One Good Man Read online

  Ever since Jodie had opened her café, she’d had lunch delivered everyday to Mrs. Weatherstone. At first the older woman had protested, but Jodie had insisted. The meals-on-wheels were a thank-you for enabling her to purchase the building, and, as Mrs. Weatherstone grew frailer each year, the hearty lunches helped her to remain independent in the home she loved so dearly.

  A refrigerator door slammed in the large kitchen at the back of the house, and Jodie guessed her hostess had hired a local teenager to prepare tea. Mrs. Weatherstone claimed having teens around kept her young. She’d even paid Brittany on occasion for light housekeeping and weeding her flower beds.

  “Now.” Her hostess rubbed her hands together, and her violet eyes sparkled with anticipation. “Tell me all about the wedding. I regret that these old bones prevented my attendance.”

  Jodie launched into a description of Merrilee and the rest of the wedding party, the flowers, the music, the guests and Mrs. McDonough’s elaborate reception.

  When she mentioned Gloria with her special floral collar, Mrs. Weatherstone gasped. “Grant actually took that wolfhound to the wedding?”

  “Grant’s worked miracles with her. She doesn’t tear things up now and she’s very obedient. Gloria sat next to Grant and Daddy through the entire ceremony in the church and didn’t make a sound. But her tail-wagging almost knocked over an eight-branched candelabra.”

  “And she performed her own version of the wedding waltz,” a familiar male voice chimed in.

  Jeff, holding a tray of iced tea and cookies, stood in the arched doorway. Dressed in black trousers with a gray knit shirt, he looked even more mouthwatering than he had in his suit last night.

  When he’d kissed her. In a way she’d never been kissed before.

  Heat swept through Jodie at the memory.

  “What are you doing here?” She regretted the bluntness of her question immediately, but Jeff had caught her by surprise. To her knowledge, Jeff didn’t even know Mrs. Weatherstone. He’d never had much contact with any of the people who lived in town.

  “Why, he’s having tea with us, dear,” Mrs. Weatherstone said matter-of-factly, as if Pleasant Valley’s notorious bad boy’s presence in her living room was a customary occurrence. “Put the tray on the coffee table, please, Jeff, and sit by me.”

  “You two know each other?” Jodie felt as dazed as the time a yellow jacket had stung her right between the eyes. This house was the last place she’d expected to find Jeff Davidson.

  Mrs. Weatherstone accepted the glass of iced tea Jeff offered and smiled up at him. “Jeff and I are good friends.”

  Jodie’s brain whirled. What in the world did Mrs. Weatherstone have in common with Jeff?

  Jeff handed Jodie a glass of tea and offered a plate of home-baked cookies. She accepted the glass and took a cookie automatically, her mind still trying to assimilate the puzzle before her.

  She stared at the cookie in surprise. “You made these, Mrs. Weatherstone?”

  The elderly woman barely managed to prepare her own breakfast and a simple supper. She definitely lacked the stamina for baking. Maybe a neighbor had brought them.

  Jeff selected a glass of tea and a cookie for himself and folded his large frame onto the love seat next to Jim Dandy. “Trace baked the cookies.”

  “Trace?” Jodie was feeling more and more like Alice who’d just fallen down the rabbit hole.

  “Lovely boys, Jeff’s Marines,” Mrs. Weatherstone said with a nod.

  “We’ve divided duties at the farm.” Jeff sneaked a piece of cookie to the dog. “Gofer’s our psychologist. Trace does the cooking.”

  “And a good job, too,” the older woman said. “These cookies are delicious.”

  “Kermit’s in charge of the animals, and Ricochet takes care of the gardens.”

  Since Jodie couldn’t rush out immediately without upsetting Mrs. Weatherstone, she opted for polite conversation until she could make her escape. “What’s your job?”

  “Administration and fund-raising,” Jeff said.

  Fund-raising.

  Suspicion raised its ugly head. Mrs. Weatherstone had a large fortune, inherited from her father, who’d made millions in textiles after World War II. Was Jeff after the old lady’s money to finance Archer Farm?

