One Good Man

Jodie couldn’t help laughing. Brynn always cheered her up, even after her worst rows with Brittany.

Brynn dumped artificial sweetener and cream in her coffee and stirred. “How does a pregnant woman know she’s carrying a future lawyer?”

“There’s no stopping you, is there?”

Her friend’s grin widened. “She has an uncontrollable craving for baloney. What does a lawyer use for birth control?”

“I give up.”

“His personality.” She barely paused for breath. “What happens when you cross a pig with a lawyer?”

Jodie laughed. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“Nothing. There’re some things even a pig won’t do. What do you call—”

“Stop, please.” Jodie struggled to speak through her laughter. “Is this how you interrogate suspects? Lawyer-joke them until they crack?”

“Now there’s a thought.” Brynn cut her a probing glance. “Guess you saw Jeff Davidson.”

“He has a catering job for me.” Jodie worked to keep her tone casual.

“You don’t do catering.”

Jodie shrugged. “I do now.”

“For the dorm raising?”

“How’d you know?”

“I’m invited.”

“You? You’re more tool challenged than I am. Unless we’re talking guns, of course.” Brynn was a crack shot who’d won several competitions. But, as far as Jodie knew, the officer had never fired her weapon on the job.

“I don’t have to work Saturday,” Brynn said. “And Jeff thinks my presence will lend respectability to his project. If I witness what’s happening, I can combat rumors.”

“So he worked his devilish charm on you, too?”

“Devilish charm?” Brynn gave her a blank look.

Being a cop must have inoculated her friend against male charisma, especially since so many men Brynn encountered were felons. Jeff had come close to that category in high school, Jodie remembered.

Brynn’s face lit with sudden comprehension. “Charm? Sister Jodie, our resident nun, found Jeff charming?”

“Of course not, but he tried to use his wiles with me.”

“If you didn’t find him charming, why are you catering for him?” Brynn, an expert at gauging reactions, was watching her every move.

Jodie was determined to appear unaffected by the Marine’s appeal. “Because he agreed to pay the outrageous price I quoted.”

Brynn wrinkled her nose. “Why do you suppose he did that?”

“Because he’s desperate?”

“He could feed his crew of Marines beef jerky and water and they wouldn’t complain. Maybe he fell for your charms.”

“Don’t be silly.” Jodie picked up a cloth, scrubbed a non-existent stain on the spotless counter and changed the subject. “I had another row with Brittany.”

Brynn sighed. “What’s she done now?”

“Wants her navel pierced.”

“Best place. Least defacing. Least visible.”

Jodie snorted. “Not the way she dresses. Besides, it’s a precedent. First the navel, then an eyebrow, then...” She stopped and shuddered. “I don’t know what to do, Brynn. She’s slipping away from me, becoming more rebellious and angry each day. And with her wild, out-of-control friends, she’s headed for more trouble.”

“I checked out the names you gave me. None of these kids have been arrested. Not like the last group.”

Jodie shook her head. “Maybe they just haven’t been caught.”

“Maybe you should get married.”

Jodie had taken a sip of coffee and almost spewed it. “What?”

“Brittany needs a father figure.” Brynn said matter-of-factly. “And you could use a husband.”

“She has father figures. Her grandpa Nathan and her uncle Grant.”

“And you have?”

The perfect comeback. “I have my job. Just like you.”

“Touché.” Brynn chugged her coffee. “I’ll give you a hand Saturday, since I’ll be at the dorm raising anyway.”

“Want to ride with Brittany and me?”

“You’re taking Brit?”

“She’s been working Saturdays with Grant at the clinic. But he’s going to the dorm raising, too.” Jodie sighed. “I don’t dare leave her unsupervised for a full day. Who knows the trouble she’d get into.”

“I’d better take my own vehicle. And my radio. In case I get a call.”

“All work and no play—”

“Isn’t that the second verse of the song I just sang for you?”

Before Jodie could reply, Brynn downed the rest of her coffee.

“Gotta go,” she said. “See you around.”

Jodie followed and locked the door behind her. Her visit with Brynn had grounded her and brought her raging hormones under control. Her reaction to Jeff Davidson had been a fluke. Come Saturday, feeding a horde of hungry men and keeping an eye on Brittany, Jodie could play her ice maiden role again with no problem.

Piece of cake.

She climbed the stairs and ignored the niggling reminder that a piece of cake was the first step in falling off a years-long diet.

