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Then she looked toward Addie, and it was nothing but pure warmth and joy. “I’m going to go get the berries right now, so we’re all ready for tomorrow morning. Okay?”
Addie clasped her hands together. “Okay!”
She stepped back and shut the door. Jacob pulled away and headed for the work trailer offices behind the chain-link fencing. He glanced back, through the rearview mirror.
Josie had gotten into her car and was backing out of the space. He found that reassuring for some reason. Her surprise arrival concerned him. She’d shown up, out of the blue. She’d crossed a construction zone. She—he paused and his thoughts took a different route, a more personal one.
She was downright beautiful, and clearly worried. Who wouldn’t be in her situation?
As he pulled up to the double-wide work trailer, Addie leaped out of her seat and waved toward the road.
Josie Gallagher was driving by. She spotted the girl and gave a quick wave back, nothing over the top, but it seemed to make Addie happy. “I like her, Daddy!”
She clutched his hand and skipped alongside as he approached the work trailer. “You do?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She bobbed her head and her curls bounced. “She has really pretty hair.”
He couldn’t fault her six-year-old reasoning because he’d noticed Josie’s hair, too. Dark brown, with copper-red highlights, but not enough to be called auburn. And those smoke-toned eyes with a hint of green. He’d noticed their odd shade as she turned the corner of the concrete walk and their eyes met.
“I would love a dolly with hair like that,” Addie confessed. “All of my dolls have hair like mine.” She sighed as if hair made a difference. It didn’t, of course. “I might be really, really tired of yellow hair.”
“Strawberry blond,” he reminded her and laid a hand over her head. “Really pretty strawberry blond hair, and I think you’re exactly the way God wanted you to be, Addie-cakes.”
“Well, I don’t think he’d mind if I had a brown-haired dolly.” The logic of her reasoning wasn’t lost on him. “I think he’d be okay with that, actually.”
He’d never really noticed that her dolls were all light-haired. A couple were from her early years, and several were more recent gifts, but she was right. Every one of them was pale and blond-or copper-haired. Clearly he and his parents thought alike, but that was shortsighted. Her playthings should have diversity, shouldn’t they? To reflect the real world?
He set up Addie with a juice box and crackers in the front room, then arranged for the conference call in the adjacent office. He made a note to check out the doll situation when he had time, then refocused his attention on dock-building bids. For the moment, Addie would have to get by with what she had with her, and she was such an easygoing child, he was sure that would be just fine.
* * *
“You never told anyone about the attack?” She’d surprised Drew Slade, Josie realized less than two hours later, and a man who used to be top security for the current president of the United States didn’t surprise easily. “Josie, why not? They could have helped you. They still could,” he added firmly.
Fear and shame had held her tongue seven years ago. She clenched her hands in her lap and wondered how all of her careful reasoning had come to this. “I wasn’t on the best terms with my family when I went to Louisiana.”
“How so?”
“Kimberly never told you?” That made her feel better, somehow. Not that she wanted Kimberly to keep secrets from Drew, but she was glad her stupid mistakes hadn’t become gossip fodder.
Drew shook his head.
“I messed up in college. Big-time. I cut loose, and partied with all the wrong people after my Dad died. I flunked out midway through my sophomore year and became a bitter disappointment to the Gallagher clan.”
“We all make mistakes,” Drew replied. “I’m a card-carrying member of Alcoholics Anonymous myself, so I hear you. But I don’t get what one has to do with the other.”
“I embarrassed my family, and they worked hard to help me get straightened out,” she told him. “Counseling, rehab and a job. They stuck by me despite what I did. When I decided I wanted to work the barbecue circuit in the Deep South, my mother and aunts tried to talk me out of it because there’s plenty of temptation in New Orleans. For a barbecue cook, though, it is the place to be if you want to learn all the aspects of good Southern cooking.”
