It's Never too Late - By Tara Taylor Quinn Page 0,9
cart crates of files into court.
Sweat dripped down her back beneath her tank top. She wiped more from her forehead and smeared it on the denim shorts that had been clean at the beginning of this project but now bore various smudges.
The guy at the landscaping store in Phoenix had assured her, as he’d loaded the fountain into her car, that she’d have no problem putting the thing together by herself. It was in pieces, he’d said, and had recommended that she open the box and carry the fountain, piece by piece, to its final destination.
Using a board for a ramp, she’d managed, by climbing into her trunk and getting behind the box, to push it out of her car, down the ramp and onto the two-wheeler.
Then, with her tennis shoes for traction on the hot cement, she’d started the cart rolling to the backyard.
She’d landed the base on the ground by sliding it out of the box.
And now they wanted her to lift the bowl? Had the guy at the store even looked at her? She was female. Five foot two. Weighed not much more than that fountain did. There was no way she could lift it.
And no way she was even going to try to live without a fountain. Water sustained her; it was the foundation of her mental and emotional equilibrium.
A girl who’d been burned alive could recover, move on, live a healthy and stable life, as long as she had water close by. And she was better at it when she could hear the water, anytime, all the time, in bed at night, and in the kitchen in the morning.
Right now, with the life of lies she was embarking on, she needed the foundations of her existence firmly in place. Addy, the most black-and-white person in the world, had just taken on a life of duplicity. Her boundaries were already pushed beyond maximum capacity.
Add to that, she was back in Shelter Valley. The desert. Where temperature soared to excruciating highs, drying out everything in its sphere. A fire’s breeding ground.
And the land of her personal hell.
She had to have water.
* * *
“GO HELP HER.”
Standing at the sliding glass door that led out to a small private patio and yard separated by a two-foot-high wall from the small private patio and backyard next door, Mark watched the petite woman sitting on the ground reading instructions. Her hair, pulled back into a ponytail, almost touched the ground.
“You help someone do what they can do for themselves, you make them helpless,” he said to the woman who’d just rolled up behind him.
“You let her do for herself, she discovers her own strength,” Nonnie corrected behind him. And then, with a snort, added, “Don’t be an idiot, Mark. You know the context. And that clearly is not something she should be trying to do herself.”
He did know. He also wanted to see what the blonde pixie was going to do next. He’d been home for an hour and on his way out the door to help his new neighbor wrestle the box out of her trunk, when the unwieldy box had slid expertly down the plank she’d set for it.
He’d watched as it landed evenly on a two-wheeler, which she’d then pulled with little effort.
Impressed, he’d walked to the back of the duplex that was larger than the house he’d grown up in back home, expecting to see someone—the husband, maybe—back there waiting to help her.
Instead, she’d opened the box, read the instructions and was now working on putting the thing together on her own.
Fascinating.
In Bierly, the women he knew asked for help first. And got it, too.
No strings attached.
“Go help her, boy. Now!”
And he’d been afraid the cross-country trip would be more than Nonnie’s frail, disease-ridden body could handle.
* * *
“DO YOU MIND if I lend a hand?”
For a second Addy wondered if the heat was getting to her when she glanced up to see the dark-haired, exquisitely proportioned man climbing over her wall from the unit that adjoined her temporary new home.
The navy muscle shirt and navy-and-white running shorts he wore framed his assets perfectly.
Wow.
“You aren’t the older woman who lives there,” she said inanely, certain now that the heat had done a number on her.
“No, I’m her grandson.”
Made sense. The woman probably had family all over town stopping in to check on her—help her out.
Shelter Valley was like that.
She might have been a little kid when she’d been shipped off to Colorado, but even at that young