Rescue Me (12 page)

To set his mind at ease, Renee added, “Penelope, the teacher who rescued you from the copy machine the other day, will be here in a few. She’s a Georgia Bulldog fan, but I try not to hold that against her.”

Alex’s face visibly relaxed. “Well, I’ll be here meeting with your aunt, anyway, right?” he said with a smidge of reluctance.

“That’s right.” Renee nodded, fighting the urge to smile. “Aunt Lorna will be here, too.” Maybe it was better they have a chaperone.

“Okay, then, let me get things straight with the guys,” Alex said.

Renee stood at the door, watching him walk toward his crew. They would have to take things slowly, but for the chance to know Alex better, Renee was willing to slow things down a bit.

Chapter Nine

 

Margo heard the rhythmic thumping coming from the living room, but it took several minutes for it to register that the sound was of someone knocking.

It must be a solicitor trying to sell something if they were knocking at the front door. If it was anyone she knew, they would have known to go around to the back door. Whoever was out there would eventually get the picture and leave.

But they didn’t. The knocking continued.

Margo groaned. If her mother hadn’t instilled the principles of being a good, southern Christian woman in her, she would curse whoever had interrupted her morning and slam the door in their face. Margo rolled over in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a moment, willing her legs to work. Only marginally confident they would keep her upright, she planted her feet on the floor and felt around for her slippers.

“Margo!” The call came from just outside her window.

Gerald?

Margo jumped from her perch on the bed, slipping on the floor in her dash for the window. She caught her toe on the edge of the nightstand and one of those unladylike words slipped from her mouth, anyway. Margo hobbled the rest of the way to the window and spread the curtains wide. Gerald stood right below, crushing her begonias.

“Gerald, what are you doing here?” Margo choked out.

“Checking on you,” he yelled. “Let me in.”

What on earth was he thinking, showing up here?

“Go around the back,” she yelled at him through the pane of glass. Margo winced at the pounding in her head, courtesy of the hangover and the thumping of her own heart.

She snatched her robe from where it draped over the back of the rocking chair and stuffed her arms through the sleeves as she made her way from her room to the kitchen. She opened the kitchen door, and jumped when she saw Gerald standing right in front of her.

“You should keep that porch door locked,” he said. “Any old crazy from the street can get in here.” He leaned over and touched his lips to hers. Margo took a millisecond to savor it. She loved his kisses. She stepped onto the porch and closed the kitchen door behind her.

Gerald’s brow rose. “You’re not going to invite me into your house?”

“Gerald,” Margo sighed. “We talked about this. I told you we had to follow certain rules if we were going to see each other, and you said you understood them.”

“I said I would follow them, I never said I understood them.” He took both her hands in his. “I was worried about you. I called to check on you, but you wouldn’t answer your cell phone. I wanted to make sure you were okay after last night.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt like an ungrateful witch for biting his head off after he was only calling to check on her. “I thought it was Eli calling my cell phone.”

“You’re avoiding your sons now?”

Margo nodded. “With the way he and Alex have been hounding me today, I’m starting to suspect they know about you.”

“You make it seem as if I’m this terrible disease you’re trying to keep the world from knowing you’ve caught, Margo.”

She looked up at the hurt she heard in his voice, and saw
it in his eyes as well. “Oh, Gerald.” Margo brought her hand up to his face and rubbed his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

He covered her hand and pressed his cheek more firmly against it. “There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He didn’t deserve this. He treated her as if she was the most precious human being on the face of the earth. And she treated him as if she was ashamed of him.

He took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing each finger. “Margo, I wasn’t sure if I should say this yet, but I need you to know something.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “I’m falling in love with you.”

Margo’s stomach dropped. Her heart clenched in her chest.

“I am,” he said. “I think about you every minute of every day.”

“Gerald,” she whispered.

“You don’t have to love me. Not yet. I know you’re still unsure about me for some reason.”

“It’s not you, it’s—”

It’s that she had worn the mantle of the respectable widow for so long it had come to define her. What would her boys think of her being someone’s girlfriend? She’d been loyal to their father’s memory all these years. She knew her boys well enough to know the thought of another man in her life would not go over well.

