Chapter 3
Chapter Three
I t all began so innocently. She and Wyatt met through their jobs two years ago. She was at the Tri-County Orange Juice Plant to sign a new contract while he’d been there performing a routine inspection.
Like most citrus growers in Florida, Jenny sold her oranges to the frozen concentrate market. She could have signed an automatically renewing annual contract, but she enjoyed touching base with the business folks at the processing plant each year. It was a rare chance to escape the grove and mingle with townspeople.
After leaving the OJ plant with a newly signed contract, Jenny’s triumph faded the moment she spotted the flat tire on her pickup truck. Normally she could change a flat while blindfolded, but she didn’t have a spare tire with her and hunkered down to inspect the damage.
Wyatt was leaving the plant at the same time, and her first sight of him was like something out of a movie. The late-afternoon sun cast him mostly into silhouette, obscuring everything but his impressive height and broad shoulders tapering to a slim waist. He had a long, languid stride as he drew near. He approached slowly, as though not to alarm her because she still knelt on the asphalt beside the flat tire.
Who didn’t love the sight of a man in uniform? It was a khaki uniform with a fully loaded duty belt and a shiny badge, but best of all was the expression in his eyes. He had deep, gentle brown eyes that gazed at her with empathy as he hunkered down beside her.
“Can I be of help, ma’am?” She could melt from the sound of his smooth, rich baritone and barely had the strength to stand. He helped her up, her hand slim in his large, firm grip.
“I’ve got a flat, but I can probably make it to the auto supply store.”
“Hold on, let me make a call.” He had one of those two-way radios in his service vehicle, and in short order arranged for someone to drive a spare tire out. It was hard not to gape at his handsome features as he took care of the problem.
“You don’t have to wait,” she assured him after he completed the call. “I’ve got a jack in my truck and can change it myself.”
“You can?” He sounded skeptical, but Jenny’s grandfather taught her all manner of survival skills, whether it was finding potable water, hunting and rendering a deer, or changing a tire. Suddenly she was grateful for her grandfather’s crazy survivalist training because Wyatt seemed alternately intrigued and alarmed as she positioned the tire jack under the pickup’s frame after the tire arrived.
“Ma’am, I really wish you’d let me help.”
She started cranking the jack handle, then paused. Despite growing up in a male-dominated world and playing with Tonka trucks, GI Joes, and air rifles, she always secretly wanted a Barbie doll. While other girls in high school fussed over pretty manicures, Jenny cleaned tractor grease from beneath her nails. Her favorite movie was Cinderella. Was it so wrong to want to be sought after and adored? Or to feel feminine and pretty? She didn’t need a knight in shining armor . . . but deep inside, she wanted one.
She stepped aside and let Wyatt take over. He carried out the task with quick efficiency, the muscles in his forearms tensing and releasing with each twist of the jack handle. His competence as he changed her tire appealed to a secret thrill of having a strong man look out for her.
They chatted while he worked, and it turned out they had a lot in common. They both grew up in Amity, Florida, and had the same fourth-grade teacher, though seven years apart. They both went to the University of Florida, except Wyatt majored in environmental science before joining the army and working all over the world doing environmental cleanup on military bases. After leaving the army, he took a job with the state’s Department of Agriculture in the law enforcement division.
Workers were beginning to leave the processing plant for the day before her tire was changed. Wyatt retrieved an old rag from his service vehicle and slowly wiped the grease from his hands, but time went into slow motion as he gazed at her. She felt his eyes on her as she returned the wrenches to her toolbox, and didn’t want their time together to end.
“You know, ma’am . . . I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything sexier than watching you handle those tools.”
Then . . . amazingly, he started to blush. He glanced away, shifted his weight a little, and went completely tongue-tied. She’d never seen such a handsome, powerful man get clobbered with embarrassment like this, but it was . . . well, it was rather wonderful. He stammered for a moment before putting a coherent sentence together.
“Could I . . . would you . . . Are you hungry? I know a place a mile up the highway that makes the world’s best smoked brisket.”
He seemed as captured by the same magnetism that drew her the moment she spotted him striding across the parking lot toward her.
“I’d love smoked brisket, but please quit calling me ma’am.”
