She’d been going to say men like him. He didn’t ask questions. “I told you, my grandmother wouldn’t like it if I didn’t help.”
She studied his face. “You don’t have a grandmother.”
“Technically, she’s not my blood, but I claim her and, thankfully, she claims me. We all call her Nonny and she’s the center of the family. A good woman. She’s lived her life in the swamps of Louisiana, is as smart as a whip and about the kindest woman I know.”
Amaryllis glanced down at her tablet. “Start with the switch on the door. The latch, I mean. No, wait. It’s an assembly of latch switches.” She held out the tablet. “Like that. It says if it’s defective then the door can’t lock, and the dishwasher won’t work.”
Malichai watched the little video providing information on the door latch switches before carefully inspecting the assembly. “Is Marie really okay? She looks very upset, too upset to be frazzled over a dishwasher breaking down. It also sounds like you’ve been pulling extra duty to help her out quite a bit.” He kept his voice low as he examined the switch housing.
“Jacy’s been pretty sick again. She has a heart condition. Marie lost her husband and Jacy’s all she’s got. She’s very worried.”
“Is it her heart again?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think Marie does either. But she’s scared.”
“That’s too bad.” He didn’t know what else to say, but it worried him. It wasn’t right that the widow of a man dying in the service of his country was facing financial ruin and the possible loss of her daughter because Jacy had a heart problem. “Give me something else to check. This looks good.”
“The thermal fuse. You’ll have to access the control panel and you’ll need the meter. Do you know how to use that thing?”
“I’m surprised she has such good tools.”
“Her husband had them. He was really the one to come up with the idea of a bed-and-breakfast. He would be the maintenance man and she would be the cook. They’d both do the household chores together. They bought this place as a fixer-upper and just when they had everything in place, he was killed. His teammates still drop by occasionally, but she never asks them for help.”
He checked the thermal fuse twice before ruling it out. “I don’t think this is the problem either.” He glanced over his shoulder as Marie came in carrying far too many dishes. “Whoa, woman, you’re not a pack animal. You’re going to hurt your back. I can get those for you.”
Marie laughed. “Malichai, that’s silly. I do this every day, or Amaryllis does.”
Marie had registered him, but still, just hearing his name said in such a friendly tone surprised him. Some of his teammates were married. His brother Ezekiel was married. The women in their “family” were also GhostWalkers, every bit as lethal as their male counterparts. They sometimes joked and teased with him, but outsiders, as a rule, didn’t. He put it down to his looks. He knew he was intimidating.
“That doesn’t mean you should, ma’am,” he countered.
“Marie,” she corrected again. “Just please, call me Marie. If you call me anything else, I’ll feel far older than I already do.”
He doubted if Marie was even thirty yet. He glanced at Amaryllis. “We’re narrowing this down fast. Hopefully, if we don’t need a part, we’ll be using the dishwasher for all these dishes. Otherwise”—he lowered his voice as if entering a conspiracy—“I haven’t told her yet that I volunteered the two of us to do the dishes for you.”
Amaryllis covered her smile with her hand. “As I often clean the kitchen and do the dishes that don’t fit into the dishwasher, it isn’t unexpected.”
“You hear that, Marie? She’s beginning to reach the conclusion that a man can be helpful at times.”
“I didn’t say that,” Amaryllis hastened to deny.
When she smiled, those blue eyes of hers lit up her entire face. She had smooth, beautiful skin and it looked radiant when she smiled. Her voice was extremely pleasing. Soft and melodic. He noticed it in particular because it seemed to get inside him somehow and replayed almost every word she said to him.
Marie put the tub of dirty dishes down and went back for the warmers, shaking her head and laughing softly at their antics.
“She’s pretty terrific,” Malichai observed. “She’s going to be another Nonny. Growing up, I wasn’t around too many women. My brother Ezekiel raised us. He was a kid himself, but I didn’t view him that way. He was tough as nails and when someone tried to take our food or our territory where we slept, he beat the holy shit out of them. When Mordichai or I didn’t follow every dictate, which was almost never, he beat the holy shit out of us.”
“Why does it not surprise me that you didn’t obey every dictate?”
He grinned at her. “I can’t imagine. It’s not the thermal fuse. What’s next on the list?”
“This says to check the timer or the electronic control.”
He scowled up at her. “Woman, seriously. Don’t try my patience. Cough up a little more information than that.”
She flashed a genuine smile and his heart went into overtime. The more he looked at her, the more beautiful she was. That smile of hers was enough to trigger a serious reaction in his body, one that wasn’t welcome when he was sitting on a kitchen floor trying to repair a dishwasher.
“I’m so sorry, I thought maybe you were born with dishwasher files in your head or something. Let me read this.”
“Dishwasher files in my head?” he echoed. “The only thing I know about dishwashers is Nonny doesn’t always like to use them. It doesn’t even make sense. One minute it’s okay and the next, not so much and she needs volunteers for dish duty.”
“She sounds fun.”
“She is fun. She’s more than that. Nonny sits in her rocking chair looking out over the swamp, a pipe between her teeth, with a shotgun inches from her hand, and she is the swamp. The people. She knows every plant and what their properties can be used for. She puts out food and clothes for those less fortunate, and she always has a pot of gumbo or fish stew on the stove for any of us who come in hungry.”
“She sounds amazing.”
Malichai nodded. “She is amazing. What is most amazing about her is she claimed us right away. I remember going home with her grandson Wyatt that first time. I was shot up all to hell. We all were. We arrived very late, came up the river and tied up at this pier. I can’t explain to you, but I never had a home. I lived mostly in the streets of Chicago and there I was, in the swamp, this sultry, beautiful weird world all its own. We walked up the stairs to the porch where she was just sitting in that rocking chair, her pipe smelling like spices. She looked at me and I swear to you, it was like coming home.”
He hadn’t ever told anyone that story, not even Wyatt. He didn’t understand why he’d told Amaryllis. He looked up at her. She was staring down at him as if she thought he’d grown two heads. Malichai sighed. That was just like him. Impressing her with a child’s tale hadn’t been his best idea, although to him, that had been a defining moment. No matter what, he clearly would never be considered the cool ladies’ man.