A Merry Little Christmas (6 page)

“Who’s we?”

“Rehab & Renew—we call it R & R. Small joke there, because we actually work our tails off. It’s a group here in Springfield. A Christian organization. It’s their ministry, and I like helping out. A great change from office work. In some ways, it really is relaxing. Why don’t you join us?”

He stared at her, his eyes bluer in the moonlight than she had anticipated. “What’s driving you, Lara? All this helping stuff?”

“I’m a Christian.”

“So am I, but I don’t spend all my free time doing charity work. I take care of my family, and I write out a check for the church.”

“Then you’re missing the blessing.”

As they reached the front door, Lara realized the cottage had gone quiet. “Wait a second,” she said. “The baby’s asleep. I won. You owe me dinner. Ha.”

“Tomorrow,” he said quickly. “Six.”

“Now wait—”

“Too late, Dr. Crane. We have a date.” As he was speaking, his cell phone warbled. He reached for the holster on his belt. “Melissa?” he said into the phone, his voice softening. “Hey there. Yeah, about tomorrow…”

Unable to trust herself, Lara turned away from him and started for her car. As she slipped the key into the ignition, she shook her head in disbelief. She was
not
going on a date with Jeremiah Maddox. Who was Melissa? And why on earth did she even care?

Jeremiah drove down a street lined with dilapidated houses and thanked God for the custom-tinted windows on his BMW. He couldn’t find Lara in the crew of people with ladders and paint buckets who swarmed the run-down clapboard home, and he knew he was well hidden inside his car. Turning right at the four-way stop, he considered going on home. This whole idea had
mistake
written all over it.

Melissa had phoned the night before, calling to ask if Jeremiah minded changing their lunch date from a tearoom to a small café across the street from her favorite antiques shop. She’d been hearing rumors that its chicken salad was to die for. As Jeremiah had watched Lara Crane’s little car back out of his driveway, he heard himself telling Melissa that he needed to cancel their date entirely. Something had come up, he said.

Did it have to do with work? she had asked him. With architecture?

Rounding the block and starting down the street a second time, Jeremiah recalled answering in the affirmative. It was work. Architecture.

As the BMW again approached the old house, a man with a ladder over one shoulder turned to talk to someone on the sidewalk. The ladder swung sideways, just missing the car’s tinted front window. Jeremiah stepped on the brake pedal, let out a breath…and there she stood. A halo of white paint spatters crowned the curly ponytail that topped her head. A brush in one hand. Freckles. She was chattering to the man with the ladder—her green eyes entirely too sparkly, in Jeremiah’s opinion. He pulled over to the curb and got out.

“White paint?” he said. “Worst color you can put on a wall.”

Lara focused on him and her eyes widened. “Jeremiah.”

“Thought I’d drop by for some R & R.”

“How did you find us?”

“Phone book.” He hooked his thumbs in the back pockets of his jeans. “Someone’s kid answered and gave me the address where you’re working today.”

“That would be my granddaughter.” The ladder man held out a hand. “She lives with us. Might as well be ours. I’m Bill Scroggins. My wife and I founded Rehab & Renew.”

“Pleased to meet you.” He shook the man’s hand. “I’m Jeremiah Maddox.”

“The architect?” Scroggins’s face sobered. “Listen, Mr. Maddox, this home is not for sale. Miss Ethel lives here, and we’re making a few repairs for her. I read in the paper about you tearing down that old building a couple years back. R & R won’t help you with that kind of thing. We do nothing but rehab.”

“I came to help.” He glanced at Lara. “To help her.”

“Me? You did?” She swallowed. “But I’m…I thought tonight…”

He took a step backward. “Hey, if I’m not needed here—”

“Whoa now, buddy.” Scroggins hand shot out and caught his arm. “We’ll take all the help we can get. Lara, how about if you put him to work? I’ve got to climb up on the roof and check the flashing around that chimney. Miss Ethel says it’s been leaking for years.”

As the older man walked away, Lara pushed the sticky handle of the brush into Jeremiah’s palm. “You can paint the trim in the living room. We don’t have enough white for walls. We use goofed-up paint for those.”

