light glowing from the interior.
It was dark outside and she was still out there.
Obviously no brother. No place to stay, but at least she now had a job. A temporary job.
Not that he cared.
There were a lot of things to do before tomorrow. Make the house habitable for human living, do some laundry and throw out the two-month old milk in the fridge. And while he was doing that, she would be out there alone. He tried to ignore the hole in his gut. There was nothing that he could do about the Impala that was parked at the edge of the road, but every few hours, he peeked out the window, making sure there was no trouble.
Not that he cared.
BROOKE CALCULATED THAT by day three she would have enough money to buy more suitable work clothes. First, she needed a cooler shirt, because the sweater was a merino-wool blend that was causing her to wilt. In order to have money for the car, she had sold most of her clothes in Nashville. At that time, a sweater had seemed practical. Now, not so much. The Shearling boots were looking sadder by the minute and would need to be replaced, too. Brooke believed that no matter the financial hardship, it was important to look capable and confident.
Unfortunately, the work that the Captain had given her was insultingly easy, as if she wasn’t capable of anything more. That morning, he’d handed her a sheet of paper and then indicated a knee-high pile of assorted mechanical whatsits, a tiny island in a yard of complete chaos.
“Here. Write down everything you see.”
“That’s an inventory, not an organizational system,” she pointed out, and he glared at her out of his one visible eye, which he probably thought was intimidating, but she thought it was more sexy pirate. She knew he wouldn’t want to hear that, so she pulled her features into some semblance of lemming-hood.
He didn’t look fooled. “Inventorying this pile is step one. Once that’s done, we’ll talk about step two.”
She nudged at a wheelless unicycle with her boot. “It’s going to take me fifteen minutes to do this. Why don’t you let me sort by type?” By all indications, he’d tried to do that in the areas closest to the house. Wood boards were stacked together, some kind of electric gizmos were lined up like bowling pins—wait, they were bowling pins.
He put his hands on his hips, doing that intimidating thing again. “You don’t know what each item is.”
Unintimidated, she picked up a springy thing attached to a weight with a circular metal plate on the end, some piece of the Industrial Revolution that’d gotten left behind. Probably on purpose. “You really know what this is?” she asked.
At the Captain’s silence, she dangled the part higher in the air.
As a rule, Brooke was usually a people-pleaser, but she had issues with someone thinking that poor people didn’t have a brain in their head. It was apparent that the Captain was giving her busy-work in order to give her money because he felt sorry for her. Charlene Hart would have taken the money and ran, possibly stopping for happy hour on the way. Brooke Hart needed people to see her as something more than a charity case—someone positive, someone good.
His gaze raked over her, inventorying her clothes, but lingering on the thingamaboobs beneath. Wisely Brooke pretended not to notice. “You’re not dressed for working outside,” he told her, because apparently his optimal working wardrobe was a thousand-year-old pair of jeans, a white undershirt, and a denim work shirt that hung loose on his rangy shoulders. Perhaps if Brooke had discretionary funds, she might have sprung for something more functionally appropriate. But no, she decided, even if she were as rich as Trump, she still wouldn’t be caught dead in clothes that were so…démodé.
Not wanting to argue about her outfit, she held the doo-dad up higher, just so that he would notice her chest. Cheap, yes, but effective. “You don’t know what this is, do you? Insulting my clothes won’t detract me from the truth. Exhibit one, an antiquated widget that got rusted over in the Ice Age.”
He muttered under his breath. “I’ll give you money. Go into town. Buy something. At least better shoes.”
And now she was back to being a charity case. Brooke placed the doo-dad on the ground and pushed up her sleeves. “I’m here to work.”
“You can’t work in those shoes.”
Seeing the stubborn set to his jaw, Brooke decided that there was no point in continuing the discussion. She walked toward the front gate, skirting one hill then another. A demonstration to the unbelieving that her boots were just fine.
Unattractive? Yes, but this was from a man who thought exterior appearances unimportant. Or at least she hoped so.
“Where are you going?” he yelled, just as she reached the gate.
“I can’t work under these conditions. You’re trying to micro-manage everything and I’m accustomed to more responsibility. I suggest you find some able-bodied teenager who needs detailed instruction and doesn’t mind a dress code.”
“It isn’t a dress code,” he yelled back. “More a dress suggestion.”
She turned, stared him down in silence until finally he shrugged.
“You win. I won’t say another word about your clothes.”
Still, there was disagreement in his face. Brooke stayed where she was. “I can help you with your inventory, but you have to let me do my job. Do you have a computer I can work on?”
“In the house.”
“Good. I can use the computer to look up whatever I don’t know, and you can work in peace. We’ll get along fine, and I’ll guarantee you’ll be happy with the results.”
At his nod of agreement, she picked a path from one pile to another, until she stood in front of him. Once again, his gaze drifted to her boots.
Brooke held up a hand in warning. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”
Judging by his four-letter response, it was a rule he needed to work on, but Brooke was down with that.
Like she’d said, if he’d let her do her job, they’d get along fine.
BY THE TIME THE SUN was baking overhead, Brooke had sorted and inventoried fourteen small heaps of contraptions that no man in his right mind would want, which only proved her suspicions that the Captain was a standard left-brainer. As even more evidence, not that she needed it, inside the house was a veritable smorgasbord of oddly designed gizmos and wuzzits. A push-button car radio hooked up to an iPod. Bookshelves made from stacked wooden pallets, a vintage Coke machine made into a bar and a small metal box with a blinking light that made her nervous.
That, and then there was Dog. The little, rounded ‘pet’ scooted around the floor at different speeds, and sometimes he sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” in a voice that sounded just like Marilyn Monroe. Some dog, indeed.
Everything seemed to belong in an art gallery, a museum or thrift store, possibly all three, but she had to give him high marks for creativity. Brooke would’ve never thought of an automated pot scrubber or a self-cleaning toilet. However, now that she’d seen them, she wondered why no one had ever thought of them before.
