The Husband Project

Mama Marie hurried over. “You’d probably better start opening presents,” she told Meg. “You’ve got a lot of them, and it’s gonna take a while.”

“I can’t believe this,” Meg sighed. “A party and presents.”

“That’s what happens when you get engaged,” Mama Marie pointed out. “At last.”

“You didn’t have to add the at last,” Meg grumbled.

Lucia laughed.

“I’d like to make a toast!” Aurora lifted a glass of champagne. “Quiet, ladies! We also have several announcements.”

The crowd’s chatter died down, but excitement stayed in the air. Lucia met Mama Marie’s smile with one of her own. Loralee, standing beside her, winked.

“First of all,” Aurora began, “we’re here to congratulate Meg for having the good sense to wait for Owen MacGregor to return to town.”

“It only took sixteen years,” someone hollered. Lucia thought it was Patsy, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Whatever,” Aurora said, waving her elegant hand. “It finally happened, so let’s raise our glasses and wish the couple well. And then? Presents!”

Cheers filled the room as the women clinked glasses.

“Speech!” called Loralee.

“No speech,” her daughter said.

“Just a little one,” Lucia said, pushing Meg forward so she could see the crowd of friends gathered to wish her well.

“Okay.” Meg cleared her throat and smiled at her neighbors. “Thank you, everyone. And thanks especially to Lucia and Aurora for putting this together.” She raised her left hand and wiggled her fingers. “You’ve seen the ring?”

Another round of cheers.

“I wore this secretly for two weeks when I was a teenager,” she said. “Some of you have heard the story, I know. And I just want to say I’m really happy to have it back.” She laughed when several of the older women fist-pumped the air. “So thank you for coming. It means a lot to me.”

“Open the presents!” This came from Shelly, who looked ready to burst from excitement. At more than six months along she looked ready to burst, period.

Now it was Lucia’s turn to blink back tears. She remembered the sweet discovery of having created a life and feeling the baby move inside her for the first time.

Shelly had inadvertently created a baby with a man who turned out to be married, a man with the morals of a stray, unneutered dog, and her young life had immediately changed and shifted in ways she never could have imagined.

It was a tough thing to learn. Lucia herself had been smacked in the face with the reality that nothing was forever. You never knew what lurked around the corner.

She’d been tiptoeing around corners ever since.

* * *

“HEADING HOME?” The man in the seat next to him turned away from the window and adjusted his seat belt. They were about to take off from a dirt runway in Nicaragua.

“Not exactly.” Sam needed to pick up some things in Miami, then head to Los Angeles for production meetings. “Are you?”

“I’m getting closer,” he said, seeming happy with the idea of being on his way. He appeared about Sam’s age but had a military look, with his clipped dark hair. “You know what the opposite of the Amazon is?”

“Alaska?”

“Montana,” the man had said quite seriously, as though it were a well-established fact. He’d glanced out the window as the plane vaulted into the sky. Beneath them lay thousands of acres of green foliage, brown water and vague dirt roads twisting into the jungle.

“Montana,” Sam repeated. He’d never been there. “Any special place in Montana?”

“Willing,” the man replied immediately.

“Excuse me?”

“Willing. The center of Montana.” He’d flipped through the pages of a tattered airline magazine until he found a map of the United States. “There,” he said, tapping his index finger on the page. “That’s the best place in the world.”

Sam believed him. The stranger was earnest, his expression one of intense longing.

“And that’s home?”

“Yeah,” he said, flipping the magazine shut and stuffing it into the seat back pocket to join a wad of out-of-date reading material. “Always.”

“We’re here,” someone said. “Welcome to Willing.”

Sam dragged himself out of the memory and realized he must have dozed off. He blinked, then focused his eyes, and realized Theo was driving down what Sam assumed was the main street in town. It was growing dark and the snow was still falling, so there wasn’t much to see. Theo turned right at a flashing red light and crawled down the dimly lit street.

“I’ll give you the tour,” he said. “You’ve got the library on the right, but it’s closed now,” Theo said. “The town council’s hoping to get some volunteers to keep it going. That log building? It’s the community center.” The street curved at a ninety degree angle, with a battered building with neon beer signs sitting in the elbow.

