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  Hannah nodded politely.

  “Will Guthrie be coming to supper?” Mom asked.

  Hannah listened for the answer. Would she have to face him in front of his family and be expected to eat?

  “Who knows?” Martha grinned as though this were a perennial question. “I always serve dinner at six. Those who show up for it get it fresh. Those who don’t…” She finished by lifting one hand, then gave an easy grin.

  Garner chuckled as he glanced at his wife. “That’s what you should have done.”

  “If I had,” Mom replied with mock severity, “you would never have eaten a fresh meal.”

  “Guilty as charged.” Dad tickled Jenna, who squealed with delight.

  Martha looked at Hannah and asked, “I hear you are a food writer?”

  “Yes, my Real Food, Healthy Food column appears in twelve papers now across the Midwest.”

  “Wonderful. I hear you’ve written two cookbooks already, too.”

  Blushing, Hannah nodded. “I see you’ve been talking to my parents.” A door slammed, and the three children suddenly went on alert.

  “Guthrie?” Martha called.

  Hannah waited for the answer, breathless.

  “It’s me, Mom!” a feminine voice replied.

  “That’s Lynda,” Martha said.

  Hannah didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed.

  Within moments, a thin young woman, very much like Martha, stepped onto the porch. Her children mobbed her. She kissed her daughters’ heads, then swung Hunter into her arms. “Hello, rug rats!”

  A touch of envy stung Hannah. If she and Edward had married right after college like she’d wanted, she could have been a mother by now. A divorced single mother, a bitter voice added. Edward had never been eager to become a parent. That should have warned me off. How could I have been such a fool?

  After greetings and introductions had been accomplished, they all went to their places around a long picnic table on the wraparound porch.

  A light tapping on the porch door caught Hannah’s attention. She glanced over to see two slender older ladies standing on the top step.

  “It’s the great-aunties!” Jenna shouted and ran with blond braids flying to let them in.

  “Hello!” Martha greeted them. “You’re just in time for dinner.”

  Hannah watched Lynda welcome the two older women who wore identical pink-flowered dresses, which might have been new in 1965.

  Martha looked at Hannah. “These ladies are my late husband’s twin aunts, Ida and Edith Thomas.”

  Hannah exchanged greetings with the women, who reminded her of two of the actresses in a recent production of Arsenic and Old Lace she’d seen at a community theater in the spring. These two ladies could easily have played the aging sisters who were quietly poisoning lonely old men. Ida wore her silver hair pulled into a topknot, but soft bangs framed her cheerful face.

  Edith’s hair had been cut short and curled around her face into gentle waves. Edith was the same height but a bit rounder than her sister.

  When everyone was seated, Hannah’s father said a brief prayer, then Martha began to pass bowls family-style. The menu was the classic spaghetti with marinara sauce, salad and garlic bread.

  Hannah tasted the tangy red sauce, chunky with tomatoes, onion and green pepper. “This is delicious!”

  “It’s just spaghetti sauce.” Martha’s cheeks turned pink. “Cooking for a food writer made me nervous, but I decided to go ahead and make the meal I’d planned for your parents.”

  “That’s Mom’s own recipe,” Lynda said proudly. “She cans it herself.”

  “I don’t wish to contradict you, Lynda,” Ida said, “but this is our recipe. We gave it to your mother when she first married dear Randall. May he rest in peace.”

  “Absolutely,” Edith commented.

  Martha turned pinker. “Yes, of course, you’ve given me so many of your excellent recipes.”

  Martha and her daughter exchanged glances, then they both gave Hannah an uneasy look.

  “Do you can a lot of this?” Hannah asked, puzzled. Had the great-aunts given her the recipe or not?

  “No, I used to can almost one hundred quarts of tomatoes every summer and freeze bags and bags of sweet corn and green beans. But no more. Now I spend one day canning just tomatoes, then a day making spaghetti sauce and one day for salsa.”

  Hannah wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Is the salsa also your own recipe?”

  This time neither aunt claimed the salsa as their own.

