LITMIR.BIZ

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slid down Cody’s cheeks.

      Jack wanted to show him how badly he felt for scaring him. He moved toward the boy...

      And messed up again.

      In an effort to keep Jack at bay, Cody fell backward, the white soles of his shoes flashing in the afternoon sunlight when he caught himself with his palms. Helpless to do anything but watch, Jack stood stone-still as Cody’s behind hit the ground and he scooted away like a trapped animal attempting to flee.

      Jack knew better than to make any type of move toward the kid, so he remained where he stood and made his voice as calm as possible. “I won’t hurt you, Cody. I promise. I was just going to see if I could help.”

      Dark eyebrows dipped as Cody shuffled away, the heels of his shoes pushing against loose leaves and dirt in his retreat. He shook his head, a dark wave of bangs shifting with the move, while his attention darted from Jack to the discarded mahogany and back again.

      And then his confused expression landed on Jack’s thick beard.

      Before Jack could say anything else, Cody scrambled to his feet and darted into the woods, disappearing down the path, while Jack ran a hand across the scruffy mess covering the lower half of his face.

      * * *

      Elise had made it about ten feet down the trail when she met Cody coming from the opposite direction. Conflicting emotions slammed her with his appearance. Happiness that he hadn’t stayed gone long and found his way back without problem, and disappointment that she hadn’t needed to go farther down the trail to find him, as in all the way to Jack’s cabin.

      She had no doubt that Cody had been to his favorite spot, but unfortunately, his time away hadn’t produced a positive demeanor. His face was drawn and tense, eyes fixated beyond Elise as he brushed against her on the trail. “Cody?” She turned to follow him but stopped when her cell vibrated in her pocket.

      Assuming she knew who was on the other end, she kept an eye on Cody as he headed toward his cabin and answered, “Hello?”

      “He came back, but I scared him away.”

      The frustration in Jack’s voice tugged at her heart. “What happened?”

      A sharp intake of breath echoed through the line.

      “Jack,” she said, “how did you scare him away? I need to know so I can help him.”

      “At first, I thought it was the wood, but now I think it was the beard. Should’ve shaved it.” His words were delivered as if talking more to himself than to Elise.

      Her eyes slid closed, and she gripped the phone, his behavior reminding her of so many conversations from the past, when she had to decipher what Anthony tried to say and fill in the missing pieces.

      God, please, don’t let me get sucked into trying to fix another man.

      But even as she thought the words of the prayer, she found herself empathizing with the guy who had tried to help Cody and had come out short. “You said something about wood?”

      “A piece of mahogany. I bought it for the top of the dresser, but then I got to sanding it and had my mind on—” another pause “—other things.”

      Her counselor’s instinct pushed at her to ask about the “other things,” but her experience with Anthony held those words in check. She didn’t need to get too involved in Jack’s world. Didn’t want to find herself close enough to get hurt. She cleared her throat and prepared to tell him that she needed to see Cody, but his heavy sigh of discouragement forced her to continue the conversation until he found some form of comfort from his efforts to help her patient.

      “You were sanding wood when he got there?” She visualized Cody happening upon Jack involved in the task and knew that he undoubtedly equated the man with some semblance of the carpenter who had raised him and loved him. But she didn’t know why that would have upset Cody. “Did it seem to bother him?”

      “I wasn’t sanding when he got here. I’d gotten—” he sighed again, apparently searching for the right word “—irritated at myself for sanding the same spot too long and ruining the wood, and I was tossing it when Cody came through the woods.”

      Elise pictured the scene more clearly now. Cody had gone searching for Jack, but instead of finding the quiet, rugged carpenter he’d encountered the past two days, he’d happened upon an aggravated man who, from the sound of things, took his frustration out on a piece of mahogany.

      As far as Elise knew, Cody hadn’t been exposed to any form of abuse in his past, so she didn’t think he’d been scared that Jack would hurt him. However, Jack’s action triggered something, enough of a response that Cody had returned to Willow’s Haven.

      “Seeing me throw the wood bothered him, but I think it was the beard that caused him to leave.” And again, he spoke more to himself than Elise.

      She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then said, “The beard hasn’t bothered him before. Why do you think it did today?”

      “I don’t know, but I’m pretty good at reading people, or at least I was when I was working. And he was bothered by the beard.”

      When he was working. Elise wondered what the man did in the film industry, and how the guy could move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere without any apparent form of income. She started to ask, but then heard the whispers of warning in the back of her mind.

      Getting too personal will make you care too much.

      You have a patient with enough problems to keep you more than busy while you’re here. Don’t take on a man with issues too.

      Protect your heart.

      “Elise.”

      The way he said her name let her know he was fully involved in the conversation now, and she found herself anxious to hear more.

      Protect your heart.

      “Yes?”

      “We can help him.”

      We? She closed her eyes, prayed for God to keep her from getting hurt...too much. Because she knew in her soul that Jack could hurt her, the same way she’d been hurt before.

      A door slammed, and she opened her eyes to view Cody exiting his cabin, a big, tan canvas tote draped over his shoulder. He walked directly to her car, opened the passenger door and got in.

      “I’ve got to go,” she said. She heard his frustrated, “Goodbye, Elise,” echo through the line and almost explained why she had to finish the conversation, but memories of the last man in her life gave her the courage to click the end button.

      Plus, Cody sat waiting in her car.

      Knowing he wouldn’t use words to let her know what he wanted, she dashed to her cabin, grabbed her keys, her purse and the flash cards she used to communicate with him, and then hurried to the driver’s side of the car.

      He reached for the cards as soon as she climbed in, but Elise shook her head. “First I need to remind you that you shouldn’t have left without letting someone know.” She thumbed through the cards. “If you want to go for a hike, you show me this card.” She held up the picture of a guy wearing a dark green shirt, jeans and hiking boots. Yesterday, she’d have said the guy in the photo looked rugged and outdoorsy. But then she’d met Jack. In his sawdust-coated flannel shirt, jeans and boots, he had rugged and outdoorsy mastered.

      Cody tapped his fingers together at his chest, a signal of his anxiety, and Elise shook the image of Jack away and pointed to the hiking guy on the card. “So you show me this card the next time you want to go see—The next time you want to go for a walk in the woods. Understand?”

      He bobbed his head and reached again for the cards. This time, Elise released the deck.

      Cody, used to this routine, flipped through the stack so rapidly that the snapping cardboard sounded like popcorn within the confines

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