“That’s the Dahl,” his guide explained. “The one and only bar. You’ll meet just about everyone in town in there sooner or later.” Theo slowed and almost stopped in the middle of the street. “Looks like the party’s breaking up. My wife was going to the bridal shower this afternoon.”

Sam closed his eyes again. He had three months to learn what the town looked like.

The Escalade slowly escalated and turned a corner onto a narrow residential street. “I’m here on this block, right on the corner,” Theo said. “You’re the last house on the left, next block up. You’re actually closer to the main road north, but we just made a big U through town so you could get your bearings.”

“Thanks.” Sam didn’t mean it, but Theo seemed like a decent, well-meaning guy. One block later Theo parked the car. Sam peered out the window at a two-story white bungalow, floral curtains barely visible through the snowflakes.

“Here you are,” Theo announced.

“Thanks.” Sam unbuckled his seat belt and took two one-hundred-dollar bills from an inside pocket of his jacket. “I appreciate the ride.”

“That’s more than—”

“We’re good,” Sam declared, while struggling to open the car door without passing out from the effort of twisting his body to the right.

“Do you have a key or was Jerry going to leave the house unlocked?” Theo asked.

“Leave it unlocked,” Sam said. “He told me he might be out of town.”

“Yeah, that could be. Is this all you have?” He lifted Sam’s duffel bags from the backseat.

“Yeah, thanks.” The cold air cleared his aching head at the same time as the wind whipped across his face and pelted him with snow.

“You travel light.”

“Always,” Sam said.

“Makes it easy to get out of town fast?” Theo joked, hanging on to the bags and tromping up the recently shoveled cement walk and three cement steps. He stopped at the front door.

“That’s the idea,” Sam said, keeping his voice light. “Except I won’t get far without a car.”

“Call me if you need to go into Lewistown—or anywhere else, for that matter. I’m the local taxi.” Theo opened the door and set the duffel bags inside. He didn’t enter, though, explaining that he didn’t want to track snow into the house.

“It’s not real warm here. I guess Jerry left the electric heat on just enough so the pipes wouldn’t freeze,” he said. “There’s a woodstove, though. You know how to get a fire going? Oh. Food. I guess I should have asked you if you needed to stop for groceries. The café will be open until eight if you want dinner. Head north, and turn right at the main road. It’s across the street.”

“Thanks. I’ll be okay. Jerry said he’d have someone get the house ready for me.”

“Probably Lucia,” Theo said, looking eager to get back in his car and head home. “Lucia Swallow.” He pointed to a bright yellow house next door. “Makes the best pies in town.”

That sounded promising. A little old pie-baking woman next door would be a plus.

Sam thanked Theo again and shut the door behind him, leaving the merciless wind to batter the windows.

He stood on ancient brown carpet and surveyed the living room. He didn’t know how old Mrs. Kelly was when she died, but from the furniture he’d guess about a hundred and ten. The room ran the width of the house. The wall directly opposite the door was lined with bookshelves stuffed with ceramic animals and glass vases. To his right stood a dark dining room table with six ornate chairs; to his left lay a red velvet couch that looked old enough for Queen Victoria to have fainted on it. A wood stove occupied one corner and an empty wood box sat next to it.

Sam ignored the snow on his boots and made his way around the dining room chairs to a long, narrow kitchen. All the appliances he needed were there, and the room was spotless. A small Formica table sat in front of a picture window that faced what he assumed was the backyard, though the area was hard to make out in the storm. A woodshed backed up to a fence and a row of evergreens, but if there was a path, he didn’t see it. He completed his tour of the main floor, noting the back door, a hallway that led to a set of stairs, a bathroom and a large bedroom that opened onto the living room. He had no reason to explore the upstairs, not tonight.

All in all the place was perfect, though the downstairs bedroom looked as if its owner had been way too fond of purple. Purple bedspread, purple throw pillows and purple shag rug.

He’d manage. The house was luxurious for a guy who usually lived in a tent. In addition to a real bed he had an indoor bathroom. A picture of a vase of violets dangled from a hook on the wall over the toilet. Purple hand towels hung on a rod beneath the framed print.

The house still had a lived-in quality. It was as though poor Mrs. Kelly had just walked out of her house one day and never returned. The mayor must have bought the place “as is,” except for a brand-new bar of soap in a dish next to the sink.

