Smitten

"No. I was the rich little rich girl. I had a terrific childhood. I just never learned to paint."

"Uh-huh. What happened to Mister Wonderful, the guy who hired painters."

"You mean my ex-husband?" Her eyes narrowed slightly and the line of her mouth tightened. "It turned out we had different expectations about marriage. Paul expected me to close my eyes to constant indiscretions, and I expected him to be faithful to me."

"I'm sorry."

Lizabeth waved it away. "Actually, I could have lived with that. What finally drove me out of the marriage was when he insisted that the boys go to boarding school. Paul had political ambitions. He wanted me to be a perfect hostess. He found the children to be a burden."

"I don't think I like this guy."

"He was very charming," Lizabeth said. "But he was a jerk."

Matt studied her. She was okay. Really okay. She had strength. He grabbed her hand and led her up the stairs. "C'mon, I'm going to give you a ride home. And if you want I'll take a look at your house."

"I should warn you about my Aunt Elsie first," Lizabeth said. "Aunt Elsie is from my mother's side of the family. She's a little outspoken."

"I can handle it. I'm pretty brave when it comes to old ladies."

"You've never met an old lady like Aunt Elsie."

Matt could hear the affection in her voice. "She must be something special."

"She's… unique."

Ten minutes later they drove down Gainsborough and Matt parked his 4x4 Ford pickup in front of Lizabeth's house. The yard was tidy, and someone had planted clusters of flowers along the front porch, but the house itself was even worse than he'd remembered. His attention was distracted by the car in the driveway. "My God, what is that?"

"That's Elsie's car. If you see her on the road give her a wide berth. She didn't learn to drive until last year, and she doesn't have it perfected yet."

A small gray cat sat on the porch watching their approach.

"This is Bob the Cat. He adopted us about a week ago." She reached down and scratched the kitten's neck. The front door opened and two small boys tumbled out.

"Mom! We've had the most awesome day," Jason said. "Aunt Elsie's here. She took us for a ride in her car. It gets six miles to a gallon of gas. It's radical."

Billy was radiant. "She ran over the summer-school crossing guard's hat and got a ticket. And then she clipped a parking meter downtown. The meter had a big dent in it, but nothing happened to her car. Mom, that car is like a tank!"

"I heard that," Elsie said. "It wasn't my fault I ran over that policewoman's hat. She practically * threw it in the middle of the road, right in front of my car."

"Yeah," Billy said, "she got real flustered when she saw us barreling down on her in the Cadillac. She tried to jump out of the way and her hat flew off."

Lizabeth winced. "Elsie, you weren't speeding with the boys in the car, were you?"

"I don't think so, but sometimes my foot sticks on the floor mat…"

Billy rolled his eyes. "She wasn't speeding. She was barely moving. We never went over twenty-five. It was that she was driving down the middle of the road."

"It's that dang big car," Elsie said. "It don't fit in one lane. When I get some money I'm going to get myself one of them nice little Japanese cars." She noticed Matt standing to one side of the family group. "Who's this?"

"This is my boss, Matt Hallahan," Lizabeth said. "He's come over to take a look at the house for me. Matt, this is my aunt, Elsie Hawkins."

Elsie Hawkins had tightly curled steel-gray hair, sharp blue eyes, and an uncompromising mouth. She was dressed in support hose, tennis shoes, and a tailored blue shirtwaist dress that came to just below her knees. Matt thought she looked like she could wrestle alligators and win. Lizabeth affectionately ruffled Jason's hair. "And these are my sons, Jason and Billy."

Both boys had brown hair that had recently been cut. They were dressed in shorts and polo shirts and had skinned knees and quick smiles.

"Wow, he's got a tattoo," Jason said. "Neat!"

Elsie looked at the tattoo. "What's that funny writing on it?"

Matt felt his cheeks flush. He had mixed feelings about his tattoo. "It's Chinese. I joined the Navy right out of high school. We made a port call in Taiwan, and I got drunk and ended up with this tattoo."

"Pretty fancy," Elsie said. "What do those Chinese squiggles mean?"

"Uh…" He shifted from one foot to the other. "It's sort of a rhyme. It has to do with… sexual relations with a duck."

Elsie clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from giggling. "That's terrible," she said.

"I know what it is!" Jason said. "I heard it on cable television. It's…"

"Jason Kane!" Lizabeth said. "Don't you have a football to throw around?"

"Ferguson ate it."

"Ferguson's our dog," Lizabeth explained to Matt. "He eats things."

Matt grinned. The place was a loony bin. He loved it.

Lizabeth made an expansive gesture with her arms. "Well, what do you think of the house?"

He looked around critically. Even if he helped her, he doubted she could afford to do all the necessary work. His guess was she was trying to make it on her own, without her father's or her husband's money, and she was having a tough time of it. "Needs a little paint," he volunteered. "Maybe a few new shakes for the roof."

Elsie looked at him sideways. "Cut the baloney. What do you think it really needs?"

"A lot of paint. It has to be scraped and primed and then painted. It needs an entire new roof, new aluminum gutters, and all of the shutters need to be rehung."

"So, you're in the construction business," Elsie said. "I suppose you got ladders and paint scrapers and such. Why don't you stay for supper. We're having meat loaf."

Lizabeth groaned. "Aunt Elsie, that's not very subtle."

"I'm an old lady. I don't have to be subtle."

Matt grinned. "Meat loaf sounds great."

Elsie looked him over. "You a bachelor?"

"Yup."

"You could do worse," she said to Lizabeth.

Lizabeth glared a warning at Elsie. "He's my boss!"

"He make a pass at you yet?"

Lizabeth felt her ears burning.

"I knew it," Elsie said, turning back to the house. "Supper will be ready at five-thirty."

An hour later Matt sat on the porch steps and reviewed his findings with Lizabeth. "The toilets are easy and inexpensive to fix. You can do them right away. I have some rollers and brushes you can borrow, and for a relatively small amount of money you can paint the interior. You can do it one room at a time, if you want. The floors are going to need a professional. You have a new water heater and the furnace doesn't look half bad. That's on the plus side."

"Someday, this house is going to be beautiful," Lizabeth said. "I'm going to paint it yellow with white trim, and I'm going to plant flowers everywhere."

Matt leaned against the railing and closed his eyes. He was jealous of her, he realized. She had two kids and a wacky aunt, a dog, a cat, a house she loved. She had a future that was filled to the brim with life. Somehow, he hadn't fashioned that for himself. He lived in a rented town house, all alone. And he built houses for other people. It had always been enough, but right now it seemed de-pressingly deficient. "Lizabeth, your house is beautiful now. It will always be beautiful. It doesn't have anything to do with paint or plumbing or petunias. Your house is beautiful because you're beautiful."

It was a full minute before she could respond. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. It was the most perfect compliment she could imagine. Her eyes filled with tears, and she bit into her lower lip. "Thank you."

"Oh damn, you're not going to cry, are you?"

"I'm very emotional. It's one of my faults."

It was the sort of fault he could get used to, he thought. You would always know where you stood with her. She was guileless.