“It could be I was wrong about you.
I thought you were sweet,”

Shelby told Jake, wounded.

“I am. On you,” he admitted.

“Oh, Jake!” she murmured, defensiveness melting as she saw it from his point of view. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re the one with the hole in your heart.” Hunkered down beside her chair, Jake tucked a curl behind her ear, traced the tear track and then her bottom lip with the flat of his thumb.

Shelby trapped his hand with both of hers. But it was a poor defense mechanism, for he let her keep it, leaned in and stole a kiss. It sparked heat lightning across the stormy expanse of her heart. Fiercely, she blinked tear-shine, crowded out rational thought and kissed him back.

SUSAN KIRBY

has written numerous novels for children, teens and adults. She is a recipient of the Child Study Children’s Book Committee Award, and has received honors from The Friends of American Writers. Her Main Street Series for children, a collection of books that follow one family through four generations of living along the famed highway Route 66, has enjoyed popularity with children and adults alike. With a number of historical novels to her credit, Susan enjoys intermingling writing and research travels with visits to classrooms across the country.

Love Sign
Susan Kirby

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For in Him we live and move and have our being.

—Acts 17:28

To Levi

You’re a patient sounding board

a storehouse of ideas

and a constant source of joy.

What more could a mother ask?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Letter to Reader

Chapter One

Shelby Taylor awoke ahead of her alarm. She slipped out of bed and onto her knees. Words were slow to come, but time spent with God quieted her hurting heart. She rose to turn off her alarm and open the drapes. The bedroom window of her third-story Lake Shore Drive apartment overlooked Lake Michigan. A kiss-me red sunrise splashed rosy hues over whitecaps, gulls and bobbing sailboats. Shelby dawdled, combing her fingers through short red-gold tangles and admiring God’s artistry as if it were an ordinary Saturday and as if time were a luxury she could afford. But her calendar told a different story. She flipped the page to July, covering the unnecessary reminder of what was not going to happen this last weekend in June.

Shelby plugged in the coffeemaker, showered, then swung her closet door wide. White satin and lace spilled out and tickled her in the ribs. She stood clutching a damp towel, waiting for the aftershocks to subside. She should do something with the dress. But what? Shelby retreated to the kitchen, braced herself with coffee and returned to the closet. She skimmed past the wedding gown and retrieved a streamlined skirt and silk blouse.

Patrick Delaney, a corporate attorney, had been a part of her life for three years. Shelby had come to appreciate him as a realist who knew his limitations. Until he called off their wedding with only a week left on the clock.

Shelby didn’t plead or storm or try to bury him in guilt. An only child with busy parents who were intent on not spoiling her, she had been conditioned at any early age to hold back the little actress within. “Scenes” belonged in childhood plays and daydreams and storybooks.

It was a lesson that served her well as an editor, as a writer and even as a jilted bride. While juggling wedding cancellations and a nightmarish problem with an author who was threatening a lawsuit because she didn’t like her book cover, Shelby had hugged the small consolation that someday, this week of horror would provide grist for the mill. That, God’s grace and the promise of the only thing she hadn’t canceled—weekend reservations at Wildwood—had kept her going.

Chosen initially as a honeymoon getaway, Wildwood was a downstate bed-and-breakfast with cozy cottages off in the pines. She prayed it would prove the perfect hideaway to the plot her new novel, which hereto was not stewing so well.

Shelby lifted her eyes to the shelf on the wall facing her computer. Her Bible was there, and five teen novels with her own name on the binding. If not for the meat-and-potato necessities of the real world, she would be writing full-time.

Shelby packed light and pulled her game face from her cosmetic bag, beginning with sunblock. Hazel eyed and fair skinned, she burned easily if she spent much time outdoors. While that hadn’t been a problem in some time, her new laptop computer gave her options, sunshine among them. Feeling more composed, more focused and better equipped to cope, she donned a pair of trendy platform sandals and pearl earrings. Shelby finished her coffee standing up before stuffing projects from work into an oversize book bag. Anesthesia, should her own fiction fail her.

A fresh breeze whisked through Jackson Signs South. It diluted the blended odor of dust, engine grease, sweeping compound and banner ink. Jake Jackson hit the remote. The overhead chain-driven door shuddered up the track. Jake shifted the fifty-foot ladder truck into gear, then braked for his twelve-year-old niece, Joy, who blocked his way with her skinny arms outstretched.

He cranked down the window. “You trying to get run over, blondie?”

Straw-haired and freckled, Joy wrinkled her nose at the outgrown nickname. “Just checking your brakes. Is Mom around?”

Jake jerked his thumb toward the back room where his oldest sister, Paula, was bending neon. “Thought you’d be in the field.”

“Mr. Wiseman never showed up. We waited an hour.”

“Something must have kept him.” Jake anchored the stack of service orders on the seat beside him with a phone book. “Move it or lose it, kiddo. I have a bank job waiting.”

“How about a ride home?” Joy asked.

“Okay,” Jake agreed. “Update your mom first, and let’s go.”

Joy flung her hoe on the back of the flatbed crane truck, trotted into the neon room and was back in short order. “Can we swing by the sign first?”

“What sign?” Jake played dumb.

“Dad’s sign.”

Jake was concerned over Joy’s johnny-come-lately fascination with her absentee father, Colton Blake. Fifteen years ago Colton’s image had gone up on the billboard on the outskirts of Liberty Flats after Wind, Water and Sky Outdoor Gear chose him for their advertising campaign. Clad in jeans, flannel, leather boots and a distinguishing red voyager cap, the Voyager, as Colton was dubbed, had become a North American icon in the intervening years—all due to that one billboard image of him paddling a canoe along a wilderness stream.

“Satisfied?” Jake asked as they cruised past.

“Thanks,” Joy said, attention riveted on the bigger-than-life portrait of the father she had never met. “Uncle Jake?” she began. “Dad has a right to know about me, don’t you think?”

“It’s not my call,” replied Jake.

Joy flopped against the seat. “You’re a big help.”

Jake took her mood shift in stride. She had been underfoot since she could crawl. But then with Colton gone and her mother sharing the sign company partnership, where else would she be?

The interstate highway gave way to a fair-size city 150 miles south of Chicago. Shelby spotted a bank from the off-ramp. A lighted message board spelled out generous savings rates—the decimal point was missing.

A sign truck turned into the lot just ahead of her. It rolled to a stop and parallel parked at the curb in front of the bank. The driver cut the motor and climbed out, a lanky, wide-shouldered, long-waisted man in jeans and T-shirt, dark glasses and a baseball cap.

Shelby circled the lot once before finding a space. She searched her shoulder bag for her traveler’s checks, only to remember they were in her suitcase.

The sun was hot and climbing as Shelby opened the trunk. She grabbed her suitcase, returned to the front seat to retrieve her traveler’s checks from within, then locked the car, leaving the suitcase on the seat with her laptop.

The sign serviceman was up on the back of the flatbed truck raising his hydraulic ladder as Shelby approached the curb on the heels of a heavyset fellow in painter’s garb. “Better buy CDs. The rates are about to take a dive,” the sign man called to the painter.

“Go home, Jake, you old spoiler, you,” replied the grinning painter, then held the door for Shelby.

Waiting in line, Shelby’s attention strayed inward to that place where stories were born. First, a name. Something catchy for the heroine. She entertained a dozen possibilities in the time it took to cash a traveler’s check and let herself out again. The ladder on the sign truck stretched to the roof of the building. Shelby cut around the truck, off the curb and onto asphalt.

“Look out, lady! Stay back!”

Shelby pivoted to see the sign truck’s hydraulic ladder swing away from the building, leaving the sign man on the roof, waving, shouting a warning. Alarmed, Shelby leapt back onto the curb and watched the unmanned ladder sweep the air twenty feet above the parking lot. All at once, the boom toppled. It came down like a limb in an ice storm and unbalanced the truck. The truck tilted, then fell over on its side. The boom crashed into Shelby’s car with a stomach-turning crunch of steel and shattering glass.

When the dust settled, what lay beneath the crane more closely resembled a crumpled soda can than a car. The air fizzed out of a tire, rupturing the caught-breath silence. Shelby wheeled around, tipping her face to the sign man hunkered at the edge of the roof.

“It’s never done that before,” he said, peering down at the damage. “Some kind of malfunction…”

“You or the crane?” Shelby cut in.

“Toggle switch, I’m guessing.” He shifted to his feet and planted his hands on narrow hips. His sunglasses and the brim of his cap shadowed a tanned and wary demeanor. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

It was a car, not a human being. Or a relationship squashed like a bug. As Shelby struggled with herself, the young man palmed his cap and dived tanned fingers through short-clipped sun-bleached chestnut waves. “I hate to ask. But could you help me down?” he ventured. “There’s a rope there—fell off the deck.”

