“Lindstrom.”
The problem with Inga was that Hannah couldn’t always tell when the woman was looking for fodder for the gossip mill, or when she was truly concerned about the welfare of another. It was entirely possible that with Inga and her ilk, there wasn’t that much difference.
She wanted to give Inga the benefit of the doubt. But she also felt oddly protective of the elderly gentleman she’d met that morning. If what Inga had said was true—that Mr. Lindstrom was usually quite together, his “spells,” as she’d called them, had to be extremely upsetting. If he even remembered them after they happened.
“I’d say he seemed a little foggy on details,” Hannah returned by way of compromise. Meat sizzled as she placed a chicken breast on the hooded grill behind her and sprinkled it with seasoning. “He seemed better when we got him home. Maybe that was because he was around familiar things again. I know Grandma always did better at home when she was having one of her bad days.”
“Who’s we?”
Hannah could practically see Inga’s antenna rise on either side of her coiled braid. “We?”
“You said by the time ‘we’ got him home. Who were you with?”
Talking to Inga was like fishing with a gill net. Nothing got past her. Hannah hadn’t even realized what she’d said until the woman picked up on it. Even then, the question was innocent enough. It was the image the question put in Hannah’s mind that caused her to hesitate.
“A fisherman,” she finally said. A very big, very...disturbing...fisherman. “I didn’t have my car, so we used his to drive Mr. Lindstrom home.
“You know, Inga,” she continued, deliberately motioning toward the few remaining orders to be prepared, “I think you can handle this now. I’m going to run down to the freezer for more stock and put on another pot of soup. We’ve already gone through the yellow pea.”
If Inga found anything suspicious in the abrupt change of subject, she didn’t let on. She just kept turning out sandwiches and salads and frowning at the youthful waitress who was doing a far better job than Inga wanted to admit.
Hannah was frowning herself as she turned away. Partly at Inga. Mostly at the image of the fisherman that had fixed in her mind. Determined to ignore the latter, she concentrated on how the older woman’s uncompromising attitude toward Erica and her sister kept getting worse instead of better. If staff didn’t get along, the business itself suffered, and she didn’t want that kind of stress in her establishment. Before she talked to Inga, though, she needed to know if the woman had always had a problem with teenage staff, or if her picky attitude was a subtle form of rebellion for Hannah having taken over the café.
She’d no sooner decided to ask her evening waitress, the level-headed Brenda, her opinion when the image she was trying to block fixed more firmly in her mind—the image of muscular shoulders, a wicked-looking tattoo, storm gray eyes and a mouth that could make a woman go weak in the knees.
The man definitely wasn’t one a person easily forgot, she conceded, and turned into her office to retrieve the keys for the lower stairwell door and the freezer.
She thought she’d left her key ring in the pocket of her sweat jacket. Obviously, she hadn’t. She checked the other pocket, and the pocket on her apron, in case she’d been so preoccupied that she hadn’t paid attention to what she was doing and put her keys in there. Considering what she’d been thinking about when she’d come in, that could certainly have been the case.
They weren’t in her apron, either.
She checked her desk. The kitchen floor. The backstairs. Beginning to appreciate the frustration of the contentious fisherman she’d met that morning, she tried to recall when she’d last had them. She remembered hearing them jangle in her pocket when they’d left Mr. Lindstrom’s house, so she checked the gravel lot below the café where Damon had let her out. When she didn’t find them there, frustration gave way to an indefinable sort of unease.
She could think of only one other place they could be.
It was five-thirty the following morning when Hannah hurried down the hill toward the dock. Pebbles skittered in front of her on the cracked and narrow street, the small sounds magnified by the stillness. Sunrise was nearly half an hour off, but the eastern sky already revealed the first threads of pink morning light on the horizon. She didn’t know what time Damon normally arrived at the dock, but she knew that many of the commercial boats left before sunup. Her first week in Pine Point, she’d often watched their lights disappear beyond the breakwater from her apartment above the café, grateful that the night was almost over. Since she opened the café at seven, she figured her best bet was to get to his boat early so she wouldn’t miss him. If he wasn’t yet there, she’d just leave a note taped to the door of his wheelhouse.
