Sharon Mignerey - Small Town Secrets

He set the pins in the pair of holes to make sure they fit, then removed them, lifted the window two inches, and drilled a second set of holes.

“You make that look disgustingly easy,” she said. “I would have been at this for another half hour.”

“And the third reason,” he prompted, mostly because he liked the sound of her voice. Plus, she was close enough that he imagined he smelled cinnamon again.

“I’d have to take me along,” she said, simply.

He made a point of looking her up and down. “And that’s a bad thing because…”

“If I ran I away, I’d be pretending that I didn’t have any responsibility for the things that happened in my marriage.”

“Make a fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” he said. When she sent a questioning glance in his direction, he swallowed and gave her the bare truth. “You saw me coming out of the meeting today.”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“I’m an alcoholic,” he said, just as he had hundreds of times over the past three years—and remembering a time when the words hadn’t come easily. His sobriety was something he needed to maintain for himself, but he admitted that he wanted Léa’s good opinion of him. “And that’s one of the steps to recovery.”

She didn’t say anything, just watched him with those clear blue eyes that seemed to look right through him.

“Just what every girl wants,” he finally said to break the silence. “An alcoholic ex-con across the street.”

“When you put it that way, it sounds awful.”

“It was. It is. And I have to live the rest of my life knowing that, whether I was drunk or not, I’m responsible for someone dying.”

“Are you…sober, now?”

He nodded. “Three years and two months.”

“Then, I can think of worse neighbors,” she said.

He liked the sound of that, even though another bare truth was he still wasn’t feeling just neighborly. Not by a long shot.

They finished installing the pins on the other two windows in the living room. “One room down,” Léa said.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked. When she sent him a questioning glance, he added, “Lock yourself in like this?”

“I’ll sleep easier.” She led the way to the kitchen.

That simple statement told him too much. Namely that she hadn’t slept last night. He knew what that was like, knew the stress it caused.

“My favorite room in the house,” she said, moving toward the bank of windows.

Zach understood why it was her favorite. The view through the windows included a large yard with a couple trees and farther away the ramparts and juniper-covered mesas that stretched for miles.

He then realized that locking the windows wouldn’t keep out anyone determined to get in.

The back door opened onto an old-fashioned glassed-in porch, and both doors were fitted with a big pane of glass that would be an invitation to a burglar in a big city.

“All somebody has to do is break the window and they can still get in,” Zach said, stating the obvious.

“At least I’d have proof someone had been in the house,” Léa said.

“If you’d told me two weeks ago that I’d be helping a neighbor build a prison—”

“That’s how it seems to you?” She looked genuinely shocked.

“How does it seem to you?” he countered.

“I’m not—” She shook her head, her stricken glance lancing him, then skipping away. “I just want to know that when I go to bed at night no one can get in.”

“Hey.” As he had last night, he took her hand, liking the way it felt within his. “Don’t mind me. Just because I can’t stand the idea of being locked in doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you need to. Okay?”

She looked away, then nodded.

He released her hand and moved away from her, once again repeating to himself the litany of reasons she was off limits.

She made him another iced tea while he repeated the process he had done in the living room. Throughout, their conversation remained carefully away from the subjects of prisons and her ex-husband. Zach hated caring so much that she hurt. He had just met her, yet that didn’t keep him from wanting to shield her from heartache—another surprising thought had him silently laughing at himself. He was the last person imaginable to shield her from hurt or heartache or anything else.

She led him upstairs, the stairwell in her house accessed from the kitchen, the sky-blue color of the kitchen continuing down the hall. She opened the first door—a nursery all done up in soft colors and white painted furniture. Clearly, it was a room that had been put together with the care of a woman already loving the child who was to be in here.

Léa paused an instant, then crossed the room to the window where she took down the café rod that held crisp eyelet curtains.

Following her into the room, Zach cleared his throat. “I overheard you and the woman who was here before—you’re wanting to adopt?”

She nodded, her gaze not quite meeting his. Her guarded expression revealed just how important this was to her, which somehow made it important to him.

“Some kid is going to be lucky to have you for his mom.”

“Thanks.”

Léa’s voice was husky, as though she needed to clear her throat.

“I could be putting my foot in my mouth, but I thought it was nearly impossible for a single person to adopt.”

“In some states I’ve heard that’s the way it is,” Léa said. “Thankfully, here in Colorado, it’s a little easier, though the scrutiny for a single parent is the same as it is for a couple.”

He made quick work of securing the window, then followed her on down the hallway past the bathroom and into the larger bedroom at the end of the hall. Her room.

It was comforting and feminine. The white wicker furniture reminded him of being on a porch, and, as he gazed around the room, he decided that it might have once been one. It appeared that after it had been closed in, a pair of glass double doors had been left that now opened onto a balcony too narrow even to stand on.

“The left-side door doesn’t open,” she said, pulling back the sheer curtain. She vibrated with tension as she stared out the window. “Right after we moved in, Foley dubbed this the Romeo balcony.”

“I thought Juliet was on the balcony.”

Léa nodded, her gaze lifting to his. “Exactly.”

“And he was able to get in this way?”

“I used to love sleeping with the door open,” she said without directly answering his question. “A breeze would come in, and you’d be able to smell the junipers and the piñon. I hate this—locking the doors up this way—but I don’t know any other way.”

“You could move.”

“No,” she stated simply, although the look she gave him spoke volumes.

Though Zach disliked the idea of marring the white woodwork with the sturdy latches she handed him, he installed them both. Since the doors were panes of glass, they also wouldn’t keep anyone out for long.

Finishing, he turned around to look at Léa where she stood next to the bed.

“Need anything else?” he asked, deliberately putting distance between them and heading down the hallway toward the stairs.

“You’ve done more than enough,” she said. “Any time I can return the favor…”

“You fed me breakfast. Let’s just call it even.”

She followed him to the front door where he casually let himself out of her house without looking back, telling her that he’d see her in a day or two. If he could stay away that long, that is. Like her cooking, she was a feast for the senses, and he loved everything about being around her.

Oh, he could tell himself that he was simply being a gentleman and a good neighbor because he was worried about her. But that would only be half the story. Being with her had made him feel more human and more alive than anything he’d experienced during the last three years. And seeing her vulnerability made him ache to hold her close the way he craved a shot of bourbon.