Yanking off his tie, he shed his clothes like they were on fire. He was exhausted, undone, out of answers for everyone and especially himself. Logically, he supposed he should make a healthy choice: go for a bike ride, help his sister in the shop, take a walk. Instead, he closed the curtains, slid naked between the sheets, and fell almost at once into a restless sleep. Every few minutes, he dragged his eyelids open, only to fall back under the spell of an intoxicating fatigue. By the time he was able to drag himself out of bed, he was stunned to realize it was after six.
He slipped on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, stepped into his shoes. His sister wasn’t a hotelier, after all. Just because he was having a crappy day didn’t mean he could abandon her entirely. He splashed cold water on his face, ran a brush through his dark hair, and trotted down the stairs.
The dinner rush must have been as successful as the lunch rush, because the kitchen looked disastrous. Sam decided discretion was the better part of valor and opted for behind-the-scenes work, wiping off counters and filling the sinks with cleaning solution. Working mindlessly and efficiently, he soon had a decent stack of clean plates and glasses. Just in time, too, as Dani came swooping back in with another binful, her cheeks flushed.
“Oh, thank God, Sam! I just used my last sandwich plate. You’re a rockstar!” She grabbed a stack and scooted back out.
At least she didn’t appear to be holding any grudges for his disappearing act earlier. Sam checked the soup, saw that there was barely more than a spoonful sizzling on the bottom of the big pot. He grabbed one of the prepared plastic tubs out of the freezer and dropped it in to warm up. One should be enough, he decided. The rush should be winding down. Probably no more than a handful of people would want soup through the later evening.
He’d just convinced Dani this week that she should try staying open later on the weekend. Normally the shop closed at two-thirty, giving Dani time to close up and get to school to collect Parker, have something resembling a family evening, prep for the next day, and fall into bed. Sam thought that the Broad Ripple nightlife, on the weekends especially, represented too much revenue to leave lying on the table. He’d promised Dani he’d help her run the shop on weekends for a few weeks. If the late openings were a success, she could afford to hire someone to work the weekend evening shift and do the next day’s prep.
This was the first night, and he’d been nearly MIA. But Sam was too tired of self-loathing to give it more than a dusty corner in the back of his mind. Disgruntled, it eventually curled up and went back to sleep.
This would be good, he told himself. He’d be busy, distracted, all evening, and not have time to wrestle endlessly with the questions of the day. And hopefully he’d be helping Dani, too, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for her and Parker.
He slid a fresh loaf of sourdough into the slicer and neatly drew down the blade. The slices glided onto a clean plate and he carried them out to the case. The pastries were nearly all gone. Mentally he ticked off the list: blueberry crumble, lemon bars, brownies, white chocolate oatmeal cookies. Only a few peanut butter cookies and some gingersnaps were left. Briefly, he wondered what Mom would have thought of Dani’s impressive domestic abilities. She sure hadn’t learned them at home. He’d like to think she’d have been proud of her daughter. She definitely wouldn’t have known what to make of her son, either before or after his disgrace.
Dani shot him a scattered smile from across the room as she wiped down the last table and scooped up a pile of books for reshelving. “Thank you so much. Can you start a fresh carafe?”
“No problem. Decaf or regular?”
“Oh, good question, actually. Decaf. Can you believe it? We never run out of decaf!”
Sam smiled wryly and gestured to the twilight falling in the windows behind her. “Well, some people don’t care for caffeine as night comes on.”
“Amen to that,” Dani said on a heartfelt sigh. “I’m ready to crash myself.”
Her voice drifted over the bookshelves toward him as he loaded up the coffee maker. “I’m up past my bedtime!”
Sam laughed. That was an exaggeration, but not by much. Dani had to get to bed early to be up in time to bake fresh bread in the mornings. She should, however, have been able to get a moment to herself and unwind and relax by now. Sam’s conscience twinged.
