“I’m Althea Morrison.”
J. T. exhaled and wiped his own hands, admittedly a trifle damp, on his jeans. “Pleased to meet you Mrs.Morrison. I’m John Tennessee McCord.”
“Huh. A man with three names is usually an assassin or a president.”
“Believe it or not, I’m an actor.”
“Well, that makes sense, too. That’s why I can see your teeth from here. You ought to be careful. You can blind someone with those things.”
“It’s a job requirement, the white teeth. It’s like a uniform.”
She chuckled again. “All right, no monkey business, Mr.John Tennessee McCord. You just fix her porch.”
“I’ll be in and out of here right quick. I’ll try not to make too much noise. You need anything done around your house while I’m at it?”
“I got some lightbulbs need changing. A few holes in the wall need patching. Sometimes this gun just goes off all by itself.”
“I’ll just bet it does,” he said soothingly.
“You want a Dr Pepper with a little rum on the rocks?” she called. “I’m about to fix myself one.”
“Dr Pepper and rum, huh? That’s a new one on me. That drink have a name? You should call it a Visit to the Doctor.”
She laughed merrily. “We might just get on, John Tennessee McCord.”
“Make mine with whisky,” he suggested. “We’ll call it the House Call.”
“House call!” she hooted, then disappeared into her house.
J. T. watched her go with a smile on his face.
And then he sighed and picked up his toolbox.
A sane person who’d just been drawn upon by shotgun-toting nonagenarian might feel a little put out, but perversely, he felt there was something right about neighbors caring about neighbors enough to pull a shotgun on a stranger. That of course could be the result of growing up in a place where shotguns got pulled for nearly every occasion, from weddings to poker games. But there was something unassailably right about this pocket-sized house set among the trees and the youngish woman and the old woman who looked out for each other.
He didn’t even know who lived on the opposite side of him in Los Angeles. He didn’t even fully understand his compulsion to fix the porch.
But she’d known he’d needed a beat-up old house.
And he thought he might know what Britt needed, too.
CHAPTER11
Britt gave Phillip his dinner, showered off the restaurant smells, threw on clean shorts and an old halter top, and then bolted out of the house. She halted in the doorway, then stepped deliberately, wonderingly on that brand-new fixed step. Like Queen Elizabeth stepping on Walter Raleigh’s cloak spread out over a puddle. She and her sister used to take turns acting out that scene when they were little.
She walked. She needed to move.
Faster and faster, until she was almost running.
She realized she was heading for her vista point, where she could look out at the huge wide open sky and the vast canyon. It seemed the only place that could accommodate the multitude of things she felt, from anger to panic to something too bright and too big to contain, the thing that had all but launched her from her house like a firework.
When she was in a leisurely mood, she could get to that vista point in about fifteen minutes. Today she took it at a near run, gulping great drafts of dusty, pine-scented air.
And she was almost there when she stopped abruptly.
Her heart leaped like a kite jerked into an updraft.
An unmistakable red truck was parked there.