Sidewalk Flower (25 page)

“I’d like to but I’ve got to get back to
work.”

Green and white reflective markers passed
one by one until he had counted six miles without a word from his cousin. When
Jaxon finally spoke up, he wasn’t sure what to make of it.
 
“You think your father and uncle could hold
down the fort if you were to accept a job away from the shop?”

Where Jaxon was headed with this, he
didn’t know.
 
“I suppose so.
 
But why?
 
They don’t need to.
 
I’ll be there…”

“Well, what if I hired you to work for me
on this tour?”

Come again?
 
What kind of work was his cousin referring
to?

“Doing what, exactly?”
 
He had to ask.

“Well, don’t be offended, but you could
probably take up as the lead carpenter.
 
You know, building the stage and all.
 
It’s
tough work, lots of hands-on and the hours
aren’t the best, but I think Trissy would be happy to have you along.”

Trista needed to teach him how to read
people better.
 
Boy had he pegged his
cousin all wrong.

“Why would I be offended and why are you
being so helpful now?
 
No offense but…”

“Well, I feel like I kind of owe it to
you.
 
Not just because this whole deal
fell through, but you know, for leaving like I did and not keeping in touch
with you and your daddy and…your uncle.”

Jaxon couldn’t even refer to his own
father as such.
 
He had a lifetime of
guilt heaped on his shoulders.
 
That must
be what had driven him to make the job offer.
 

But lead carpenter was nothing to be
ashamed of.
 
Back home, a job like that’d
earn a man more than a decent wage.
 
He
could buy some land, build a home.
 
The
both of which he already had.
 
No, if he
took Jaxon’s offer, it wouldn’t be for the money.
 

A vision of Trista dressed in her white
cotton nightgown with her tangled blonde hair pulled up on top of her head,
sitting by the fireplace on a blanket spread out for the two of them at his
home in Tennessee flashed in his mind.
 
It didn’t take long for the thought of a possible family with her to
come rolling in.
 
He wasn’t getting any
younger.
 
The gorgeous
woman, the beautiful child, the home.
 
The life.
 
He realized he wanted everything Jaxon had, only his way.
 
But in order to get that, he’d have to do
things Jaxon’s way first.

Chapter
Sixteen

“Hey darlin’, I have something I need to
talk to you about, when we have time alone.”

Lucky greeted Trista nearby where she’d
parked, all the way down on the curb by the street, a healthy walk from the
sprawling curved driveway of Jaxon’s mission-style home.
 

The strict ninety-degree angle in the
bend of her elbow and the way her fingers coiled tightly around the strap of
her small purse made escorting her up the walkway tough.
 
Of all the Trista’s he’d met the past week,
this one felt the most foreign.
 
Instead
of jockeying for her arm, he relented and found the small of her back, easing
her along, slowly with a steady hand.
 
He’d have to share his news later.

Now it was time to concentrate on
protecting his lady.
 

Turned out, Trista had every reason to be
as rigid as she was.
 
He’d gotten a
bird’s eye view during dinner at a local seafood restaurant, when something had
sent Vangie flying off into a fit back at Jaxon’s house the night before.
 
He’d missed whatever had ruffled her to start
but the end was unbelievable.
 
The red
stain on Vangie’s lips seemed to have inched up into her cocoa brown eyes.
 
Her eyebrows arched more severely than
Cruella Deville’s.
 

The way she let into Jaxon became
uncomfortable in a nanosecond.
 
He’d
wanted to sneak out the back door but Jaxon had moved the argument
upstairs.
 
Even with the separation of the
home’s well-built Spanish walls, he could still hear Vangie reaming Jaxon.
 
And he wondered if they cared that their
daughter might overhear.
 
He’d peeped in
on Maryella to make sure she was asleep then shut her door.
 
Thank God she had been.
 
More than anything, he’d wanted to leave and
go see Trista then and there.
 
But he’d
stayed put.

It was a mistake.

He’d been about to step outside and at
least call Trista when Vangie had stormed down the stairs, acting more like a
tantrum-induced toddler than a sophisticated woman.
 
She’d turned to him and said, “You better
realize the favor I’m doing you by letting that conniving bitch in my house.”

 
He’d never wanted to slap a woman in his life,
before that moment, but he’d held his tongue and bit back his rage at her
belligerence.

Vangie Agosto was Jaxon’s problem, not
his.
 

Lord, please
let us all act like adults today
.
 
Myself
included
.

Trista stopped them just shy of the front
door. “Well, we could make time now.
 
It
sounds kind of important,” she said.

But, for fear of making the woman of the
house wait, Lucky found himself walking on egg shells.
 
Such power over a man in the wrong woman’s
hands was a dangerous thing.
 

“No, I think I’d like to wait until after
the party,” he said to her with a hint of longing.
 
No use trying to act like he wasn’t desperate
for it to be just the two of them.

Trista’s mouth strained into a crooked
smile while her eyebrows pulled together but she slid her small hand into the
crook of his elbow.
 

“Okay.
 
If you insist,” she said, exhaling.
 
Three times.
 
