“Too fussy. Can I go over to Marcie’s?”
“What about homework?”
“I don’t have any except that dumb Africa report. He’s going to help me.” Jason met her smile with a lifted brow. “Aren’t you?”
Jason would have dared any man within a hundred miles to resist that look. “Yes, I am.”
“Clara, you can’t—”
“It’s okay ’cause I asked him to dinner.” She beamed, almost sure her mother would be trapped by the good manners she was always talking about. “There’s no school now for ten whole days so I can do the report after dinner, can’t I?”
Jason decided it wouldn’t hurt to apply a little pressure from his side. “I spent six weeks in Africa once. Clara might just get an A.”
“She could use it,” Faith muttered. They stood together, looking at her. Her heart already belonged to both of them. “I guess I’d better start dinner.”
Clara was already racing across the yard next door before Faith pulled the door of the Doll House shut and turned the sign around to read Closed.
“I’m sorry if she was a nuisance, Jason. She has a habit of badgering people with questions.”
“I like her,” he said simply and watched Faith fumble with the latch.
“That’s nice of you, but you don’t have to feel obliged to help her with this report.”
“I said I would. I keep my word, Faith.” He touched a pin in her hair. “Sooner or later.”
She had to look at him then. It was impossible not to. “You’re welcome to dinner, of course.” Her fingers worried the buttons of her coat as she spoke. “I was just going to fry chicken.”
“I’ll give you a hand.”
“No, that’s not—”
He cut her off when he closed his fingers over hers. “I never used to make you nervous.”
With an effort, she steadied herself. “No, you didn’t.” He’d be gone again in a few days, she reminded herself. Out of her life. Maybe she should take whatever time she was given. “All right then, you can help.”
He took her arm as they crossed the lawn. Though he felt her initial resistance, he ignored it. “I went to see Widow Marchant. I had cookies right from the oven.”
Faith relaxed as she pushed open the door of her own kitchen. “She has every word you’ve ever written.”
The kitchen was twice the size of the one he’d just left and there were signs of a child in the pictures hanging on the front of the refrigerator and a pair of fuzzy slippers kickedinto a corner. Moving with habit, Faith switched on the burner under the kettle before she slipped out of her coat. She hung it on a peg by the door, then turned to take his. His hands closed over hers.
“You didn’t tell me Tom left you.”
She’d known it wouldn’t take him long to hear it, or long to question. “It’s not something I think about on a daily basis. Coffee?”
She draped his coat over a hook and turned to find him blocking her way. “What happened, Faith?”
“We made a mistake.” She said it calmly, even coolly. It was a tone he’d never heard from her before.
“But there was Clara.”
“Don’t.” Fury came into her eyes quickly and simmered there. “Leave it alone, Jason, I mean it. Clara’s my business. My marriage and divorce are my business. You can’t expect to come back now and have all the answers.”
They stood a moment, facing each other in silence. When the kettle let out a whistle, she seemed to breathe again. “If you want to help, you can peel some potatoes. They’re in the pantry over there.”
She worked systematically, he thought angrily, as she poured oil to heat in a skillet and coated chicken. Her temper was nothing new to him. He’d felt the brunt of it before, sometimes deflecting it, sometimes meeting it head-on. He also knew how to soothe it. He began talking, almost to himself at first, about some of the places he’d been. When he told her about waking with a snake curled next to his head while he’d been camping in South America, she laughed.
“I didn’t find it too funny at the time. I was out of the tent in five seconds flat, buck naked. My photographer got a very interesting roll of pictures. I had to pay him fifty to get the negatives.”