“Deck?”

“Truck deck,” he amended, pointing.

Shelby cast the less-than-stable-looking truck a doubtful glance. “It won’t roll over on me, will it?”

“It shouldn’t.”

Peachy. The rope had fallen on the pavement when the truck spilled over. Shelby gripped her purse under one arm and picked up one end of the rope.

“Can you throw me one end?” Sign Man called from the roof.

Shelby gave it a go. The rope uncurled like a striking snake. It climbed half a story, then dropped and nipped her on the noggin. Her second effort was better, but unsuccessful. She put her shoulder bag down on the curb.

A pickup truck pulled into the parking lot. The man inside assessed the situation and climbed out. “Anyone hurt?” he asked.

“Just my car,” said Shelby ruefully.

“Here, let me,” he said, and took the rope.

Relieved, Shelby backed out of the way and dusted her hands.

The man coiled the rope a few times and tossed it skyward. Sign Man caught it and anchored his end. The muscles in his arms bunched as he eased himself down the rope and to the ground.

He was thirtyish, clean-shaven with strong shoulders and tall enough so that Shelby had to look up. The sunglasses still screened his eyes. He pressed his lips together, and dimples emerged then went into hiding again as he shifted his attention to the man who had come to their aid. With tanned and capable hands, he slipped the sunglasses from his face and into his T-shirt pocket as he thanked the Good Samaritan.

“The hydraulic lever stuck. I figured the crane would circle around and come back to me,” he explained. “I didn’t think about it jerking the truck over.”

“Did you set your outriggers?” asked the other man.

“Just on the driver’s side. I know better. I got distracted and broke my own rules.” Sign Man’s glance shifted to Shelby. His eyes, a striking blue, enhanced prominent cheeks. His jaw sloped to a nicely carved chin that jutted slightly as he asked, “Are you in a hurry to get someplace?”

“No. Not now,” replied Shelby.

“I’ll call one of my men and get this truck upright,” he said. “Then I’ll see what we can do about getting you wherever you’re headed.”

“Wildwood,” she said.

“Vacationing?” he asked.

Shelby nodded, and glanced at the Good Samaritan who was walking away. Sign Man noticed, and called after him, “Thanks, man.”

The man waved and drove away in his pickup truck.

It wasn’t long until a second sign truck pulled into the lot in answer to Sign Man’s phone call. With the help of the crane, the truck was soon upright and the boom off Shelby’s car.

Sign Man retrieved Shelby’s purse from the curb on his way by. “Here you go,” he said. Faint creases tugged at the corners of his morning glory eyes. “I’m Jake Jackson.”

“Shelby Taylor,” she returned.

Jake started to offer his hand, then checked the impulse. He turned up a grease-smudged palm and asked, “So how upset are you?”

“I’m sorry I snapped at you.” Lamely, Shelby offered, “It happened so fast.”

“Kind of caught me off guard, too.” He spared her further apology and glanced back at her car. “I’ll call my insurance company, see if they can get you something to drive,” he offered.

Jake called on his cell phone and returned with word that his insurer would send an adjuster out. “He’ll see about a loaner car once he has taken some pictures and squared away the paperwork. Like I said, I’d be happy to give you a lift if you don’t want to wait on him.”

At a loss as to how else she was to reach the cabin at Wildwood, Shelby accepted.

“Need anything from the car?” he asked.

“My laptop and suitcase from the front seat. Grab my cell phone, too, would you? Oh! And my book bag, please. It’s in the trunk,” she said, and gave him her car keys.

Jake jerked a thumb in the direction of the bank lobby. “May as well wait inside where it’s cool,” he said.

Thoughtful, as saboteurs went, noted Shelby as she retreated to the lobby. He wasn’t long. Her suitcase swung from one hand, her laptop from the other. He retrieved her cell phone from his shirt pocket. Their fingers brushed as it changed hands.

“Can you get along without the book bag? I didn’t have any luck popping the trunk lid,” he said.

Reluctant to leave unpublished works behind, Shelby wondered aloud, “Could we pry it open?”

“I thought of that. But the adjuster may want to snap his pictures before we tear into it,” he said.

Conceding his point, Shelby followed him to his truck. He checked the oil, then wiped his hands on a towel that lay in the seat. Except for some scraped paint and a broken side view mirror, the truck appeared sound. The engine coughed a time or two en route to the sign shop. But they covered the short distance without incident.

Shelby’s gaze swept twin steel buildings, a hodgepodge of equipment emblazoned with the Jackson name, and a graveyard of old signs.

“It’s a family business,” Jake explained. “We have a shop south of here at Liberty Flats. Wildwood’s just a few miles farther on. Hope I haven’t fouled up your vacation too badly.”

“It’s a working one, anyway.” Shelby accepted his help out of the truck. He had a steady hand. Durable fingers, a callused palm and a measured grip. She turned to collect her things.

“Let me.” Jake reached for her suitcase and laptop.

Shelby followed him to a sporty four-wheel drive vehicle and stowed her things behind the seat while she climbed in.

“There’s a bookstore nearby. You want to pick up something to read?” he asked as they got underway.

Realizing he had misunderstood about the book bag, she said, “Thanks, but it isn’t leisure reading. The bag contains manuscripts.”

“You’re a writer?” Jake winced as she conceded as much. “Can’t say I’d want to leave my life’s work in the trunk of a wrecked car.”

“It isn’t mine.” Seeing his confusion, Shelby explained, “I work full-time for Parnell Publishing, and write part-time. What will they do with the car?”

“Have it towed, I suppose. I’ll phone the insurance company again and explain about the manuscripts. They could take it to my shop. It’d be easier for you to access than at a salvage yard.”

Jake made the call while waiting for a light to change. Traffic flowed once more. He resumed their conversation. “What is it you do at Parnell?”

“I’m an editor.”

“Really! Can’t say I’ve ever met an editor.” Jake threaded his way along busy streets. “What kind of books does your company publish?”

“We do a variety of nonfiction titles—self-help, how-tos, food and cooking titles, home and family, travel and guidebooks. That sort of thing,” said Shelby.

“And your part-time writing—is that for Parnell?”

“No. I write romance mysteries for young adults.”

“Is that right?” His smile deepened, his eyes reflecting a sunny twinkle. “Thomasina’s a real fan of romance novels. Out at Wildwood,” he added. “She and her husband Trace have transformed that old farm into a real cozy vacation retreat.”

“I’ve heard nothing but good things about their business,” said Shelby as Jake took the interstate south out of town. “I look forward to meeting them.”

“You’ll have to stick around a couple of weeks, then. They left for the southwest two days ago for their third wedding anniversary.

“Oh.”

“How about you? Are you married?” he asked with a glance from those vivid blue eyes.

“No.”

“Seeing someone?”

“No.” The word to Shelby’s own ears, clanged like a metal gate. She twisted the strap of her pocket book, and fell silent.

They passed the next dozen miles in silence. Jake flipped the air off as they exited the interstate, trucked past the Voyager billboard, and rolled down the window as they skirted Liberty Flats.

“Too much wind? I can roll it up,” offered Jake, as the breeze riffled Shelby’s short curls.

“No, don’t. It’s fine,” she said and lowered her window, too.

Jake stole a sidelong glance, admiring the wind in her hair and sunlight dancing on flawless skin. But he couldn’t remember when he had seen such a soft round face look so long and weary. His carelessness had complicated her vacation plans, big time, that went without saying. He thought about apologizing again. But then, what good did that do? They hurtled along the country road a few miles, then Jake slowed for Wildwood Lane.

Shelby draped her arm out the window, letting the air blow through her fingers. In the air there was a fragrance of green growing things and of sun-warmed earth. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with clean country air, willing the stone to roll off her heart. Time, that’s what she needed. Anonymity in which to lick her wounds until she had ceased to flinch at words like marriage and anniversary.

The lane ended in front of a two-story farmhouse. The house, freshly painted, gleamed like a pearl amidst blooming gardens and barn-red outbuildings. Reprieve was so close, she could almost taste it.

“Go on and get squared away. I’ll bring your things,” Jake offered.

The path to the front office was bordered by a bright tangle of nodding flowers. Inside, flowerpots filled the office windowsills. Trailing plants spilled from the pots onto a battered drop-leaf table. There was a coffee urn and cups and glasses and iced lemonade beading a carnival glass pitcher. Shelby pushed the bell. Chimes rang through the house. She helped herself to a glass of lemonade. A young woman came in response to the bell. “May I help you?” she asked, her hoop earrings jangling.

“Yes, I have reservations.” Shelby gave her her name.

The woman sat down at the computer and hit a few keys. When she lifted her yes again, her smile had faded. “I’m sorry. But I don’t seem to have any record of it,” she said.