  Mrs. Weatherstone set her iced tea aside and grabbed her walker to hoist herself to her feet. “If you young people will excuse me, I’m going to powder my nose.”

  Jeff stood at the same time.

  “You can tell Jodie all about us while I’m gone,” Mrs. Weatherstone said.

  Jodie waited until Mrs. Weatherstone had moved out of earshot down the hall before jumping to her feet and turning on him. “Of all the sneaking, lowdown, conniving tricks! How dare you manipulate that sweet old lady?”

  Jeff’s expression darkened with an anger so fierce that Jodie took a step back.

  “Mrs. Weatherstone is a saint,” he said. “I’d never take advantage of her.”

  “Looks like you just did, buster, using her to get to me.”

  Jodie wanted to bolt for the door, but Jeff stood in her way, as big and impassable as the rock face of Devil’s Mountain. If her anger rattled him, he didn’t show it. Cool, imperturbable and handsome as sin. That pretty much summed him up.

  “Tell her I had a headache,” Jodie said, “and had to leave.”

  “You want me to lie for you?” He arched an eyebrow and skewered her with a gray-eyed glance that made her knees weak.

  She had to escape before she did something stupid, like throwing herself against that solid chest and kissing him again. She breathed deeply to block the emotion from her voice. “I don’t want to hurt her feelings. Mrs. Weatherstone’s been good to me.”

  “Me, too. Want to hear how?”

  “No.” She started around him.

  He moved into her path. “You’re really not interested?”

  “Why should I be?”

  “You live in Pleasant Valley. Everybody here has an insatiable hunger to know everyone else’s business.”

  “I never pay attention to small-town gossip.”

  “We have that in common,” he said reasonably, “and Mrs. Weatherstone.”

  Jodie had to get away before her rebellious senses hijacked her reason and encouraged her to repeat last night’s mistakes. “You won’t let me leave?”

  Jeff stepped aside. “You can go anytime. But Mrs. Weatherstone wants you to help me. That’s why she invited you today. If you’re turning me down, you can tell her yourself. I’ll go get her.”

  “Wait!” Jodie loved Mrs. Weatherstone like a grandmother and couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing her. How could Jodie tell the older woman she’d refused to help Jeff when she hadn’t even listened to what he wanted?

  “I’m waiting,” Jeff said mildly, obviously enjoying the upper hand.

  Jodie conceded defeat. “I’ll hear what you have to say, but I’m not making any promises.”

  “Fair enough.” He nodded solemnly.

  “And there have to be ground rules.”

  “Ground rules?” Amusement tugged at the corners of his very kissable mouth.

  She jerked her gaze away, concentrated on the sleeping dog and backed onto the love seat. “No touching.”

  “No touching,” he agreed.

  She didn’t look at his face, but she could hear the laughter in his voice. “And that includes kissing,” she emphasized.

  “You didn’t like our kiss?” He sounded surprised.

  Jodie took a deep breath. “Whether I liked it or not is irrelevant.”

  “You accused me of sexual harassment. That was a low blow.”

  “Do you always go around kissing women who don’t want to be kissed?”

  “I’m sorry if I misinterpreted your wishes,” he said with apparent sincerity. “I’ll obey your ground rules if you’ll listen to my proposal.”

  Jodie took a swallow of iced tea to douse the warmth consuming her. She wouldn’t accept Jeff’s propos
ition, no matter what it was, but she had to know about his relationship to Mrs. Weatherstone. If he was working a con on the old lady, Jodie intended to put a stop to it.

  “Mrs. Weatherstone said to tell me about the two of you,” she reminded him. “I want to hear that first.”

  Jeff pulled a chair close to the love seat and sat. Jodie realized she should have extended her ground rules to include keeping his distance. Although he wasn’t actually touching her, as he’d promised, his proximity was distracting. He smelled of clothes fresh from the dryer, sunshine and a distinctive masculine scent that teased her senses. She took another cooling drink of tea and avoided his auger-like gaze.

  “Mrs. Weatherstone came into my life twenty-nine years ago,” he began.

  Jeff was Grant’s age. Jodie did a quick calculation, and the results astonished her. “You were only five.”

