She searched the backyard for Riley and found him kneeling near the trunk of her favorite old honey locust. The bright orange chain saw case gaped open on the ground and he was fitting the saw back in.
Was he finished? Yes. A minute later, she watched him close the case and then stand up again and head for the house. Only by sheer luck and Chester fortuitously lunging out of the way, she managed to wheel away from the kitchen window just seconds before he rapped on the back door and then opened it without waiting for her to answer it.
He filled her house, large and masculine, in the space that had become rather girly since Jeff moved out.
“That should take care of your arboreal needs for a while.”
“Until the next big windstorm anyway. Thank you. I appreciate all your help.”
He shrugged. “No big deal. I had a free morning. Anyway, I’d rather be outside doing yard work than holed up in my office down at the station filling out reports.”
“Will you have some lunch? I made a couple of sandwiches.” She pointed to the table with more than a little embarrassment. The sandwiches she’d made looked clumsy and crooked on the mismatched china, all she could find in the dishwasher. She couldn’t reach up into the cupboard easily, so she’d been forced to make do.
Riley didn’t seem to notice anything wrong with her efforts. He gaped at the table and then looked back at her.
“You’re in pain and can barely move, Claire,” he exclaimed. “The last thing you need to be worrying about is feeding me.”
“I’m feeling fine. Great, actually.” She didn’t add that she had felt more useful making that pitiful excuse for a sandwich than at any time since the accident. “Anyway, it’s only a sandwich, Riley. It’s not like a five-course meal Alex would fix or anything.”
“Thank you, then,” he said after a pause. “It looks delicious and I am starving. I should probably wash some of this dirt and sawdust off first, though.”
“The bathroom’s down the hall, first door on the left.”
When he returned a few moments later, his hair was damp around his face and a couple of water droplets still clung to his neck.
He looked completely delicious. She, on the other hand, was not at her best. She had chosen a plain cotton dress with tiny sprigs of blue flowers, something easy to pull over her various medical hardware. She had pulled her hair back in a headband and even put on a little makeup, but her spruce-up efforts seemed rather pathetic.
He slid into a chair at the table and looked around her sunny, comfortable kitchen.
“I have to say, this place has really changed since the last time I saw it, back when that scary-mean Mrs. Schmidt lived here.”
“She wasn’t scary or mean. Just old and lonely.”
“Do you always look for the best in people?”
She could feel her face heat. “If you take the time to see past the gruff, you can usually find something good.”
“Maybe you should try being a cop for a day or two. That would probably change your perspective.” He picked out a pickle spear from the jar she’d managed to wrangle down off the shelf of the refrigerator and took a chomp out of it.
She sipped at her water. “No, thank you. I’ll stick with my bead store. I like being foolish and naive.”
“I didn’t call you either of those things. I actually think it’s...sweet.”
She didn’t want to be sweet. Not when it came to Riley.
“So tell me about the house,” he said. “How did you come to be the proud owner of Mrs. Schmidt’s crumbling old brick pile?”
“I’ve dreamed of living here from the time I used to walk past it on my way to school,” she confessed.
“Even as creepy as it used to look, with the grime and the cobwebs and the shutters falling off their hinges?”
“I could always see past all the dusty corners to the gem inside. The bones were good and I knew with a little elbow grease, this place could truly sparkle.”
“So you came back to town ready to make your dreams come true.”
“Something like that. Mrs. Schmidt died a few months before Jeff finished his residency and was ready to open his practice. When we started looking around for houses, her children were just a week or so from putting it on the market. Our real estate agent put us in touch with them and we bought it just like that.”
Jeff hadn’t wanted an old house. He had wanted to build their own place from the very beginning, something modern and airy, but she had convinced him this was the perfect place to raise their children.
Her own ignorance still shamed her. She hadn’t wanted to see how different—and how distant—she and Jeff were becoming over the years.
“Did you gut the whole thing?” Riley asked.
“Close enough. It took about a year of hard work to make it the home we wanted.” And while she had been stripping layer after layer of wallpaper, painting, refinishing old woodwork to create a warm, lovely home for her family, her marriage had been crumbling around her feet without her noticing.