Chapter Two

On Saturday, Jodie crawled reluctantly out of her warm bed before dawn. She’d worked past midnight preparing subs, making potato salad, baking cookies and gathering paper goods. With Saturday’s forecast high in the upper fifties, she’d also started two Crock-Pots of chili. Groggy from too little sleep, she stowed the food and supplies in her minivan and awakened her daughter.

Brittany dressed, muttered complaints all the way to the car and instantly fell asleep in the front seat.

Jodie considered her dozing daughter with a tenderness that brought moisture to her eyes. It seemed only yesterday that Brittany, a tiny precious bundle with blond ringlets and a delightful baby gurgle, had required the child carrier in the back seat. Only weeks instead of years since Jodie had piled Brittany and her nine-year-old teammates into the van for soccer practices. What had turned her once loving and adorable daughter so rebellious, so bitter? Did adolescence with its hormonal fluctuations and resulting emotional roller coaster make all teens this difficult?

Or had Jodie, as Brittany so often implied, failed as a parent?

Failed? How could she not? She’d been a kid herself when Brittany was born.

Shoving that thought away before it ruined her whole day, she debated waking Brittany to share the breathtaking sunrise over the beautiful farming valley from which the town took its name.

Jodie drove the familiar route at a comfortable speed, and the van hugged the narrow highway that meandered alongside the Piedmont River, broad and tranquil in some spots, in others a torrent of white water over a boulder-strewn bed. Slanting, dawn sunlight glinted off the spring green of willows, oaks and maples, struggling toward full leaf in mid-May. On either side of the river, rolling pastures lush with high grass and freshly plowed acreage stretched toward the haze-draped mountains that surrounded the valley like the sides of a bowl.

Jodie rounded a curve and passed the veterinary clinic where Grant and his future father-in-law, Jim Stratton, worked as partners. Their trucks already stood in the parking lot, because the vets’ day began with the farmers’, long before dawn.

Brittany awakened, crossed her arms, and set her face in its customary scowl. “Why do I have to come? I had plans with my friends.”

Exactly why you’re with me, cupcake. Brittany’s current pals gave Jodie nightmares. “I need your help.”

“Who is this Jeff Davidson?”

“A friend of your uncle Grant.”

“Huh,” Brittany said with a snort of disdain. “I didn’t know Uncle Grant hung with lowlifes.”

Jodie cast her a sharp glance. “Who said Jeff’s a lowlife?”

“The whole town knows he was no good.”

“Jeff had a tough time growing up.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

Jodie silently counted to ten. Her daughter had become a travel agent for first-class guilt trips. “Jeff’s father, Hiram, was a lowlife, no doubt about it. Never held a job and stayed stinking drunk his entire adult life. He was locked up so often Chief Sawyer named a cell after him.”

Brittany studied her black-painted fingernails without comment.

Jodie couldn’t tell if the girl’s boredom was real or feigned. “Jeff’s mother died when he was a baby.”

“Who took care of him?”

Ah, a note of interest from the blasé Miss Brittany? Would wonders never cease?

“His drunken father,” Jodie said. “It’s a miracle Jeff survived. When he was old enough, his father forced him to make moonshine deliveries.”

“Moonshine? Yuck.” Brittany made a face.

Jodie hoped her daughter’s response wasn’t based on personal experience. “Hiram ran a still somewhere on the mountain behind their house.”

Like a camera flash, a memory flared of Jeff, long dark hair blowing in the wind, black leather jacket zipped to his chin, roaring through town on his Harley, its saddlebags filled with Mason jars of white lightning cushioned with moss. The boy had been arrogant. Solitary. Lonely. With a don’t-come-close-or-I’ll-break-you-in-two expression.

Brittany squirmed in her seat. “Will his father be at the farm today?”

“Hiram died a year ago.”

Brittany was silent for a moment. “Anybody my age coming?”

“Not today.”

Lordy, Jodie hoped not. She had enough trouble with Brittany’s current friends. She definitely didn’t want her daughter fraternizing with Jeff’s clients, kids within a hair’s breadth of going to jail for a long, long time.

Reality check.

When Grant had first told her of Jeff’s project, a camp to rehabilitate potentially prison-bound teens, she’d been caught up in her brother’s enthusiasm.

“If Jeff hadn’t joined the Marines right out of high school,” Grant had explained, “he might have ended up in jail himself. So he understands where these kids are coming from. And where they might be headed.”