Sam returned to the kitchen and opened cupboards until he found the drinking glasses. He removed his jacket, tossed it on the back of a chair and pulled a bottle of prescription pain pills from his shirt pocket. He’d had to keep them close. Not that he liked taking them. But traveling had been the hell his doctor had predicted.

In fact, now he couldn’t bend over.

He’d have to go to bed with his boots on.

Once again, nothing new.

He shivered, chilled to his bones, and after a brief struggle managed to get his jacket back on. He’d do one more thing before he collapsed into the purple bed, and that would be to examine the woodstove and get a fire going. He’d seen a thermostat on the wall between the kitchen and living room, so he could turn up the heat easily enough, but he didn’t like to depend on electricity. Especially not in a storm.

Besides, he liked carrying wood and building fires. He allowed himself a small ironic smile. He’d wanted cold weather, had dreamt of icicles the last time he was on the Rio Purus.

Acknowledgment of his sheer stupidity replaced whatever reason he’d chosen Montana for a winter retreat. He’d let a brief conversation with a stranger lead him to renting a cold house in a cold town in the middle of cold nowhere.

He usually had more sense, he realized.

No, that was wrong.

He was a man who took chances, who didn’t look before he leaped and jumped into murky rivers without knowing what waited for him.

Compared with the jungle, this town would be a piece of cake.

CHAPTER TWO

“MOM! HELP!”

“Mrs. Swallow?”

“Mommy!”

Lucia heard the screams coming from her backyard as soon as she opened the car door. It took her six seconds to run, slipping on fresh snow piling up on old snow, from the driveway through the space between her house and the Kelly house. Sure enough, there was a body in the backyard. Lucia’s heart seemed to stop for a moment, until she realized her three children and their babysitter, Kim, were not hurt. They looked at her and called for her, but their voices held more excitement than horror.

Her first thought: someone had fallen. The witch next door? No, the body was large, man-sized. Had Kim’s grandfather had a heart attack? The old man sometimes stopped in to check on his granddaughters, twin volleyball stars.

Tony, age four and the image of his father, ran as fast as he could toward Lucia. “Mom, we caught a thief! We caught a thief!”

“A robber,” her oldest son, Davey, insisted, calling from the back of the small yard. “I hit a robber!”

“He doesn’t dress like a robber,” was the first thing Lucia said as she hurried over, because the man lifting his face from the snow wore a new jacket and expensive hiking boots. “What happened? Did you call Hip?”

“I was just about to,” Kim said. “We were checking for a pulse. He has one. It’s a little rapid, but within range.” She held up her phone. “I just looked it up.”

Lucia leaned closer. “Can you tell us where you’re hurt?”

“I don’t think he’s a robber at all. He’s a nameless victim of inclement weather,” her babysitter declared, her cell phone clutched in her ungloved hands. “That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.”

The so-called robber groaned and rolled over onto his side. Thank goodness he wasn’t dead. Finding a dead thief in the backyard would not keep one in the holiday spirit. Finding some poor man frozen to death less than twenty feet from her warm kitchen would be positively tragic.

Boo growled, warning the man not to leap up and attack the children.

“Boo,” Lucia said, hoping the dog would listen to her. “It’s okay.” When he looked to her and wagged his tail, she knew the animal was enjoying the drama as much as her babysitter was. He turned back to the man in the snow and whined.

“Help,” the stranger groaned. “Get...them...away from me.”

“He was stealing our wood,” Davey said. “I was getting wood, like you told me to, and there was a guy stealin’ it!”

“Stealing our wood!” Matty cried, jumping up and down in the snow. His hat was missing and his ears were red. “The man was stealing our wood!”

“He’s not dead. See? I told you he had a pulse,” Kim said as she took pictures with her cell phone.

“Kim, stop that,” Lucia ordered, but she knew it was useless. Within seconds at least half the senior class of Willing High would know there was a strange man in her backyard and by tomorrow morning his photograph would be on the front page of the Willing Gazette’s Facebook page. “Don’t Twitter it, either.”

“Too late,” she said, stuffing her phone into her pocket. “Already sent. It’s a done deal, Mrs. Swallow. Sorry. But I’m glad he’s not dead. Really.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and studied it for a few seconds. “My grandpa wants to know if you called the sheriff.”