  “Yes.” Martha finished tying a bib around squirming Hunter’s neck.

  “I can see and taste that I’ll have to get to know you better.” Hannah grinned.

  “Yes, Martha is a wonderful cook!” Ida and Edith chorused.

  Martha glowed with honest pride, then she humbly changed the topic. “I guess Guthrie was unable to get away from work. I’ll have to fix a dish for you to take to him, Lynda.”

  Her pulse sped up, and Hannah raised her hand. “I’ll take it out to him.”

  “Oh, no.” Martha objected.

  “Please, it’s the least I can do for him after scaring him off the roof yesterday!” Besides, I have something to discuss with Guthrie.

  Nervous but determined, Hannah parked her fiery red sport utility vehicle on her parents’ muddy gravel track. She opened the door and got out to deliver the covered nine-by-thirteen-inch pan Martha had filled with supper. She stepped gingerly on the mud-mired grass, then onto the path of boards toward the building in progress. She hummed “Onward Christian Soldiers” loudly so she wouldn’t take Guthrie by surprise a second time.

  “I hear you!” Guthrie called cheerfully. “Let me guess—that’s your favorite song!”

  His easygoing humor tickled her, made her feel alive. “No,” she teased, “but do you smell your supper?”

  “It’s Mom’s spaghetti and garlic bread. I’m starving!”

  “Then you should have come home!”

  Guthrie was shirtless again. Hannah dragged her eyes away from the bronzed picture he made in the golden twilight. Didn’t the man know what the sight of him did to her knees?

  “Sit with me while I eat?” he invited.

  Still keeping her gaze away from the visual feast he offered, she sat on a hard, sharp-edged stack of lumber, leaving a chaste two-foot gap between them. “Okay. Get busy and eat before it’s completely cold.”

  Guthrie used the wet wipes his mother had sent to clean his large, work-roughened hands. He sat beside her, took the pan onto his lap and bowed his head for grace.

  Hannah bowed her head also, praying for guidance in this situation. The crickets of fall were already singing. Warm breezes whispered against her nose and earlobes.

  “Amen,” Guthrie murmured.

  The sound of the word brought tears to Hannah’s eyes. I’m becoming a cry baby. I cry over everything. Hannah blinked away the moisture. Ever since that day two months after the breakup, when Edward’s sister had called to prepare her in case someone mentioned his wedding. She drew in a deep breath and began talking away the blues. “Two days without rain in a row. Think this might be the beginning of a trend?”

  “I hope so. This summer has been frustrating.”

  I’ve had better summers myself. “I believe you. How much work do you have left on the church roof?” she asked, trying to get the facts she needed.

  “I checked things over today. I’m waiting on an order for some joists, beams and wallboard to repair water damage in the attic. After I replace all the damaged roof boards, all I have left to do is replace some of the siding on the steeple, then I can start the shingling.”

  “Good.”

  “So today I worked on your parents’ house, as you can see.” He waved a slab of fragrant garlic bread toward the foundation. He’d been working on floor joists. For one man, he’d accomplished quite a bit in one day. Why did he insist on working a job alone?

  Not voicing this concern, she bowed her head
as if scolded. “I noticed. Here I was trying to be polite by not bringing this up.”

  He chuckled.

  She looked at him sideways. His golden hair was damp from hard work. A fine layer of sawdust frosted his curls. She nearly reached over to fluff his hair and shake off the pale particles. “I like your family.”

  “Imagine that. I do, too.” He tore off a hunk of the garlic bread.

  Trying to come up with some safe newcomer-type subject, she asked, “What is there to do for fun around here?”

  “Fun? You want to have fun, Miss Hannah?”

  The rich coaxing tone he used made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. “If I decide to hang around.”

  “I thought you were just here to make sure that your parents got into their house on time.” Guthrie twisted saucy spaghetti around his fork.

  “That’s true.” No sense mincing words, then. “Guthrie, you said that you have offered to let my parents out of their contract. Did you mean that?”

  He swallowed his swirl of spaghetti. “Yes.”