“Goofed-up?”

She headed for the house. “The paint stores sometimes mix colors wrong. Or a customer changes her mind and returns a few gallons. It’s cheap, and no one minds a slightly oddball shade when they’re getting a fresh coat on their walls.”

“Who pays for all this? The flashing, the shingles, the paint?”

Lara swung around, green eyes suddenly narrowed. “Look, why are you here, Jeremiah? If you’d rather donate money, just make out a check to R & R. This work isn’t about atonement. It’s about giving. Don’t do it unless you really want to.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You came because of what I said last night. I guilted you into it.”

“I came for the blessing, Lara.”

Her expression softened. “Then you need to meet Miss Ethel.”

Jeremiah hesitated. He had come to be near Lara Crane. He spent the bulk of his time with developers, lawyers, draftsmen and designers. Teenagers took up what few hours remained in each day. Once in a while, he carved out time for something different.

As he climbed a set of rickety steps, ducked his head and entered a dimly lit room, Jeremiah felt a stab of doubt. Truth was, he didn’t really want to meet Miss Ethel or anyone else on this street. He certainly didn’t relish the idea of breathing paint fumes in this poorly ventilated house. He should have gone antiquing.

“Miss Ethel, this is Jeremiah Maddox,” Lara said. “He’s here to help.”

“Well, bless my soul! Aren’t you just the handsomest thing to come along for many a moon?”

Jeremiah peered down at a tiny, withered woman with sharp brown eyes and hands like bird claws. Toothless, she smiled up at him, and suddenly the image of Tobias Muraya flooded Jeremiah’s heart.

“How do you do, Miss Ethel?” he asked, dropping to one knee and gently taking fingers knotted with rheumatoid arthritis. She was seated in a large, saggy chair with gold velvet upholstery worn away on the arms.

“I’ve been better, let me tell you.” She spoke in a quavering voice and patted his hand as she talked. “I used to work for the telephone company, sweetheart. Back in the day, I was quite something. I could really get around—raised five children and buried two husbands. But I’m tired all the time now. My kidneys don’t work right, and my ticker’s nearly given out. I tell you what, sometimes it’s all I can do to get myself out of bed in the morning. Would you like a cup of tea? Did you know you can make a box of twenty-five tea bags last for a month if you’re willing to use them a couple times each? I don’t mind sharing, not with a fellow as purty as you. Can you find the contraption that nice nurse brought over the other day for me…sort of a cane with legs?”

“Thanks, but I just ate breakfast, Miss Ethel,” Jeremiah said, spotting the cane leaning against her chair. “Why don’t you stay put, and I’ll paint the crown molding and the baseboards for you. How about that?”

“What on earth is crown molding?” She smiled at him. “Well, you just do whatever you want, sweetie. You’re so good-lookin’ I could keel right over.”

“Don’t do that, Miss Ethel,” Lara warned. She took an afghan knitted in orange, blue and black stripes and tucked it around the woman’s lap. “We need you to stay warm and tell people what to do. Especially Jeremiah. He’s clueless.”

Giving him a wink, Lara turned and headed for the front door. “Enjoy the blessing,” she said.

Jeremiah was about to tell her that he was hoping for a different kind of grace—the blessing of a woman with strawberry curls and green eyes and a voice that made his knees weak. But she was already out the door, letting the screen slam shut behind her.

“You ever had kidney trouble?” Miss Ethel asked as he dipped the brush into a can of white paint. “You know, we used to eat kidneys when I was a girl. My mama would kill a chicken and fry up the heart and liver—well, nearly all of it, to tell you the truth. Giblets, we called those leftover parts. I wonder if that’s why I’ve had so much kidney and heart trouble. Payback, you know. From the chickens. Do you suppose that could be it?”

“Lunchtime,” Lara sang out as she stepped back into the house. She half expected Jeremiah to have fled. Instead, he was down on his knees brushing glossy white paint onto the baseboards that rimmed Miss Ethel’s living room.

