metal, she assumed he’d dropped what he’d carried somewhere opposite the double French doors leading from the dining room. He didn’t reappear. And she didn’t move. She just stood there staring at the foliage, feeling chastised and more than a little guilty.
There was no doubt from the fatigue in his eyes and the condition of his clothes that he’d already put in a full day. Yet he was willing to work evenings so an elderly woman wouldn’t have to spend any longer than necessary in a place she didn’t want to be.
He’d also made the effort, grudging as it was, to let her know he’d seen nothing to indicate there was a problem with her grandmother’s mental faculties. The fact that she’d insulted him when she’d expressed her worry about that particular concern only made his gesture that much more generous. He hadn’t had to bother with the reassurance at all.
She couldn’t believe how deeply his consideration touched her, or the ambivalence it caused her to feel. The thoughtfulness he’d just shown was the very sort of thing the man who’d been engaged to her sister had done in the past, the sort of consideration that had endeared him to her entire family. Yet he’d gone on to so callously betray Paige’s trust.
Amy hated what he had done. She hated why he’d done it. But if she were to be perfectly honest with herself, what she hated most was that, in a way, he’d hurt them all. He’d made himself a part of them, made them care about him, then walked out of their lives as if their existence hadn’t mattered to him at all.
The guilt she felt jerked in a different direction. Thinking of herself as an injured party was petty and selfish, and entirely irrelevant. Her dad had shelled out a small fortune in nonrefundable deposits for the wedding, so his anger had been understandable. Only the fact that Nick had sent him an unsolicited check a month later had stemmed the flow of his ire. And their mom had spent months excitedly planning with Paige, followed by weeks of consoling her heartbroken daughter. If anyone other than Paige had the right to feel injured, it would be them. Her own role had been completely insignificant.
They would be the first to point that out, too.
The hollow sensation in her stomach was too familiar for comfort. Determined to ignore the thoughts her family provoked, annoyed with herself for indulging them, she turned for the door just as Nick appeared by the gardenia bush on his way to the truck. Not caring to have him see her still standing there, she hurried inside.
She had run back upstairs to make sure she’d turned off the bathroom light and was passing through the dining room on the way to the kitchen when she caught sight of him through the panes of the glass doors. He was back on the porch, tape measure in hand.
She kept going, only to hear him tap on one of the small panes. Glancing past the long mahogany table with its white lace runner and huge ruby glass compote, she saw him hold up a quart-sized can.
“I might as well give this to you now,” he said the moment she swung in one of the doors. He held the can of solvent toward her. “Be sure to let it sit at least an hour and use it with gloves. Then scrape it off with a putty knife. If that doesn’t work, I’ll get you something else to try.”
He was doing what her grandmother had asked, telling her how to remove the paint. He also clearly intended to limit his assistance to supplying her with products and advice, not elbow grease, which was fine with her. Working with him would only add to the strain of his presence.
As long as she had advice available, however, she would take it.
“How do I make it sit on a vertical surface? It’s on the front of the cabinets.”
“She told me you were trying to get paint off linoleum.”
“That’s the only part I told her about,” she admitted, looking down at the directions. All she actually saw were the buckle of his belt, the worn white threads on the zipper of his faded blue jeans and the creases in the fabric above his powerful thighs.
“I’ll take a look at the cabinets,” he muttered, resigned.
“I need power, too.”
Her glance jerked from his groin, incomprehension covering her flush.
“Electricity,” he explained. “Is there an outlet I can use for a few minutes? I have to cut out a section of railing, and there are no outlets out here.” He nodded to the power saw and a huge coil of what looked like orange rope. “I have an extension cord that’ll reach just about anywhere.”
There was an outlet behind the buffet, but it would be easier to access one straight through in the kitchen. She told him that as she turned away, aware of his glance moving down her back as she padded across the hardwood floor and into the big, old-fashioned kitchen.
For as long as she could remember, the cabinets lining the room had been pale yellow and the floor black-and-white tile. The walls had been the variable. Over the years, orange paper scattered with swirls of avocado green had given way to paper of mauve and blue. Five years ago, her grandmother had stripped the walls bare, painted them shiny, enamel white and hung brilliantly colored stained glass birds in the windows to throw swaths of azure, magenta and chartreuse into the room.
On days when the sun was brightest, being inside the room was like being inside a kaleidoscope. Bea’s most recent alteration would have slashed color into the room even on the dreariest of days.
“What the…?”
Amy knew exactly what had brought Nick to a dead halt behind her. She’d had the same reaction when she’d first let herself in and seen the mess her grandmother’s accident had created. Her heart actually felt as if it had stopped—just before she broke into a grin at her grandmother’s daring.
The paint her grandmother had chosen for her cabinets was called Crimson Cherry—and when she had fallen from the ladder while painting the upper trim, nearly a gallon of the bright bold red had splattered over the counter, the floor, the front of two upper cabinets and all but three of the lower ones.
Amy had managed to clean the streaks and splatters off the white enamel of the old stove, a project that had taken her most of yesterday, but the shock of scarlet stood out in macabre relief against the yellow and black and white of everything else.
“It looks like a crime scene in here.”
“I know,” she replied. “That’s what I thought when I first saw it.”
“This is what she was doing when she fell?”
Amy nodded, watching his frown move from the worst of the spill on the floor to a rather artful spray of bright droplets on one of the cabinets under the sink. A thick splotch of solid red the size of a dinner plate graced the cabinet next to it.
“Why?” he asked.
“She said she wanted to add a little life to the place.”
“I mean, why didn’t she pay to have it done?”
“Because she wanted to do it herself.”
The frown intensified. “A woman her age has no business doing something like this by herself. She’s—”
“Capable of making her own decisions,” Amy interrupted defensively. “She knows her own mind and once it’s made up, no one can change it.”
“You
