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For some reason as he was thinking that, Jubilee’s face shimmered across his brain again, like it had quite often since he’d met her along the road.
“Yeah. Mom gave her a room, and her kids too. She’s going to be helping her for the summer. Probably longer if I know my mom.”
“I’ve heard she always seems to take vagabonds under her wing.”
“Anyone who needs it.”
“You know the world needs more people like her,” Davis said casually.
“She’s one of a kind, that’s for sure.” Although, he saw characteristics of his mom in Jubilee. Jubilee had just had things a little harder, a little earlier. His mom had her husband walk out on her after she already had six kids and a farm to run. Jubilee’s circumstances might have been a little bit different, and he was curious to know her story, but he could see the compassion and caring in Jubilee that was easy to see in his mom.
“So how did Jubilee land on her doorstep again?” Davis asked, making Matt’s head jerk up. Did he know the story and just wanted to rub it in?
But Davis was concentrating on throwing hay bales down and didn’t have so much as a smirk on his face.
“She broke down on the road. I came across her, saw her kids, heard her story about looking for work in Strawberry Sands, and my mom seemed like a natural place to put her.”
That was most of it. Although, he had to admit that if there hadn’t been something about Jubilee that tugged at his heart, he might not have suggested giving her a place at his mom’s.
He might have put her up at a hotel himself. Or warned her away, considering that there wasn’t much work in town anyway.
Eva crossed his mind again, and he wondered how long she would last in town. Knowing his mom the way he did, she probably offered to let Eva stay for free. After all, Eva was the mother of her granddaughter whom she adored. His mom had always been way too nice to her as far as Matt was concerned. Eva just took advantage of her.
Anytime he pointed that out to his mom, she just smiled and said that God had it, and she wasn’t worried about people taking advantage of her. God would reward her and even things out eventually. She had so much confidence in that fact, it was hard for Matt not to have confidence in it as well.
“You know, sometimes God puts those things in your path because He has a plan for them.” Davis’s words were very casual, and Matt tried not to read more into them than what was there. Davis couldn’t possibly know that he’d been thinking way more about Jubilee than he should have been. Not to mention, if God had something in mind for him, it was kind of odd that God would also have Eva moving back to Strawberry Sands, even if only for a summer.
He wasn’t sure whether he had read everything right that morning or not. Whether Eva really did seem like she was interested in getting together with him.
He couldn’t even say “back” together, because they had never really been together.
They went on to talk about the weather and how much hay Matt was making, and that type of thing.
Matt noticed that the small girl Davis had hired shortly after Kathleen was born slipped in and out, taking care of the horses. The boy that had been with her at times was nowhere to be seen. But Matt didn’t go around looking for them, although he wanted to ask about them again, because even now, the girl looked young to him.
And a little bit...haunted. He wasn’t sure that was the right word, but she just seemed like someone who maybe didn’t have the best homelife. He wasn’t sure exactly what gave him that idea and couldn’t quite put his finger on why he thought that.
But she slipped out of sight, and he forgot about her by the time they had the hay unloaded, Davis had written him out a check, and he walked out to his pickup, stopping to look over the lake.
He probably shouldn’t have, because he could see Jubilee down below, playing in the sand next to the water with her daughters.
As an adult, he would have thought that she would be sitting, possibly reading a book while her girls played around her. But she chased them through the waves, laughing and splashing, and from the way she was acting, he would have thought that she wasn’t much older than they were.
He smiled to watch it.
It wasn’t exactly the sultry, sexy beach babe that might have caught his eye ten years ago. Eva, for example.
Jubilee wore a long skirt that flowed and waved in the breeze, whipping out behind her, patterned in bright blue and looking cheerful. Her white tunic shirt flapped along with her movements and was most definitely more than modest.
Yeah, she wouldn’t have turned his head when he was a teenager, but she caught his eye now. Maybe he was older and wiser and knew that the perfect beach bod didn’t necessarily mean that there was a personality that he wanted to hang around for any length of time behind it.
But he loved the unaffected way Jubilee played with her girls. Like she didn’t care whether anyone was watching and didn’t expect them to.
He really didn’t plan it that way, but before he thought about it, his feet were taking him down through the dunes and out onto the beach.
He stopped at the edge to take his boots and socks off and roll up his pant legs. His white legs sticking out from his jeans looked ridiculous, and he realized despite the fact that he lived next to Lake Michigan, he hadn’t been in the lake at all that year.
He had no intention of swimming in his jeans, but he definitely had the intention of going down and... He wasn’t sure. He was just drawn to the laughter and happiness and fun.