  He nodded. “I was in kindergarten at Pleasant Valley Elementary. Mrs. Weatherstone volunteered as a mentor, and I was lucky enough to be assigned to her.”

  “She helped with your schoolwork?”

  “She saved my life.” The words, spoken so quietly and with such conviction, echoed in the room.

  “I don’t understand.” Jodie could no longer avoid looking at him. His eyes were dark with memory, the strong angles of his face softened by affection.

  “My mother died shortly after I was born, and I was sent to live with an aunt in North Carolina. She had too little money and too many of her own children, so as soon as I was school age, she packed me up and brought me back to my father. He wasn’t home that day, and she left me alone on the front porch to wait.”

  Jodie pictured a lonely little boy, abandoned at the unfamiliar mountain farm by the only family he’d ever known. Her heart went out to him, in spite of her determination to remain aloof.

  “Daddy enrolled me in preschool,” Jeff continued. “Not that he was a great believer in education. I was too little to work, and he wanted me out of his hair.”

  Jodie couldn’t imagine the pain of the young boy’s situation: no mother and a father who didn’t want him. How had he survived?

  “The day I met Mrs. Weatherstone who was mentoring in my kindergarten class,” Jeff continued in a voice that betrayed none of his feelings, “it was mid-December, twenty-three degrees and snowing. I had only a thin jacket that was too small and shoes with the soles half-gone.”

  The image of the cold little boy wrung Jodie’s heart. “I’m surprised Child Welfare didn’t place you in a foster home.”

  “They tried. Daddy greeted the social workers with a shotgun. Warned he’d blow them all to hell if they set foot on his property again. He was paranoid, believed all governmental agencies were in cahoots, and feared they’d discover his still. Chief Sawyer tried to talk to him, but Daddy said they’d have to take him to court to get me, and to do that, they’d have to catch him first. That was the last I ever saw of Social Services.

  “Not long after, I encountered Mrs. Weatherstone at school. When she realized I had no money and no food, she brought me here during the lunch hour and fed me, not only that first day but every school day until I graduated high school. That day she also bought me shoes, boots, a warm coat with a hood and mittens. She upgraded my wardrobe as needed to keep up with my growth spurts. And she always sent me home on Friday with enough food for the weekend. It would have been enough, if Daddy hadn’t eaten most of it.”

  Jodie shivered with revulsion. Hiram Davidson must have been a monster, stealing food from his own child. “Living with him must have been hard.”

  Jeff shrugged. “It was the only life I knew. I didn’t realize until I was a few years older that all fathers weren’t like him. Mr. Weatherstone was still alive then, and he was more a father to me than mine ever was. He’d take me to his shop, where your café is now, and teach me to fix things. When I entered high school, he bought the Harley I have now. It was a piece of rolling junk, but we restored it together.”

  Doubt gnawed at her, and Jodie narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t know any of this, and, as you say, everyone in Pleasant Valley knows everything about each other.”

  “The Weatherstones kept their interest in me a secret, for my sake. They knew my father’s hot temper and possessive attitude. He wouldn’t take care of me, but he didn’t want anyone else butting into his business, either. He’d have locked me up and forbidden me to see the Weatherstones if he’d known.”

  Jodie couldn’t help thinking of her own dad, big and jovial, always ready with a hug and unconditional love. Even when she’d embarrassed him by becoming pregnant as a teen, he’d never turned his back on her, never made her doubt for an instant that he cared more about her and Brittany than anyone else in the world. Including her mom and Grant, of course.

  Jeff hadn’t had a mom. And only a sorry excuse for a father. And now the former Marine was devoting his life to rescuing other kids whose situations were probably as desperate as his own had been. Jodie’s attitude toward Archer Farm was softening, and she gave herself a mental shake. Not all down-and-out kids turned out as well as Jeff had. State and federal prisons were filled with people whose miserable childhood and/or bad company had set their feet on an irreversible path of crime and destruction.

  “Once I reached junior high,” Jeff said, “I told my father I was working for the Weatherstones. They paid me to care for the lawns and gardens, to sweep out Mr. Weatherstone’s shop, to run errands on the Harley. Dad didn’t complain, as long as I gave him the major part of my earnings.”