“Tell him I’ll get back to him.”

“Okay.” Kim’s thumbs flew over the keyboard. “I’ll tell him to ‘stand down.’”

“Down!” echoed little Tony, holding Lucia’s hand as he bounced up and down like his older brother. “Down, down, down!”

“Shh,” Lucia said. “All of you, be quiet and let me find out who he is.”

She knelt over the stranger in the snow, looked into pain-filled blue eyes and saw a very angry, very unfamiliar, very handsome man. He didn’t seem dangerous. Just intensely aggravated and somewhat humiliated, the way men get when they’re not in control. “Can you tell me who you are? Are you hurt? We’re going to call for help.”

“Don’t. Need. Help. Ribs,” he rasped. “Cracked.”

She turned to her son. “You broke his ribs?”

Davey stared at her, his eyes large. “Not on purpose. He was stealing our wood,” he whispered. “No one steals wood. Except bad people.”

“Not. Stealing.” The man moaned. “Renting. House.”

“From Jerry? Claire’s house?”

“Kelly,” he said. “The woman who died.” He tried to take another breath, but winced. “Purple.”

Kim muttered, thumbs once again punching her phone. “How do you spell delirious?”

Lucia ignored the question and focused again on the man. There was no blood, no obvious broken bones, but that didn’t mean he was okay. “I think you need to go to the hospital.”

He struggled to sit up. “I just...got out of one. So, no. The answer...is no.”

“You might want to think about it,” she said. “You look a little out of it.”

“Long...day,” he said.

“Okay,” she told him, deciding to save the discussion for later, after they were all out of the snow. “Just hold on for a sec and I’ll get you back inside before we all freeze to death out here.” She straightened and faced her boys. “Davey, take your brothers home. Now.”

“But—”

“Now.”

He knew she meant it, so he reached for Tony’s hand and led him across the snow-covered yard. Her youngest child continued to bounce despite the snow that should have slowed him down.

Matty hesitated. “Can I stay?”

“No, sweetheart. Your ears are cold. Go on, and call Boo with you.”

The dog had planted his rear end in the snow and had taken it upon himself to guard the new neighbor, someone he obviously saw as a potential threat to his temporary family. He’d been staying with Lucia while Owen, the future bridegroom, was out of town. It was like having another child, Lucia thought, watching the dog’s ears flick when he heard his name.

“Boo,” Lucia said. “Go with the kids.”

The dog looked disappointed. He may have even sighed. But he stood and shook off the snow before trotting obediently after Matt.

“We’re gonna have cookies,” the boy promised. “A whole lot of ’em, and they have red sprinkles on top. Green, too.”

Boo knew what cookies were. He wagged his tail a couple of times and broke into a run, racing Matty to the back door.

“Can you stand?”

“Eventually.”

She turned to her teenaged babysitter. “You get on one side, I’ll get on the other.”

She looked back down at the man. He was about forty, broad-shouldered—and more than a little handsome, she noted anew. “So you’re renting Mrs. Kelly’s house?”

“Yeah.” He managed to nod as he lifted himself up on one elbow. “Get me up. The wood stove,” he panted. “Needs wood.”

“Sure.” She motioned to Kim to help her. Together they managed to hoist the man to his feet. Split logs lay in the snow at their feet, and Lucia bent to collect them, until she realized he couldn’t walk without help. She’d come back for the logs later.

“I’m really sorry about this,” she said, dusting snow off the front of his jacket. “Put your arm around me. You don’t want to fall again.”

“I didn’t...want to fall the first time.”

At least he was breathing a little more normally. He was taller than she’d thought, at least a foot taller than her. His close-cropped dark hair was flecked with gray and wet with snow, which also clung to the front of his jeans. He shivered and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“I can help—”

“I’m fine,” he interrupted, but he sounded more tired than angry now. “I can walk. What I can’t do is...fend off little boys...and a dog. In a foot of snow.”

He tromped carefully toward Mrs. Kelly’s back door, Lucia and Kim following him until Lucia told Kim to go back to the kids. “I’ll be home in a few minutes.”

“No hurry. I’m gonna go put the pics on Facebook.”

Wonderful. “My mother-in-law will phone me as soon as you do, so tell her I’ll call her back after I defrost the neighbor.”