  “Then I was wondering if you would take it a step further.” Hannah stretched her legs and gazed at the fading sunlight.

  “How do you mean that?” Guthrie took a drink from a quart jar of iced tea.

  “Would you tell them you’d like to break the contract?” She held her breath even though she could almost predict his answer.

  He stared at her. “But that would be a lie. I don’t want to break the contract.”

  She hung her head, discouraged. “That’s what I expected you to say. In fact, I agree with you.”

  “Hannah, your parents may be semiretiring, but they are still competent adults. At the very beginning, I explained to them that I work mostly alone with little help. We discussed the possibility of weather causing delays. As of yesterday, they still wanted me to build their home.”

  She nodded. “I know. You are the builder they want to build their dream house.” She hadn’t fully realized that before, but she did now.

  “Then why do you want them to settle for a factory-built house?” He began twisting his fork again, gathering another tangy mouthful.

  She gave him a rueful smile. “I don’t, really. I just thought it was important for them to get into their home as soon as possible. They may say they don’t mind staying at the Cozy Motel, but it will cease to be a novelty in the next few weeks.”

  Guthrie nodded.

  Leaning backward, she looked at the endless twilight sky—golden bands between slate-blue layers. “My sister called today and laughed at me. Called me Hannah, the planner, and told me I couldn’t treat life like a recipe.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing, but…” Mom’s leukemia was certainly something. She didn’t want to take her mother’s return to health for granted. And her sisters’ idea of looking for Mom’s adoption papers lurked in the back of her mind, lending urgency to the need to get her parents settled. What to do?

  Pushing away these concerns, she turned to face him. “I really want to help my parents with this move. They’ve had health problems crop up in the past year, and I wanted this to go smoothly.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I’m not licked yet. I want my parents in their dream house before snow flies and I will find a way.”

  He shook his head. “Well, be sure to let me know what you come up with. I’ll be interested.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be the first to know.”

  Sitting with her black laptop in her lap, Hannah rubbed her eyes. The bedside clock read one a.m. She ran the spell-check on her computer, then connected the jack and cord between the computer and phone. She quickly set up the fax information and tapped “Enter.”

  “Goodbye,” she murmured as her column, “Old and New Canning Recipes and Tips,” traveled through the phone lines to her newspapers. With a groan, she laid down on her bed. She yawned and whispered a good night prayer….

  The blare of a trucker’s horn woke her. She sat up. Thin, early sunlight sifted through blinds into her room. The images in the dream she’d awakened from sent a thrill through her. The memories must be an answer to prayer. Thank you, Lord. Now I know what I can do.

  Chapter Four

  Several hours later at nearly ten on another cloudy morning, Hannah swung into the church parking lot and with a quick spin of the wheel parked her red SUV beside Guthrie’s sky-blue pickup. Aha! When she’d driven by her parents’ lot and found it uninhabited, she’d known she’d find Guthrie here.

  Right after breakfast at the Cozy Café, she’d driven to the Farm and Fleet out on the highway and bought heavy-duty overalls and tan work boots. Then she went to her room, tore off the tags and pulled on the stiff denim. Finally, she’d wiggled her cotton-socked toes in the steel-toed boots making sure she had enough toe room.

  She was ready. She was set. It was a go!

  Saying a quick prayer, she grabbed her red plastic toolbox, climbed out of the vehicle and jogged through the side door leading into the church basement.

  Her mother was speaking on the phone in the church’s outer office. No doubt her father sat in the inner office hard at work preparing Sunday’s sermon. I’m doing this for you, Mom and Dad. You need to get settled and the sooner the better. Mom’s remission and her sisters’ suggestion that Hannah look for Mom’s birth documents nipped at the back of her mind, but Hannah waved and went on. Hammering from above beckoned her irresistibly.

  The church was so small it wasn’t difficult to find the short flight of tan-painted steps that led her to the main floor, then to the narrow, dark-wood staircase and attic. The pounding became louder with each step. And each step lifted her spirits. Since she’d arrived in Petite, she’d been mired in a bog of disappointment.