And what about the ladies at the church? She herself had been guilty of joining in the gossip when Josephine Johnson brought her gentleman friend to church last year. Would her friends say the same things about her if they found out about Gerald? The image she’d built and protected for all these years was in jeopardy of crumbling around her. Was it worth it?

Margo looked into Gerald’s handsome, understanding face and a fervent
yes
soared through her blood.

He was worth it. She just had to figure out a way to introduce him to the other people in her life.

“Whatever your reason is for resisting me,” Gerald was saying, “it’s not going to keep me away. I will not let anything, including your sons, come between me and the most special person I’ve found in a long time.”

Margo couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat.

“I haven’t felt this way about someone since my wife. When she died, I thought that was it, Margo. I’d had my one true love. But God has brought me another one, and I’m not letting you go. We’ll keep up this pretense for now if you’re still not ready to tell your boys about us, but the time will come when you’ll have to shatter this illusion they have of you. They need to accept that you are still a healthy, sexy, vibrant woman, with the
needs
of a healthy, sexy, vibrant woman.”

She gave him a wry grin. “You don’t know my sons.”

“And whose fault is that?” he asked with a grin of his own.

“They’re so overprotective. I’m not sure how to even broach the subject with them.”

“You’re a smart lady,” Gerald said. “You’ll figure it out.” He gave her another slight peck, this time on the tip of her nose. Then he turned and headed for the screen door, but before he walked through it, he turned around. “And don’t think I’m letting you off the hook. I’m eventually going to see the inside of that house.” He winked, and walked out the door.

Margo clutched her hand to her chest, slumping against the door with a wistful sigh. The past six months with Gerald had been incredible. She’d had more fun last night than she’d had in years. Even though she was paying for it this morning, she thought with a wince as pain sliced behind her eye.

How freeing it would be not to worry about the boys’
reaction to her newfound relationship, or what the deaconess board would have to say if they saw her walking hand in hand with Gerald.

Margo leaned her head back against the door with a sigh.

“One day,” she whispered. “One day.”

Alex stuffed the envelope containing the bid for a project Holmes Construction was vying for in the glove compartment of his truck. He grabbed the price list Jason had left for him to use as a guide in estimating what the materials for Lorna Davis’s renovations would cost.

Alex looked over at the FEMA trailer and his breathing escalated.

When Renee had extended the offer to watch football with her, Alex’s first instinct had been to decline. Over these past couple of years, he’d been attracted to his fair share of beautiful women, but he’d always been able to rationalize his way out of feeling anything more than a slight attraction.

Not with this woman. When he tried to counter his reaction to Renee with his usual refusal tactics, his mind had a rebuttal each and every time.

He told himself he was too busy with work to be concerned with a woman, but over the past couple of weeks, Alex had come to the harsh reality that he really wasn’t as essential to the running of Holmes Construction as he wanted to believe. The place had not imploded upon itself just because he wasn’t in the office or with his men on the construction site every day. In fact, just before he’d left to catch the games with some of the plumbers, Jason had fed Alex a pill he was still having difficulty swallowing. Turned out his guys were working even more efficiently without him. According to his lead foreman, most of the workers had admitted to being more comfortable over the past couple of weeks without Alex around. Apparently, they thought he was intimidating.

Even if the work excuse was shot to hell, Alex could always count on Jasmine to be his shield against diving back into the dating pool and opening himself up to all the potential crap that could come out of it. But Jasmine loved Renee. This morning, when Alex told her over breakfast that he would be helping Ms. Moore rebuild her house, Jazzy couldn’t have been more excited. She’d gone on and on about how much she loved her Accelerated Reader class, and how she wished she could go more than two days a week because Ms. Moore was her favorite teacher.

He was out of excuses.

Well, except for the fact that Renee had a boyfriend.

Yet, she’d said it was the other female teacher coming over to watch the game, not Richards. Maybe they’d had a fight last night, and she’d kicked Richards’s butt to the curb. Alex figured since he was fantasizing, he might as well add that scenario to the mix.

He knocked on the trailer door and a second later, it opened. Renee had changed into a blue University of Florida T-shirt and a pair of well worn jeans. She was still sporting the ponytail. Give her a backpack and she could be a student walking the quad. She said she’d taught at the community college level, which meant she had to at least have some graduate work under her belt. If she was in her thirties, she wore it well.

