in her life temporary at best. After all, she knew only too well how the game was played. Ten years of experience on one side of that equation should have prepared her better for the other.
Oh, she had been placed with foster families who had truly tried to make her feel a part of the group, but she had always known that it would end. Something would happen, and she would be on her way again, shuffling from one home to another with heart-numbing regularity.
Somehow, though, she hadn’t let herself think that it could happen with Russell. When Connie had first gone to prison, pregnant and unwed, she had talked about giving up her child for adoption. Then, after his birth, when she’d asked Jolie to take him and give him a good home, saying that he ought to be with family, Jolie had seen her opportunity to really have someone of her own.
She and Connie had never discussed what would happen after Connie got out. For one thing, Jolie had never dreamed that a judge would actually hand over the child whom she had raised as her own to her misguided younger sister, no matter that said sister had given birth to him. It wasn’t fair, and to have their adored big brother Marcus side with Connie had been the unkindest cut of all.
Jolie was still grieving, but she supposed that was to be expected. It had only been days since she’d last seen him, eleven days, two hours, in fact. She could know how many minutes if she was foolish enough to check her watch, which she wasn’t. Of course she was still grieving. She’d grieved her mother’s absence for years, until she’d found out that Velma Wheeler was dead. Strangely enough, knowing that her mother had died was easier than believing that her mother had simply abandoned her children to the uncertain kindness of strangers.
Jolie shook her head and willed away the tears that had spilled from her eyes, telling herself that she would get on top of this latest loss. She’d had lots of practice.
Reaching for the roses, she slid them from their plastic cone and began arranging them in their makeshift vase. She did not realize, as the pleasing design began to take shape, that she