The single street lamp at the end of the road cast its spare glow over the gravel parking lot. At the fringes of that pale light, she spotted a dark truck among the other cars and vehicles nosed up to the horizontal logs defining the space. The truck was parked in a different place than Damon’s had been yesterday, though, and she didn’t know trucks well enough to be absolutely certain the one she noted was his. The one vehicle she did recognize was the white van with the Feldsons’ Fresh Fish logo on the side. She bought fish from Axel and Jen Feldson for the café. Offering a smile and a wave to the couple as they pulled on waist-high rubber pants beside the van, she jogged down the worn wood steps and headed purposefully past the trawlers being loaded with coiled ropes and cooler chests. The boat she wanted was moored near the far end of the dock.
Few of the dozen or so fishermen going about their morning routines paid her any mind as she hurried along. Or, if they did, she didn’t notice. Her attention was on Damon’s dark shape as he moved around behind his battered boat. As she drew closer, she could see that he was loading a pile of gear from the dock behind the Naiad’s stern.
In the reflection of the wheelhouse and running lights bouncing off the inky water, she saw him reach for a thick, coiled cable, loop it over his shoulder, then snag two heavy red fuel cans in his expansive grip. Without missing a beat, he turned to the back of his boat, clamped his hand over the stern’s thick lip and stuck his booted foot on the third rung of the short ladder tagging the boat’s name. In one fluid motion, he swung himself up and over the stern’s peeling wood. With that same economy of motion, he disposed of his load and swung his tall, powerful body back onto the dock.
The oddly graceful choreography stopped Hannah in her tracks. He moved as easily as if he’d been weighted down with nothing more than a sack of air, hard muscles bunching and shifting effortlessly beneath worn fleece and fatigues. The man was obviously no stranger to hard work.
“Good morning,” she said, watching him reach for a long, rolled-up tarp.
The hesitation in her greeting was reflected in her expression when his head snapped up.
Seeing her, seeing the unease she tried to hide, he suddenly looked a little hesitant himself.
“Isn’t this a little early for you?” Defensiveness marked his compelling features as he shouldered his load. “You told Lindstrom you don’t come down here until sometime between breakfast and lunch.”
It was apparent from the annoyed edge in his tone that he rather wished she’d stuck to her schedule. Sympathizing, since she would have liked to avoid him, too, she started to tell him why she was there, but he’d already turned his back to her and was calling for his deckhand.
“Marty,” he shouted, his deep voice carrying over the slap of waves along the thirty-foot length of the boat. “Stow this and start her up.”
From where Hannah stood ten feet away, she saw Damon’s employee, the one with the square build of a tanker, emerge from below the deck. Without a word, the taciturn sailor took the tarp when Damon held it up and set about the tasks he was paid to perform. He never looked at her or at his skipper, his bulldog expression giving the impression of a man who did his job only because he had to work, and who could easily be bought by
another operation for another buck an hour. Men like him showed up on the docks every spring and departed like migrating birds when winter ended employment. There was nothing for outsiders in Pine Point once the commercial season was over.
Had she not known that Damon owned the boat, she’d have been hard pressed to think of him as anything other than a rough vagabond himself.
“I know you’re in a hurry,” Hannah called out, thinking him rough, anyway. “I just need to know if you’ve seen my keys. I think they might be in your truck.”
He’d picked up a large green-and-white cooler. Stopping long enough to surreptitiously eye the way her breasts plumped over her tightly crossed arms, he shook his head. The cool breeze slashed strands of dark hair over his forehead, making him look as rakish as he undoubtedly was when he carried that disturbing glance up the long line of her throat to her mouth.
“I haven’t seen them.”
