Harley couldn’t help chuckling at the idea of Mary Claire letting loose on a cussword. “I’ve said a few myself when my aim wasn’t right. Hurts like hel—heck.”
Obviously unaware of his slip, Stephie sifted through the nails and let out a long sigh. “Mama and Jimmy are fixing that little fence that goes around our house. I wanted to help, but they said I was too little and would just get in the way.”
Harley heard the disappointment in her voice and remembered a time or two when his own daughter had suffered the frustrations of being too little to do things her brother was allowed to do. The memory made a cloud of sadness drift across his heart. “You’re helping me, though,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, I guess.” She crossed her ankles and sank down cross-legged on the ground, pulling the sack to her lap. She dug out another staple and handed it to Harley. “Do you have any little girls?” she asked, squinting up at him.
Harley froze, his fingers fumbling with the staple he’d just pressed to the post. “One, but she’s not so little anymore,” he murmured. “She’s sixteen.”
“Does she baby-sit? Mama was saying just this morning that she was going to need to find a babysitter for us when she starts working.”
Harley had to close his eyes against the pain. Even after ten years, it still hurt to think about his daughter and son and all that he’d missed in their lives. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. She doesn’t live with me. She lives in San Antonio with her mother.”
“You’re divorced?” she asked, cocking her head.
“Yeah. For about ten years now.”
“My mama and daddy are divorced, too. My daddy lives in Houston, but Mama didn’t want us living there anymore because it’s so dangerous.” She leaned back on her elbows and stretched her legs out, pointing the tips of her tennis shoes toward the sky while she balanced the sack of staples on her stomach. “Jimmy got beat up on his way home from school and Mama cried. She said she couldn’t take it anymore, so she moved us here.”
Harley wanted to ask, “What couldn’t she take anymore? Houston? Jimmy getting beat up? Or living in the same city as her ex-husband?” But he decided it wouldn’t be right to press the child for information. “I’d imagine that’d be tough,” he said vaguely.
Stephie sighed again. “Yeah. I heard my mama’s friends talking, and they said guilt is what drove Mama to move.”
“Guilt?” Harley said before he could stop himself.
“Yeah. When Mama and Daddy were married, she didn’t have to work and she could stay at home with us. She told her friends that if she hadn’t divorced Daddy and had been at home like she was before, Jimmy wouldn’t have gotten beat up.”
Though Harley had his own opinions, bitter as they were, about divorce and its ramifications, he only shook his head. “Some things you just can’t prevent.”
Stephie pressed her lips together and nodded her agreement. “That’s what Mama’s friends said. But Mama wouldn’t listen. So she moved us here to Aunt Harriet’s house so we’ll be safe.” She stared off into the distance at the two-story frame house that was now her home. “Jimmy says our house should be condemned, but Mama says it’ll look prettier when we get it all fixed up.”
Harley followed the line of her gaze, taking in the peeling paint, the rotten boards and the choking weeds. “I’m sure it will,” he murmured, but his mind wasn’t on the condition of the house. He was busy replaying that scene in front of the feed store when he’d peeled the child’s mother off his back—and maybe understanding a little better the reason behind Mary Claire Reynolds’s attack.
“Hi, Mama! I’ve been helping Harley mend fences.”
Mary Claire looked up and saw Stephie skipping across the overgrown lawn. She bit back a groan when she saw that Harley followed a few steps behind.
“You have?” she asked, forcing a smile for Stephie’s benefit.
Stephie skipped to a stop in front of her mother. “Yeah, and he said I was the best help he’d ever had.” Stephie beamed a smile at Harley over her shoulder. “Didn’t you, Harley?”
He stopped behind Stephie, laying a hand on her shoulder, and grinned down at her. “Without a doubt.”
He glanced Mary Claire’s way just as she pushed to her feet, and he had to lock his knees to keep from falling over backward. There ought to be a law, he swore silently. A woman shouldn’t be allowed to walk around half-dressed like that. Wearing the same cutoffs she’d worn the day he’d caught her washing windows, she exposed a mile of tanned shapely legs. To make matters worse, instead of the T-shirt she’d had on then, she now wore a little crop top that barely covered her stomach.
Her mane of red hair was pulled up under a baseball cap whose curved bill shaded her eyes, but he could see the distrust in their green depths as she shifted her gaze to the hand he’d rested on Stephie’s shoulder. From what Stephie had told him, he supposed he could understand her wariness, but he wasn’t about to move his hand. He wasn’t a threat to the little girl, and the woman might as well learn that now.
He tore his gaze from hers, finding it a lot easier on his system to look at the fence than confront all that bare flesh. “Looks like you’ve been doing some fence mending of your own.”
Mary Claire glanced at the distance she’d covered. that morning and let out a weary sigh. “Three hours and less than forty feet. At this rate it’ll take me a year to finish,”
Harley chuckled. “Once you develop a rhythm, the work’ll go faster.” He glanced Jimmy’s way. The boy was busy ripping off rotten boards with a crowbar. “Appears you’ve got some pretty good help of your own.”
Mary Claire smiled proudly as she looked at her son, knowing she couldn’t have accomplished half of what she’d done without his assistance. “He’s that all right.”
“Could you use some more muscle?” Harley asked, then wondered where the offer had come from. He certainly had enough chores at his own place without taking on Mary Claire’s.
She looked at him in surprise. “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to take time away from your own work to help us.”
“You didn’t ask. I offered.” He gave Stephie’s shoulder a squeeze before he pulled his hammer from the carpenter’s belt strapped low on his hips. “Me and my partner here work pretty cheap.”
Without waiting for a reply, he caught Stephie by the hand, winning a smile from her, and headed down to the next section of fencing. Before Mary Claire could think of an argument, he had Jimmy toting a bundle of new pickets to him and Stephie passing him nails.
Mary Claire knew that inviting Harley to eat lunch with them was the least she could do, considering he had entertained Stephie all morning, then spent another two hours working on her fence. But knowing it and liking it were two entirely different balls of wax. For some reason, the man made her uncomfortable.
With Stephie and Jimmy upstairs washing up, she laid out cold cuts and cheeses on a platter—and kept
