by Stacy Finz
Well, damn, now she had to go next door and thank him. Leaving a mere thank-you note seemed chintzy for a pie of this caliber. Plus, if Sloane didn’t get out of the house soon, she’d inhale the whole thing.
She checked her hair in the mirror, walked across the porch and knocked. A few seconds later, he pulled the door open, wearing a pair of running pants and a long-sleeved compression shirt. And if she’d thought the pie was good . . . Hello, Superman.
“How’s the move going?”
“Better, now that I have pie . . . outstanding pie. I just wanted to thank you.”
“No problem.”
“You going running?” No, Sloane, he always dresses like that.
Brady stuck his head out and looked up at the sky. “Yeah, but I think it might rain. I have to be back at the inn in time for the afternoon service.”
“Well, I won’t keep you. Thanks again for the pie, and I’ll return your pan as soon as I’m finished.”
“No rush. I’ve got lots of them.”
She started to head back to her side of the duplex and stopped. “Where do you run?”
“There’s a fire trail at the top of the hill. If you want to go sometime, I’ll show you.”
“I’m not sure what my schedule is yet, but yeah. Thanks.”
“Sure,” he said, and went back inside.
The guy had to have a girlfriend, she told herself as she retreated behind her own door. No way was someone like him single. Her cell rang and it took her a few minutes to find it in all the clutter. These days she always checked caller ID before answering. If she didn’t know the number, she let it go to voice mail. That way she had a record.
“Hi, Chief.”
“How’s the unpacking going?” He sounded harried.
“Uh, good, thanks.”
“Look, I hate to do this to you, but Wyatt’s sick as a dog. Jake is taking his graveyard shift. Any chance you could ride along with Jake, get to know the place? I have a feeling we’re gonna be short an officer for a few days.”
She gazed around the disaster that was currently her home. “No problem. In fact, I’d love to.”
After hanging up, Sloane got her new uniform out of the closet. In the robbery and homicide division, RHD, she’d worn plain clothes. The last time she’d donned her blues at LAPD was for the funeral of a fellow detective shortly before she’d left. A man whose death had been laid at her feet. The harassment had started even before Sweeney died—nasty looks, even nastier gossip about her, and no one wanted to partner with her in the field. But after they’d found Sweeney dead in his house, she’d been blamed and the persecution got so bad that Sloane couldn’t stay in the department any longer. If she had, the next funeral would’ve been hers.
Chapter 3
“What do you think of the new lady cop?” Donna asked Emily. For an hour Brady listened while the members of the Baker’s Dozen, the local cooking club that commandeered his kitchen the second Saturday of every month, gossiped.
“You ladies ever consider doing some actual cooking?”
Donna, the proprietor of the Bun Boy, swirled a glass of wine and sipped. “What bee flew up your butt? We’re talking about the new girl, the one who happens to be your neighbor.”
All eyes turned to Brady, who threw his hands up. “I’ve got an inn full of people and a wine and cheese service in three hours. If you want to learn the French technique for making pâte à choux, it’s now or never, ladies.” Why he’d agreed to join this klatch of crazies, he’d never know. He was the only male in the group and the only one of the bunch who didn’t spend their meetings nattering.
“Let’s do it,” said Emily, the only sane one of the bunch, who already knew how to make a killer pâte à choux. “Show us your technique, Brady.”
Brady preheated the oven to four hundred degrees and quickly added the first few ingredients to a large saucepan. He planned to use the puff pastry for cheese gougères to serve to the guests—and the Baker’s Dozen.
“Some measurements would be nice,” Donna said, taking notes.
“Measurements?” Brady smiled. “We don’t need no stinking measurements.” He couldn’t remember the last time he used a scale or a cup or a spoon. Maybe culinary school.
From memory he said, “About a cup-and-a-half of water, a stick plus a tablespoon of unsalted butter, a teaspoon of sugar, half that much salt, two hundred grams of flour, and eight eggs.”