Shelby set down the half-drained glass of lemonade to retrieve the confirmation number from her checkbook register where she had written it on the day she and Patrick finalized their honeymoon plans.

The young woman typed in the number. Frown lines creased her forehead. “You’re marked out.”

Startled, Shelby protested, “There must be some mistake.”

“Forgive me, you’re right, it wasn’t you.” The young woman turned from the screen to a lined tablet. “It was a man who called to cancel. I wrote it here somewhere.” She ran a finger down to the middle of the page and looked up again. “Patrick Delaney.”

The name washed over Shelby in a bone-skinning tide. Tears threatened. She batted them back, struggling to make mental adjustments. “If the cottage has been rented, a room will do.”

“I’m sorry, but we’re booked here at the house, too.”

Jake was a dozen steps from the house when the front door spit Shelby out onto the garden path. Her cream-colored silk blouse and a fitted skirt molded nicely to feminine curves.

She was almost upon him before she saw him and skidded to a stop. Clouds darkened her eyes. She pressed her full lips together. A pulse hammered at her smooth, white temples.

“There’s been a mix-up. I hate to ask, but could I please have a ride back to town?” she said, and reached for her laptop.

Her effort to keep it together as the morning went from bad to worse put a commiserating knot in Jake’s gut. But her guarded facade warned him against a barrage of questions. He passed her the laptop. Fumbling to take the suitcase, too, she shifted her pocketbook and reached for the suitcase handle.

“Go on, I’ll bring it,” said Jake quickly.

She nodded and turned toward the drive. Jake watched the hem of her skirt trail over tall flowers that sweetened the path. She crossed crushed rock, climbed into the Jeep and settled there, hugging her laptop. Jake rubbed an uncomfortable sensation in his chest, then set her suitcase down and went inside.

“’Morning, Annie.”

Antoinette Penn smiled a welcome from behind the desk. “Hello, Jake. If you’re looking for Trace, he’s not here.”

“I’d heard they’d taken off,” he said and took off his cap. “What happened with Shelby Taylor’s reservations?”

“A guy called this morning and canceled the reservations,” explained Antoinette.

“But if she made the reservations…” began Jake.

“For all I know, they made them together,” Antoinette interjected. “Honeymoons are usually planned that way.”

Startled, Jake blurted, “Honeymoon? She’s getting married?”

“Not anymore. He called it off. That’s the reason he gave for canceling.”

Shelby’s fragile state fell in place like a key fitting tumblers. “So what’s she doing here?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Jake. All I know is the honeymoon cottage is taken.”

Jake swung around and looked out the window. Shelby’s slim arms were still wrapped around her laptop. He had done all he could. And yet…Jake shifted his feet. “How about a room here in the house?”

“Sorry. It’s like I told her, we’re booked.”

“What about Trace and Thomasina’s room? They won’t be needing it,” he reasoned.

“It’s full of their stuff!”

“Under the circumstances, she may not mind.”

“I wasn’t talking about her.” Antoinette drew herself up. “What’re you trying to do—get me fired?”

“Oh, come on,” Jake cajoled. “What’s the point in being in charge if you can’t make an executive decision?”

“Save your breath, Jake. I am not booking Trace and Thomasina’s bedroom. And you can quit looking at me like that, it’s not my fault,” huffed Antoinette.

“She’s shell-shocked,” Jake said. “Jilted, canceled and I dropped the crane on her car.”

“You what?”

“Never mind. Guess I better drive her back to town.”

“I wish you would,” said Antoinette, rubbing her temples. “She’s making my head throb.”

“Mine, too,” Jake said. Though on closer accounting, it was more of a burn than a throb and it wasn’t confined to his head. He rubbed his chest again, reached into his pocket for an antacid tablet and left Antoinette muttering.

Chapter Two

Jake was gone so long, Shelby grew restless. She climbed out of the Jeep and was almost to the farmhouse screen door when she overheard his parting exchange with the desk clerk. He swung out onto the path before she could patch her expression.

Jake blinked finding her there and tipped his cap back, a gesture Shelby was beginning to recognize as habitual.

“No vacancies,” she filled the sudden caught-breath silence.

“Antoinette told me. I said I’d get that,” he said and reached for her suitcase on the walk where he had left it.

“I had a thought while I was waiting…perhaps a room in Liberty Flats,” said Shelby, following him toward the Jeep.

“There’s no motel. It’s a pretty small town,” he said.

Shelby raked her fingers through her curls. Anxious to find herself a place before he began to regard her as a pup he had orphaned and could not leave to fend for herself, she asked, “What about Bloomington?”

“Sure. There are plenty of rooms there if that’s what you want to do,” he said, and opened the Jeep door for her.

Shelby plucked her laptop off the seat and slid in. Jake circled to the driver’s side and put her suitcase behind the seat. He would have stowed her laptop there, too, except she had her arms around it again. “Wherever you want to go. Just name it,” he said, as he climbed behind the wheel.

“Somewhere quiet where I can work. Speaking of which, I’m keeping you from yours,” she said.

“I was due for a morning off.”

“Not like this,” said Shelby.

“We’ve had a nice ride so far,” said Jake.

“Thanks,” she said with a wan smile.

“For what?”

“Being such a gentleman.”

Her attitude caught Jake off guard. Feeling all the more responsible for her predicament, he said, “There’s plenty of room at my grandmother’s house. You’d be welcome to stay.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t impose,” she said hastily.

“You wouldn’t be. Gram Kate likes having company.”

“That’s kind. But it’s too much to ask.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.” Hoping she would accept and relieve his conscience, Jake stopped at the crossroads just shy of Liberty Flats. His turn was dependent upon her decision. “Would you like to have a look before you make up your mind?”

Shelby’s head was pounding. She anchored the laptop between her feet on the floor and reached into her shoulder bag. “Here,” she said, and uncapped a bottle of aspirin.

“What’s this?”

“For your headache. Mine’s splitting, too.”

Chagrined Jake rubbed the back of his neck. “You have good ears,” he said finally.

“So I’ve heard.” Shelby shook two tablets into her palm and offered them, saying, “My treat.”

She was a treat, dressed all in cream. All that kept Jake from telling her so was the pain in her doe-soft hazel eyes and a mouth that was too grave. That quick, she got to him. An almost-could-have-been-should-have-been-married woman. He thanked God she wasn’t, and gestured, saying, “You first.”

Shelby tossed the tablets back. They burned all the way down. She coughed and rubbed her eyes. Jake pushed a box of tissues her way. Hoping for the chance to know her better, he made the turn into Liberty Flats. “I’ll get you something to wash it down with.”

The shady streets spanned a time line of American housing, from Victorian to cheerful bungalows to ranch-style homes to imposing Cape Cods on manicured lawns. At the center of town, Jake circled the village green. It enfolded a bandstand, picnic tables, a memorial stone honoring war dead and a flag pole. Old Glory rippled in the breeze, a twin to the flag jutting from the brick front of Newt’s Market across the way. The remainder of the business district consisted of boarded-up buildings, a few of which leaned like stacked stove wood.

Jake turned the Jeep up the alley and parked in the driveway of his timber-framed shop. Shelby spotted the sign company logo above the overhead door. The Jackson name was also lettered on the side of the building. “You live here, too?” she asked.

“I have lately. Gram’s memory isn’t what it used to be,” said Jake. “My sisters have families to look after. All but the youngest, and she just got married. I was the logical choice. Come on, and I’ll get you that drink.”

His amiable smile tweezed the thorn that had cropped up at Shelby’s realization the house he referred to as his grandmother’s was his home, too. She climbed out and paused for a closer look at the house. It was a two-story arts-and-craft home with clean lines and deep verandas. The slate roof sloped away from a catwalk enclosed by a wrought iron railing.

Jake knocked the dust off his feet on the back veranda and waited for her to catch up. The back door opened into a eclectic kitchen that spanned a generation. Good bones, nice texture. In her head Shelby heard her mother accentuating the positive.

“Tea? Juice? Soda?” Jake offered, his footsteps ringing over vintage pine flooring.

“Water’s fine.” Shelby dropped her head back, admiring a high ceiling sectioned by hand-hewn oak beams. The room was long and wide and graced with deep windows. Fresh flowers adorned a table big enough for all the king’s horses and men. Handicrafts decorated the walls—a framed wood-burned copy of the Lord’s Prayer, a plaque inscribed Friends Are Special People. The napkin holder had rust spots, and child-size fingerprints glazed the cookie jar.

Jake drew her a glass of water, waited as she drained it and returned the empty glass to the sink.

“It’s a restful house. Don’t think I’m not tempted to accept your hospitality,” Shelby began. Then Jake’s beeper cut in. She gestured, saying, “Go ahead. Don’t let me keep you.”