“I went to work for the telephone company during the war,” the old woman was saying. “My husband had been sent off to England. The European Theater of Operations, they called it. Left me at home with three babies and hardly enough to live on.”

“That must have been rough.” Jeremiah’s eyes locked on Lara’s face. “I asked Miss Ethel how she came to live in this house. She’s been telling me the story.”

“Ahh.” Lara smiled. “You’re up to World War Two. So, she’s told you about the births of Reggie, Betty and Sue.”

“We’ve gone back and forth a little. We began with the Depression. Then we traveled forward to the sixties when one of her sons got involved in drugs.”

“Reggie,” Miss Ethel spoke up. “That boy never was the same.”

“How about a break?” Lara asked, sensing Jeremiah’s need for a respite from Miss Ethel’s warbling monologue. “It’s noon. You can have half my sandwich, Jeremiah.”

He stood and wiped his hands on his jeans, smearing white paint on the thighs. “I could run home—”

“I’ve got enough for two. Come sit on the porch. It’s a beautiful day for late November.”

As Miss Ethel began eating the lunch that Meals on Wheels had just delivered, Lara led Jeremiah out into the sunny afternoon. She had managed to stay away from him all morning, determined not to read more into his appearance at the site than she should. After all, the man had a busy career, active sons, new renters…and Melissa. Whoever she was.

They settled onto the porch, side by side, leaning against the clapboard wall of the old house. The rest of the crew had scattered nearby—some picnicking on a blanket in the yard, others resting in their cars. Lara handed Jeremiah half of her sandwich, poured him a cup of cold water and set a container of carrots between them.

“Did you see the Murayas this morning?” she asked, making conversation to keep her mind off the fact that his knee was two inches from hers.

“When I left the house, the two boys were playing with the dog out in the backyard. Have you seen the dent in the front of Peter’s car? I’m surprised the thing even runs.”

“That was his third car accident.”

“You know every little detail about these people, don’t you? How many times Peter Muraya has wrecked his car. The names of Miss Ethel’s children.”

She chuckled. “Why do you think my students call me the Grill Sergeant? I ask a lot of questions. So, tell me about you. Why did you really come here today?”

“About me. Forty-three, divorced, two sons, architect. Christian.” He fell silent for a moment. “Not in that order…and I really came to see you.”

She nearly choked on a carrot. “You didn’t have to do that. We’re having dinner tonight, aren’t we? Or maybe you’ve changed your mind.”

“I keep my promises.” His blue eyes grazed her face. “I wanted to see you doing this…being yourself.”

“I’m never anything but me. And listen, Jeremiah, you’re a nice man. Nicer than I thought, actually. I don’t want you to think I’m being standoffish, but I can’t…I just really am not able to find a lot of time for people.”

“Your whole life is about people.”

“People like you.” She covered her face with her hands and let out a groan of frustration. “You cannot have come here for
me,
okay? I’m not your type, and besides, I’m so far beyond all that. I’m thirty-five, and I have a doctorate and a good job. I was engaged for six years to the wrong man. I decided I really enjoyed working in Africa and helping international students and rehabbing houses more than anything. More than dating or whatever you want to call it. I’m single, okay? I go out with men sometimes, but I don’t want to do the whole game. The serious stuff and the emotional roller coaster and all that. So don’t be here for
me,
okay? Be here for Miss Ethel.”

“Okay,” he said.

Jeremiah munched on a carrot while Lara died of mortification, wishing she had kept her mouth shut and wondering why God hadn’t given her a magic eraser to delete all the things she said and did that she wanted to take back.

“The front half of Miss Ethel’s house is caving in,” Jeremiah commented after a few minutes of awkward silence. “The leaking roof has rotted the frame. Patching the chimney isn’t going to help. It needs major work—new trusses, drywall and insulation. Might as well redo the wiring and plumbing while we’re at it. She’s got a nice archway between the living and dining areas, but if she ever needs a wheelchair, she won’t be able to get back to the bedroom or the bathroom. Those doorways need to be widened, and we’ll want to put a ramp onto the porch.”