It only took another minute to turn onto Verna Lake Road. The long, gravel-lined street served only two houses, and both were nestled in the dense stands of pine and spruce that edged nearly every lane and lake in northern Minnesota. They passed the larger of the two, a relatively new, two-story faux-Georgian that looked a tad pretentious in a community where more modest architecture prevailed. Past a dense stretch of spruce and scrub brush sat a square white cottage with fading red trim and a steeply pitched roof, looking like a forgotten stepchild. The little house, with its lace curtains in the windows and pots of geraniums on the porch, looked as old as Lindstrom himself.
When the truck stopped in the narrow driveway, the old man opened the door and slowly unfolded his lanky frame.
“Do you want us to come in with you?”
Her keys jingling in her pocket, Hannah scooted across the seat after him—only to be yanked to a halt by a manaclelike grip on her arm. Damon had obviously used up his quota of sensitivity for the day. Frowning over her shoulder, she met his meaningful glare.
“You’ve got one minute.”
He didn’t have time for this. That message was obvious as he let go.
“A minute is all I need. I just want to make sure he gets inside all right.”
“I’m not going inside.” From where he stood with his hand on top of the open door, Mr. Lindstrom nodded behind him. “I’m going to rest on my porch for a while.”
“Will you be okay?”
Puzzlement added a few creases to his jowly features. “Of course,” he said, as if he couldn’t imagine why she would ask. “Thank you, Hannah.” He ducked his head to glance across the seat, fishing lures bobbing. “And you,” he added, seeming to have already forgotten Damon’s name.
With a faint smile, he closed the door and lifted his hand in a wave. A moment later, he’d hitched up his pants and turned to amble up the alyssum-lined walk to his house. From the looks of the small vegetable garden and the profusion of flowers and well-tended bushes, he clearly knew what he was doing when it came to growing things.
Still concerned, Hannah dubiously eyed the trowel swaying from its loop on his fishing vest. “Does he live alone?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Maybe we should call someone to stay with him.”
Damon was already backing out of the drive, his attention on avoiding the banks of purple lupine edging the road. “His nephew’s family lives there,” he said, dipping his head dismissively in the direction of the faux-Georgian with its sweeping cement driveway and huge gray pots of ivy that had been tortured into topiary. The place looked as quiet as the mausoleum it resembled when they passed. “If you’re that worried about the old guy, call Neil Lindstrom. He works at the marine supply store on Lake Drive. But if you do talk to him, don’t mention my name.”
“Why not? If it hadn’t been for you, his uncle might have been hurt. I know you didn’t want to be bothered with this, but you were very nice to—”
“Lady,” he muttered, cutting her off, “I’ve been called a lot of things before, but nice isn’t one of them. Now, I’m going back to the dock. Do you want to go back there, or do I drop you off at the café?”
From the corner of his eye, Damon saw her lift her hand to the base of her throat. The motion seemed graceful to him, and decidedly protective.
“The café,” she murmured, turning her head to the window. “Please.”
He heard the faintly injured quality in her voice, and felt it strike a nerve he didn’t even know he had. It was apparent she hadn’t heard of his reputation. But, then, according to what she’d said a while ago, she’d only been there a month, and he hadn’t done anything lately to make the natives restless. She’d hear about him eventually, though, and once she did, she wouldn’t want anything to do with him, anyway. She was a member of the tightly knit community he went out of his way to avoid. Yet, pushing her away first hadn’t given him near the satisfaction it should have.
Already defensive, he glanced over to where she studied the blur of blue-green fir trees flying by her window.
“What’s a woman like you doing moving to Pine Point, anyway?” She looked like the country club set to him. Or, maybe, an urban professional. It was the cut of her hair, the subtle makeup that didn’t look like makeup at all. It took money to look like that. Or breeding. Never would he have pictured her owning a nondescript café in a place where, in winter, church bingo was the highlight of the week. “I could see you as a tourist, but as for living here, you don’t belong here at all.”
The look she gave him was amazingly eloquent.