“So it’s a recipe for high cholesterol,” Ethel, owner of the Nugget Market, quipped.
Brady chuckled. “Nah, this is health food.”
“Easy for you to say,” Donna interjected. “You don’t have an ass the size of a barn.”
“I don’t know, Donna, your ass is looking pretty good to me.” She was old enough to be his mother.
“Not better than Officer McBride’s. I heard she signed up for Pam’s yoga class.”
That was news to Brady. Then again, he wasn’t keeping tabs on his new neighbor. Rather, he was trying very hard not to. He had, however, noticed that Donna was right: She looked damned good in that Nugget PD uniform of hers.
A few mornings this week she was getting home as he was leaving. The poor woman had evidently pulled the graveyard shift. He supposed newbies had to pay their dues. Somewhere he’d heard that she’d been a homicide detective. Whatever she’d left in LA had to be pretty bad for her to start from the bottom again. He certainly knew what that was like.
The water, butter, sugar, and salt came to a boil and Brady added the flour, instructing the women to stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture formed into dough. A few took pictures with their phones. Brady removed the pan from the heat and proceeded to beat the eggs, adding them a little at a time to the dough until it was glossy.
“This is what it should look like.” Brady demonstrated how the dough should slide off a wooden spoon like a thick ribbon, then transferred the batter to a pastry bag fitted with a half-inch tip. “Got it?”
The women nodded their heads and Brady proceeded to show them how to pipe small mounds of the dough onto cookie sheets.
“This is the part I have trouble with,” Grace, owner of the Farm Supply store, said. “You do it so fast and so perfect.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice.” He’d worked his way through culinary school catering. Before that he’d helped out in his aunt’s restaurant in South Carolina.
“Today, I’m making gougères.” He sprinkled each mound of dough with shredded Gruyère. “But you can fill these with pastry cream for cream puffs or éclairs.”
Emily helped him pop the cooking sheets into the Lumber Baron’s large industrial oven, where they’d bake for thirty minutes or so. In the meantime, Brady tossed together a Caesar salad with chicken he’d grilled earlier. They’d have it for lunch along with the gougères.
“Well, Brady, dish. What’s Sloane McBride like?” Donna wanted to know.
“You mean beyond being a nice lady and the newest member of our fine police department? Because if that’s what you want to know, I’ve got nothing.”
“She came into Farm Supply to introduce herself and seemed lovely,” Grace said. “I for one like having a woman in the department. It adds a different sensibility. Did you all get an invitation to Jake and Cecilia’s wedding?”
Everyone said yes in unison.
“I never did understand why Cecilia never joined the Baker’s Dozen,” Ethel said. “The woman is a marvelous cook.”
“Maybe because you women gossip too much,” Brady put in. “You ever think of that?”
Ethel stared at Brady over her spectacles. “Cecilia can hold her own in the gossip department.”
“We should probably approach her again,” Donna said. “But after the wedding. She’s got her hands full.”
“Brady, aren’t you catering the wedding?” Emily asked.
“Yep. If you know of anyone looking to make a few extra bucks, I could use servers.”
“Lina might want to,” Emily s
aid. “She’s saving for a new car.”
“Did she get into Nevada?” Ethel asked. “Last I heard they were waiting to hear.”
“She’s in.” Emily beamed. “Rhys and Maddy are ecstatic. She’s getting a place in Reno, but will be home all the time now.” The forty-five minute drive was a cake walk compared to the four hours it took to get to San Francisco.
“I know she’s taking some weekend shifts at the inn and is looking for any other odd jobs she could work in with her class schedule,” Emily continued.
“We’re always looking for checkers at the market,” Ethel replied. “I’ll let Maddy know.”
