Getting Lucky Read online

  Chapter Three

  One hot summer night when he was fifteen, Ben had gone for a ride with some friends. They’d stopped at a convenience store for beer and cigarettes, and they’d cruised a few back roads. He hadn’t had a clue, he’d told Emmaline later that night at the jail, that the car, the beer, and the cigarettes were all stolen, along with the contents of the store’s cash register. For once, he’d been telling the truth, and she’d believed him. But she’d warned him on the way out of the police station that he was a lousy judge of character, and it was going to get him in serious trouble someday.

  Truth was, he was a damn good judge of character. He’d known those kids he went joyriding with were thieves and troublemakers. He just hadn’t cared.

  He didn’t know exactly what Lynda Barone was. As they waited for the red-haired waitress to bring their drinks, he studied her, seeking answers. The fact that she had money was obvious in ways that had nothing to do with the hundred-fifty-grand car parked back at the hardware store. She looked, acted, even smelled rich.

  He didn’t have any automatic prejudices in favor of or against wealth. Some of the most down-to-earth good ol’ boys in Georgia had money to burn, and some of the sorriest excuses for wasting oxygen didn’t have two dimes to call their own. How important the wealth was to her would determine how important it was to him, and he didn’t know that yet.

  Money aside, he couldn’t quite get a feel for her. She apparently had a reputation for being difficult, and yet she could be intimidated by a baby. She was evidently successful in her career, but on the short walk to Harry’s, he’d asked her the usual getting-to-know-you questions, and she’d answered in words of one syllable without ever looking at him. Was she shy? Private? Too busy to waste time on idle chatter? Or disdainful of fraternizing with the help?

  He was still trying to figure it out.

  Maeve greeted them both, filled Lynda’s coffee cup, and set a glass of iced tea in front of him. He gave the pale liquid a long, sorry look before reaching for the sugar. “You Yankees may have won the war, but you still haven’t learned the secret to making good iced tea.” He doubted the sugar would improve it much. Sweetness could hide only so many flaws—a fact that applied to life as well as tea.

  She smiled an all-purpose smile, thin and quick. “If you don’t object, Mr. Foster, I’d like to get right to business. I have a busy schedule today.”

  And she didn’t want to disrupt it any longer than necessary with him. He could understand that … though he wondered what was the point of having all that money if she couldn’t take a few hours off when she needed to.

  “My first priority on the house is the roof. It leaks.”

  He glanced at the clouds settling over the valley, as if the weight of the rain they carried was slowly forcing them to the ground.

  She looked out, too, and a scowl wrinkled the fine skin across her forehead. “Additionally, I have electrical problems. Lightbulbs burn out fairly quickly, and the circuits overload on a regular basis. There are also some rotted boards on the porch.” She grimaced as if she’d gone through a couple of them.

  “That’s it?”

  “Those are the priorities. There’s also a leak under the kitchen sink and a drip in the bathroom sink, and one of the toilets runs constantly. There are no shelves and not enough electrical outlets in my office, the kitchen needs additional outlets and cabinets as well, the floors are in need of work, some of the molding is missing, the banister is wobbly, the front door sticks, some windows need replacing, and—”

  “I get the picture.”

  She drew a breath. “Can you handle the priorities and, time allowing, some of the lesser jobs?”

  “Yes.” Fact was, any reasonably skilled handyman could do most of them.

  “Would you like to see the house so you can prepare an estimate, and then we can—”

  The first raindrops were fat and landed with audible plops on the flat surfaces outside the window. The wrinkles returned to her forehead as she watched them, and he took advantage of her preoccupation to speak. “We can do it two ways, Ms. Barone. I can give you one price that covers everything. You pay me, I buy the supplies and hire whatever help I need. Or you can buy the supplies and hire my help, and pay me an hourly wage. Since I don’t know how long I’ll be in Bethlehem, that’s what I would prefer.” He didn’t want to be stuck there until a specific job was finished, and he didn’t want to be accountable for her money.

