A Man Worth Keeping. Molly O'Keefe
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was only nine in the morning, and the forecast had called for squalls all day.
Winter. Nothing good about it.
Of course, spending every minute of the season outside was a surefire way to cultivate his dislike of the cold. But lately, walls no matter how far away—and ceilings—no matter how high—felt too close. Like coffins.
The thick brown gloves didn’t keep out the chill so he clapped his hands together, scaring blackbirds from the tree line a few feet behind him.
Even the skeleton structure he’d spent the past few months constructing seemed to shiver and quake in the cold December morning.
He eyed his building and for about the hundredth time he wondered what it was going to be.
It wasn’t one of the cottages that he’d spent last spring and summer building for his brother’s Riverview Inn.
Too small for that. Too plain for his brother, Gabe, the owner of the luxury lodge in the wilderness of the Catskills.
Max told everyone it was going to be an equipment shed, because they needed one. But it was so far away from the buildings that needed maintaining and the lawns that needed mowing, he knew it would be a pain in the butt hauling equipment back and forth.
Still, he called it a shed because he didn’t know what else to call it.
Besides, the construction kept his hands busy, his head empty. And busy hands and an empty head stymied the worst of the memories.
The skin on the back of his neck grew knees and crawled for his hairline and he whirled, one hand at his hip as if his gun would be where it had been for ten years. But of course his hip was empty and, behind him, watching him silently beneath a snow-covered Douglas fir, was a little girl.
“Hi,” he said.
She waved.
“You by yourself?” He scanned the treeline for a parent.
She nodded.
Talkative little thing.
“Where’d you come from?” Max asked.
The girl jerked her thumb toward the inn that was back down the trail about thirty feet through the forest.
“Are you a guest?” he asked, although it was Monday and most guests checked in on Sunday. “At the inn?” She shrugged.
“You…ah…lost?” Max asked.
She shook her head.
“Can you talk?”
She nodded.
“Are you gonna?”
She shook her head and smiled.
His heart, despite the hours in the cold, warmed his chest.
“Do you think maybe someone is worried about you?”
At that the girl stopped smiling and glanced behind her at the buildings barely visible through the pines.
“Should we head back?” he asked, stepping away from his project in forgetting. At his movement she darted left, away from the trail, under the heavy branches of trees and he stopped.
She was a deer ready to run. And since beyond him there was a whole lot of nothing, he figured he’d best keep her here until someone came looking for her.
“All right,” he said. “We don’t have to go anywhere.”
Amongst the trees, her pink coat partially hidden in shadows, he saw her pink-gloved finger point at the building behind him.
“It’s a house,” he said.
She laughed, the bright tinkle filling his silent clearing.
“You think it’s too small?” he asked, and her head nodded vigorously.
“Well, it’s for a very small family—” he eased slightly closer to her where she hid “—of racoons.”
Something crunched under his foot and she zipped deeper into the shadows and now he couldn’t see her face. He stopped.
Two years off the force and he’d lost his touch.
“Want to play a game?” he asked, and when she didn’t answer and didn’t run he took it for a yes. “I’m going to guess how old you are and if I guess right, we go inside, because it’s too cold.” He shivered dramatically.
Again, no sound, no movement.
“All right.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “It’s coming to me. I can see a number and you are…fortytwo.”
She laughed. But when he took a step, the laughter stopped, as if it had been cut off by a knife. He stilled. “What am I—too low? Are you older?”
Her gloved hand reached out between tree limbs and her thumb pointed down. “You’re younger?” He pretended to be amazed. “Okay, let me try…eight?”
No laughter and no hand.
For one delightful summer of his misspent youth, Max had been an age and weight guesser on Coney Island. He had a ridiculous intuition for such things and that summer it had gotten him laid more times than he could count.
Ah. Misspent youth.
“Am I right?” he asked.
She stepped out from underneath the tree, her face still, her eyes wary.
“Are you scared? Of going back?”
She shook her head and looked at the end of her bright orange and pink scarf, playing with the tassels.
“You just don’t want to?” he asked.
The little girl’s eyes lifted to his and he saw a misery there that he totally understood. She didn’t like what was back there.
“Tough one,” he muttered.
“Josie!” The cry split through the quiet forest. “Josie! Where are you?” It was a woman’s voice and she was panicked. Scared.
“You Josie?” he asked the little girl, and her guilty expression was enough.
“She’s here!” he yelled. “Stay on the trail and—”
A woman, petite and fair, erupted from the trees and nearly tripped into the clearing. Her wild eyes searched the area until they landed on Josie, small and pink and looking like she wished she could vanish.
“Oh my God!” the woman cried, hurtling herself through snow to practically slide on her knees in front of Josie. “Oh, Josie. I was so worried.” She checked the little girl, cupped her cheeks in her own bare hands. The woman didn’t even have a coat on.
“What did I say about wandering off?” the woman asked, snow gathering in her red hair. “What did I say? You can’t do that, Josie. You can’t scare me that way.” Finally the woman hauled Josie into her arms but stayed on her knees, her blue jeans no doubt getting soaked through.
No coat. No gloves and now she was going to be wet.
He cleared his throat. “She’s been with—”
Before he could even finish, the woman was on her feet, Josie sequestered behind her. The woman was braced for battle, a bear protecting her cub and Max had serious respect for that particular facet of motherhood and had no desire to screw with it.
He took a careful step away from the two females and lifted his eyes to look into the woman’s in an effort to calm her down. He opened his mouth to tell her that he meant no harm, but the words died a quiet death in his throat.
There was a buzz in the air and under his jacket all the hair on his arms stood up.
I know you, he thought, looking into her radiant blue eyes. I know all about you. Her stiff shoulders and trembling lips told