“You have no idea what kind of a woman I am,” she quietly informed him. “You don’t know a thing about me. I’ve spent most of my life in the city, but this is where I spent all my summers growing up. I didn’t belong where I was,” she told him in that same soft voice, “and if you say I don’t belong here, then just where do you suggest I go?”
There was no heat in the question. No defense. Just a request for an honest answer that hit Damon harder than he was prepared to admit. He knew all too well how it felt to not fit in anywhere. He knew, too, how it felt to have someone deliberately prod at a vulnerable spot. He’d lived with jibes and taunts all his life. He’d developed calluses in most of those places. But there was nothing tough about the woman beside him. If anything, she looked as if he’d just added a bruise to a wound. One she tried very hard to pretend wasn’t there.
Suspecting he’d just ridden roughshod over sensitive ground, feeling like a jerk for protecting himself at her expense, he said nothing. Even when he pulled into the gravel lot below the café to avoid the congestion on the street, he didn’t trust himself to say a word. Being physically attracted to her was bad enough. Feeling empathy was downright dangerous.
She opened the door the moment he stopped. “Thank you for not answering that,” she murmured, sounding as if she’d fully expected him to respond to her question by telling her to go to hell. The breeze grabbed her hair as she slipped off the seat, flicking the shining strands around her face. She grabbed it right back, catching it at her nape, and turned to face him. “And thank you for your help with Mr. Lindstrom. I know it was an inconvenience, but I appreciate it. Despite what you think, it was nice of you.”
With that, she closed the door and turned away. It seemed she couldn’t get away from him fast enough as she headed for the flight of stairs leading to a back-door marked Deliveries Only.
The slope of the hill put the café’s front door at street level. The back of it sat over a vacated welding shop. Situated as the building was, its view of the lake from there was unrestricted. But the only view Damon cared about was of the woman quickly ascending the green-railed stairway, her steps so light she scarcely seemed to touch the wood at all. It took a supple kind of strength to move that way, and it didn’t help matters at all that the way she moved had the same effect on him as her scent and her spirit.
His hand tightened on the gearshift knob as he jammed his truck into reverse. She wasn’t the only one anxious for distance. It had taken years for the lesson to sink in, but he knew the only way he could keep any peace in his life was to stay as far from involvements as he could.
Chapter Two
You don’t belong here.
Hannah hurried up the last few steps, telling herself with each one to put the too-familiar phrase from her mind. There was no reason for the awful anxiety knotting her stomach. Not now. The words meant nothing.
I don’t love you, Hannah. I never did. You don’t belong here.
The words would have been so much easier to forget had they not been emblazoned in her brain. Even now, nearly a year after the fact, she could visualize her ex-husband’s neat, precise handwriting on the note he’d left on her pillow. He hadn’t even had the decency at first to tell her to her face that it had never been her that he’d wanted; that she’d only been a substitute for someone he’d thought he couldn’t have.
She could still v
isualize the note. Yet, as she hit the landing, she knew it was only the sentiment Damon Jackson had echoed that still carried the power to shake her. That lonely sense of not belonging, of no longer being part of something that mattered, still left her empty and feeling more than a little lost. She’d been doing just fine all morning. All week, for that matter. Now she could almost hate the man for resurrecting the feelings his charming opinion had evoked.
She could hate him if she’d let herself think about him, she told herself. And that was not something she chose to do. Damon was cynical, mercurial and confusing. He also happened to be the hardest man she’d ever met. Not that she’d ever met anyone remotely like him.
He bore no resemblance at all to steady, uncomplicated types such as her father and uncle. Or, the stoic, salt-of-the-earth sort, as her grandfather had been. And he was the absolute antithesis of the urban professionals she’d known in Minneapolis, her ex-husband included. Not that that was a drawback. The point was simply that he unsettled her in ways that didn’t merit defining, and she’d had enough upheaval in the past year to last her a lifetime. She needed to concentrate on running her business. The Pine Café was her life now. It was all she needed. And this town that she’d loved as a child was now her home. She might not truly belong there yet, but she was working on it.
