Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
W yatt didn’t want to go through the rest of his life avoiding Jenny Summerlin like he’d been doing since the night his sister died. Jenny wasn’t responsible for what happened to Lauren, and she’d had nothing but bad luck ever since that awful night. While he disapproved of how she’d hid the citrus canker, it was time to do something about the guilt that clobbered him each time he remembered her stricken expression as government tractors closed in on her grove.
The damaged gutter on the side of her house was a good excuse to check up on her. He could drive out to Jenny’s place, fix the gutter, and wish her well, then put her safely in the rearview mirror of his life. His campaign to run for Commissioner of Agriculture had picked up surprising momentum, and he needed to pay more attention to it instead of worrying about Jenny.
It had been a week since her grove had been plowed down. His heart sank as he turned onto her property because it looked even worse than he remembered. It couldn’t even be called a grove anymore. It was only a torn-up field of barren, lumpy dirt.
To his surprise, a state vehicle was already parked in front of the house. He’d known the department intended to send an agronomist out to make recommendations for getting the grove up and running again, and Heidi Larsen was already here. Heidi had a master’s degree in plant science and a cute, flirtatious smile.
He cut the engine and stepped out of his truck, slipping on his sunglasses like a battle shield. This wasn’t going to be easy, but it was time to extend an olive branch to Jenny.
Jenny and Hemingway were talking to Heidi over by the supply shed. He raised his arm in greeting, and even from fifty yards away it looked like every muscle in Jenny’s body stiffened at the sight of him. She strode toward him, her face grim. He needed to lower the temperature and adopted a casual tone as she approached.
“It’s good to see Heidi already out here,” he said. “She’s a pro at getting farms up and running. I’m guessing she’s here to take soil samples?” That was usually the first step in a farm evaluation, but Jenny acted like she hadn’t heard a word he said.
“What are you doing here?”
He nodded to the roofline of the farmhouse. “That gutter needs anchoring.”
“Go away, Wyatt.”
He shifted uneasily. Making conversation with attractive women had always been a struggle, but it used to be easy with Jenny. Now he felt as awkward and tongue-tied as ever. Maybe it was best to simply tell the truth.
“Jenny, I’m sorry about what happened?—”
“What happened?” she interrupted. “You say that as though you weren’t the person who signed off on the paperwork.”
“I was, and I’m sorry that I had to do it. And I’d like to fix that gutter for you.”
She folded her arms and glared. “Tell me this, Wyatt. If I came over to your house to fix your sagging gutter or whatever else needed repair . . . would that mend everything that’s gone wrong between us?”
He winced, her arrow finding its mark. “Some things can’t ever be fixed,” he finally said, and her eyes hardened.
“But that gutter can. Go fix it.” She stomped up the porch steps and slammed the door without a backward glance.
He tamped down the urge to follow her inside and demand a full-blown, cards-on-the-table accounting over how she let him down after Lauren died. He tried to make things right regardless of what Jack did. They could be married now if Jenny hadn’t been so irrationally fixated on this grove.
Instead, he swallowed back the frustration and hoisted the ladder from his truck, then climbed onto the roof to examine the gutter. At least, that was what he was supposed to be doing. Instead, he glared at Hemingway taking the state agronomist on an ATV tour of the property. Heidi clung to Hemingway’s back like a barnacle, her laughter floating over the yard as the ATV rocked and bumped over the torn-up ground. It was annoying how easily Hemingway could flirt with any woman under the sun.
“English professor,” he muttered under his breath, then went back to examining the damaged screws on the gutter. What kind of English professor did nothing but drink and flirt with women all day? Back when Wyatt was dating Jenny he’d been so suspicious of Hemingway that he ran a background check on him, and found that Hemingway had been fired from every job since college. Yes, Hemingway earned a doctorate in English Literature at the University of Iceland but got fired from a college in Reykjavik during his first year of teaching. Then he got fired from the Icelandic coast guard. In a country with a miniscule population, how bad did you have to be to get fired from the coast guard? Then he got ousted from a tenure-track position here in Florida, even though the students loved him. According to an online site that reviewed professors, Hemingway was wildly popular with the students, especially the female students. They said he was funny, irreverent, and as handsome as a Viking god.