“I know. I’m really sorry about spacing out on you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Dani’s voice wavered as she moved up and down the aisles, shelving and straightening as she hadn’t had the chance to do for the last couple of hours. “I’m an asshole, but I’m not a heartless asshole. Today had to be terrible for you. Plus you had to spend it with the Grim Reaper. I’m kind of surprised you re-emerged at all.”
“You’re not half-bad as a sister, you know that?”
“Yeah, I think I’m pretty cool.”
“I’m going to get some pastries,” Sam warned her so she wouldn’t keep talking to empty air.
He dodged back into the kitchen, threw some frozen cookie dough onto a sheet, and started the oven. He pulled pastries out of the refrigerator and cut them into squares, setting them on plates with the little square white doilies Dani insisted were necessary. He put those on a tray and carried them back out to refill as much of the pastry case as possible.
Critically he regarded the two display sandwiches that had been in the case since Dani opened at six am. She only made her sandwiches fresh to order. Sam thought the display sandwiches were looking a bit wilted.
“Dani, I think it might be a good idea to make fresh display sandwiches in the afternoon on the weekend nights.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she called back. “Feel free to go ahead. It’s a little late now, but it won’t hurt. I’m going to finish the last of these reshelves and make tracks.”
“No problem,” Sam said. “Where’s Parker?”
“Sleepover. What are the odds, right? My kid finally gone on a Friday night, and I have to work. Just kidding. I’m too tired to want to go out, anyway. Not to mention I still have to get up at three regardless of where the bratling is sleeping.”
“Well, that’s good, anyway. I was starting to worry he’d run away from home and I hadn’t even noticed.”
“That’ll never happen. Parker’s inherited your fine sense of the dramatic. If he runs away from home, we’ll all know.”
Sam affected a falsetto. “Me, dramatic? Bless your heart, darlin’, I haven’t an inkling what you mean.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dani rounded the corner, feet dragging, but a smile on her face. “You were right, by the way, you know. I don’t know if it will prove true all weekend, but we were crazy busy tonight.”
Three or four customers still sat scattered around the dining room surrounded by books and coffee cups, their furtive glances and lingering smiles marking them as happy eavesdroppers. Sam had no doubt Dani’s regulars would come out in droves once word of her later hours got out.
“Awesome,” Sam told her. “Now go upstairs and get some rest. I’ve got this now.”
“Are you sure?” Dani asked, but her quick retreat indicated no chance of recanting.
“I’m sure!” Sam called after her. “I’m solid.”
He turned back to the dining with an evaluative stare. Two more minutes, and he could pull the cookies out of the oven. Another round through the dining room to gather up empty dishes and say hello, and then as long as no-one else came in, he could start prepping for tomorrow. It was nearly eight, and he’d convinced Dani to keep the doors open till ten.
Sam grabbed a clean cloth and dunked it in the sanitizing bucket Dani kept right under the register. He walked through the dining room, wiping down tables and stacking empty plates. A slight, blond-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses glanced up from his copy of The Bell Jar as Sam passed by.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep.
“Can I get you something?”
The man smiled, looking surprisingly
embarrassed. “No, no, I’m good. I just wondered—I thought I overheard—is Dani your sister?”
Sam thought he’d seen the man before. “Lemon bar and coffee to go?” he asked.
“What?”
“You come in the morning and order a lemon bar and coffee to go?”
Sam didn’t know men could blush, but this one flushed right to the roots of his hair.
“Um, yeah. That’s me.”
“I thought so. I’m Sam, Lemon Bar.” He dried his hand on his jeans and stuck it out. “And yes. Dani is my sister. And at the moment, my boss.”
“I’m Ian Lannister.”
“Seriously? Like Game of Thrones Lannister?”
Another blush. Geez. This poor guy was going to burst into flames if his face got any hotter. But he surprised Sam with his next words.
“Actually, kind of the opposite of Game of Thrones Lannister. I’m not interested in my sister, I’m interested in yours.”