She opened the kitchen’s back door, mentally changing gears as she hurried inside and past her small office. She was late returning from her walk, and judging from the sounds filling the slightly rundown, stainless-steel-and-white space, the lunch rush had started early. That meant there was a good possibility Inga, her relief cook, would be in a snit.
Sure enough. The fifty-two-year-old scion of local gossip was up to her coiled, graying-blond braid in prawn salad sandwiches and looking none too happy about life in general when she caught sight of Hannah whipping around the corner.
“Well, there you are,” the woman muttered, scarcely sparing her a glance. “I couldn’t imagine what was keeping you. You simply have to talk to that girl,” she continued, jabbing a spreader into the butter bowl. “She’s just like her sister, slower than spring thaw and getting more behind by the minute. There’s six orders sitting here to be delivered. If I’d known you were going to be late, I’d have had Brenda or Astrid come in early. They’re more interested in working than flitting around the boys the way those two do.”
Brenda and Astrid usually took turns working the supper shift. Like the cook, the women, one slightly older than Hannah, the other older than dirt, were as much a part of the rustic little restaurant as the heavy maple tables and pine green gingham curtains out front. That was one of the reasons Hannah had kept them on after she’d bought the place. It wasn’t unusual for the new owner of a restaurant to hire new staff so she could put her personal stamp on the operation. But firing three locals from jobs they’d held for years would hardly have endeared her to people who were already afraid she’d “citify” the comfortable old café. As it was, had her grandparents not lived there all their lives, Hannah knew she wouldn’t have received the welcome that had been extended to her so far. The locals’ acceptance was only tentative, though. She’d have to work hard to keep it.
“I’ll take care of her. Just give me one minute,” Hannah told the scowling woman as she unzipped her sweatshirt. Inga hadn’t liked the idea of hiring high school students from day one. Hannah, however, thought the Holmes twins were doing just fine. Erica and Eden, both blond and bubbly, did tend to bat their baby blues at the young male customers who came in, but they were fast learners, their attitudes were good and the patrons in general seemed to like them. “I need to make a phone call and wash up and I’ll be right there.”
Impatience flashed as Inga deftly arranged pink shrimp on buttered sourdough. “Can the phone call wait? I’m backed up seven orders. Eight,” she amended when Erica shoved another ticket under a peg on the order wheel. “I’m running low on cucumber salad and I need three yellow pea soups and a chowder to go with these.”
Going four directions at once was nothing new for Hannah. A person didn’t survive the restaurant business without learning how to put out a fire with one hand while garnishing a plate with the other. She also had a knack for swallowing personal irritations and concerns until the crisis of the moment was over—which was why she overlooked the older woman’s proprietary instructions and picked up the portable phone on her way to the washroom. She never liked to keep customers waiting, but her conscience wouldn’t let her do anything until she’d contacted someone about Mr. Lindstrom.
Her concern was real, but her motives weren’t totally altruistic. The sooner she made the call, the sooner she could put the entire encounter with Damon Jackson out of her mind.
The familiar din of customers’ conversations and cutlery clatter drifted through the service window above the work station. After quickly securing her hair in a neat knot at her nape, she tied her burgundy apron over her white Pine Café T-shirt while she held the phone to her ear with her shoulder to get the marine supply store’s phone number from directory assistance.
Seconds later, waiting for Neil Lindstrom to be summoned to the phone, she was scrubbing her hands with the thoroughness of a doctor preparing for surgery. By the time the brusque-voiced Neil came on the line, she’d made her way to the tall stainless steel pots simmering on the stove, ladled up four cups of steaming, savory soup for Inga’s order and snagged the next order from the wheel.
Inga asked for another chowder.
