Joker's Wild by Sandra Chastain

sleep. Planting a light kiss on her forehead, he backed away and returned to his construction.
    After a quick sandwich and icy sweet lemonade for lunch, Joker and Mac went back to work. It was late afternoon when the final piece of roofing went into place and the rain began to fall. By the time Joker had cleaned up and returned to the kitchen, the rain was coming down in torrents, and Allison was standing in front of the open door staring out into the garden.
    “What are you doing, Beauty?”
    “Watching the rain fall. I love to watch the rain and the snow. Everything is clean and pretty afterward. When I was in the hospital, I used to wish I could run out and let the water make me pretty.”
    “You want rain, Beauty, you got it.” Joker swooped her up and walked through the open hole in the wall and into the garden, swinging her round and round in a circle. The rain pelted them, soaking their clothes and hair in seconds. It made little rivers down his face into his beard and turned Allison’s long lashes into spikes that dripped crystal beads of water.
    “You idiot,” Allison said, laughing. “We’re getting soaking wet. I feel the way I did when I was a child and Gran turned on the water sprinkler for me to play in. Except I didn’t play in my clothes.” She held her face up to the water as if she were a parched flower.
    “Well.” He stopped and grinned at her. “We can take care of that in a heartbeat. Wanna get nekked?”
    “Too late. We’re not children anymore.”
    “Speak for yourself, Beauty. I never intend to grow up. Playing is good for the soul. Look how beautiful we’ve become. Look at us, Allison. Don’t you see?”
    She gazed at the burly man with the strong arms. “Yes, I think I do. You never see the ugly in life, do you?”
    “Never. If I don’t like what I see, I just find a different way of looking at it.”
    “I wish I had eyes like yours,” she said seriously, “Eyes that see beauty in everything.”
    “You want new eyes? I’ll make them new, if you’ll let me.”
    She hugged him, pushing her face into the shelter beneath his chin. “Maybe you can, you crazy man. Maybe you really can.”
    An early morning call from the Chattahoochee construction site took Joker Vandergriff reluctantly away from the estate. He didn’t feel good about leaving before Allison was awake. The previous night had seemed to be a milestone in their relationship. He’d taught her to accept him, and he’d wanted to stay close to her.
    He looked in on her before he left, taking in the relaxed way her hand lay against her cheek. Satisfied that she’d sleep very late, Joker called and delayed Mac and the construction crews arrival until lunchtime before heading to the office to settle the delivery date for the junipers he’d ordered and to check the planting schedule for the sod.
    Later he stopped by the glass company to be certain that the glass panes he’d bought would be delivered and installed in the new sun room. The last stop was the nursing home, where he found Miss Lenice bright-eyed and eager to share the news of a second visit from her granddaughter.
    “Take care … Joker,” Lenice had managed to say, and he’d known she wasn’t warning him. She understood that something was wrong with her granddaughter, and she was passing on that problem to him just as she had her home. He’d nodded and had spent the next twenty minutes keeping up a nonstop patter of nonsense about frying chicken and planting marigolds. When Mrs. Josey began to tire, he pressed a kiss against her forehead and left. She hadn’t had to ask him to look after Allison. He’d accepted her as his responsibility the moment she’d fallen into his arms in the gazebo. She needed his help just as much as the gardens he was slowly bringing back to life.
    After leaving the nursing home, Allison drove past the old grammar school she’d attended. She had fond memories of that time in her life, when Gran had walked her off to