Chapter Three

      Jodie forced herself not to run. More than anything, she wanted to snatch Brittany from Daniel’s presence, shove her in the car and take off, as fast and far from Archer Farm as Jodie could drive.

      But she knew better. She was no expert in teen psychology, but she’d learned enough. If Brittany even suspected her mother didn’t want her at Archer Farm, Jeff’s project would become her daughter’s most desirable destination.

      Jodie wanted to stop, scream and shake her fists at the heavens. Why, every time her sex drive kicked in, did her brain check out? What kind of spell had Jeff Davidson cast that she’d allowed herself to become involved with his plans? Between Brittany and the business, Jodie already had her hands full. She didn’t need more temptations dangled in front of her very impressionable child, and she particularly didn’t need the distraction of a man as good-looking and compassionate as Jeff.

      Anger and frustration threatened to strangle her. Being a single mom was hard enough. Why did Jeff have to add to her problems by bringing his jail-bound teens to Pleasant Valley? Why not Chicago where his pal Archer had come from?

      Hard to farm in Chicago, logic reminded her.

      Jodie wasn’t operating on logic, however, but pure, unadulterated maternal instinct. Jeff’s clients posed a potential threat to her child, and Jodie pledged every effort to keep Brittany away.

      But Jeff also threatened Jodie’s well-ordered single life in a way no other man had. She liked him, he was interesting, he made her pulse race and she wanted to spend more time with him. Which was exactly why she vowed to keep herself away from Jeff and Archer Farm, as well.

      Slowing her steps to a casual saunter, she approached the table where Brynn sat with Brittany and Jeff’s first client.

      “How many lawyers,” Brynn was saying, “does it take to change a lightbulb?”

      “How many?” Brittany said.

      “Three. One to climb the ladder, one to shake the ladder, and one to sue the ladder company.”

      Brittany and Daniel laughed, until they took a look at Jodie’s face. Brittany’s laughter died in her throat, and Daniel shoved to his feet.

      Well, well. A felon with manners.

      Even as she thought it, Jodie recognized she wasn’t being fair. Daniel didn’t look like a hardened criminal. Thin and tall, with his freckles, wide blue eyes, shaggy hair that needed cutting, and deer-in-the-headlights expression, he reminded her of a scared little kid who wanted his mother. And he couldn’t be many days over sixteen.

      Dear God, why was life so complicated? Why couldn’t the bad guys look like bad guys?

      Jodie inhaled deeply, forced herself to relax and smile. “I see you haven’t exhausted your repertoire,” she said to Brynn.

      Her friend, looking especially ravishing out of uniform in snug-fitting jeans, leather boots and a sweatshirt that brought out the dark blue in her eyes, grinned. “I haven’t even started on my Yankee jokes.”

      Jodie groaned, rolled her eyes and sat. She’d wait until the crews started back to work after lunch, ask Brittany to help load the car and leave. Their departure would seem natural then, instead of the panicked flight she wanted this very moment.

      “Tell us, Aunt Brynn.” Brittany adored her mother’s friend, who, unlike Jodie, could do no wrong in her daughter’s eyes.

      Brynn didn’t need encouragement. “A young man from the Smoky Mountains studied very hard all his life and won a full scholarship to a prestigious Ivy League college in New England. He’d never left home before, and he soon lost his way on the large campus.

      “So he stopped an older student and asked in his slow mountain drawl, ‘Could you please tell me where the library’s at?’”

      Daniel and Brittany exchanged amused glances at Brynn’s exaggerated twang.

      “The older student looked down his nose with a sneer at the newcomer and replied in clipped Yankee tones, ‘If you spoke proper English, you would know never to end a sentence with a preposition.’

      “The mountaineer grinned. ‘Of course. Thank you kindly for the grammar lesson. Now, will you please tell me where the library’s at, jack—’”

      “Brynn!” Jodie interrupted sharply, but Brittany and Daniel caught the officer’s drift and howled with laughter.

      “Sorry,” Brynn said. “I hang around cops too much.” She turned to Brittany. “That language is not appropriate for a young lady. And you, Daniel, must be especially cautious of how you speak. You need to make the best impression possible, understand?”

      “Yes, ma’am,” the boy agreed with a respectful nod.

      The sound of an engine straining on an uphill grade broke the silence, and a delivery truck from the local builders’ supply rumbled into the clearing.

      Across the yard, Jeff jumped to his feet. “Let’s help unload.”

      “Ooo-rah!” his team answered in unison and double-timed it to the truck. Daniel and Brittany got up and joined them.

      “Get the feeling those guys would follow Jeff to hell and back?” Brynn asked.

      “From what he’s told me, they already have,” Jodie said quietly and watched the men heft heavy timbers onto their shoulders as if they weighed no more than matchsticks.

      “Is that why you looked so spooked a minute ago? Too many war stories?”

      Jodie shook her head. “I’m worried about Brit, and I’m taking her home as soon as I can. Daniel has a rap sheet as long as my arm. She shouldn’t be around him.”

      “He needs a friend, Jodie.”

      “Someone else’s daughter can be his friend.”

      “Aren’t you being harsh?”

      “The boy’s jail-bound. I don’t want him steering Jodie in the same direction.”

      Brynn shook her head. “I’ve seen his rap sheet. And I’ve read between the lines. He’s a good boy who fell in with the wrong crowd. Did the wrong things for the right reasons. Otherwise the judge would have made Daniel reservations at the Gray Bar Inn, not here.”

      “The