Jake excused himself to make a phone call.

After the chaos of the morning, the quiet house was to Shelby what oil was to chafed skin. Her eye skipped from child-crafted refrigerator art to toast crumbs on the counter to the yellow energy efficiency rating sticker, the grease-splattered corners of which curled from the surface of a new stove. Ordinary folk, cutting corners rushing through ordinary days. It wasn’t like her to impose on the kindness of strangers. But then again, she hadn’t exactly been herself lately.

“Shall I bring in your things, or do you want a ride back to town?” asked Jake, returning.

“Are you sure I won’t be in the way?” Shelby asked.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“I can see you’re a busy man. I won’t be a pest,” she promised.

Jake smiled and excused himself and returned moments later with her belongings. “This way.”

Shelby let go the last vestiges of convention and trekked after him through the kitchen and dining room. Their footsteps fell to a whisper on the rose carpet that spanned the staircase. The woodwork was dark, the walls embossed, the decor turn-of-the-century elegant, though with a nice splash of modern graces.

The guest room at the top of the landing was spacious and homey with quilts and lace curtains and woven rugs. Shelby circled the room, absorbing it with an appreciative glance that didn’t escape Jake. “My mother would love this. She works with Harbor House, restoring old houses for low-income families,” she said.

“And your father?”

“He is a plastic surgeon.”

“I’ll bet even he couldn’t put a pretty face on this day,” said Jake in open sympathy.

“I should have seen it coming,” she murmured, then flushed at his confusion. “Oh! You mean the car.”

He nodded. “What’d you think?”

Patrick. She thought he meant Patrick. Embarrassed, Shelby averted her face.

“Can I get you anything?” asked Jake.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said, gripping her pocketbook.

“Okay. I need to be going. But if you need anything, my sister Paula is out back in the shop,” Jake told her.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thank you, Mr. Jackson.”

“Glad to help,” he said, and stopped in the door to look back. “And make that Jake.”

“Jake,” Shelby amended, meeting his gaze. His smiling eyes begged descriptive notation: Pale tropical waters splashing at sun-browned banks.

No wastrel of words, Shelby filed the line away for literary use. She rubbed her throbbing temples, slipped out of her platform sandals and stretched out on the bed. It was plush and cozy and comforting. But she couldn’t relax. She hadn’t in days. Locking her hands behind her head, she invited a story line to wander in and make order of her muddled thoughts. But before she could conjure up any story characters a slim, attractive, auburn-haired woman in a cotton shirt and jeans knocked at the open door.

“You must be Shelby. Don’t get up. Just popped in to say hi.” A smiled warmed her face. “There’s ham and fruit in the refrigerator. Help yourself when you get hungry.”

“That’s kind of you, thank you, but I’ll get something out.”

“There is no ‘out.’ Except Newt’s Market, and you’ll soon tire of that. I’m Paula Blake, by the way. Jake’s sister.”

“He mentioned you,” Shelby said. She introduced herself.

“Jake says you write and edit and all sorts of interesting things,” Paula continued amiably. “Excuse me while I get that.”

Shelby swung her feet off the bed and into her shoes as Paula crossed to the nightstand and the ringing phone.

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation, Joy,” Paula said. “Give Mr. Wiseman a break, would you? No, Dirk can’t come over. I’ll see you at four. I love you. Bye-bye.

“My daughter,” Paula explained, hanging up the phone. “She’s doing some field work over her summer vacation. Or supposed to be. Her boss didn’t pick her up this morning. His van is gone. She can’t reach him on the phone, now she’s conjuring wild scenarios. He’s sick. He’s lost. He’s fallen and can’t get up,” Paula ticked Joy fancies off on her fingers and rolled eyes as blue as Jake’s. “Kids! Now be sure and eat something,” she continued without stopping for breath, and backed out of the door, still talking.

The silence in Paula’s wake was nagging. Shelby found her way to the bathroom, tidied up and went downstairs. She made a sandwich, washed it down with a soda, then returned to her room and set up her laptop. Once upon a time…she told herself, fingers poised and waiting. The anticipated lights did not flash. No icons. No whirring. Just a black screen.

“Come on, come on,” murmured Shelby. “Give me a break. Please?” she muttered. But the screen remained dark and cold. At length, Shelby gave up. She fished pad and pen and dime-store reading glasses from her shoulder bag, took a seat and tried to recall the idea she had had before Patrick pushed the lead domino and brought her well-ordered future tumbling down around her. But her thought screen was as blank as her computer screen.

Shelby grumbled and wandered to the window and hiked it. She tapped folded glasses against the frame. Voilà! As if by design, a girl rode into the alley below, then flung her bicycle down. A skinny, sunburned, straw-haired preteen in cutoff jeans, she pinched off hollyhocks greens with bright-tipped fingernails and left a shredded trail of leaves into Jake’s shop. Moments later, she reappeared with Paula at her heels. Paula turned the girl toward a vegetable patch and gave her a nudge.

“But Mom! I don’t even like vegetables.” The girl’s voice carried through the open window. “Yikes! A bee! I think I’m allergic! Well, I could be. M-o-o-o-m!” she wailed, hands on skinny hips. “Oh, all right! How much are you paying me?”

“A nickel a weed,” Paula said.

“A nickel? Is that all?”

“Make it a penny,” Paula returned.

“Mom!”

“Keep whining, Joy, and you’ll be weeding for free.” Paula retreated into the shop.

Shelby pressed her nose to the window screen and watched Joy flounce over the garden. She plucked a weed here, a weed there, all hop-and-stop energy with no logical system. It was hard to picture a girl like that willingly weeding fields that ran on for acres and acres.

So what made Joy tick? What movements turned behind those eyes and turned-up nose and sullen brow? Shelby played what-if until a distant rumbling broke her concentration. Cool air rose from a vent on the floor below the window. Air-conditioning.

Shelby closed the window, took the chair again and balanced the pad on her knee. An opening sentence trickled across the page to be joined by more words, inserted here and there until it became a nice fat paragraph. She reached for her glasses.

Cranes, crushed cars, trapped book bags and blue-eyed men retreated as a Joy-like girl in frayed shorts and peeling freckles appeared on the lined yellow tablet. A Patrick-like guy took shape beside her. The resemblance startled Shelby from fiction to reality. She hadn’t deliberately chosen him for inspiration. It was automatic. Finger memory, like a pianist’s hands finding the right keys when the pages to a familiar song fluttered shut.

Shelby marked out the Patrick clone and reeled through male acquaintances, seeking hero inspiration elsewhere. None seemed to fit. Again, the Patrick-like character beckoned. Stubbornly resisting, she stirred from her chair and paced to the window. Sunshine glittered off the nearby building, lighting the lettering on the side of the building: Jackson Signs South.

Jake Jackson. He had been kind. Helpful. Patient. A gentleman. The heroics of everyday life. And he had those arresting eyes. Here, here! Her heart might be curled into the fetal position, but she still had her story world. A world with a voracious appetite, it fed indiscriminately on new situations, new people, fresh material to keep her upright and writing. That was the upside of this unsettling, upside down day. “This is the day the Lord has made.”

The snippet of verse ran through Shelby’s head. Not the day she had expected or long anticipated, rather a day marked by adversity. Yet in God’s hands, even shrapnel was a windfall, a deposit, a hedge against creative bankruptcy.

Shelby added Jake to her characters cast. She reshaped him into a seventeen-year-old in studious dark-rimmed glasses with a knack for mystery solving and a love for dirt-track racing.

A leggy raven-haired beauty barged onto the page. Tara. Before Shelby’s delighted eyes, Tara challenged her Joy-like character for the hero’s heart. Sparks flew better in triangles. No sparks. No conflict. No story. Not a problem today. The words flowed, the headache fled.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you. You always know just what I need.

Chapter Three

It had been a while since Jake had met a woman who interested him enough to make the day stretch long. He played catch-up all afternoon and fell several jobs short of completing his service calls. By the time he returned to the Bloomington shop, his crew had left for the day.

Two brothers-in-law worked with him in the erecting and servicing of signs. A third oversaw the computerized banners in the Liberty Flats shop while Paula shaped neon for custom-made signs. It was a skill both she and Jake had learned from their father, John Jackson.

A two-car automobile accident had claimed Jake’s parents’ lives when Jake was nineteen. Colton, Paula’s husband of just a few weeks, had been at the wheel of the second car, and had escaped with minor injuries. With his parents gone, and Paula’s marriage on the rocks as quickly as it had come together, it was only by the grace of God that Gram Kate had kept the family together, and the sign company, too. Now, a dozen years later, Jackson Signs was thriving.

