Her Small-Town Hero. Arlene James

that right?” Holt asked her. “You have folks around these parts?”

      “No. No, I don’t.”

      “Well, that’s a shame,” Hap said, shaking his head. “But if you got no family around, what brung you here? If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”

      Cara opened her mouth, but Holt supplied the information before she had a chance to speak.

      “Cara’s a widow,” he announced. “Looking for more cheerful surroundings.”

      Hap sat back in his chair, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Now, that’s a grief that I know too well.” He looked Cara in the eye. “Both my wife and my son have passed from this world. You must have some family somewhere, though. They no comfort to you?”

      “My parents are both gone,” she said, which was technically the truth.

      “No brothers or sisters?” Holt asked, sprawling back in his chair, which seemed too small to hold him.

      She had the lie ready, but somehow it just wouldn’t slide off her tongue. Besides, what harm could there be in at least admitting to Eddie? No doubt he was trying to track her down as they spoke, but the Jeffords wouldn’t know that.

      “A brother,” she said, “but we’re not close.” Cara smoothed Ace’s pale hair lovingly. “It’s just us two really.”

      Hap shook his head. “It’s a powerful sorrow when a father leaves a young family behind.”

      “Yes.” Cara laid her cheek against the top of her son’s head. “Ace was five weeks old when it happened.”

      Holt reached out a long arm and laid his fork in his plate. “Mind if I ask how your husband died?”

      While she felt the shock that always came with the truth, she carefully masked her emotions. “He fell.”

      The two men traded looks, and Holt sat up straight again, looking uncomfortable now, his gaze going to Ace as he once more picked up his fork. “That’s how my father died, too. He fell off an oil derrick trying to fix a pulley.”

      Cara took it that Holt’s father and Hap’s son were one in the same. “They say he didn’t suffer,” she offered softly, swallowing hard.

      Both Holt and Hap nodded at that. Apparently they’d been told the same thing.

      “What’d your man fall from?” Hap asked.

      “A highway overpass. He stopped to help a stranded motorist and somehow fell over the railing. No one’s certain just how it happened,” she said, still puzzled, “and the funny thing is, it wasn’t like Addison to stop and help a stranger. Not like him at all.”

      Hap laid a gnarled hand upon her arm. “There are mysteries to which none are privy, and greater mysteries revealed to all. We must trust God with the first and thank Him for the last.” Hap looked at Holt.

      Cara sensed a certain reluctance in Holt, but she knew the moment had come to discuss business.

      “The job requires long hours,” he said. “It pays a salary on the first and the fifteenth.” Holt glanced at his grandfather. “Plus room and board.”

      The figure he named didn’t amount to much pay, but she wouldn’t have to worry about food and shelter. “What about Ace? I need to keep him with me. If it’s just housekeeping work, I know I could manage. He won’t be any trouble to anyone.”

      “Well, there’s housekeeping and then there’s housekeeping,” Holt said, and for the next fifteen minutes he detailed all that she would be expected to do.

      It seemed overwhelming: beds to be made, laundry to be done, floors, bathrooms, draperies, dusting, sanitizing, even kitchens in some of the rooms. Every room. Every day. That did not include meal preparation or registering guests from time to time. But it did include Ace.

      “We could give it a try,” Hap said. “If the work and the boy together prove too much for you, we’ll figure something out. It’s not like you’d be on your own around here.”

      “Except for Saturday nights,” Holt put in. “I take Granddad out for dinner on Saturday nights.”

      “Every other,” Hap corrected, with another of those teasing winks at Cara. “Me and Charlotte, we always took turns with those Saturday nights. All you’d have to do is hang around here and watch the front desk.”

      That sounded doable to her. “I take it Charlotte used to work for you?” Cara asked carefully.

      Hap chuckled. “Not exactly. Charlotte’s my granddaughter, Holt’s baby sister. She up and married this rich fellow from Dallas.”

      “Work she did, though,” Holt added. “More than I ever realized until I had to take over her job myself.”

      “Then essentially I’d be replacing you?” Cara exclaimed, pointing. Ace burbled something unintelligible and copied her gesture. Cara quickly pushed both their hands under the table, cheeks heating.

      “That’s the idea,” Holt said dryly. He seemed to doubt she could do it. Just the way he swept his hard gaze over her seemed to pronounce her lacking somehow.

      Hap waved a hand. “Now, now. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.” He pointed his fork at Cara. “You and the boy stay the night, take a good look around, think on it, and we’ll all pray this thing to a conclusion. How does that sound?”

      Cara smiled, feeling cautiously hopeful for the first time in months. “That sounds fine.”

      “Does that mean we get black-eyed peas tomorrow?” Holt asked, digging into his food again.

      “Mmm, maybe some greens, too,” Hap said longingly. “There ought to be a can in there. I hope there’s a can in there.”

      “I think I’m not used to the same kind of cooking you’re used to eating,” Cara confessed.

      “Oh, it’s simple fare,” Hap said, “nothing you can’t manage, I reckon.”

      “It’s sure to beat his cooking,” Holt said, wagging his fork at Hap.

      Hap pretended to take offense, frowning and grinning. “My cooking’s what’s kept these skin and bones together these past weeks, son, and don’t you forget it. How many meals have you cooked since your sister married? Answer me that.”

      “None,” Holt admitted. He grinned at Cara, grooves bracketing his mouth. Suddenly he looked heart-stoppingly attractive, sitting there in his faded chambray shirt that emphasized his strong, wide shoulders. “I like breathing even more than eating,” he quipped and went back to doing just that.

      “There you are!” Hap declared, slapping a hand lightly against the edge of the table. He looked cajolingly to Cara. “So do we get them black-eyed peas?”

      “Black-eyed peas,” Cara promised, gulping. “For tradition’s sake.”

      But, oh, she thought, watching Holt chew a big bite of steak, I could use just a little luck, too.

      Cara looked around the tiny, crowded bedroom with dismay. It still contained much that belonged to its previous owner: books, photos, various other keepsakes, even a yellowed set of crocheted doilies. An old-fashioned four-poster bed, dresser, domed-top trunk and wicker laundry hamper left only a narrow corridor of walking space around the bed.

      She felt Holt at her back, watching her judge the room, and fought the urge to curl into a tight little ball. She’d hoped never again to live in someone else’s space, meeting their standards rather than her own, always the outsider, never truly belonging or having control of her own life.

      Hitching Ace a little higher on her hip, their outer garments clutched in one hand, she bucked up enough courage to say, “I think we’ll be more comfortable renting a room for the night.”

      After a moment