She let it cool her face before she turned to face him again. “I’m Isabella Lockhart,” she began.
“I know who you are.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. She’d only been in Weaver a few weeks, but it really was a small town if people she’d never met already knew who she was. Lucy had told her—warned her, really—about how different Weaver was from New York. That was why Isabella had hoped—still did—that the radical change might be the solution to her problems with Murphy. As long as she was able to hold on to him.
She focused on the man’s face—what she could see of it beneath the hat and sunglasses, at any rate. “I’m sure we can resolve whatever’s happened here,” she continued in the same appeasing tone she’d once used to great effect with outraged prima ballerinas, “but could we do it somewhere other than the middle of Main Street, Mr., uh—”
“Erik Clay. Since there’s no traffic to speak of, I don’t know what you’re worried about. But I am mighty curious how you think we’re going to resolve that.” He jerked his chin toward the bed of his truck.
He wasn’t known for having much of a temper, but considering everything, Erik felt like retrieving that baseball bat and bashing something with it himself.
Focusing on the woman in front of him was a lot safer than focusing on the skinny, black-haired hellion sprawled on Ruby’s bench.
She tucked her white-blond hair behind her ear with a visibly shaking hand. Bleached blond, he figured, considering her eyes were such a dark brown they were nearly black. It didn’t seem natural that anyone with such light hair would have such dark eyes. He’d never much understood the bleached-hair deal. But even pissed as he was, he wasn’t blind to the whole effect.
Weaver’s newcomer was a serious looker.
“I’m sorry,” she was saying. “Whatever happened, I’m sure I can make it right.”
“Really?” He very nearly took her arm, but the way she’d squawked over him pushing the kid away from her kept him from doing so. Instead, he held out his hand in obvious invitation toward the truck bed. “Care to tell me how?”
Her brown-black gaze flicked over him. Her unease was as plain as the pert nose on her pretty face when she stepped over to the truck bed, which was nearly as tall as she was, and peered over the side. “Oh…sugar,” she whispered.
The words he had for the damage were a lot less sweet than sugar. But sharing them held no appeal, considering the foul mouth her kid had already exhibited.
He reached down and plucked a baseball from amid the shards of colored glass that had once been a very large, very elaborate stained-glass window destined for the Weaver Community Church. “Your boy threw the ball deliberately.”
“I did not!” Murphy screeched as he launched himself back into Erik’s face. “And I ain’t her—” he dropped an fbomb as if it were a regular component of his vocabulary “—boy!”
Erik shot out a hand, halting the kid’s progress even as he scooped the woman out of the kid’s angry path.
“Murphy!” She wriggled out of Erik’s grip and grabbed the boy’s arm, physically dragging him back to the bench. “I told you to sit.” She leaned over and said something under her breath that Erik couldn’t make out, but that obviously had some effect, because the kid angrily sank against the bench and crossed his arms defensively over his chest.
The woman tugged at the pink skirt of her waitress uniform as she straightened. Erik quickly directed his gaze upward from her shapely rear when she turned and walked back to him.
She stepped up to the side of the truck and peered over the edge once more. “It looks valuable.”
The window depicting the Weaver landscape had been a gift. An unexpected, completely unwanted gift. And it was probably wrong of him, but Erik calculated the value more in terms of personal discomfort than dollars, since the artist was a woman he was no longer seeing. and who’d likely tell him to pound sand when he approached her for a replacement, which he’d have to do, since he’d gone and donated the thing to the church, seeing how churches were more suited for that sort of thing than his plain old ranch house. Now they were expecting the thing. “It was.”
Her slender shoulders rose and fell in a sigh that only served to make the curves filling out her uniform even more noticeable. Her gaze lifted to his. “If you could tell me how much the damage is, I’ll figure out a way to pay you.”
Erik looked away from those near-black eyes that were so full of earnestness he couldn’t help but feel his anger lessening. And that just irritated him all over again. “You didn’t throw the ball at my window. He did.” He gestured toward the kid. “In my day, we pulled stunts like that, it earned us a trip to the sheriff’s office.”
She was fair-skinned to begin with, but he actually saw color drain right out of her face. Without seeming to realize it, she closed her hands over his arm, as if to prevent him from heading toward the sheriff’s office right then and there. “Please. Not the police.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
“He didn’t mean to cause any harm.”
Erik snorted, though it was a shame for such dark, pretty eyes to show so much panic. “Really? He wound up his arm and aimed straight for my truck. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“He’s just a boy. Didn’t you ever make a mistake when you were a boy?”
Heat was running up his arm, starting exactly where her fingers were digging into it. But it was her expression of sheer panic that had him sighing. That and the fact that he could remember a few ill-considered stunts from his youth.
“Relax.” He eyed the boy, who gave him a sullen look in return. “He can work off the damages.” Maybe that was to be his penance. Break the heart of a perfectly nice woman who’d saddled you with a stained-glass window you never wanted in the first place. In return, get saddled with a demon kid. “Out at my place.”
Isabella showed no signs of relaxing, however. “Your place?” Her eyebrows—considerably darker than her whitish hair—shot up her smooth forehead as she visibly bristled. “What sort of thing are you suggesting?”
His irritation ratcheted up a notch again. “Honey, this isn’t a big city filled with perverts. I have a ranch. The Rocking-C. The kid can do chores for me there.”
“The kid has a name.”
Why did Erik feel as if he was in the wrong here? He wasn’t the one who’d willfully destroyed a piece of artwork worth thousands of dollars. “Murphy can shovel manure and haul hay and clean stalls. I figure every Saturday morning until the end of summer oughta do it.” It wouldn’t come close, but he wasn’t saddling his peaceful existence with a delinquent for any longer than necessary.
“No way.” Murphy shot to his feet. “I’m not wasting Saturdays with him.”
Isabella wanted to tear out her hair. She pointed at the bench again. “Sit. I mean it, Murphy.” She waited until he’d done so before looking back up at the man. “Mr. Clay, I—”
“No need for the mister,