Recently Paula had transferred all their records onto computer. She had taken some classes and was at ease with the new system. Jake wasn’t. But he did appreciate the options gained by linking the sign shops and their home offices. Now, he could go home and relax a while before entering the day’s business.

Jake locked up the shop, stopped for chicken and the fixings, then took the highway south. Once home, he put supper in the oven on low, set the table and climbed the stairs. The second-story landing circled past the guest room. Shelby’s door was closed. Jake grabbed clean clothes and closed himself into the upstairs bathroom to shower and change.

The whistled rendition of a catchy advertising jingle penetrated Shelby’s subconscious. By and by, the hum of an electric razor muted the cheery tune. Shelby sank back into to her story only to emerge again when the whistling ceased. The razor was quiet, too. Focus broken, she rose on cramped limbs and crossed to the door.

Jake was at the top of the stairs. A short-sleeved navy-blue shirt hugged the contours of muscles that flexed as he tucked his shirttail into his jeans. The denim, faded and softened by wash and wear, suited the lean, fit lines of his body as he turned and surprised her watching him from the open door.

“I heard you whistling.”

“Was I?” He smiled. “Hope I didn’t disturb you.”

“Not at all,” Shelby said.

His dimples deepened. There was a sheen to his clean-shaven jaw that caught the light. His hair was damp from the shower and bore the tracks of a comb. “Are you ready for dinner?” he asked.

“If you’ll let me help,” she offered.

“No need, it’s on the table.”

“Next time, call me and I’ll help,” said Shelby, flushing. “I guess I should have warned you—when I’m writing, everything fades away. Time. Good intentions, everything.”

“It’ll stand you in good stead in this house,” Jake replied. “Family tracking in and out at all hours. It can turn into a regular zoo if you don’t hold your mouth just right.”

Shelby noted his was nicely held. His eyes, too. The dark shirt heightened their striking hue. The observation was part of her craft, a writing thing, as natural as breathing. She smelled soap, and something else, too. Something tantalizing. Or was that dinner? Since the breakup, Shelby had almost forgotten what hunger felt like. Her stomach gave a sharp reminder. “I’ll be right down.” Quickly, she retreated to tidy up after herself.

Jake waited for her, watching from the open door as she gathered the paper wads strewn about her chair. In contrast to those carelessly scattered papers was the precision with which she aligned her notebook, pen and reading glasses on the dresser.

“You write in long hand?” Jake asked as she snapped off the reading lamp.

“Not as a rule. But my laptop is on the fritz.”

“Not another crane casualty,” he said and clucked his tongue.

“There’s not a scratch on it,” replied Shelby. “It may just be a glitch. I’m not much good at troubleshooting.”

“I’ll take a look if you like,” he offered.

“Would you mind? I’d really appreciate it,” Shelby said.

“After dinner, then. I hope you like chicken,” he added.

“I do,” she returned, closing the door behind her. “But you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”

“I didn’t. It’s carryout. Except for the tomatoes.”

“I noticed the garden from the window,” Shelby told him.

“Green-thumb therapy,” Jake said. He held up his thumb and motioned for her to precede him down the stairs. “What about you? Do you garden?”

“I live in a third-floor apartment. But I planted blue lobelia and vincas in a window box this year.”

“Flowers, right?” he asked, and followed her down, momentarily distracted by the muted flame of red-gold curls against her slim white neck. He caught himself wondering if her skin was as soft to touch as it was to the eyes, and admitted, “Mostly what I know about flowers is that mowing them down gets you in trouble.”

Flowers. They had been Patrick’s passion. Shelby caught herself one foot down memory lane. She took her mind by the edges, gave it a shake and followed Jake into the kitchen where he introduced her to his grandmother, Kate Grisham.

Kate had hair like spun wool and a round face, powdered and wrinkled. Her lips were painted outside the lines. They tilted as she greeted Shelby, saying, “How lovely to meet you.”

“Shelby works with books,” Jake told her.

“You’re Jake’s bookkeeper!” Gram Kate set a pitcher of tea on the table and came to Shelby with hands outstretched.

“She doesn’t work for me, Gram. We met at the bank.” Jake went on to explain about the accident.

“Thank goodness you weren’t hurt,” Gram said, slow to release Shelby’s hands. “Jake, dear you must be more careful! Why, I hate to think what might have happened if that… Joy needs… Next time you mustn’t…”

The flow of Gram’s words stopped. She peered more closely at Shelby, dismissed her lost train of thought and patted her hair.

“Ready to eat, Gram?” Jake asked gently, and seated her. Declining Shelby’s help in transferring food from the oven to the table, he seated her, too, and when the food was in place, took his own chair.

Shelby spread her napkin over her lap. Gram Kate reached for her hand. “Would you ask the blessing for us, dear?” she asked, and patted Shelby’s fingers.

Shelby tucked her chin. “Heavenly Father…”

“Dear God,” rumbled Jake.

They both stopped and looked up.

“Don’t tease your sister. Take her hand, now Jake, and say grace before the ice me—me-malts,” said Gram Kate, her tone sweetly chiding.

It was no hardship for Jake. He took Shelby’s hand, and thought it a nice perk to accompany the dinner blessing.

Jake’s callused palm imprinted itself upon Shelby’s skin and her thoughts, too. This was to be her wedding dinner. Her wedding night. And here she sat with a sweet dotty old saint who thought she was family and a stranger with a foreign touch.

Jake began passing dishes her way, giving her hands something useful to do and her thoughts a safe place to light. The chicken was moist and tender, the potatoes delicious and the sliced tomatoes, wonderful.

“Did you remember crochet thread, Wendy?” asked Gram Kate, looking at Shelby.

Shelby paused, fork in hand and lifted her eyes to Jake.

He smiled reassuringly and said, “I’ll put it on the list, Gram.”

“Thank you, dear. Have another biscuit. It’s my special reci— Tea. More tea? You must have another piece of chicken, you’re a growing boy.”

Gram Kate passed everything Jake’s way. He set the tea pitcher and the serving dishes to the center of the table, but she kept returning them to him. At length, he transferred the dishes to the counter.

“I’ll wash,” offered Shelby, coming to her feet.

“No need. I’ll put them in the dishwasher later after we’ve had coffee,” Jake replied and waved her down again.

Shelby was nursing a second cup when Paula and Joy let themselves in the back door. Paula was carrying a chocolate cake. Joy bumped Jake’s chair and held out her hand.

“You owe me for fifty-seven weeds, Uncle Jake.”

“She has been paid. Don’t even think about it,” Paula warned, as Jake reached for his wallet.

“Fifty-seven cents. You call that pay?” complained Joy.

Jake fished a five from his wallet.

“I mean it, Jake,” Paula asserted.

“It isn’t for weeding, it’s a consulting fee. This is Shelby Taylor. Shelby, my niece, Joy and my sister, Paula.”

Paula exchanged smiles with Shelby. “We met earlier.”

“I heard Uncle Jake wrecked your car,” Joy said, a lively interest in eyes a shade darker than Jake’s.

“Her laptop was in the front seat. Seems to have suffered some injuries. It’s upstairs in the guest room,” Jake said. “Take a look, would you?”

“I’ll go with you.” Shelby thanked Jake for the meal, excused herself, and followed Joy up the stairs.

Jake loaded the dishwasher, left Gram in Paula’s capable hands, and joined them there.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Joy replied. She poked keys in a freewheeling frenzy.

Shelby stood by looking on, lip caught, expression apprehensive.

“Relax,” soothed Jake. “Blondie’s a regular computer chip.”

“Not tonight, Uncle Jake. I can’t get this thing to chirp.” Joy glanced at Shelby, “Sorry, Miss Taylor.”

“Please call me Shelby,” said Shelby. “I appreciate your efforts.”

“Me, too,” chimed Jake. “Thanks, sport.”

“It sure pays better than weeding your garden.” Joy tugged the wrinkled five-dollar bill from her pocket and gave it a snap.

“Any word from Mr. Wiseman?” Jake asked.

“Not yet. We drove by his house on the way over. His van is there, but no one answers the door.”

“Joy got a job cutting weeds out of soybean fields. But her boss seems to be lost,” Jake explained.

“He owes us for sixty hours,” Joy said. “Dirk’s steamed.”

“Who’s Dirk?” asked Shelby.

“One of the guys on the crew. He’s betting we’ve seen the last of Mr. Wiseman. Gave me a funny feeling right here,” admitted Joy, hand on her midriff.

“You sure it isn’t chocolate cake weighing you down?” teased Jake.

Joy twisted in her chair and tilted her chin toward Jake. “Did you try it?”

“Not yet.”

“Chocolate’s your favorite, right?” she asked.

“Second only to lemon chiffon,” he claimed.

“Last time I baked cherry chip, and you said it was your favorite second only to chocolate,” Joy reminded him.