Sam dropped into the seat opposite the other man. “Um, okay. Tell me more?”
Another fire engine flash. At least the guy was never in any danger of passing out, Sam thought.
Ian set his book aside. “I’ve been coming in for a couple of months now on my way to work. I thought you guys were married, and I would never come in between that, I just…”
His voice trailed off. Sam waited. This was too good to make up. Dani was going to die.
“I just wanted to be close to her once in a while. My mornings used to be grim. Relentless. Entirely predictable. Then suddenly there was this beautiful, fiery woman who loved books and baked bread and—I thought—yelled at her husband a lot. It just…I was happier when my days started with her.”
Sam had no idea what to say. This guy didn’t talk like any man he knew. He wasn’t sure if Ian was a stalker, a super sad lonely man, completely socially inept, or some combination of the three. So, he opted for safer ground.
“On your way to work? Where do you work?”
“I’m the volunteer coordinator for the Marion County Jail.”
Sam wasn’t sure what he’d expected Lannister to say—college professor? art critic?—but it sure wasn’t that.
“Really?”
“I know, it probably doesn’t sound like a real job. But we have a lot of volunteer programs there. Someone has to coordinate and train all the volunteers—religious, NA, AA, the service dog training program, the creative writing program from the college.”
Sam didn’t know how to tell Lannister that while he actually did know the position was a real job, he just couldn’t picture the slender, intellectual-looking character in front of him working in a jail. So he nodded instead.
“Ah.”
“Anyway, I live in Broad Ripple. I was walking by when I saw you’d extended your hours, and I thought I’d drop in.”
“And stalk my sister.”
Sam was starting to enjoy seeing how many shades of red one man’s face could turn.
“If I seem like a creeper, I’m sorry. I do work with the real creepers every day and I’d never want to do that to someone else. If you ask me to leave, I’ll walk out of here and never come back. But if you don’t, now that I know she’s your sister and not your wife, I’m going to ask her out.”
“Maybe she’s someone else’s wife.”
“Is she?”
“No,” Sam admitted. “But you’d really walk out of here and never see her again if I said so? Doesn’t sound like a great love story.”
“We do live in the same village. I have to believe we’d run into each other somewhere. The grocery store. The post office.” Ian spoke earnestly.
Sam laughed outright now. “There is just no way for you to talk about this without sounding like an absolute stalker, is there? You have to know you’re not exactly Dani’s type.”
Ian shrugged, grinning in spite of himself. “Maybe not. But I don’t want to be her type. I just want to be her date. The rest will take care of itself.”
Sam unfolded himself from the café chair as the front door dinged, casting a welcoming smile in the direction of the middle-aged couple walking in. “If you say so. I guess you’ll have to ask her and find out.”
He turned away before he could read the other man’s expression. Honestly, he didn’t get a bad vibe off the guy at all. If anything, he struck Sam as a little too meek and retiring for his “fiery” sister. Make that way too meek and retiring.
Sam stepped behind the counter and cast his hand toward the pastry case as the newcomers approached. “Welcome to Meats & Reads, folks. What can I get you?”
Chapter Thirty-One
“He said what?”
Sam choked back his laughter unsuccessfully. Coffee boiled up his nose, and tears spurted from his eyes.
“The upshot was that you’re fated to be together, so whether I told him off or not, he’d find you eventually.”
“Oh, fuck.” The uncharacteristic swear word only made Sam double over farther. “The first time in I don’t know when a guy’s been interested in me, and of course he’s crackers.”
Parker piped up. “I know crackers means crazy, but I don’t know why. What’s crazy about crackers?”
Dani’s face registered horror as she realized her son had been listening and had clearly heard the full extent of her vocabulary. Sam grinned at her unsympathetically, mopping tears and coffee off his face with a paper towel.
“I…I have no idea,” she managed faintly, clearly at a loss as to how to handle the more serious word in the conversation.