That was the actual term they used. “Viking god.” It made Wyatt want to rinse his eyes with bleach, but Hemingway seemed to have that effect on women.
Wyatt frowned at the series of rusted screws barely holding the gutter up, all of which needed to be replaced. He secured the gutter with a bunch of c-clamps, and the battery-operated drill made a satisfying grinding buzz as he removed the screws. This was the sort of job any man would do for a woman he cared about.
Once, long ago, he’d assumed he and Jenny would find their way to the altar just as easily as they’d slipped into a whirlwind love affair. By the end of their first date, he concluded she was the woman he was going to marry.
Not that their relationship had been perfect. Jenny always assumed he would move to the grove to raise a family here, which was their first problem. She never believed him when he reminded her that he’d only returned to Amity for a short stint after leaving the army. As soon as he passed the bar in Florida, he planned on leaving for a bigger challenge, like the job in Morocco or consulting on international trade. He never intended to settle down in Amity. The opportunities were too small, and life on an orange grove was too lonely. Where would their kids find friends?
Then there was Hemingway, the irresponsible and disrespectful womanizer. The only thing Hemingway had going for him was a quirk of fate that granted him symmetrical facial features so attractive it made otherwise intelligent women fall at his feet.
The pitch of the roof was steep and he crept carefully to place another bracket when a ringing cell phone from inside the house distracted him. He cocked his ear to listen.
“Hello?” Jenny said.
The window in the office must be open, because he could easily hear her. He had no business eavesdropping, but it would be rude to start the drilling when she was on the phone only a few yards away.
“I’m sorry, it’s going to be tough to drive to Miami again,” she said. The breeze picked up, obscuring whatever she said next. A screw rolled down the incline of the roof. He smacked it with his hand and almost lost his balance.
Idiot . If he died after falling off a roof on Summerlin Groves, his mother would never forgive him. Downstairs, Jenny started talking again.
“If you can email me the contract, I’ll get it notarized and sent back to you.”
The other person must be talking because Jenny was silent, and he waited. He ought to be ashamed for eavesdropping. It wasn’t something an honest, straightforward person should be doing. He picked up the drill and started working again. Jenny could close the window if the noise bothered her.
It took an hour to replace the old brackets with rust-resistant hardware. He repaired a couple of loose shingles that needed it and scanned the rest of her roof to be sure it was in good condition. A few more snatches of Jenny’s conversation leaked through the window. She’d given someone directions to Summerlin Groves and sounded profusely grateful about not having to drive all the way to Miami to sign some papers.
It took two trips to bring his equipment down to the ground. Jenny must have heard him folding up the ladder, because she came out, shading her eyes to look up at the roofline.
“The gutter is fixed,” he said. It was cleaned out, secured, and her roof was in good shape, too.
“Thanks,” she said, looking as uncomfortable as he felt.
“What’s in Miami?”
Her eyes widened. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Let me clarify. Nothing that’s any of your business.”
He shouldered the ladder and headed toward the truck. “Fair enough,” he said. Jenny had gone back inside by the time he returned for the rest of his tools.
He hadn’t succeeded in softening the arctic blast between them, but at least her gutter was no longer in danger of falling off. He’d done a lot of things on Jenny’s behalf over the years. He’d warned her about her overdue taxes and gotten the district attorney off her back over that gun charge. He even convinced Kent McAllister to start letting her visit Sam again. She would never know any of it, but at least it helped dull the ache of regret whenever he thought of her.
No matter how long he lived, he would probably always revisit memories of the glorious few months he had with Jenny, and wonder if he could have somehow salvaged the wreck her brother made of their lives.