  In the moment that she looked at him, he would bet she’d realized it was harder to get ripped off if she controlled the money. “All right,” she agreed. From her bag, she withdrew a notebook and pen, made a few notes inside, then slid both across the table to him. “If you’ll fill out that information, I’ll make the necessary calls today, and provided that everything checks out, perhaps you can start tomorrow.”

  The leather binding on the notebook was so soft he wanted to stroke it for a moment. The pen inside was silver, heavily engraved, a fountain pen filled with peacock blue ink. She looked as if she might have been born clutching it in one hand. He was tempted to lay it aside and borrow the waitress’s #2 pencil instead.

  The information was standard—name, social security number, current and previous addresses, job history, references, emergency contact. He filled in most of the blanks, then handed the notebook back to her.

  “You list your name as Ben E. Foster. What does the E stand for?”

  He gave the answer his drunken mother had once given him, deliberately slurring the words in an overdone backwoods-Georgia-mountains accent. “Enythang you want.”

  She didn’t smile.

  He didn’t, either. “It doesn’t stand for anything. My old man liked Ben E. King.”

  She looked as if she didn’t know who that was, and didn’t care. “There’s a period of five months before your last job that are unaccounted for. Were you unemployed at the time?”

  Ben resisted the urge to squirm on the bench. “No, ma’am. But I can guarantee you won’t get a good recommendation from the man I worked for then.”

  “Why not?”

  “He fired me.” It hadn’t been the first time he was fired and probably wouldn’t be the last. It had, however, been the first time the boss had tried to kill him before firing him.

  “Why?”

  He wished he’d said he’d been out of work. He didn’t want to get into the details of what definitely wasn’t one of his finer moments. “Let’s just say … she never told me she was engaged.”

  A look of distaste crossed her dark eyes. With a slow blink, she returned her gaze to the notebook. “You left the emergency contact blank.”

  He had parents who’d never wanted him, other relatives who hardly knew him, and a daughter to whom he’d never existed. “There’s no one.”

  She looked up again. The distaste was gone and replaced by something even worse—pity. But it disappeared as quickly as it came, and she closed the notebook with a snap. “You didn’t tell me the salary you require.”

  He wasn’t looking to get rich, he’d told her, but he saw no reason to sell himself cheap just to prove it. He named a reasonable range, using his best wage back in Georgia for the low figure and adding a few bucks to it for the high. Her expression was so cool that it was impossible to tell whether she’d been considering the same range, higher or lower, but it didn’t matter. The amount was more than fair, and he could live on it. That was all that counted.

  “Agreed,” she said. “Once I speak to your former employers, I’ll have our legal department draw up a contract, and you can have your own attorney review it. Bethlehem has only a few lawyers. Any one of them will do it for a reasonable fee.”

  “I’ll take your word, and your legal department’s word, for it.” He wasn’t a contracts sort of person. Back home, his handshake was more binding than a piece of paper could ever be.

  “Very well.” She returned the pad and pen to her bag, tossed a five on the table, then pulled out a compact umbre
lla. Ben would have given a lot if it were orange with yellow daisies or even a nice solid hot pink or lime green. But, like her suit and heels, it was a dull, drab navy-blue. “I’ll be in touch with you, Mr. Foster.”

  He doubted it. Oh, she would call and tell him the job was his—after all, he was good and she was desperate—but he would wager his first week’s salary that she hadn’t connected with anyone in a long time. All work and no play had made Lynda one cool, distant lady.

  He watched her leave, expertly opening the umbrella as she went through the door so not even one raindrop touched her. She headed toward the hardware store without a look back. Her back was straight, her head high, her strides long and purposeful. She moved like someone who knew exactly where she was going.

  But what would she have when she got there? Any friends? Family? Lovers?

  “So you’re going to be working for Ms. Baron.”

  Ben gazed at Gloria, sliding into the seat across from him. “You eavesdropping back there?”

  “I prefer to call it using the ears the good Lord gave me. When do you start?”