Good for Jeff Davidson, Jodie had thought. But now, considering her impressionable teenage daughter, the last thing Jodie wanted for her was more bad influences. And Jeff’s rehabilitation project would bring trouble to Pleasant Valley literally by the busload.

Jodie gripped the wheel to keep from smacking herself upside the head. Here she was, aiding and abetting, providing food and comfort to the enemy. What the heck had she been thinking?

Damn Jeff Davidson and his Marine-recruiting-poster charm. Thanks to her scrambled senses when he’d caught her by surprise, she hadn’t been thinking at all.

But Jeff wouldn’t have clients yet, she assured herself. The dorm wasn’t built, so the teens didn’t have a place to stay. And, thank God, the Davidson place was at the opposite end of the valley from town. When Jeff’s delinquents did arrive, they’d be too far away to interact with Brittany.

Jodie forced herself to relax. She and Brittany would feed Jeff’s building crew and take off. Her daughter would have no further contact with Jeff or his camp. For Brittany’s sake, Jodie didn’t want the rehabilitation facility in Pleasant Valley, but she remained open-minded enough to avoid the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. Jeff’s teens needed help. A nasty job, but somebody had to do it.

So long as the program didn’t affect her already problematic daughter, Jodie would file no objections.

She reached the end of the valley and headed the van up the winding road, a series of switchbacks that worked their way up the steep mountainside. Halfway up, she turned onto a gravel road, almost hidden by arching branches of rhododendron ready to burst into bloom. Heavy dew clung to white clusters of mountain laurel and bowed the heavily leafed branches of the hardwood forest. Jodie observed the unfamiliar route with interest. She’d never visited the Davidson farm and knew the way only from Grant’s directions.

Brittany peered through the shadows cast by the trees. “Are you sure this is the right road? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Jodie was also wondering if she was lost when a clearing opened ahead. She stopped the van at its edge and surveyed the Davidson property. Unlike the fertile farmland of the valley, this terrain was rugged and rocky. The only structures were a run-down farmhouse, a ramshackle barn, its unpainted boards weathered gray, and a few outbuildings. To one side of the barn, a terrace had been carved out of the hillside long ago, a space barely big enough for a vegetable garden, a pond and a tiny pasture.

On the opposite side of the farmhouse, a larger terrace had been graded recently, judging by the bare red clay. Stacks of lumber lay beside a huge concrete-block foundation, and beyond, a driver on a track-hoe worked the land, enlarging the level surface one bucketful of hard clay and rocks at a time.

Brittany sat up straighter and peered out the windshield with interest. “Where’s the still?”

Jodie eased the van beside Brynn’s car in front of the farmhouse and shut off the engine. “Destroyed. After his father died, Jeff told the authorities where to find it.”

“Where does Jeff—”

“Mr. Davidson, to you, kiddo.”

Brittany heaved a sigh. “Where does he get the money for all this?”

Out of the mouths of babes, Jodie thought. Hiram Davidson never had two nickels to rub together, and Marine pay hadn’t made Jeff rich. How was Jeff paying for his project?

She started to comment, but Jeff bounded out the door of the farmhouse and sprinted down the steps toward them. Every bit of breath left her body in a whoosh.

With his killer smile flashing, he was dressed in khaki cargo shorts that revealed muscular, tanned legs, lace-up workboots with wool socks, a cable-knit sweater in olive drab and a soft cap with USMC emblazoned across the front in proud gold letters. At ease, but with an underlying alertness that could snap to attention in a millisecond, he looked handsome enough for a starring role on one of Jodie’s favorite television programs.

Move over, JAG Commander Harmon Rabb, and be still my heart.

Jodie took a deep breath to clear her head. She was thirty years old, a mother and a businesswoman. She had to stop reacting to the man as if she were some teenage Marine Corps groupie.

Four similarly attired men came out of the house behind Jeff and waited on the porch.

“Holy beefcake,” Brittany murmured.

“And all old enough to be your father,” Jodie said sharply. Instantly she wanted to snatch the words back. Of all the sore spots between them, the subject of Brittany’s father was the touchiest.

Jodie unfastened her seat belt and climbed out of the car. She had to have air. An unaccustomed heat flooded her. Hormones. Had to be. Did having a baby at fifteen precipitate early menopause? What else would throw her body into hot flashes?

Brittany left the car and joined her as Jeff reached them.

