Zach had plenty of things he’d like to call the kid; Tom Sawyer wasn’t one of them. “Pain in the ass” was near the top of the list. Not only had TJ caused an unending amount of trouble, but Zach hadn’t gotten laid since TJ Moore had blown into town.
“Have you painted anything before? Do you need instruction?”
“I can handle it.”
Zach folded his arms. “Then get to work.”
“Are you going to stand around and watch me?”
“Depends. Would you rather I leave?”
“Yes.”
Zach smiled pleasantly. “In that case, I’ll stay.”
TJ’s reaction had Zach recalling his mother’s caution: Careful, son. You don’t want your eyeballs to get stuck in the back of your head.
The memory lightened his mood somewhat as he watched the boy stir the paint, then pour it into the tray. When he spied Savannah’s Taurus approaching, he was able to offer her a genuine smile. She exited the car like the queen of the Amazons ready to go to war. The sight of her struck Zach with an arrow of wanting, and his voice was husky when he said, “Hello, beautiful.”
She cut him a look that said, I don’t have time for that. He’d grown quite familiar with that look during the past three weeks. “Thomas James,” she snapped. “What in the world … oh my.”
She gawked at the graffiti, then her cheeks went red as hummingbird syrup. “Why?”
TJ lifted his chin. “I didn’t figure it was private, since you talked bubble baths in front of me.”
“We didn’t know you were there!”
The boy was referring to the previous evening, when Zach had stopped by as Savannah closed up Heavenscents and tried to talk her into spending the evening out at Reflection Point. He’d been teasing her, teasing them both, when TJ walked out of the kitchen, which both had believed to be empty.
“You eavesdropped on a private conversation,” she continued. “You should have made your presence known.”
“I was too embarrassed.”
“So you decided to embarrass me back.”
Zach didn’t believe the boy had been embarrassed. He didn’t have room for embarrassment because of all the anger he nursed. Zach couldn’t remember a time he’d ever seen a boy with so much fury inside him. Thinking about it drained more of Zach’s own anger.
Then the boy went and stepped over a line he should have stayed well away from.
“Oh, lighten up, Auntie Drug Dealer. If I’d wanted to embarrass you, I’d have painted you wearing an orange jumpsuit in your prison cell.”
Savannah gasped. Zach’s temper blew. “You little jackass. You do not talk to your aunt this way.”
“Why not?” TJ slammed the paintbrush to the ground. “Why shouldn’t I say it? It’s the truth. She’s an ex-con who went to prison for drug dealing. That’s pretty embarrassing if you ask me, and I should know. I’m an expert on embarrassment. My whole family is an embarrassment. My uncle’s in jail, my dad’s in jail, my aunt was in jail. Do I have good genes or what? But hey, I guess I shouldn’t complain. It could be worse. I could be in foster care again.” Then, so softly Zach wasn’t sure he heard it, the boy added, “With the pervs.”
Zach’s radar went onto high alert. The pervs?
The boy’s jaw went hard and his hands fisted at his side. He started blinking. Blinking. Blinking.
TJ Moore was crying.
Savannah saw the tears swell in her nephew’s eyes, processed the words he’d just said, and her fury evaporated. She didn’t know what to say to him, what to do. She sent a beseeching look toward Zach, but he was staring at TJ, a troubled look on his face.
TJ jerked his gaze away from Zach and Savannah, grabbed up a roller, and almost shoved it into the paint. He painted a wide swath of red across the center of the image he’d created and in that instant, Savannah knew what to do. She picked up a brush, dipped it in paint, and began attacking soap bubbles. A moment later Zach grabbed another roller and joined them.
Her gaze remaining on the wall before her, Savannah asked, “Did you ever hear the story about the time your father saved the life of a woman on his paper route?”
TJ cut her a sharp look and she spied the surprise in his eyes.
“Mrs. Pimlott. She was in her late seventies, but she still drove. She had a big old Cadillac. Dad used to call it a land yacht. Anyway, it was Saturday afternoon and we’d had a lot of rain the previous few