“That so?” Jake grinned and said, “How about you, Shelby? You ready for dessert?”

“Maybe later. I’d like to work a while.”

“I have a computer downstairs. You’re welcome to use it,” Jake offered, seeing Shelby reach for her tablet.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Jake answered. “I’m not up to speed on it, yet. But if you have any questions, Joy can help you out.”

“Sure. Come on. I’ll get you started,” agreed Joy.

The word processing program was strikingly similar to Shelby’s. With Joy’s help, she soon had the basics down well enough to work.

“Keep it, Uncle Jake already paid me,” Joy reminded, when Shelby tried to pay her for showing her the ropes.

“I want you to have it,” Shelby insisted. “Please? It’ll free me to ask again, should I need more help.”

“All right then.” She thanked Shelby, tucked the money into her pocket, and ventured in the same breath, “Winny Penn’s mom says you were supposed to get married this weekend. So did you change your mind or what?”

Chapter Four

Jake walked through the garden, then moved the lawn sprinkler close enough to give the tomato plants a good drink. He glanced toward his lighted office window and returned to the porch to take off his damp boots. Paula joined him on the steps.

“Gram’s tucked in,” she offered. “Her eyes were closed almost before her head hit the pillow. What’s this about your houseguest getting left at the altar?”

“Who told you that?” Jake asked, sitting straighter.

“Antoinette. I saw her at the store, and mentioned that you and Gram had a guest. It put her mind at ease to hear it. She felt terrible over having to turn Shelby away.” Paula slid him a glance and ventured, “How’s she holding up, anyway?”

“Couldn’t say,” he replied evenly.

Paula’s gaze lingered, but she let the subject drop.

Dusk fell over the yard in deepening shades of purple. The shadows brought to Jake’s mind the bruise of broken promises that lingered in Shelby’s eyes. She was having a hard time of it, yet she didn’t complain. There was nothing of the pathetic about her. He liked that. Liked her manner, too, how she had taken Gram’s mental lapses into stride without comment.

Paula spoke up, asking about Joy’s employer, Mr. Wiseman. “What do you suppose happened to him, anyway?”

“He’ll turn up,” Jake said.

“It is peculiar, though. And speaking of peculiar, what’s this about you driving Joy to the edge of town to check out Colton’s face-lift?”

“You mean the sign? That wasn’t my idea,” Jake answered.

“I guessed as much.” Paula sighed. “She asks about him all the time lately. She can’t understand why I never told him about her. She badgered me until I finally told her that as far as I’m concerned, Colt wouldn’t be in the dark about her if he had stayed home where he belonged. It’s the truth,” she added.

Part of it, anyway. Calling the rest to mind served no purpose. Jake asked, “What’d she say?”

“‘Get over it, Mom.”’

“She’s just testing the stretch in your apron strings,” Jake said. “You’re doing just fine. Blondie’s a good kid.”

“By the grace of God and a lot of help from you.” Paula patted his knee and came to her feet.

“Where you going?” asked Jake.

“Home. Joy’s a bear to get up if she isn’t in bed by ten.”

“I’ll get her for you,” Jake offered.

“Thanks, Jake. I’ll see you at church tomorrow.” Paula crossed the yard to her car.

Jake dropped his boots inside the door and trekked through the house in his sock feet. The door to his office was open, the desk in full view. Joy and Shelby were side by side at his desk, facing the door. The computer monitor partially hid their faces.

“So how come he walked out on you?” he overheard Joy ask Shelby.

“He had his reasons,” replied Shelby.

“Good ones?” pressed Joy.

“I suppose they were to him.” Shelby glanced away from the computer screen and saw Jake. Dusky eyelids fell behind the lenses of her reading glasses. Color swept up her pale cheeks.

Jake’s gut clenched at the humiliation in her swiftly averted gaze. “Your mom’s waiting in the car,” he said to Joy.

“But I’m showing Shelby how to…”

He cut her short. “I’ll show her.”

“Retrieve from the trash? You don’t even know yourself, I’ll bet,” replied Joy, tipping her chin.

“Go home,” he said.

“I was trying to help,” she huffed.

“Some help,” Jake muttered as Joy passed him in the door.

Joy made a face at him. He crossed to the desk, wondering whether to apologize to Shelby on Joy’s behalf or pretend he hadn’t overheard. He was opting for pretense when Joy called to him from the open door.

He pivoted to see her hand over the light switch.

“Nighty-night,” she said as the room went dark.

“Turn it on, Joy,” ordered Jake.

She snickered instead and closed the door behind her.

“Sorry, I don’t know what gets into her,” apologized Jake, though under the circumstances, darkness wasn’t all that unwelcome.

“I gather she heard things,” Shelby said.

“Not from me,” he said quickly. “There’s a remote switch. Reach into the desk drawer.”

“Which drawer?”

“Top,” Jake replied, though he could have as easily crossed to the switch. The drawer squeaked as she opened it. He heard pencils rub pencils, the metallic sift of paper clips and other desk drawer contents shift beneath Shelby’s unseen fingers. The darkness amplified the cat-paw soft sounds of her search. That, and the silence to which Joy’s cheeky question clung like a fly caught on a glue strip. No use ignoring it.

“I’ll tell Paula to talk to her,” he began.

“Please don’t,” Shelby interjected. “You’ve done enough.”

Jake twitched, certain she believed him the source of the things that had piqued Joy’s curiosity.

He circled the desk. “Slide back. I can put my hand right on it.” In the absence of light, he misjudged her position. His hand skimmed her curls in a chance touch that tickled his palm and his fancy, too. “Sorry.”

“My fault,” Shelby murmured and rolled the desk chair away from the desk, giving him more room.

The darkness heightened her flower-sweet fragrance. Feeling enveloped by it, Jake’s hand closed over the remote in the drawer. “Those your toes I’m walking on?” he asked, in no hurry to shed light on the room or the inspiration behind an unorthodox and not-so-chance but gentle collision of feet.

“No harm done,” she said, and withdrew them.

Jake’s sock-clad feet begged to disagree. The harm was a sweet ache that started in his feet the moment she pulled hers away. Jake swallowed a sigh and hit the remote. Light flooded the room. Her silk-stocking clad feet were tucked beneath the chair. He reached to close the yawning desk drawer and in so doing, noticed her shoes neatly aligned beneath his desk. They looked good there. Like small white hens come home to roost. Foolish to think it, much less want to say so. He moved to one side, making elbow room for her as she put on reading glasses, tilted the lined pad beside the keyboard and began typing.

“Ready for some cake now?” he asked for want of a better excuse to regain her attention.

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

Curious as what so firmly held her focus, Jake reached for her tablet. His finger barely touched down when she whisked it away. He blinked, cupped his elbow in one hand and rubbed his chin. “So, what’s this you’re writing?”

“Not much at the rate I’m going,” she said, her fingers poised over the keyboard.

Jake leaned in, trying to read the screen. Her silky lashes swept upward, lush and long and thick. Strained patience flashed in hazel depths. “Sorry,” he said, and backed away.

“For what?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly. But I didn’t get that much of a reaction when I dropped my crane on your car,” he said, wincing.

Color flooded Shelby’s face. Grabbing the tablet was pure reflex. Just as strong was the urge to erase the screen with a keystroke rather than to let him read her work before it was finished and polished. Unwilling to admit how raw and inadequate her first drafts seemed to her, and how she cringed at the thought of anyone else reading them, she swept a curl behind her ear, and explained, “What I’m working on is a rough draft. If I let you read it, it weakens my motivation to finish the thing.”

“Top secret, eh? Now I am intrigued.”

“You have no hang-ups?” she countered quietly.

“Classified, like your story,” he claimed.

His gentle jesting cooled her rising hackles and left a foolish grin on her face. She wiped it clean, curled a leg beneath her and offered, “Shall I have my publisher send you a copy?”

“Will you sign it for me?” he pressed, mouth tilting.

“If you like.”

“Just your name? Or could I have an inscription, too? Something like, ‘To Jake, You Have My Number.”’

“I sure do,” she countered.

He laughed and she smiled and the anchor eased its grip on her heart. But only for a moment. The interest flickering in his eyes reminded her that Patrick had once looked at her that way, too. Rejection, like honeybees, left the stinger in. Shelby averted her face before the heat of that bite brushed her cheeks.

“What’s it take?” asked Jake. At her blank glance, he propped a hip on the corner of the desk and added, “Time wise, I mean.”

“From here to here in a year.” She tapped her temple, then spread her hands as if she held a book. “Unless I get stuck.”

“I better go then, and let you get back to it,” said Jake.