“You’re right on time.” His gaze, deep-gray eyes that seemed almost black, locked with hers.

For an instant time stood still and she forgot to breathe.

He turned to her daughter and broke the spell. “You must be Brittany. I’m Jeff.”

“Mr. Davidson, Brittany.” Jodie reminded her daughter. She’d raised her to treat grown-ups with respect. She wouldn’t let anyone undermine her efforts. Not even the world’s most attractive former Marine.

“Hi...sir.” Brittany looked ready to dig a hole and climb in.

Jodie groaned inwardly. Everything she did further alienated the girl.

“Your mom would make a good Marine.” Jeff turned his charm on Brittany, and she actually smiled.

“Only if she’s an officer,” Brittany said with the air of a conspirator. “She’s good at giving orders.”

“That means she loves you,” Jeff said. “Take it from someone who knows. My old man never gave a...hoot what I did.”

Jodie blinked in surprise. Jeff had taken her side, and not only hadn’t Brittany bristled, she was still smiling.

Jeff’s friends joined them, and he offered introductions. “Jodie and Brittany Nathan, meet my team.”

A tall and solidly built man with pale-blue eyes, ruddy cheeks and hair like corn silk offered Jodie his hand. “I’m Gofer, ma’am.”

After squeezing Jodie’s fingers in a crushing grip, he took Brittany’s hand.

“Hi, Mr. Gofer,” Brittany said. Jodie’s lesson on manners had apparently taken hold.

Gofer laughed. “My real name’s Jack Hager. My team calls me Gofer.”

Brittany cast Jodie a what-do-I-do-now look.

Before Jodie could respond, Jeff said, “We call him Gofer because ‘go-fer-broke’ is his favorite expression.”

A rugged man with deep black skin, broad shoulders, and a close-shaved head shook Jodie’s hand next. “Kermit. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

“That’s your real name?” Jodie asked.

Kermit laughed with a rumbling sound deep in his broad chest and showed fine white teeth. “No, ma’am. It’s a nickname, too.”

Brittany, who’d been a huge Sesame Street fan as a toddler, asked, “Like Kermit the Frog?”

Kermit’s smile widened. “That’s the one.”

“Every time we pulled on our BDUs—” Gofer began.

“Battle dress uniforms,” Jeff explained.

“And smeared on camou-paint,” Gofer continued, “he sang, ‘It Isn’t Easy Being Green.’ So we call him Kermit.”

“And this is Ricochet.” Jeff pointed to a lanky fellow with soft brown eyes and curly brown hair who was nearly as tall as Jeff himself.

“Ma’am,” he responded with a respectful nod. “Brittany.”

“We call him Ricochet,” Gofer, apparently the most talkative of the group, explained, “because he can’t keep still.”

Had Ricochet actually blushed, Jodie wondered, or was his color a trick of the rising sun?

“Unless we’re on a mission,” Jeff added. “Then he’s as focused as a hound on a ham bone.”

“And I’m Trace, Ms. Nathan.” The fourth member of the team was tall and muscular with long, slender hands and the face of a poet. “Short for Tracey, my last name.”

“What do they call you, Mr. Davidson?” Brittany asked.

As one body, the four men snapped to attention and shouted in one voice, “Lieutenant Davidson, sir!”

“At ease,” Jeff ordered with a laugh. “And help these ladies unload their car.”

Jodie swallowed her astonishment. Outcast Jeff Davidson, whom everyone had believed would join Hell’s Angels and die in a bar fight, was an officer and a gentleman? Who would have thought?

Jeff motioned toward the building site. “We set up tables under a canopy and ran a power source. Having the food nearby will speed up our work.”

Jodie opened the van’s hatch. Kermit and Gofer each grabbed a Crock-Pot, Trace manhandled the massive coffeemaker she’d borrowed from the church, and Ricochet tucked a huge cooler under each arm and headed for the tables. Jeff began stacking boxes of baked goods.

“Where’s Brynn?” Jodie asked. “I see her car.”

“Inside.” Jeff used his chin to steady the pile of boxes in his arms. “With Daniel.”

“Another member of your team?”

“Nope,” Jeff called over his shoulder as he followed the other men. “My first client. He’s living with me until the dorm’s finished.”

“Cool,” Brittany said. “Can I meet him?”

“Not now. I need your help.” Jodie winced at the edge to her voice.