Then she tugged him through the door.

* * * *

The second she stepped foot in the house,
the boney finger of bitterness tapped invisibly at her shoulder.
 
And it was heartbreaking.
 
To think she’d once called this place home.
 

Until Jaxon had shown up
one night with
her
.
 
Within two weeks, Trista had been asked to
move out.
 
Talk about having the rug
pulled out from under you.
 

Her reminiscent heartbreak was quickly
transformed, however, into complete awe.
 
Ben was the first to greet her and Lucky, the couple as they were.
 
Holy cow, the place had never been this
pink.
 

“What do you think?
 
Too much sparkly feathery boa or, I could add
more, if it’s not enough.
 
What do you
think?”
 
Ben stood at her side, biting
the tip of his thumbnail, but managed a nervous smile toward Lucky who released
her to raise his hands up.
 
What a way to
tell a guy he was on his own.
   

“Hey, I was in charge of ordering the
pizza and putting the candles on the cake.”
 
Lucky took a sweeping look around at what his deco-buddy had done to
Jaxon’s villa.
 

“It looks great, Ben.”
 
She spun around the entrance way to the
house.
 
After her last twirl, she caught
him rolling his crystal green, popping eyes.
 
“What?
 
It’s not every day a girl
stumbles into a fairytale castle.
 
Has
Maryella seen this yet?”
 

Ben and Lucky both shot her a look and
Ben nearly shushed her.
 
Oh yeah, plink
went her bubble as she remembered whose territory they were in.
 
“Quiet voices,” whispered Ben and his big eyes.

“Whatever,” she whispered back.

 
Pink and silver stringed feathers looped graciously over all six
Spanish-styled arches in the entryway.
 
They mingled in the sturdy iron lamps that hung from the tall ceilings
and they danced across the dark, ponderosa pine shelving units built into the
stucco walls of this once rustic room.
 
It looked like birthday party fairies had pirouetted and flitted about,
leaving the shimmer of their dust behind.
 
Now she understood Ben’s earlier rush to leave the studio.
 
Truly, he had outdone himself.
 

“Uh, do you think it’s too much?
 
Is Jaxon going to be pissed that I turned his
home into whatever it is I’ve turned this into?
 
Maybe I should take some of this down.”
 
Ben started forward, intent on de-princessifying some mounted, fairy
dusted candle holders.
 
He took in a deep
breath then huffed, sending glittered confetti into a tizzy above and below his
head.
 

“No, Ben.
 
Leave it.
 
It’s perfect.
 
Trust me, Jaxon won’t say a word when
Maryella sees it and loves it!
 
Don’t be
so nervous.
 
Anyway, I can’t believe he
hasn’t come down already.”

Ben looked up but she could tell he was
holding something back.
 
Yep, guilty as charged.
 

“He’s here.
 
Just uh, you know, he’s been upstairs. You
know, busy with stuff.
 
Maryella is
taking a nap down here in her room,” Ben confessed.

That was code for Jaxon is upstairs,
dealing with Vangie.
 
Thank goodness
Maryella was still young enough to cocoon herself in naptime.
 
Hopefully things between her parents would
improve before she grew out of that stage.
 

“Oh,” she said.

They all knew what that meant.

“So you really don’t think Jaxon’s gonna
kill me?
 
I mean, look at that…”
 
He pointed to the candelabra made to resemble
nesting birds.
 
The nests sparkled in all
their pink glory.
 
“That stuff really
gets everywhere.
 
You know, giving a bag
of glitter to a guy who rarely sees the sun—dangerous.
 
It’s like some pleasant beaming side of me
has been unleashed on the world.”

A giggle burst up from her belly and she
hugged her silly, lanky friend.
 
He was
genuinely nervous about pissing off their boss, even though Ben dwarfed Jaxon,
not to mention Lucky, too.
 
But because
Jaxon was Australian and Ben had heard one too many stories of how scrappy they
could be, he was stone serious.
 
Benjamin
Wright might need to be resuscitated when Jaxon saw the effort he’d put forth
for his daughter tonight.
 
She’d bet
someone would be christened Uncle Benny.
 

“Like I said, don’t worry.
 
You did a fabulous job.”
 
She winked his way.

Hands on his hips and head bowed, he
stepped away from the candle holder and then brushed stray bits of confetti
from his nose.
 
“Okay, if you say
so.
 
But if he does come after me, you
better have my back.”
 
Ben’s brown hair
flopped down obscuring much of his face, held partially in check by his black
wool hat.

“You got it buddy.”
 

It went unsaid that the favor was mutual
where she and Vangie were concerned.

* * * *

Lucky stood by Trista’s side, readying
himself for whatever would eventually come down those stairs.
 
He’d enjoyed the moment she’d just shared
with her friend.
 
The young man with the big
eyes was a little stranger than most folks he knew but he also seemed kind and
genuine.
 
If anyone had anything to say,
both Ben and Trista would have plenty of back up.

* * * *

Trista, Ben and Lucky retreated to the
living room and plopped down on Jaxon’s black leather couches, to wait.