  “She hasn’t hired me yet.”

  “She will. Have you seen the house yet? Lovely place. Sits on a hill looking down on the town. The place might be a little run-down now, but when it was new, it was a gem. Teak, mahogany, ebony. Imported marble, stained-glass windows, silk wall coverings all the way from Paris … It was beautiful,” she said with a sigh, as if remembering it firsthand. “When did you say you’ll start?”

  He didn’t bother pointing out again that he wasn’t officially hired yet. “Tomorrow.”

  “You should go out there today—have a look around, get to know the place. Get a feel for it. Let me draw you a map.” She pulled a pencil from behind her ear and a napkin from the dispenser, then her face fell. “I forgot … Ms. Brown put a fancy security gate across the road. All you can see is trees, trees, and more trees. I swear, that woman’s got more Keep Away signs than anyone I’ve ever met—and I don’t mean just the kind that hang on the gate out there. Do you suppose she’s deliberately trying to keep people at a distance, or just doesn’t know how to let them near?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person. I just met her.”

  “And actually had a conversation with her. That’s more than most people in town can say, and she’s been living here for months. She needs to loosen up. You should tell her.”

  Oh, yeah, that would go over well—the new handyman telling the rich lady boss to loosen up. She would fire him before she ever hired him.

  “So … things appear to be going your way, Ben Foster. You got into town yesterday, and you have a job today, and you’ll be your own boss … well, as much as anyone working for Lydia Barone can be his own boss, I imagine. Anything else you need while God’s smiling down on you?”

  How about an answer to the question of what he was supposed to do about Alanna? Given a gentle shove in the right direction, eventually he’d be able to figure out the rest on his own.

  “Keeping your questions to yourself?” she asked with a knowing smile. “That’s all right. Well … Welcome to Bethlehem, Ben. I just know it’ll prove to be everything you need.”

  Wishing he were half as optimistic, he stood up. “Guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

  “Oh, you will.”

  As the door closed behind him, Ben imagined he heard the sentiment repeated in a soft whisper. “You certainly will.”

  At the McKinney Industries building that housed her office on the third floor, Lynda skipped the elevator and took the stairs to her floor. Along the broad corridor, she passed secretaries, minor and not-so-minor corporate officers, and a board member or two, who all greeted her impersonally. When her own secretary said, “Ms. Barone,” in a snooty sort of voice, Lynda asked her to get Melina on the phone, then waited until she closed the office door behind her to roll her eyes. Were Ross and Tom the only people in the entire company who dared call her by her first name?

  She’d never thought about it before, but it seemed so. Even Ben Foster had called her by her first name only until he’d learned her last name. Of course, she hadn’t called him by his first name at all. It seemed so … intimate. Mr. Foster was someone you could easily keep at arm’s length, but Ben was the sort you climbed into the backseat and did wicked things with under the cool moonlight. Mr. Foster could be a teacher, a lawyer, a boss. Ben was fun, lust, sex.

  “Ms. Dimitris is on the line,” her secretary called over the intercom.

  Lynda slipped out of her jacket, then braced the phone between her shoulder and ear while she dug in her purse for the notebook. “Hi, Melina. I have a job for you. I want whatever information you can get on Ben E-doesn’t-stand-for-anything Foster. His social security number—”

  “Whoa, hold up. Ben E. Foster? The Southern lad? The devil in blue jeans? What are you up to, Lynda?”

  “Nothing,” she replied defensively. “I’m making a purely business arrangement—”

  Melina gave a whoop that vibrated over the phone line. “You’re buying yourself a man! Wow, I hadn’t thought of that. It’s one way to solve the shortage of dates, isn’t it?”

  “Calm yourself, Melina. I’m considering hiring Mr. Foster to do some work for me around the house. The roof leaks, and it’s raining today. He’s a carpenter—sort of a jack-of-all-trades, really—and I can’t find anyone here who’ll do the work for me, so I’m hiring him as a handyman.”