She definitely had her work cut out for her. Between feeding ravenous Marines and keeping her daughter away from Jeff’s first resident delinquent, it was going to be a long day.

* * *

FIVE HOURS LATER Jeff sat beneath a sugar maple and devoured a bowl of chili and an Italian sub. The morning had gone well. The timber framing crew from Asheville had arrived immediately after Jodie. Grant and Merrilee had made a brief appearance but had to leave when the vet received an emergency call.

With Jeff and his buddies, assisted by Brynn and Daniel providing additional grunt work, the massive dormitory with kitchen/dining/living room was taking shape. By dark, the framing would be complete, and Jeff and his Marines could add the roof, walls and finishing work over the next few weeks.

An unaccustomed lump blocked his throat. He’d never had friends while growing up in Pleasant Valley, mostly due to his father’s infamous reputation. Jeff hadn’t been like the other kids with their extended families, tidy homes with white picket fences and fathers who didn’t stay raging drunk and beat the crap out of them. And no one had understood better than Jeff that he didn’t belong. He’d built a wall around himself merely to survive.

But the corps had been different. Backgrounds and social status were irrelevant. All that mattered was that a man carried his load, became part of the team and watched his buddies’ backs. Determined to make the grade, Jeff had thrown himself first into training and later into missions with every fiber of his being. As gung-ho, kick-ass, hang-tough as the best of them, he’d not only developed self-esteem, he’d won the unqualified respect and undying loyalty of his men. And he loved them more than he’d loved his own blood kin.

“Dessert?” A soft, musical voice interrupted his thoughts.

Jeff glanced up at Jodie, standing in front of him with a plate of chocolate cake in each hand. He set aside his empty chili bowl and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “If you’ll join me.”

Her creamy complexion blushed like a Georgia peach. “I have to—”

“You’ve served everyone else. They’re fine.”

Jodie glanced across the clearing as if hoping to prove him wrong, but the framing crew, gathered at the back of their pickups, held full plates. Brynn, flanked by Brittany and Daniel, sat under the canopy at a makeshift table of planks and sawhorses. Gofer and Kermit had set up a chessboard on a nearby stump and were engrossed in a game. Picking up trash and stray tools and, as usual, unable to stay in one place, Ricochet wandered the work site. Trace reclined on the porch steps with his nose in a novel, Cold Mountain, whose namesake stood just over the North Carolina line near the Blue Ridge Parkway, fifty miles north.

Jeff patted the ground beside him. “Sit with me.”

With the tension of a wild animal trapped with no place to run, Jodie handed him a plate and sank beside him.

“I won’t bite,” he said.

“Hmmmph.” She avoided his eyes. “Thought you Marines ate civilians for lunch.”

He lifted the plate with its thick wedge of cake. “Only when there aren’t such delicious alternatives.”

Not that Jodie wasn’t delicious in her own way. The delicate fragrance of her magnolia-scented shampoo teased his nostrils and fanned a hunger unrelated to food. He stowed his desire and put a lock on it. He had promises to keep, and no woman, not even one as pretty as Jodie, could distract him.

“You have a name for this place?” she asked.

Jeff shrugged. “I’ve always called it home, such as it is.”

“I mean your project, your camp. It has to have a name.”

He’d named it, all right. Maybe if Jodie knew the story behind that name, she’d be more amenable to helping later. “I’m calling it Archer Farm.”

“Archer? As in bows and arrows?” She seemed confused.

“Archer, as in Captain Colin Archer,” Jeff said quietly, steeled against the pain the name evoked.

“One of your team?” She indicated the Marines scattered across the building site.

“The best of our team, but he’s not here today. Except in spirit.”

Jodie took a bite of chocolate cake and waited for him to continue.

“Arch saved my life in Afghanistan.”

Remembering, Jeff could almost feel the biting cold of that winter night, see the star-strewn heavens above the dark mountain peaks, taste the grit of the desert and hear the keening wind.

“We were on a re-con mission to identify the exact location of a terrorist group hiding in a complex of connected caves. Our job was to secure coordinates, convey them to headquarters and get out. Smart bombs would do the rest.

“Harris and I took point, and, in spite of all precautions, Harris somehow tripped a land mine.”

Jodie set her cake aside, as if her appetite had fled.

“Harris died instantly,” Jeff said, “and I was injured. Couldn’t move. Men with guns poured out of those caves like a scene from a Schwarzenegger movie. Only all too real.”