“You can have a seat on the couch,” Renee said. “We only have a nineteen inch TV but this place is so small, it’s really all we need.”

“This is fine,” Alex said, taking the time to survey the small trailer. He’d been in a few and still wasn’t sure how families had been able to survive in such close quarters. The living room, kitchen, and dining areas were no more than six by ten feet, and some families were living five and six to a trailer. It was better than nothing, but Alex said another quick prayer of thanks that his home had been spared during Katrina.

“Can I get you a drink?” Renee asked. “I’ve got Coke,
Sprite, and iced tea. Sorry I don’t have anything stronger, but I’m not too big on alcohol.”

“Neither am I,” Alex said. “Iced tea is fine.”

She poured a glass and took the seat next to him on the sofa, popping the top on a can of Sprite for herself.

“Have I thanked you for all that you and your guys are doing?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah, about a hundred times,” Alex said. Dang, she smelled good, like City Park when the flowers were in bloom. She must use one of those fancy women soaps you could buy only in a department store.

“I’ve apologized for walking in on you yesterday, right?” Alex asked.

“About a hundred times,” she laughed. “And I swear, if you do it again, I’m going to be deeply offended.”

He laughed, too. “Honestly, I was only being polite. I’m really not all that sorry.”

Renee’s shocked gasp was filled with humor. “I should have charged you for the show.”

“I would have paid any price,” he said before he could stop himself.

Awareness, bold and all consuming, surrounded them. Alex stared in fascination at the pulse that beat at the base of her throat. His gaze traveled from that spot, down to her breasts that heaved with each breath she took.

“Alex?” His name came out of her mouth on a soft moan. Alex’s eyes shot back up to her face, enthralled by the desire staring back at him.

The front door opened.

Alex and Renee jumped up from the sofa as if they had been caught kissing.

“Aunt Lorna,” Renee said. She grabbed a roll of blueprints from an older woman dressed in a long, flowing dress with bright flowers printed on it. Even with her graying hair and the slight wrinkles around her eyes, she was nearly as beautiful as her niece.

“Hello there.” Renee’s aunt extended her hand. “I’m Lorna.”

“Alex,” he returned.

“Thank you so much for offering to help with all of this.” She gestured toward the house. “I can’t believe how much they’ve already done out there.”

“Isn’t it amazing?” Renee said. “They worked all morning.”

“As I told your niece, it’s no problem,” Alex said. “My guys will be back tomorrow to continue gutting the house, but I stuck around so we could get a jump start on coming up with an estimate.”

“Let’s clear off the table so you can get a look at the house plans,” Lorna said.

She took the two steps to the table and moved a napkin holder and a few pieces of mail from the table to the counter. Renee unrolled the blueprints, and Alex picked up a jar of salsa and a jar of queso dip, using them to hold down opposite corners of the sheets.

“It’s not all that different from the original layout,” Lorna explained. “I just figured since I had to rebuild, I may as well put in some of the changes I’ve always wanted.”

“Show me what’s changed,” Alex said.

“Little things, like this coat closet off the front door, and a separate shower in the bathroom.”

Peering over her aunt’s shoulder, Renee asked, “What happened to the plans for your master bedroom?”

“I’ve decided not to do them.”

“What do you mean? You had your heart set on that bay window.”

“I can’t afford to do those things now,” Lorna explained.

“What did you have in mind?” Alex asked.

“It was nothing.”

“It was not nothing,” Renee argued. “She wanted one of those bay picture windows with the bench and storage space
underneath. And she wanted to add a walk in closet with lots of drawers and storage.”

“None of which I can afford after that contractor made away with my life savings.” Lorna turned to him. “I just want my house back. I don’t care if it has to be the same layout as the original floor plan, as long as I can get out of this trailer and back into my home.”

“You’re going to be back in your house soon,” he reassured her.

Renee was shaking her head, her arms crossed over her chest. “It doesn’t make sense not to build this house exactly the way you want it built,” she said. “You’re essentially starting off with a clean slate. Just get what you want. I told you I’ll help you pay for it.”