  “Uh-huh. I agree, any man who can take care of the ‘work’ around the house is definitely handy. How are you paying him?”

  “I think the more important question is, am I paying you for doing a background check for me, or do I pass my business on to your competition?”

  “Rico would charge you double what I do, only get you the easy stuff, and come on to you in the process.”

  “And that’s supposed to warn me off? Do you know how long it’s been since any man’s come on to me?”

  “Yeah, but he’s not worth it. And I speak from experience.”

  Lynda’s smile was faint with sympathy. Once upon a time Melina and Rico had been partners in the private investigations business as well as in their personal lives. Melina had thought they would marry and live happily ever after … until one of her own employees had caught him on film, checking out the local motels with about half of their female client list. She’d kicked him out of the agency and her life, and claimed it was no big deal, but Lynda knew she’d cried more than a few tears over the rat.

  “Okay, give me Ben Foster’s info,” Melina said, sounding all business. As soon as Lynda finished reading, Melina asked, “What about those unaccounted-for months? Want me to find out what he was doing?”

  Lynda thought of his explanation. Did he know he’d blushed when he’d given it? Not the sort of full-face, beet-red blush she was cursed with, but just a bit of crimson darkening his high cheekbones. It was charming. “No. Don’t bother with it.”

  “Okay,” Melina agreed before returning to the teasing. “Let’s pretend you really are hiring him only to work on your house. This means you’ll get to see him whenever you want, right?”

  “Wrong. You forget, I work during the day. Most mornings I leave the house by seven and I usually don’t get home until about seven in the evening.”

  “But you’re pretty much free to come and go as you please.”

  “What do you want me to do, Melina? Pull a chair out into the grass, get a Diet Coke and a pair of binoculars, and spend my days watching him work?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me. Just be sure to grab a second Diet Coke for me.”

  “You’re all talk, you know that? Listen, I know you’re busy, but can you get on this as quickly as possible? I’d like him to start on the roof tomorrow.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll get back to you in a few hours.”

  After thanking her, Lynda hung up and turned to work. She hated her day feeling so fractured. Sometime in the past five years, she’d become a creature of hab
it. At one time, it hadn’t been unusual for her to walk into the office at seven only to find out that she had an hour to catch a flight to Singapore, London, or Manila. She’d loved jumping on a plane and going someplace new, arriving in some exotic country without even a toothbrush, never knowing for sure that her day would end in the same city, or even on the same continent, where it had begun.

  Lately, though, she’d noticed that she liked a little advance planning. Three or four weeks was ideal, forty-eight hours mandatory. Maybe she was getting old. Settling in.

  After a while, she succeeded in immersing herself in work. She stayed at her desk through lunch, as she usually did unless meeting with Ross or Tom, munching on a salad from the dining room downstairs. She’d made up for the morning’s lost hours by three o’clock and was actually ahead of schedule when Melina called.

  “Sorry for the interruption,” Melina said cheerfully. “I’m sure, in your head, you were off in some other time zone, finalizing some incredibly complex deal, but I’ve got the scoop on the handyman. You want all the juicy details or just the bottom line?”

  Every time Melina conducted a background check for M.I., she asked that question. Every time, Lynda opted for the juicy details—which, more often than not, weren’t—in a written report and the bottom line on the phone. This time she surprised herself. “Spill the juice.”

  “Well, from a strictly business viewpoint, he’s everything he claims to be. He does good work, is reliable and trustworthy, and knows his stuff. He doesn’t waste the customer’s time or money, he gets it right the first time, can do damn near anything that needs doing, and he plays well with others.”

  As long as they keep their fiancées a safe distance away. Like in the next state.

  “He’s never been married and is an only child. He pays his bills on time, doesn’t vote, and has only one credit card. He’s never owned a house, but he’s got a midnight-blue ’65 GTO that I’d give a week’s salary to take out on the highway with no cops around.” She sighed wistfully, then grew serious. “Now, don’t be a prig, Lyn—you know how you are—but he, uh, does have an arrest record.”