Free Redemption Road (Jackson Falls #5) by Laurie Breton Page B

snow, with the world all soft and dark and muffled. Living in Florida,
she’d forgotten about that magic, but tonight brought it rushing back to her.
    He tucked his hands into his pockets and teetered on the balls of
his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About the meatloaf.”
    She shrugged. Said, “Kids and dogs. They have no filters, but they
certainly have minds of their own. What can you do?”
    He had a nice smile, this annoying man who’d stolen her childhood
right out from under her. Beneath the porch light, crystalline flakes swirled
around his head, sending flashes of fire through his thick mop of brown hair. “Glad
you can look at it that way,” he said.
    There was something about him. That face that could have been
chiseled out of New Hampshire granite, dusted with the faint shadow of dark
beard. The soft Georgia drawl, and those blue eyes that seemed to see right
through her. She didn’t want to like him, but somehow, during the course of the
evening, he’d grown on her. Not in a romantic way, of course. She wasn’t at
that place in her life, might never be again. It was way too soon. Irv had been
dead for just six months, and she was nowhere near done grieving. She didn’t
want to mislead him, didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. Didn’t want
to forge any connections that would make leaving difficult when the time came
to go.
    But right now, she could really use a friend.
    It was still early, not yet ten, and she had another long, lonely
night ahead of her. He was childless tonight, thanks to an impromptu sleepover
for Annabel and that thieving canine of hers. Colleen was dreading spending the
next hour or two in her apartment alone, with nothing but a clock radio for
company. Being alone like that gave her too much time to think, too much time
to ponder what might have been, too much time to fall back into old habits that
were best forgotten.
    “I imagine,” she said, “that you have to be up at the crack of
dawn.”
    “Actually,” he said, “I don’t.”
    “Oh?”
    “Billy does the milking on weekends. I get to sleep in until six.”
    Surprised, she said, “My nephew Billy?”
    “One and the same. I guess you could say I inherited him when I
bought the farm from your daddy. Billy’s been working there since he was a kid.
Without him, I’d be clueless. I grew up on a farm, but it was nothin’ like this
one. We had twelve cows. Meadowbrook has a herd of almost a hundred.”
    She debated her next words, decided what the hell, she might as
well go for it. “I have a proposition for you. I need a picture hung, and I
figure you owe me. I washed your dishes. And your dog. You hang my picture, we’ll
call it even. As an added bonus, I’ll throw in a cup of hot cocoa. I’d offer
beer, but I don’t have any alcohol in the house.”  She shoved her fists into the
pockets of her new winter coat. “I don’t drink.”
    “On a night like this, hot cocoa will hit the spot. I’d be happy
to oblige.”
    He followed her up the stairs to her apartment, waited while she
unlocked the door. Inside the kitchen, she slipped out of her coat and hung it
over the back of a chair. “The picture’s on the couch,” she said. “The hammer
and nails are on the coffee table. I want it hung on the wall behind the couch,
a little above eye level. My eye level. I trust your judgment. I’ll
start the cocoa.”
    Harley removed his coat, kicked off his snowy shoes, and disappeared
into the living room. Colleen took out a saucepan, poured in a little water
from the tap, and set it on the burner. She took two mugs from the cupboard and
found the box of instant cocoa mix she’d bought earlier, then tore open a pair
of foil packets, poured the contents into the mugs, and waited for the water to
boil.
    From the living room came the tap of the hammer she’d borrowed
from her brother-in-law. Harley cussed once, a muffled oath, and she wondered,
belatedly, just how much he knew about swinging a hammer. He