“Maybe it’s because Polly wants crackers, and Polly has to be a crazy parrot after hanging out with pirates for so long?”
Sam couldn’t say he followed Parker’s logic, but the wisest course seemed to be accepting that explanation at face value.
“I bet you’re right, buddy,” he said, ruffling Parker’s bedhead into an even worse state of disrepair. “Why don’t you go and make your bed, and I’ll fix breakfast. Belgian waffles with chocolate chips?”
“Fuck, yes!” Parker exclaimed and darted up the stairs.
Dani stared at Sam in abject horror.
“Sam! You know I never cuss. One slip, and I’m the potty-mouth mom. I can’t wait for the call from school on Monday.”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. He didn’t learn that language from me.”
“Oh, like you’ve never said that!”
“More to the point, I’ve never been caught saying that by a seven-year-old. You’re definitely fast-tracking it to mom-of-the-year.”
“No kidding. Ugh. I don’t know if I should caution him not to say it at school, or if that will only make it more likely that he’ll say it at school. Probably to a teacher.”
“I feel confident in saying that Parker already knows not to say that at school. Or here, for that matter. He’s just needling you because you’ve created that rare opportunity where he can.”
Dani blew her hair out of her eyes. “I hope you’re right. I think I’m going to retreat to the old standby of pretending it didn’t happen at all.”
“Always useful. Is that the same tack you’re going to take with Lord Lannister?”
Dani scowled. “Crap. I’d actually forgotten where all of this started. Do you think he’ll be in this morning?”
Sam shrugged. “Maybe not. I’m pretty sure he usually comes in on his way to work, and I think the civilian positions in the jail are mostly Monday through Friday. Then again, maybe he’ll come in just because he misses you so bad.”
Sam utilized his long legs to carry him around the corner just as Dani threw a wet washcloth at him.
“I hate you!” she howled.
Sam heard the sloppy smack as the cloth struck the wall and slid down. He stuck his head back around the doorjamb and grinned cheerfully.
“Missed.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Maybe he’s a nice guy. Maybe he’ll be the love of your life.”
“Umm, let’s review r
eal quick.” Dani started ticking off points on her fingertips. “One, he works at the jail. Two, he coordinates things like AA meetings and church services, so he’s probably got an ever-so-slightly different outlook on the existence of a divine being than I do. Third, he’s basically been stalking me even though he thought I was married. Not to mention you said he lights up like a firecracker practically every time you speak to him, so he must be super attractive, too. Complete winning package, that.”
“It’s all perspective,” Sam insisted, laughing. “You could also say he’s a professional working man whose life’s mission is based on compassion for his fellow man, whose been silently pining after his own great love with no intention of ever achieving more than the grace of her presence. And I don’t think he’s ugly. I mean, I’m not a terrific judge of how handsome guys are, and of course he can’t measure up to me, but just because he’s pasty and shy and tends to blush a lot doesn’t mean he’s completely unattractive.”
“Oh, well, when you put it like that…”
Sam’s phone buzzed from his pocket. He grimaced at the display of a number he didn’t know.
“Probably that inheritance from India I’ve been waiting on.” He pushed the talk button. “Hello?”
“Preacher Sam?”
“Just Sam these days.”
“Oh, sorry, of course. This is Adam Jensen, Amy’s father. We spoke yesterday.”
“I remember. What can I do for you, Adam?” Sam stepped back out of the kitchen just as Parker came barreling downstairs. When he saw his uncle on the phone, the boy came to a dead stop and proceeded on tiptoe. Sam could hear him whispering to his mom in a near-shout as he reached the kitchen, “Is that Aunt Melanie on the phone?”
Adam was talking. “I was wondering—that is, Lenore and I were wondering—if you might have time to drop by.”
“Today?”
The other man was apologetic. “I know it’s short notice. If you’re busy, it’s no problem. We can do another time—tomorrow. Or next week.”
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