“Cool.”

She followed the nonrobber into his house, where he made it clear she wasn’t welcome. He sank onto one of the two kitchen chairs and stared at his wet boots. Lucia paused inside the door and kicked her suede boots off. She walked gingerly around the little mounds of snow the stranger had tracked in and turned up the thermostat on the wall next to the refrigerator. “It’s cold in here. You were trying to get a fire going?”

“I wasn’t stealing wood.” He gestured out the window to the shed.

“Of course you were. You just didn’t know,” she said, hoping to comfort him.

“That’s not my shed?”

“Nope.”

He sighed, a deep heartfelt sound that was almost comical.

“I can see where you’d think it was,” she offered cheerfully. “The yards kinda blend. I’m going to build a fire so you have a little more heat in here. Go take a shower. Can you manage that? You need to warm up.”

“I don’t know you. I’m Sam Hove.”

“I’m Lucia Swallow. Your next-door neighbor. Your—”

“The pie lady?”

“Yes.”

“You smell like rum, your kids run wild and your dog attacked me.”

He looked so disappointed. Obviously she was not what he’d expected. If she hadn’t been so amused, her feelings would have been hurt.

“I smell like rum because I was at a bridal shower and there was punch. A really delicious punch.” She didn’t explain that she’d spilled some on herself while washing the punch bowl, or that she’d been too tired to have more than a token sip during the toast to Meg’s marital bliss. “My kids are boys. I try not to let them run wild, but they do...run. And the dog? Is not mine, but he’s not wild, either. I’m dog sitting for the groom.”

“Groom?”

“Who’s marrying the woman whose bridal shower it was, but he’s out of town. Now, go take a shower and I’ll make a fire.” She didn’t say she’d return with some lasagna and garlic bread leftover from last night’s dinner. He looked as though he could use something to eat.

“I can’t,” he said after a long moment.

“Why not?” She was as patient as she’d be with little Tony, who often stared at his feet and said “I can’t” in a pitiful voice.

“I can’t get my boots off.” He smiled, the barest of smiles on his tanned face. Her heart did a tiny—very tiny—flip.

“Ah, those cracked ribs.” She drew a chair up opposite him. “Come on, give me your foot.”

He hesitated, eyeing her as if she might be playing a joke on him.

“I’m a mother,” she said. “I do this kind of thing all the time.”

“Not to me,” he muttered, but raised his leg and rested the heel on her leg. In a matter of seconds she’d untied the snow-drenched knot, released the frozen laces and pulled his new boot off. She did the same for the other boot. “You were going to wear these until your ribs healed?”

“I didn’t think that part through.”

“Obviously.” She held the boots by two fingers. “I’ll put these by the stove so they’ll dry out.”

“You don’t—”

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I thought you’d be a lot older.”

“I feel about ninety.”

“Jerry said you were some kind of professor. Retired. I pictured a frail, fragile elderly gentleman who liked soup and drank Earl Grey tea.”

“I thought pie ladies were old. Great-grandmothers wearing aprons.”

“Then I guess we’re both disappointed,” she assured him.

* * *

DAVEY SWALLOW NEVER meant to kill anyone, but for a few minutes outside in the snow he was awfully afraid he’d done it anyway. He and Matt had taken Boo outside to play in the snow after convincing Kim that their mother wouldn’t mind. Mom didn’t care if they made snowballs and built a snow fort as long as they didn’t leave the yard. Davey knew he was in charge of Matt and Matt knew it, too, though sometimes he griped. Most of the time Matt just followed him around and that was okay.

Sort of.

Except that Matty talked too much. Tony used to be quiet, but lately he’d started talking, too. Except he was only four and didn’t know any different. Davey thought that the world would be better if people didn’t talk so much. There were seven girls and four boys in his third-grade class and the seven girls never shut up. They talked about books and horses and television and video games and their older sisters. They talked about their dogs and their kittens and their favorite colors and when their mothers would let them get a cell phone.

They talked about homework. They talked about each other. They talked about the boys.

One time Davey wore ear plugs, but Mrs. Kramer caught him and made him take them out. She made him stay after school and asked him a lot of questions about whether he was happy or having a hard time or being bullied or having trouble at home.