More Than Neighbors by Janice Kay Johnson Page A

thrown away otherwise. An Olympic gymnast sent me her leotard. I sewed a whole set of pillows from a World War II uniform with the patches as accents. I never know what I’ll get, so I try to keep a varied selection of fabrics to go with anything and everything. Sometimes I have to head out to search for something that’ll work, but...hmm, I have a certain style, and I like certain looks.” She shrugged.
    “How do customers find you?” he asked, deeply intrigued.
    “Website. My business is called Pillow Talk.”
    “Sounds racy.”
    She grinned. “If that draws attention...”
    “I’ll have to take a look at it.”
    Her nose looked cute when she scrunched it up. “Except it has a whole lot of pictures showing examples, which means it would take you twenty minutes for it to load. It never even occurred to me there were places still without high-speed internet.”
    “Yeah, browsing the internet isn’t something you do in a hurry in these parts. There’s talk that high-speed is coming, though. The cable TV company is working on bringing it to us.”
    “That I could get excited about.”
    “Me, too,” Mark interjected. He’d been getting restless, Gabe had seen out of the corner of his eye. Mom’s business didn’t interest him. “There’s all these cool sites, but they take so long they’re hardly worth it. And the library in town is so small .”
    Gabe raised his eyebrows. “Goodwater is a small town. We’re lucky to have a library at all.” He suspected he sounded defensive, but didn’t care. “You can order anything that’s in the system, you know, and interlibrary loan is faster than you’d think.”
    “I’ve already ordered a few books, and Mrs. Upton was really helpful,” Ciara put in.
    There was something in her voice, though, that made him wonder. Gloria Upton might be helpful, but she was also a busybody. Gabe didn’t know of any other kids in the area who were being homeschooled. Gloria might have been scandalized by the very idea that this newcomer didn’t think Goodwater schools were good enough for her son.
    Come to think of it, did that have something to do with Ciara’s decision to teach Mark at home? Had she wanted a rural lifestyle, but assumed her kid was too good for the small school in a backwater town like this? And this from a woman who obviously couldn’t handle the math her son was supposed to be learning?
    Would she tell him why she was homeschooling if he asked? Maybe—but probably not in front of Mark if her motivation was specific to him and not more general, as in having to do with her religious beliefs.
    He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bothered speculating much about anyone’s life or reasons for doing anything. Better not to ask, he told himself. Keep this relationship casual. He was enjoying sharing his skills with Mark more than he’d expected. It took him back to that shop class and Mr. Avery, who had meant a lot to him. Paying it forward, he thought; that was all he was doing. And he was getting some damn good food out of it, too.
    “Apple pie, anyone?” Ciara asked.
    Oh, damn. Bad enough that she was pretty and that he didn’t dare let himself look too long into eyes that made him want to be a poet. Now she was assaulting his defenses in a whole new way.

CHAPTER FIVE
    E VERY TIME THE renewed whine of the circular saw penetrated the closed doors and windows, Ciara’s anxiety rose. Mark could lose a finger or a hand in less time than it took to blink. Should she really be trusting a man she didn’t know that well? In the week since he’d first come to dinner, she had had him once more, but that was it. She still hadn’t figured out why he was giving so much time to Mark, or how he could be so patient.
    “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Gabe Tennert out there with your son,” Audrey Stevens said. When she’d called earlier, Ciara had invited her to come by for a cup of coffee. She could use the distraction. Otherwise, she was