  “You must have hated him,” Jodie said.

  Jeff leaned forward, clasped his strong hands between his knees, and regarded her with a puzzled look. “I did, but I loved him, too. Or I loved the father I wanted him to be.”

  “And you joined the Marines to get away from him?”

  “The Weatherstones offered to send me to college, but I knew I wouldn’t fit in. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I just wanted to get as far away from Pleasant Valley as I could.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “I hadn’t planned to. As mean as my daddy was, I figured he’d live forever. Like in the old saying ‘Only the good die young.’”

  Jeff’s face clouded, and Jodie guessed his sorrow was for his friend, Captain Archer, not his father.

  “Arch and I had discussed buying land somewhere out west. But when my father died and the homestead became mine, we decided to locate here. With the land, house, barn and outbuildings in hand, our initial expenses dropped considerably.” Jeff sighed. “I didn’t know then that money wouldn’t be a major problem.”

  Jodie’s protective instincts raised the hackles on her the back of her neck. Had he cajoled Mrs. Weatherstone into bankrolling his farm? “Why not?”

  “Arch.” Jeff’s voice, controlled and steady when he’d spoken of his mother’s death and his father’s abuse, broke on his friend’s name. He cleared his throat. “Since we were both orphans, we named each other beneficiaries on our life insurance policies.”

  “Oh.” Jodie resisted the overwhelming urge to put her arms around him and comfort him.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” His expression held more pain than irony. “Arch’s dying helped make our dream come true.”

  Jodie could tell, however, that Jeff would rather have his friend alive, even if it meant a hardscrabble life to support their project.

  Your sympathy’s kicking in, she warned herself, along with your attraction. You’ll find yourself in hot water if you’re not careful.

  Time for a hasty retreat. Enough of the story of his life. She cut to the chase. “You have your place and your funding, so why do you need me?”

  Jeff cleared his throat again. When he spoke, the huskiness of loss was replaced by a strictly business tone. “I invested the money from Arch’s policy, but in today’s economy, even with state and federal subsidy grants, the funds won’t last forever. Archer Farm has to become self-sufficient.”

  His words rocked her backwar
d. “That’s a tall order.”

  “That’s where you come in.”

  “My business barely pays its way and supports Brittany and me.”

  “That’s why my plan will be good for both of us.”

  She raised an eyebrow and regarded him with skepticism. “I’m listening.”

  He leaned closer, his expression earnest with an appealing boyish quality. “Archer Farm will provide you with fresh herbs and vegetables, milk, eggs and even goat cheese, at below wholesale prices.”

  The idea sounded good. Too good. “What’s the catch?”

  “You hire a few of my clients as busboys and dishwashers.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding! I don’t want to scare off my customers.”

  “I’ll vouch for my clients.” His boyish grin widened. “And I’ll keep close tabs on them. In addition to saving money on your food purchases, you’ll have the help you need and my boys will learn the satisfaction of doing a job well and earning a paycheck.”

  Jodie expelled a deep breath. Talk about putting the fox in the hen house. Not only would Jeff’s delinquents be in constant contact with Brittany, but Jeff would be popping into the café on a regular basis to evaluate his charges.

  “I don’t know....” Jodie shook her head.

  “There’s more,” Jeff said.

  “More?” His proposal had already boggled her mind. What more could he ask?

  “We intend to keep the teens busy.”

  “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” One of her mother’s favorite sayings had sprung automatically to her lips.

  He nodded. “They’ll care for the animals, plant and maintain the gardens and perform housekeeping chores. But we want them to have a creative outlet, too.”

  “Something to replace stealing cars and shoplifting?” She hadn’t even tried to throttle her sarcasm.

  But apparently nothing she said could dampen his enthusiasm. “They’ll learn mountain crafts, basket weaving, quilt making, even pottery.”

  In spite of her efforts to remain objective, she found his excitement contagious. “You’ve planned every detail, haven’t you?”

  “These kids need to learn self-respect and the satisfaction of hard work.”