Now was not the time to remind the woman who worked for whom. Hannah ladled up the soup, then finished two chef’s salads while she introduced herself to Neil Lindstrom and told him about her encounter with his uncle that morning. She didn’t mention Damon. Partly because he’d asked her not to, but mostly because she had the distinct feeling there was no love lost between him and the man she was speaking with now. She didn’t know who had the problem with whom, but it wasn’t her problem, so she wasn’t going to worry about it. She cared only that Neil said he’d check on his uncle. Since she didn’t know the man, she could hardly judge his reaction, but she could have sworn he sounded more annoyed than concerned by her call.
Having done what she could, wondering vaguely if it was enough, she punched the button marked End Call on the phone. After dropping it into the wide pocket of her apron, she picked up the three plates for table five and backed out the swinging door.
She delivered that order and two of the others, refilled water glasses for the diners at the counter, then slipped up behind Erica to tell the tall, wholesome-looking high school senior that she was doing great, but she needed to hustle with filling the orders and clearing dead tables. The little café only seated twenty-four, twenty-seven if she counted the three high chairs, but when it filled up all at once, even the most experienced waitress could get behind.
When she had everything under control in front, she headed back into the kitchen and snagged the next order from the wheel.
Inga was dealing out slices of cheese like a card shark. “So that’s why you were late,” she said, as if there hadn’t been a two-minute lapse since she’d overheard Hannah’s telephone conversation. “It’s too bad about Mr. Lindstrom,” she continued, her nose back in joint now that she understood why Hannah hadn’t returned on time. “You hear of old folks losing their memory and being confused and such, but I never thought it would happen to him. Up until a month or so ago, you’d never have known a thing was wrong. He was getting a bit crochety, mind you, but he was sharp as a tack.” The bright overhead light caught the diamond weave of her gray hairnet when she shook her head. “This would be the second or third spell he’s had now.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with him?”
Inga lifted a rounded shoulder and started dealing tomato slices. “Just getting old, I suppose. Lucky he has Neil to look after him. Never married, you know.”
“Neil?”
Inga’s expression held enormous patience. “Mr. Lindstrom. Neil married Kirsty
Swensen. Didn’t your mother or grandma ever mention the people around here to you?”
Turning from the big stainless steel refrigerator, Hannah murmured that they hadn’t. All her mom had ever said about the residents of Pine Point was that they were salt of the earth, but that a person couldn’t sneeze without someone spreading the word that he or she had a cold. As for her grandmother, Margretha Olson had been so into her painting and pottery that she’d rarely left her quiet woodland home long enough to hear what was going on with anyone, much less take the time to repeat it.
“Well,” Inga confided, more than happy to fill the gap in Hannah’s knowledge, “the only Lindstroms around anymore are Neil and his uncle, but Neil was the town’s favorite son for a while. He was captain of our hockey team and went to the university on a hockey scholarship some fifteen years or so ago. The professionals were even looking at him in college.
“Nothing ever came of it,” she hastened to add, sounding as if his failure had been a disappointment to the whole community, “but he and Kirsty got married before they found out he wasn’t going to be picked or drafted or whatever it is they do. She was homecoming queen that year, I think. Or maybe it was Miss Snow Daze for the winter carnival.
“It was Snow Daze,” she said decisively, getting sidetracked with the details she prided herself on keeping straight. “I’m sure it was because I remember her being pregnant with their first baby when she crowned the Jansson girl the following year. That was when she brought a torte that was tough as a hockey puck for the cakewalk. Poor thing still can’t cook to save her soul. About poisoned us all at the Good Shepherd Christmas smorgasbord one year. But she gives her time to charity and her father owns the marine supply store. Everyone knows that’s why Neil is the manager there.
“So,” she went on, having dished out that gossipy bit of history along with the plates she set in the service window, “just how confused was Louie?”
Keeping up with Inga required a playlist. Unless Hannah was mistaken, Mr. Lindstrom’s only local relative worked for his father-in-law and his wife couldn’t cook. Somewhere in there someone with the same last name as the local sheriff had succeeded Neil’s wife as Snow Daze queen. “Louie?”
Hannah And The Hellion (Silhouette Treasury 90s) Page 3