By the time the Baker’s Dozen had finished eating and left, Brady got started on laying out a spread for the guests. The weekends were particularly busy at the inn, when people from the Bay Area and Sacramento flocked to the Sierra to commune with nature. He usually took weekdays off, preparing dishes in advance that could easily be reheated. In LA, his restaurant closed on Mondays and he’d had a staff of fifteen, including a chef de cuisine who did the heavy lifting when Brady wanted a day off.
Here, he had no staff. But the Lumber Baron was slower paced, giving Brady more time to be creative. And hopefully Nate would continue using him for his big hotel events. Eventually, when Brady determined it was 100 percent safe, he’d resurface and take up where he’d left off. For now, though, this was a nice life.
After the guests had devoured the last cheese puff, Brady cleaned up the kitchen, packed up, and went home. He’d just gotten out of his van when Sloane drove up.
She slammed her door shut. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“You just getting home from work?” She had on her uniform.
“Yep. And you?”
Brady nodded. “How’s the new job going?”
“So far, so good. I’m still trying to familiarize myself with the area.”
“I guess it’s different than what you’re used to.”
“You can say that again. I was thinking of taking a run. You wouldn’t by any chance want to show me that fire trail you were talking about?”
“Sure,” he said. “Give me five minutes to change.”
“I’ll meet you on the porch.”
He got there first and waited in his rocker. Sloane came out a few minutes later and the first thing Brady noticed was she had a semiautomatic holstered in an elastic-band carrier around her hips. The second thing he noticed was she had very nice hips. And ass. Nice everything, come to mention it.
“You always run with that?” He pointed at the gun.
“I feel naked without it.” She cocked her head at his chair. “Where’d you get that?”
“Colin Burke. He’s local—makes mind-blowing furniture. His house and studio are just over the hill.”
She reached out to touch the pinewood. “It’s nice. I may have to get me one. You ready?”
“Yep.” Brady got to his feet and looked at the sky. “It’s gonna be dark soon. You need to warm up or anything?”
“No, I’m good.”
He started out slowly since part of the trek was uphill and he didn’t know what kind of pace she liked to keep. So far, she kept up just fine.
“It’s really pretty here,” she said as they reached the top of the hill where the terrain flattened out.
“It is. Cold too.” He noticed she’d worn short sleeves.
“I’m originally from Chicago, so this doesn’t faze me.” Her voice hitched slightly from exertion. Brady was surprised she could carry on a conversation at all. “How about you? I detect a Southern accent.”
“South Carolina.”
“You came to Nugget by way of South Carolina?”
He laughed. “I went to Los Angeles first.”
“Really? How long were you there for?”
“Three years.” He didn’t want to get into the details. It was a small world and the fewer people who knew where he was and what he’d come from, the better.
Brady hadn’t bothered to change his name, figuring it was common enough. But he stayed off Facebook and Twitter. When Harlee Roberts had wanted to write a feature story about him for the Nugget Tribune, he’d politely declined. No need to borrow trouble. But if trouble found him, he’d be ready.
“Chicago, huh? What brought you out here?”
“Job. LAPD was looking for officers.”
“You didn’t want to stay in Chicago?” Brady cut over to the fire trail and they took that for a while.
“California appealed to me, but mostly I didn’t want to work in the same city with my father and three brothers.”
Brady lifted his brows. “All cops?”
“Nope. Firefighters. My dad’s a battalion chief. My oldest brother is an arson inspector.”
“They wanted you to join the family business?”
“Not exactly.” She stopped, bent over, and put her hands on her knees. “You mind if we rest for a second?”
“Sure.”
She looked over at him. “You’re not even winded.”
“The high altitude is probably getting to you. I’m just used to it.”
“No. It’s that I do all my running on a treadmill at the gym.”
“We’ve done five miles. You want to walk back?”
“Would you think I’m a wuss?”
“Anything but.” He deliberately stared at her pistol and let his eyes wander a bit, trying not to be too obvious about it. “So, are you one of those competitive women?”
“A little bit,” she said, and grinned. “Kind of have to be in my line of work.”