Her smile, though fleeting, did nice things to her face. Like the blush on a peach. Though on closer scrutiny, Jake found that pinch never quite left her eyes. Her lashes came down, closing the beaches on those hazel seas. Intrigued, he wondered at her thoughts. That, at least was rational. The impulse to sweep her out of her chair and into his arms to kiss those pinch lines into retreat was not.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, and came to his feet.

“Good night. Thanks for everything,” she called, breathing easier now that he was leaving.

Jake wished she would use his name. He hesitated a moment, realizing he hadn’t used hers, either. It formed on his tongue. But already, she had shut him out. Her white fingers were over the keys, skipping like whitecaps. Divorce, Jake had heard, was second only in trauma to suffering the death of a loved one. Where, then, did getting jilted rank? Somewhere in the ballpark with desertion, he wagered. He was still seeing the consequences of that in Paula’s life, and Joy’s too, as she struggled to fill the void left by a father who didn’t know she existed.

Jake checked on Gram before turning in. It was a long while later when he heard water running and knew Shelby had called it quits for the night. He rubbed one eye and peered at the illuminated dial of his alarm clock. It was 3:00 a.m. And after the day she had had. She had stamina.

Jake rolled over and slept until the aroma of perking coffee stirred him awake. It was six. He could have grabbed another hour of sleep. But these days, Gram and the stove were an unpredictable mix.

Shelby smelled coffee and heard voices. In the time it took her to get her bearings, she remembered she had no car, and nowhere she had to be today. On that note, she dozed off again and got up a good while later to an empty house. A shower and a dash of lipstick helped a face in need of some color. She rubbed scented hand cream from elbows to fingertips and went downstairs.

There was coffee in a carafe and cold bacon and biscuits on the kitchen table. Shelby made a biscuit sandwich and poured coffee. She ate quickly, carried her dishes to the sink, turned on the tap and her thoughts, too. By the time she reached the study, words were crowding, wanting out.

Ringing church bells drew Shelby to the window at noon. Moments later, Jake’s Jeep turned up the back alley and parked in the drive alongside his building. He climbed out loosening his tie and circled to help Gram Kate from the front seat. Three more cars pulled in behind him. Doors flew open and a blend of Jacksons piled out. Shelby assumed they were Jacksons—lanky frames and blue eyes were in the majority. She watched Joy turn down the alley. A boy pedaled toward her on his bicycle. Joy hurried to meet him. They slipped out of sight behind Jake’s sign building.

Jake climbed the stairs to change out of his suit and saw the guest room was empty. He returned downstairs and found Shelby at his desk. Her fingers moved over the keys. She paused, lips pursed, and typed on, unaware of him in the open door. It was the sort of concentration he looked for in crane operators. He could have used some of it himself yesterday on the bank building, letting his eye stray to a pretty woman climbing out of her car in the lot below. For all the good it did. It was plain to see that her heart was still attached to the one who had cut her free.

Smitten in spite of himself, he called to her, “How’s the story coming?”

She glanced away from the screen. “Pretty well, thank you.”

“Doesn’t seem like much of a vacation, closed in with your work.”

“It’s a treat not to have to squeeze it in between my hours at the office.” She pushed her chair back, and rose smoothing her dress. It was sleeveless, with a fitted yoke, brown as toast. A drift of yellow pleats fell from the bodice.

“That’s a nice sunflower dress you’re wearing,” said Jake, though the loose fit left a lot to the imagination.

“And you said you didn’t know flowers,” she countered.

Jake grinned. “No, but I’ve pulled enough weeds…”

“It’s a weed? A sunflower is a weed?” she said doubtfully. “Are you sure?”

“Look it up.” Jake reached for his favorite gardening book on the desk, and pushed it her way.

Shelby thumbed through dog-eared pages and plunked back into her chair. “You’re right.”

His mouth tipped at her disheartened sigh. “I haven’t ruined it for you, have I?”

“‘A rose by any other name’…” She set the quote adrift, and tucked a curl behind her ear. The pencil tunneled there wobbled and fell in her lap. “How was church?”

“Crowded,” he replied, and ducked under the desk to retrieve the pencil. “But we would have made room for you.”

“I overslept. By the way, I’ve been thinking about that loaner car. Perhaps it’s time I phoned my insurer.”

“No use trying on Sunday,” he told her, fingers brushing hers as he returned the pencil. Her nails were trimmed short, but neatly curved and tinted ivory. “Anyway, I checked with my agent last night. He said he would have a car for you sometime tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Shelby said. “I’ll stop by your shop then, and get the manuscripts out of the trunk.”

“If they’re that important, we can go today,” he offered.

“Could we? I wouldn’t bother you with it, but I’m responsible for them,” she explained.

“We’ll go after lunch. My sisters brought covered dishes for lunch,” he said.

“What can I do to help?”

“You’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”

She smiled and followed him into the kitchen where he made introductions, then slipped upstairs to change out of his suit.

There was enough physical similarity between Jake’s sisters that Shelby had a hard time remembering who was who. It was even more difficult with the children. Shelby counted seven boys and six girls. Then Joy came dashing in, flushed and fresh as a rosebud dressed all in pink.

“Where you been?” asked one of her cousins.

Joy pinched his arm.

“Ouch!” he squealed. “Quit it, Blondie Blake-a-cake,”

Joy’s giggly cousins shouted with laughter and took up the chant: “Blondie Blake-a-cake! Blondie bake-a-cake, Blake-a-cake,”

“You better quit calling me that or you won’t be eating any of my cake,” warned Joy with a lofty sniff.

“Another cake? You’re turning into a regular Sara Lee,” Jake said, joining the teasing.

He had changed into khakis and a loose-fitting shirt that suited his eyes. The writer in Shelby made mental notes. Preoccupied with the process, she saw his smile shift to silent inquiry and realized her gaze had lingered too long. His smile came on again as their eyes met. The glow of it spread heat within, like bottled sunshine. Startled at her instinctive response, Shelby averted her glance and finished setting the table. When the dinner call came, Jake held a chair for her, another for Joy, and settled between them.

The family joined hands for the blessing. Once again, Shelby found herself comparing Jake’s broad, callused palm to the one her heart knew so well. With an effort, she focused on the bountiful table and the congeniality of Jake’s family. The adults were welcoming, the children boisterous and lively. The meal, right through to dessert, was seasoned with humor and affection, and a balm to Shelby’s bruised spirits.

“Scratch chocolate. Lemon’s my favorite,” Jake told Joy as he dribbled warm lemon sauce over his slice of lemon cake. “Second only to butter bean.”

“Butter bean? I never heard of butter bean cake,” said Joy.

Everyone laughed.

Joy’s cheeks turned as pink as her dress. “You made that up,” she accused, and flipped her braid over her shoulder.

“It’s served in all the finest restaurants,” claimed Jake. “A real delicacy. Isn’t that right, Shelby?” he prompted with a gentle elbow and a blue-eyed wink.

Shelby indicated her mouth was too full to answer.

Thwarted, Jake wagged his head. “And here we were about to cut you in on our after-dinner baseball game.”

The children gulped dessert, grabbed their baseball gloves and tramped out, arguing over teams. The men followed. Shelby stayed behind with Jake’s sisters to clear away dinner and learned how to load and start the dishwasher.

Afterward Paula, Wendy and Jake’s other sisters joined Gram Kate on the veranda. Shelby slipped up to her room for her notebook. She was on her way down to the study when Jake met her on the stairs.

“You’re not going to spend your afternoon working, surely,” he chided.

“I’m behind,” she explained.

“Good position to be in.” Grinning, he pivoted on the step. “You won’t go wrong. Fall in behind me, and I’ll take you out for some air.”

“I meant behind on my work,” she protested.

“Even God rested from His work on the seventh day.”

His plainspoken logic nudged Shelby’s conscience. But it was his coaxing smile that tipped the scales. “You’re right, you know.” Capitulating, she followed him downstairs.

“You want to pitch?” he asked on the way outdoors.

“No, thanks. Words are the only game I have any success with. Anyway, I’m resting. Remember?”

Jake chuckled at having his own words fed back to him. He left her with his sisters, and joined his team of Jackson progeny waiting in the yard. Shelby shaded her eyes and watched from a wicker lounger a makeshift game of men and kids and elastic rules that stretched to accommodate the smallest among them.

“So tell us, Shelby. What is it you’re writing about?” asked Jake’s youngest sister, Wendy.

“Teens,” Shelby said.

“Joy’s twelve, and already, I feel like I could do a book on teens!” exclaimed Paula.

In the company of her sisters, Paula was just one talker among many. Shelby’s gaze returned to the game, and Jake, now hunkered down behind home plate with a catcher’s mitt in hand.

“Hey, batter, batter,” he chanted as a young nephew toddled up to bat. After the second strike, Jake dropped his glove and helped the pint-size batter swing.

