Caleb had been right about her calling Kas, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing, at least not for a while, that she’d gone to her rich brother for financing.
Oh, Kas would’ve easily given her the money with no strings attached. He wasn’t like that in business, but as he’d said on the phone, Katie wasn’t business. She was his baby sister. His only sister. And he was happy to help her. But he’d given her a big dose of advice too on how many ways to Sunday she could screw this thing up if she wasn’t careful. He wasn’t going to stop being her big brother. He was just a phone call away. And he’d be coming back home to check on her in a few weeks.
Katie was sure that before the project was over, Kasper Dobbs would show his face at the chapel many times just to make sure she was on track. And Katie didn’t mind one bit.
“That should do it,” Caleb said, slipping the handle of the hammer he’d been using into his tool belt. He yanked on the door handle just to see if it would move. “It looks good. I can’t guarantee kids won’t find their way in here somehow. But that lock I put outside will hold them off for a little while.”
“Maybe I should put a sign out front. SOLD. Under construction. Desperate woman wanting to invest in real estate makes stupid move and buys decrepit old chapel…” She laughed at the absurdity of it as she said the words aloud.
Caleb smiled. “I don’t see this as you being desperate. Impulsive, yes. But not desperate, Katie.”
Relief filled her. Not only because she knew she never would have been able to do as good a job getting a temporary door up on the chapel. But because although Caleb said she was crazy, she could see that he hadn’t meant it. At least, not in the way she’d taken it.
He looked around with interest. There was so much sunlight coming through the stained glass windows. There were many of them. But what few still intact were illuminating the room with brilliant colors that seemed magical to her.
“I can’t say that I see your vision. Yet. But I think you got something here,” Caleb said.
Katie’s insides began to sing. “You think?”
He nodded and she could see the appreciation in his expression. Maybe even envy. It gave her a tremendous amount of satisfaction that she was on the right track.
“Can I confess something to you?” she asked.
He frowned. “Confess? Do I look like a priest?”
She rolled her eyes. “Not hardly.”
“Good. Because there’s nothing righteous about the way I’ve been thinking about you all morning.”
His admission threw her off guard. He’d been thinking about her? Thinking how? Lately Katie had been thinking of herself as a lunatic. Only a lunatic buys a chapel in the middle of nowhere in Sweet, Montana and decides to renovate it into a house without knowing a thing about how to do it. Which was what she was going to confess to him before he made that admission.
“I’m a little scared,” she said. That confession surprised her. She thought it over plenty the last week. She hadn’t said the words aloud and she wondered why she chose this moment to admit it to Caleb.
“That’s okay. Fear is just a state a mind. It’s not a person. I was scared plenty when I was in the army. There was plenty of cause for it, too.”
“This isn’t the army, Caleb.”
“You’re right. All I’m saying is that a little healthy dose of fear is okay as long as you get the job done. There’s no reason to run away from it. You’ll do okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. And I have a confession of my own.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m real curious about what you have in mind for this place. You don’t have to rush off to work today, do you?”
Katie had been scheduled to work, but she’d taken the day off when Caleb made his offer to help her this morning.
“I switched with Rachel the other day because she had a doctor’s appointment.”
“Let me buy you lunch and you can tell me all about your plans.”
“I thought you had to work?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure how long this was going to take so I switched to a later shift.”
“You’re not afraid of talk?”
He frowned. “This is home, Katie. Everybody talks. Everybody. Even when there isn’t anything to talk about.”
She giggled. Yes, she actually giggled as if she were fourteen. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed with herself or question her sanity further. But when she looked up at Caleb’s expression, she didn’t see teasing or mocking or anything like she did to herself. He was just waiting for an answer to his invitation.
“I’d love to.”
* * *
“This is a far cry from arresting me,” she said, sitting in a booth across from Caleb in the local diner on Main Street.
“The day’s not over yet,” he said with a teasing grin that warmed her insides like melted butter.
They ordered their meals. She ordered a salad and a bowl of stew and he had a steak and potatoes. When the server delivered her salad, she smiled.
“What’s that for?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
“When I was living in California they served everything with avocado on it. And I mean everything. It took me a long time to get used to it. I’m not sure I ever became a fan though. A salad without avocado is a nice change.”
“I didn’t know you lived in California,” he said. “When was that?”
“When Bruce was going to school. We had a deal. I’d work full-time and he’d work part-time while he finished school.
