You’re more tool challenged than I am. Unless we’re talking guns, of course.” Brynn was a crack shot who’d won several competitions. But, as far as Jodie knew, the officer had never fired her weapon on the job.
“I don’t have to work Saturday,” Brynn said. “And Jeff thinks my presence will lend respectability to his project. If I witness what’s happening, I can combat rumors.”
“So he worked his devilish charm on you, too?”
“Devilish charm?” Brynn gave her a blank look.
Being a cop must have inoculated her friend against male charisma, especially since so many men Brynn encountered were felons. Jeff had come close to that category in high school, Jodie remembered.
Brynn’s face lit with sudden comprehension. “Charm? Sister Jodie, our resident nun, found Jeff charming?”
“Of course not, but he tried to use his wiles with me.”
“If you didn’t find him charming, why are you catering for him?” Brynn, an expert at gauging reactions, was watching her every move.
Jodie was determined to appear unaffected by the Marine’s appeal. “Because he agreed to pay the outrageous price I quoted.”
Brynn wrinkled her nose. “Why do you suppose he did that?”
“Because he’s desperate?”
“He could feed his crew of Marines beef jerky and water and they wouldn’t complain. Maybe he fell for your charms.”
“Don’t be silly.” Jodie picked up a cloth, scrubbed a non-existent stain on the spotless counter and changed the subject. “I had another row with Brittany.”
Brynn sighed. “What’s she done now?”
“Wants her navel pierced.”
“Best place. Least defacing. Least visible.”
Jodie snorted. “Not the way she dresses. Besides, it’s a precedent. First the navel, then an eyebrow, then...” She stopped and shuddered. “I don’t know what to do, Brynn. She’s slipping away from me, becoming more rebellious and angry each day. And with her wild, out-of-control friends, she’s headed for more trouble.”
“I checked out the names you gave me. None of these kids have been arrested. Not like the last group.”
Jodie shook her head. “Maybe they just haven’t been caught.”
“Maybe you should get married.”
Jodie had taken a sip of coffee and almost spewed it. “What?”
“Brittany needs a father figure.” Brynn said matter-of-factly. “And you could use a husband.”
“She has father figures. Her grandpa Nathan and her uncle Grant.”
“And you have?”
The perfect comeback. “I have my job. Just like you.”
“Touché.” Brynn chugged her coffee. “I’ll give you a hand Saturday, since I’ll be at the dorm raising anyway.”
“Want to ride with Brittany and me?”
“You’re taking Brit?”
“She’s been working Saturdays with Grant at the clinic. But he’s going to the dorm raising, too.” Jodie sighed. “I don’t dare leave her unsupervised for a full day. Who knows the trouble she’d get into.”
“I’d better take my own vehicle. And my radio. In case I get a call.”
“All work and no play—”
“Isn’t that the second verse of the song I just sang for you?”
Before Jodie could reply, Brynn downed the rest of her coffee.
“Gotta go,” she said. “See you around.”
Jodie followed and locked the door behind her. Her visit with Brynn had grounded her and brought her raging hormones under control. Her reaction to Jeff Davidson had been a fluke. Come Saturday, feeding a horde of hungry men and keeping an eye on Brittany, Jodie could play her ice maiden role again with no problem.
Piece of cake.
She climbed the stairs and ignored the niggling reminder that a piece of cake was the first step in falling off a years-long diet.
Chapter Two
On Saturday, Jodie crawled reluctantly out of her warm bed before dawn. She’d worked past midnight preparing subs, making potato salad, baking cookies and gathering paper goods. With Saturday’s forecast high in the upper fifties, she’d also started two Crock-Pots of chili. Groggy from too little sleep, she stowed the food and supplies in her minivan and awakened her daughter.
Brittany dressed, muttered complaints all the way to the car and instantly fell asleep in the front seat.
Jodie considered her dozing daughter with a tenderness that brought moisture to her eyes. It seemed only yesterday that Brittany, a tiny precious bundle with blond ringlets and a delightful baby gurgle, had required the child carrier in the back seat. Only weeks instead of years since Jodie had piled Brittany and her nine-year-old teammates into the van for soccer practices. What had turned her once loving and adorable daughter so rebellious, so bitter? Did adolescence with its hormonal fluctuations and resulting emotional roller coaster make all teens this difficult?
Or had Jodie, as Brittany so often implied, failed as a parent?
Failed? How could she not? She’d been a kid herself when Brittany was born.
Shoving that thought away before it ruined her whole day, she debated waking Brittany to share the breathtaking sunrise over the beautiful farming valley from which the town took its name.
Jodie drove the familiar route at a comfortable speed, and the van hugged the narrow highway that meandered alongside the Piedmont River, broad and tranquil in some spots, in others a torrent of white water over a boulder-strewn bed. Slanting, dawn sunlight glinted off the spring green of willows, oaks and maples, struggling toward full leaf in mid-May. On either side of the river, rolling pastures lush with high grass and freshly plowed acreage stretched toward the haze-draped mountains that surrounded the valley like the sides of a bowl.
Jodie rounded a curve and passed the veterinary clinic where Grant and his future father-in-law, Jim Stratton, worked as partners. Their trucks already stood in the parking lot, because the vets’ day began with the farmers’, long before dawn.
Brittany awakened, crossed her arms, and set her face in its customary scowl. “Why do I have to come? I had plans with my friends.”
Exactly why you’re with me, cupcake. Brittany’s current pals gave Jodie nightmares. “I need your help.”
“Who is this Jeff Davidson?”
“A