He grinned and touched the brim of his hat. “Yes, ma’am.”
A rush of joy bloomed inside. Some men were simply born and bred with those gentlemanly southern manners. She followed him to the barbecue joint, then went to his condo to watch an old Jimmy Stewart movie. Before sliding the DVD into the player, he scribbled a note on a slip of paper and tucked it into a pewter tankard that doubled as a bookend.
She loved that he had a fully loaded bookshelf. His entire condo featured vintage furniture with a Frank Lloyd Wright vibe. Leather sofas, craftsman-style tables, and prairie-style simplicity gave the condo plenty of old-school character. The tankard clanged as Wyatt returned it to the bookshelf.
“What’s on the note?” she asked.
“Nothing.” And yet, he couldn’t meet her eyes and he was blushing furiously as he started the movie. It was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , her first clue that Wyatt was as sappy and sentimental as she. They watched the movie, and at the end she got choked up because he got choked up. In short, it was the best date of her life. Before that day she hadn’t known it was possible for two people to click together so perfectly, as though God himself played matchmaker.
She shouldn’t have read so much into it. Millions of couples had magnificent first dates, but that didn’t mean they were destined for the altar. She and Wyatt had a magnificent second date, too. And a third, and a fourth . . . actually, they had enjoyed a magnificent April, May, and June.
The more she learned about him, the more appealing he became. He earned his Eagle Scout badge and graduated from high school with honors. He was class president his senior year, and played wide receiver for the football team. He completed law school while still in the army and was studying to pass the bar exam in Florida.
With each date at his condo, she glanced at the tankard on his bookshelf and wondered if the note he wrote on their first date was still in there. He clearly didn’t want to tell her what he wrote, but it plagued her.
And she never could resist a secret.
One evening when he carried a bag of trash to the dumpster behind his unit she reached up for the tankard and felt inside.
The note was still there. She pulled it out and read:
Today I changed a tire with the woman I’m going to marry.
Her hands trembled as she replaced the note. She hopped onto the sofa, hugging her knees to her chest. Sometimes the threads of one’s entire world started weaving together into something magical. She loved everything about Wyatt’s old-school manners and unabashed sentimentality. He was a man of the law as comfortable wielding a gun as writing a sappy, sentimental note to himself.
Then there was the appeal of Wyatt’s family. His parents were happily married and they all doted on his kid sister, Lauren. They were a nice, wholesome family who went to church, paid their taxes on time, and had an actual white picket fence surrounding their home.
Meanwhile, Jenny’s family was littered with broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and a touch of mental illness. Not that anyone had ever been formally diagnosed with a mental condition, but proof of it was all over the grove. There were the two extra supply sheds built specifically to store objects of her grandfather’s compulsive hoarding. They had an underground bunker stocked with supplies to survive the Armageddon. Her family were preppers before the word was invented. Wyatt knew about her crazy Summerlin family history and loved her anyway.
Then it came crashing down on a sweltering summer night eighteen months ago when Wyatt’s sister was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lauren Rossiter was the social worker who came to help Jack in his custody dispute with his child’s mother. The argument had been vicious. The security camera out in the barn didn’t have audio, but the murder was caught on video. Jack panicked after he shot his girlfriend, and when Lauren arrived on the scene five minutes later and tried to call 911, Jack panicked and shot her too.
All of it was caught on video. Jenny had been out of town at an orange growers’ conference in Miami. If she hadn’t seen that video footage with her own eyes, she couldn’t have believed her charming and reckless brother could be guilty, but there it was. For a few minutes after the murders Jack curled over Miranda’s lifeless body and sobbed, then he put the gun to his temple and took the easy way out.
The double-murder and suicide knocked her sideways and time stopped as grief crippled her. Belief in goodness and mercy evaporated. How could a loving God let something like this happen? Jenny would never understand how or why Jack fell into such darkness, but she eventually came to understand that his failings didn’t give her permission to abandon her faith. The day eventually came when sunlight began to pierce the veil of grief. She got back on her feet and life went on, even if it wasn’t quite as bright as before.
Another thing she lost after that terrible night was Wyatt. Their love affair collapsed even faster than it had blossomed. She wished it wasn’t so, but Wyatt had good reason to hate everything about Summerlin Groves.