They turned around and started heading to the duplex. “Word on the street is that you signed up for yoga.”
“On the street?” She laughed. “Who told you?”
“The Baker’s Dozen—a group of meddlesome old ladies. We’re all in a cooking club together.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. You want to join?”
“I don’t cook. But I’ll come to eat. Is that allowed?”
He shrugged. “From what I can tell they don’t have a lot of rules. They just like to gossip—and drink. These women can seriously hold their liquor.”
Sloane laughed. “Are you the only guy?”
“Yep. Nuts, huh?”
“I think it’s awesome. How long have you been a chef?”
“Ten years. Went to culinary school right out of college. Got my first job in Charleston. How long have you been a cop?”
“Nine.”
That probably put her right around his age of thirty-three. Maybe a little younger. “You didn’t like LAPD?”
“Uh, let’s just say I needed a change of scenery after some difficult circumstances.” She made it sound ominous.
The sun had set and the sky was streaked in red and blue. Pretty soon they’d be out of light. They were more than halfway home when the distant rumble of a train sounded.
“How often do they come by?” The duplex was a stone’s throw from the tracks.
“A few times a day,” Brady said. “Not so much at night.”
“That’s good.” She smiled, and the sheer power of it caught Brady off guard.
He was almost tempted to ask her what she was doing for dinner. But the run had been enough. He wouldn’t want to seem interested. After all, she’d clearly come here with a past and Brady was in no position to deal with her complications. He had enough of his own.
It was Sloane’s first day on the job solo, and years since she’d worked patrol. At least she’d pulled a day shift. The chief was fair about spreading around the crappy hours. He even worked them himself, which at first surprised Sloane. According to Connie, no one was exempt from pulling holiday and night duty.
She turned left on Main Street, thinking about lunch. Possibly a burger at the Bun Boy, or maybe she’d dash home and pop a frozen burrito in the microwave. Just about to head back to the square, Connie’s voice came over the radio.
“We have a 10-91V at the Nugget Gas and Go. Anim
al control is ten minutes out.”
Sloane hung a U-turn and put on her flashing lights. At the gas station she hopped out of her police SUV and went inside the store. A guy in coveralls greeted her and she couldn’t help but notice that he was rather nice-looking. Not as knock-your-socks-off as Brady, but right up there. What was it with this town? She’d yet to meet an unattractive man here, making her wonder what they put in the water.
“Around back,” he said.
He led her outside, past the garage bays—where a mechanic had his head under the hood of a pickup—and behind the shop. On a flat concrete pad that butted up to a grassy embankment sat a large Dumpster and . . . oh shit, a bear! He’d pulled out heaps of garbage and was sitting down to a picnic lunch.
Sloane had absolutely no experience with this sort of thing. “Isn’t he supposed to be hibernating?”
“Not all of them do. I read somewhere that fifteen percent of the black bears up here don’t sleep in the winter. I’m Griffin Parks, by the way. You must be Officer McBride. Nice to meet you. Welcome to Nugget.”
“Nice to meet you too.” She glanced over at the bear, wary, her hand on her holster. The creature didn’t pay them any mind, just continued to chow on trash. “When I got the call I thought it would be a dog . . . like a pit bull.”
“It’s my fault for keeping the Dumpster unlocked. It’s a hassle otherwise. He’ll likely take off when he’s done, but I can’t risk it, especially with tourists. You’d be surprised how many of them think it’s a good idea to pose their kids with a bear for a close-up. Or try to feed them.”
“Animal control is on its way.” Hopefully she sounded like she knew what she was doing because she didn’t have the foggiest notion what the protocol for dealing with wildlife was.
Griffin nodded. “How you liking the town so far?”
It’s different, that’s for sure. “I’m liking it. You grow up here?”
“Nope. Visited when I was a kid and the place stuck with me. So I bought the gas station two summers ago. Best move I ever made. I hear you’re living in Rhys’s duplex on Donner Road next to Brady.”