  Today that had changed! She bubbled inside with happy purpose. Arriving in the attic, she breathed in the welcome scent of fresh-cut wood.

  Guthrie’s back was to her as he crouched, pounding replacement boards over floor joists. He hadn’t heard her approach. She opened her mouth to say something, then paused to watch as he hammered. The muscles of his back rippled under the taut white T-shirt.

  No doubt about it. Guthrie Thomas was a masterpiece of a man. When God had crafted this carpenter’s genes, He’d been extravagantly generous. But God Himself had chosen to be born into a carpenter’s family. Maybe He had a soft spot for them.

  Guthrie’s every move was sure and strong, without hesitation or fumbling. But something, some thought she’d had about Guthrie in her late-night deadline session last evening eluded her now. She creased her forehead, thinking. Yes!

  “Why aren’t you married?” The words popped out of her mouth.

  Guthrie shot up and spun around. “Hannah!”

  She covered her hot face with her hands. “I’m sorry.” After three years of holding back her true feelings so she wouldn’t upset Edward, she’d lost control of her tongue. Now words she’d never dreamed of saying aloud would pop out of her mouth. I hope this goes away—and soon!

  “Why did you sneak up on me like that?” He put down his hammer.

  “I know! I’m sorry!” She didn’t blame him for being exasperated with her, but she hoped he hadn’t heard her question. How embarrassing!

  Experience had taught her that whenever a woman mentioned marriage near a man, he thought she was interested in him. If he only knew! Marriage should be the last thing on her mind. Besides, Guthrie could give any leading man competition, and she was just plain old Hannah. But why hadn’t he married a high school sweetheart and started a family by now? That was the mystery!

  Bending his head under a low rafter, he stepped closer to her. “What can I do for you?”

  He must not have caught her question, and he wasn’t angry over her startling him again. His calm words and manner showed this. Easygoing Guthrie.

  Trying to ease her stress, she shrugged her tense shoulders to relax them. “Nothing. I mean, I came….” Her words petered out. How would Guthrie Tho
mas take to her idea?

  In her rush to get rigged out and in the excitement of finally coming up with some positive action, she’d ignored a fluttering in the back of her mind, a touch of concern over how Guthrie would like her plan.

  He paused, eyeing her. “I need to keep at it. More showers are predicted today, so I gave up the idea of working on your parents’ house. I’ve started to work here inside on the attic—”

  She decided to say it and get it over with. “Guthrie, I finally thought of a way to help you get my parents’ house done more quickly.”

  “Really? How?” He sauntered over to where he’d been hammering and squatted, his thigh muscles molding the well-worn denim.

  “I’m going to work with you. Be your carpenter’s helper.”

  He popped up like toast from a toaster. “What!”

  She’d snagged his attention, all right. Would he proceed to opposition next? “Yes, I suppose you didn’t know that I’ve done construction work.”

  “You? Construction?” He looked at her as though she were babbling nonsense.

  She nodded. “I went on mission trips to Arkansas and Haiti.”

  “Mission trips? What has that got to do with building your parents’ house?”

  She anchored one hand on her hip. The other gripped her toolbox. “I helped rebuild a church in Arkansas after a tornado destroyed it. In Haiti, I built small cement-block homes for the poor.”

  He took a step nearer. “This is not going to be a one-room cement-block—”

  She lifted her chin. “I also helped build two Habitat for Humanity homes in Milwaukee.”

  He stopped and stared at her. “You’re serious.”

  “Very serious. My parents need their house finished, and the sooner the better. The weather has delayed you. You’re only one man. One person can only do so much.” She waved two fingers in the air. “But two can do twice the work of one.”

  Looking nonplussed, he measured her with his gaze. “You’re not strong enough. I mean, look at you.”

  His frank stare made her blush, so to hide this she looked at herself. What did he see? She was no ethereal angel like her sister Spring. Anyone could see she was built to work. She said in a determined tone, “They didn’t seem to think I was too weak to do a day’s work in Arkansas, Haiti and Milwaukee.”