She's No Angel. Leslie Kelly
roof, she murmured, “So you want to sit here in the dark and get rained on?” she asked before taking a bite.
“That’s just what you’d like, isn’t it? To make me so sick and miserable I’ll let you put me in an almost-dead-folks home?”
Jennifer couldn’t contain a small laugh. Ida Mae was nothing if not blunt. “Look, can we please call a truce? I have absolutely no intention of forcing you to do anything.”
“As if you could,” the woman mumbled, eyeing Jen’s salad.
Without saying a word, Jen pushed the container across the coffee table, watching Ida Mae grab an olive and pop it into her mouth. With Ivy, only liquor, ice cream or an oldies CD for the stereo Jen had bought her last Christmas could have done the trick. Ida Mae was much less picky when it came to bribes.
The ploy worked. The older woman slowly lowered herself onto the opposite chair, but kept griping. “Shocking lack of respect for your elders. Your dear, sweet father will be horrified to hear this.”
“You’re not going to bother my father,” Jen said, her tone steely. “You know as well as I do that he can’t handle the stress. Mom said he’s just now strong enough to walk to the mailbox without coming back winded. None of us are going to do or say a thing to worry him.”
Ida Mae sucked in her bottom lip. The only thing Jen could ever do to get the old woman to back off anything was say it wasn’t good for Ivan Feeney. Ida Mae and Ivy did have a soft spot in their brittle hearts for their much younger brother.
“Sweet baby boy,” Ida Mae said, sounding about as gentle as Jen had ever heard her. “I do wish your mother would have let us stay longer to take care of him.”
Ha. Smother him was the better term. Jen’s mother had almost shot herself when her two elderly sisters-in-law had come down to North Carolina to “help” her parents get settled in their new home. If they went back, Mom was likely to have a heart attack and end up right beside Dad.
Which was why Jen intended to take care of the aunts whether they liked it or not. “I’m very sorry my suggestion came across as an order.”
Getting better. Ida’s posture eased a tiny bit, but she wasn’t finished grumbling. “Think I buried one husband and divorced another just so I could let somebody else order me around?” She didn’t wait for an answer, instead grabbing a cherry tomato and a slice of green pepper. The aunts usually lived on canned tuna, so fresh veggies had to be a real treat. Even if they had come out of Tootie’s greasy kitchen.
“I would like…I would hope, that you and Ivy would at least consider moving into someplace a little nicer.”
Oh boy. Tactical error. She knew it the minute the words left her mouth.
Ida Mae’s spine stiffened as if somebody had sent a bolt of electricity through her. She launched herself up on her sturdy legs and glared down, a bit of pepper flying out of her mouth as she snapped, “Nicer? You’re saying my house is not nice? Well, young lady, you may feel free to stay somewhere else then.”
“Aunt Ida…”
“Out.”
She shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The shrug, and reasonable tone, seemed to get Ida Mae’s attention more than anything Jen had said. She appeared a bit nonplussed that her niece hadn’t launched to her feet and started arguing back—as Ivy probably would have done. Ida Mae could handle anger. But she wasn’t so good at holding up against calm, rational conversation.
Maybe that was one reason she never battled with her brother. Jen’s father was the absolute epitome of a laid-back, kindly man. Which had made his massive heart attack at fifty-nine that much more frightening.
As if knowing she’d lost the skirmish—though, she’d never concede the battle—Ida Mae glared. “Fine. Stay then. Just be gone tomorrow.”
Without another word, she bent down, grabbed Jen’s salad and stalked out of the room.
THE LAST TIME MIKE HAD VISITED his grandfather in Trouble had been during the winter, at Christmastime, to be exact. So it hadn’t quite hit him just how hot this part of Pennsylvania could be in August. Particularly in a monstrous old house with no central air-conditioning. Even his hair was sweating.
He hadn’t noticed it as much when he’d first arrived the previous evening, since Roderick had served up a great dinner on the back patio. With newly installed ceiling fans spinning lazily overhead, an icy cold beer in his hand and his grandfather’s fine company, he hadn’t even felt the temperature.
Until he’d gone to bed.
Then he’d turned into Mr. Heat Miser from that old Christmas show.
His grandfather had said he’d looked into installing a system when doing renovations on the old monstrosity over the last year. But supposedly the lines of the oddly constructed building—which, in Mike’s opinion, looked like a bunch of kid’s card houses on top of one another—would be affected by installing central air. So Mortimer hadn’t done it. He’d merely brought in a few window units, though none for the third floor.
Hence the sweating. Even Mutt had known better than to sleep up here. He’d come in with Mike the night before, then turned right back around and gone downstairs where it was cooler. Man’s best friend. Huh.
Mike had to concede it: the steaminess of his first night in the house might also be attributed to the dream he’d had. He couldn’t remember all the details. But he definitely remembered it had involved Jennifer Feeney, a bottle of massage oil and a pair of his handcuffs.
It had also caused him to wake up as hard as a tree trunk.
“Get out of my head, lady,” he muttered as he got up, knowing there was no point trying to sleep any longer. When his feet hit the floor, he groaned. Even the scratched old wooden floors of the attic room were hot, and it was only 9:00 a.m.
His brother Max, who’d spent a few weeks here last summer, had sworn this third-floor room got the best cross breezes from the two turret windows. Supposedly, its greatest benefit was that it was out of earshot of Mortimer’s snoring, which had been known to knock pictures off walls.
Mike was apparently a lighter sleeper than his brother. He’d heard his grandfather sawing away from one story below until at least 3:00 a.m. And if a breeze had come through the front window last night, it had tiptoed around him sprawled naked on the bed and gone right out the other side. Now that some rainy weather had rolled in, the humidity was thick enough to drink from a cup and his whole body felt sticky.
He didn’t know how Max had managed to stay here last summer. Then he thought about his new sister-in-law. And he knew how.
His brother had fallen hard and fast for Sabrina, and more power to him. Maybe with one grandson settled, Mortimer would get some great-grandchildren who’d distract him from this mess of a town he’d purchased a little over a year ago.
The man was never as happy as when he had someone to scheme and fuss over, and a new baby would definitely fit the bill. The way Grandpa talked about Hank, his secretary Allie’s kid, he sounded as if he’d already bought stock in Pampers. He adored the boy who was, to be technical, a relative, since he was Sabrina’s nephew. Mike couldn’t even imagine what Mortimer would do with his own great-grandchild…beyond loving him more than life.
Just as he had his grandsons, who’d never forgotten what he’d done for them when their parents had died. He hadn’t shuffled them off to private schools or dumped them on paid servants. Hadn’t treated them as if they were a nuisance. Hadn’t allowed them to wallow in their own unhappiness. No. Instead, he’d become a true parent all over again, in every sense of the word.
Mike had only been a kid when his dad had been blown out of the sky during the first Gulf War. But he remembered full well how terrified he’d been of losing anyone else he cared about. So the death of his mother from cancer less than a year later had brought his entire world to a crashing