The little guy was stunned when the bat cracked the ball. “Jimmy hit!” he cried. “Jimmy hit!”

“Run, Jimmy! Run!” hollered Jimmy’s father, Curtis.

Jimmy froze, clutching the bat. Jake scooped him up and ran the bases with him. Jimmy was still clinging to the bat when they crossed home plate. He beamed as Jake set him down amidst his cheering teammates.

“Jimmy hit,” he said again.

“Jimmy sure did!” Jake heaved Jimmy aloft and onto his shoulder and ran a victory lap.

“Jake needs a family of his own,” Wendy commented.

“Wendy hasn’t been married long,” Paula said to Shelby. “The blush is still on the rose.”

“But the kids do love Jake,” pointed out Jimmy’s mom, Christine. “Joy thinks the sun rises and sets on him.”

“She should. He’s always been there for us,” Paula stated.

“That’s all good and well. But it’s time he was thinking about a nest of his own.” Wendy turned a beaming smile on Shelby. “Say! Do you have any friends we could set him up with?”

“I could probably think of someone. But it would be a long drive for him,” Shelby replied, rising from her chair. She caught Paula rolling her eyes, and angled for the door, adding, “Excuse me, would you? I left my sunglasses upstairs.”

“That was real subtle, Wen,” Paula chided Wendy.

“What?” protested Wendy with feigned innocence. “All I said was, did she know anyone.”

Restless, Shelby retrieved her sunglasses, and on impulse, phoned her parents. No one answered. She wasn’t surprised. They were very busy. Even in childhood, it was a catch-as-catch-can proposition.

She left a message explaining the circumstances that had forced a change of plans, where she was staying and how to reach her. As she did so, she could almost see them trading benign and somewhat surprised glances at her bid to reassure them she was fine. It wouldn’t occur to them to think otherwise.

Ball game forgotten, Shelby let herself into Jake’s study, closed the door and turned on the computer. Time fell away as she polished her first chapter.

THE FIELD

Chapter One

The sun was rising as Cheryl gathered with half a dozen sleepy-eyed teens beneath the park pavilion. Yesterday’s rain had distorted the bill of her Weed Buster’s cap. Her sneakers were stiff with dried mud and the edges of her cutoff shorts were unraveling.

“So where’s the boss?” she asked one of the boys waiting there.

“Who cares? he said. “Waiting’s easy cash.”

Cheryl wished she could be so carefree. She looked up the empty street, then sat down on a picnic table to wait. As the minutes stretched into half an hour with no sign of Mr. Weedman, the rest of the kids picked up their lunches and hoes and ambled away, Dudley among them.

But Cheryl stayed, pacing now. He would be along anytime with a logical explanation. He would apologize for keeping her waiting. They would round up the other kids and go to the field.

Seven-thirty and still no Weedman. Where was he? Why didn’t he come? She needed to work. Needed the money. Needed to kill weeds and self-doubts. Blue-eyed dirt-track speed-demon Jack Cook, in not exposing her, had given her purpose. She wanted to be who he thought she could be.

Seven forty-five. Get a brain, Cheryl. He isn’t coming! She picked up her lunch cooler, her hoe. And yet…what harm was there in waiting a few more minutes?

Eight o’clock. No Weedman. Cheryl was angry now. And scared. She tried to reason away the fear. But she was cold inside. Cold with the growing conviction that something was terribly wrong. That she had seen the last of Wiley Weedman.

And she was dead right.

“So here you are! Why aren’t I surprised?”

Shelby looked to find Jake leaning in the door, a grass stain on one knee of his khakis and his baseball cap in hand. “Who won?” she asked, her eyes returning to the screen.

“Hard to say when it erupts into a brawl,” he said. “I called the game. Gram separated them as best she could, put them in their cars and sent them home.”

“Hmm,” Shelby replied, struggling against the gravitational pull of her story.

“It tuckered her out, until it was all she could do to climb in the last car out the drive. She said don’t wait supper, she’ll make them feed her before she comes home.” Jake crossed to the window and lowered the blinds. “If you can find a stopping place there, we’ll go into town and rescue your homework. May as well eat while we’re at it.”

“Is it that time already?”

“Getting close,” he said. “If you’re not hungry, we could go for a walk.”

“After an afternoon of baseball?” Trying to talk words at odds with the words she was typing was too much. Shelby looked up just as Jake perched on the corner of the desk and reached for her hand-scrawled notes.

“Please don’t…”

“…read your stuff,” he finished, withholding the tablet.

Shelby restrained herself from leaping across the desk and wrestling her tablet away. His baiting smile triggered heat, which she strove to hide, even as she tried to divert his attention from her scribbled notes. “About this walk. Would it take us past Mr. Wiseman’s house?” she asked.

“I guess it could. Why?”

Shelby hit a key, watched the screen darken and pushed out of her chair. “Has he turned up yet?”

“Not that I know of,” Jake said.

“Do I have time to run upstairs and get my walking shoes?”

“Sure. No hurry. Aren’t you forgetting something?” he called after her.

Shelby turned in the door and caught the tablet as he pitched it across the room. “You’re a tease, Jake.”

He crooked a brow and countered, “Here I thought you had eyes only for your story.”

“You noticed?”

“That you weren’t hanging on my every word? Of course I noticed. What man wouldn’t?”

He spoke in jest. And still it gave Shelby pause, for until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone but Patrick would find her preoccupation with her story objectionable. She mulled the thought as she climbed the stairs to freshen up. What good was a forward view if her future became a repeat of the same conflict she had had with Patrick? Hearing the phone ring, Shelby tucked away the thought with her tablet, splashed her face and combed her hair and returned downstairs.

“I thought she left with you,” she heard Jake say as she joined him in the living room. “No, she’s not here. Sure, I’ll send a carton with her if she turns up.”

“Who’s missing?” Shelby asked.

“Joy. She told her mom she would walk home. Paula thought maybe she could catch her before she left. She’s out of eggs.” He held the door for Shelby.

The air had cooled. It was fragrant with the neighbor’s freshly clipped grass and pine needles. A canopy of old trees shaded the crumbling sidewalk.

“Liberty Flats,” murmured Shelby when the silence grew heavy. “Kind of an odd name for rolling prairie, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is if you don’t know its story,” Jake replied. “The township was settled by abolitionist farmers from the east. Along with forty acres of land, each settler got a lot in a little town they called Liberty. Some men in the colony ran a station on the underground railroad. Thus, the name.”

Shelby listened as he explained that when the railroad bypassed Liberty a few years before the Civil War, the tiny village was doomed to return to the prairie.

“A guy by the name of Dan Flats came along and offered to sell the town fathers some land adjacent to the tracks, if they wanted to pull up stakes and relocate Liberty. He quoted a bargain rate with the stipulation that they name the new town for him,” Jake continued. “So when the ground was frozen, Liberty loaded their houses and sheds onto ox-driven sleds and moved east three miles. And Liberty Flats was born,”

“Interesting stuff,” Shelby said, silently appraising the easy pride he took in his hometown.

“It gets better,” Jake continued. “A few years went by, and come to find out Flats didn’t have clear title on the land he had sold. The public was put out enough at dapper Dan, they tried to change the town name.”

“To what?”

“That was the problem. They couldn’t agree. By then, Dan’s grown sons had put down roots in town. When it came to a vote, Liberty Flats got seven votes. The rest were split between a dozen other suggestions. So Liberty Flats carried the day,” explained Jake. “Dan was pleased enough, he nailed together a little hotel by the railroad tracks, and spent the rest of his life in Liberty Flats, trying to clear himself of any wrongdoing. Claimed he’d been taken in by a slick land agent.”

“Was that true?”

“According to Dan’s descendants, it is,” Jake said. But his grin left room for doubt.

Modern concrete gave way to quaint brick sidewalk. Flower beds dotted green lawns that unfolded toward the street. Jake paused beside a picket fence. “This is it. Wilt Wiseman’s place.”

Shelby stopped in front of the two-story clapboard of chipping paint and fading glory. The grass needed cutting, the newspapers were piling up and a garbage can at the back corner of the house was overflowing.

Shelby was about to walk on when she heard a clatter. Joy, still clad in her pink dress, darted into view without seeing them. She grabbed the garbage can by one handle and dragged it behind the house.

“Now what do you suppose she’s up to?” Jake opened the gate, took a beaten path skirting the house and disappeared around the far corner.

Chapter Five

Shelby’s nerves leapt as a young man came racing from the far side of the house. He was a dead ringer for the boy she had seen at noon in the alley by Jake’s sign building. As she stood watching, he jerked a bicycle out from beneath a bush, pedaled through the open gate, and tore down the street. A moment later, Jake returned with Joy, whining and dragging her feet.

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