River Road(13)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

Mason and Aaron had been sitting in the office of their very nice, very kind caseworker, having the facts of foster care life explained to them, when a gleaming gray SUV rolled into the parking lot. Mason knew that neither he nor Aaron would ever forget the sight of Deke striding into their lives. He was pretty sure the very nice, very kind caseworker would never forget it, either.

Deke had not been in uniform that day, but one look at him and you knew that he was hard-core military. It was there in his ramrod-straight bearing—his clean-shaven face, the high-and-tight hair, the neatly pressed shirt, polished boots, sleek wraparound dark glasses and the you-don’t-want-to-mess-with-me attitude.

When he walked through the door of the office, Mason and Aaron had stared at him, awed and thrilled. Mason knew in that moment that Uncle Deke had come to save them. For his part, Deke had taken one look at his nephews and nodded once, evidently satisfied with what he saw.

“Let’s go home, boys,” he said.

The very nice, very kind caseworker had given Deke close scrutiny, asked him a few questions, and then she had smiled. She, too, had been satisfied with what she saw.

Not everyone else in the office, including the very nice caseworker’s boss, was of the same mind. There had been some hasty, behind-closed-doors conversations, but the caseworker had triumphed. She had blazed through the formalities with lightning speed—a warrior of another sort, Mason thought.

And then Deke had taken Mason and Aaron home.

Home had been a series of military bases for a few years. Deke stopped deploying, but he stayed in the Army. There was a lot of relocating, but none of them had a problem with that. They had one another.

In the end they wound up in Summer River. Deke deployed one last time the summer Mason turned nineteen. Everyone knew why. The family needed the extra money. Three divorces had wiped out what little Deke had managed to save, and Aaron was destined for college.

Living with Deke gave Mason a chance to discover the truth. In addition to taking a couple of beers or a glass of whiskey in the evenings, Deke did like women. But he treated both the alcohol and the women with respect. He taught Mason and Aaron to do the same.

Mason concluded that Deke was neither an alcoholic nor a womanizer. But he was pretty sure that Deke had possessed another secret. Deke had been more than a little addicted to war. He had given up that addiction to take on another mission—raising his nephews.

He had gone to war one last time to help pay for Aaron’s education, but when he came home that time he hung up his shield for good. He bought the old hardware store and settled down to live a different life. As far as Mason could tell, Deke was content now. Either the old addiction had burned out or Deke had changed.

“Who are you seeing tonight?” Deke asked. “You might as well tell me, because we both know it will be all over town by tomorrow morning.”

“It’s no secret,” Mason said. “I’m going to drop by Sara Sheridan’s old place.”

Deke did look genuinely shocked now. “You’ve got a date with little Lucy?”

“She’s not so little anymore.”

Deke chuckled. “Gained a little weight, has she? Generally speaking, that’s a good thing in a woman.”

Mason turned and looked at him. “I meant she’s not sweet sixteen anymore. She’s still little, though. Sort of. But she’s all grown up.”

Deke grinned. “Yeah, I hear that happens. That was quick work on your part. She just got into town yesterday. How’d you manage a date so damn fast?”

“She’s planning to do some repairs before she puts the house on the market. Her first priority is to open up the fireplace in the front room. She says her aunt blocked it with a lot of tile because it was inefficient. I told Lucy I’d see if I could handle the job and maybe save her a few bucks. She’s going to need the name of a reliable contractor, by the way.”

“Hang on here, you call tearing out some old tiles a date?”

“I’m going over to her place at approximately five-thirty in the evening. I’m doing her a favor, and she is going to repay me by cooking me dinner. What do you call it?”

Deke pondered that briefly and then smiled his slow smile. “You could call that a date.”

“Certainly struck me that way. As long as you’re here, I’ll let you close up by yourself.” Mason took his keys out of his pocket. “I need to go back to the cabin and clean up.”

“Don’t use all the hot water. Remember, I’ve got a date tonight, too. Becky and I are going to shoot some pool and do some dancing out at Hank’s.”

Mason shook his head. “You’ve got a pool game lined up and I’m taking out some old tiles. We’re a couple of real wild guys, aren’t we?”

“Definition of wild changes as you get older.”

“I’m starting to notice that.”

8

Lucy took a sip of her white wine.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“You were right,” Mason said. “Whoever did this job was a world-class DIY amateur.”

“That pretty much describes Aunt Sara. She had a lot of talents, but home repair was not among them.”

They were standing in front of the big fireplace, contemplating the tiles that walled up the front. A short time earlier, Mason had replaced the last of the burned-out bulbs in the ceiling fixtures that she had been unable to reach. After examining the wobbly stepladder in the hall closet, she had concluded that he’d had a point about the dangers of ladders.

The lights were on throughout the first floor now, but it seemed to Lucy that the house was as gloomy as ever and no room was darker than the front room, with its cold, closed-up fireplace. Things would be different when she would finally be able to get a real fire going.

Mason swallowed some of his beer, leaned down and used a chisel to poke at one of the tiles. Some of the grout that secured it to the backing crumbled into fine dust.

He straightened and set the beer on a side table. “The grout is in bad shape. I could probably take this down with my bare hands.”

“I wonder why she didn’t call in a professional to install the tiles,” Lucy said.

Mason shook his head and studied the raggedly arranged tiles with the expression of a doctor surveying a doomed patient. “We in the hardware business see this type of mistake over and over again. Someone insists on a do-it-yourself job to try to save a few bucks. The result is that it ends up costing more to fix the bad workmanship than the project would have cost if it had been done right in the first place.”