“Would you mind looking? Not now,” she hurried to add, easing one hand to her shoulder to block his view when his glance drifted down again. “I have my cook’s set, so I don’t need them to open the café. But if you’d check your truck when it’s convenient and let me know, I’d really appreciate it.”
For a moment, he said nothing. He just watched her, his eyes glinting hard as diamonds in the reflected lights. Hers was a simple request, and he’d either do it, or he wouldn’t. Yet, as his shadowed glance moved over her face, he seemed to be considering something far weightier than letting her know if he had her keys.
“I’ll look when I get back,” he finally said.
Her soft smile held relief. “Thanks. A lot.” Anxious to be on her way, she took a careful step backward, lifting her hand toward his boat as she did. “Good luck.”
His dark eyebrows darted together. “What?”
“With your fishing,” she expanded, unable to imagine what else he thought she was talking about since she’d been pointing at his boat.
It was a moment before he slowly lifted his chin in acknowledgement, but his eyes remained locked on hers, no longer quite so cool, so dismissing. Hannah wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but something about his questioning look made it seem as if he wasn’t accustomed to anyone wishing him luck with the day’s catch, and that he simply hadn’t been sure how to respond.
That such a small, everyday consideration should catch him so off guard made her wonder if he wasn’t accustomed to anyone wanting anything good for him at all.
Uneasy with that thought, unnerved by the way his gaze tugged at something deep inside her, she turned with a squeak of her sneakers on the dew-dampened wood and hurried back down the dock.
The feel of those fathomless eyes branded her back all the way.
Damon didn’t move until he saw Hannah reach the stairs. It was only then that he remembered the other fishermen. Many of them were watching her, too, but curious glances had also turned in his direction, most of the latter belonging to owners of the other boats.
He’d bet the day’s catch that they were wondering what a woman like Hannah Davis was doing talking to the likes of him.
Skimming his glance past old Ernie Pedersen three slips away, he blocked out the stares and the speculation as he always did. He had a job to do, and as long as he concentrated on getting it done, no one had any cause to find any more fault with him than they already did. He liked his work, anyway. When he was out on the water, it was just him and the elements and that suited him just fine. He needed nothing else.
He found her keys that evening, wedged between the seat and the seat back of his truck.
Two days later, he still had them.
Damon didn’t fish on Sunday. The practice had nothing to do with any religious conviction. He hadn’t set foot in a church since his father’s funeral six months ago, and he couldn’t begin to remember when he’d been in one before that. He didn’t fish because the broker who bought his catch didn’t work on Sunday, so he usually spent the day tending the Naiad’s infirmities or working on the ramshackle house where he’d been born. The old shake-roofed structure had been in worse shape than the boat and it still needed a ton of work. But at least the roof no longer leaked, the front porch no longer sagged, and he’d patched the gaps around the windows.
Today, though, he couldn’t seem to concentrate on the house or the boat.
He leaned against the sidewall of the Naiad, his feet braced on the scrubbed deck and a can of beer dangling from one hand. The breakwater at the mouth of the tiny inlet cut the force of Superior’s oceanlike waves, but, like him, the water was never truly calm. The boat rocked gently, the motion as familiar as the cry of the loons farther down the shore. He should be greasing his wench. Instead, he stood studying the keys the woman from the café had come looking for.
A small fob dangled from the crowded silver ring. It was one of those novelty items a person could buy at a fair or in a souvenir store, the kind that held a card in clear plastic and told the meaning of a name. The card was pink, the flowing script on it spelling out Hannah. On the line below the name it read Gracious And Merciful.
He didn’t know if she’d bought the thing to remind herself of what she should be, or if someone had given it to her because they thought she already possessed those qualities. But from what little he knew of grace or mercy, and having seen her with the old man, he couldn’t help thinking that she’d been named well.
His fist closed over the keys, metal biting into his palm. He needed to stop thinking about her. Mostly, he needed to stop thinking about how she’d looked just before she got out of his truck and practically bolted for her back door. He hated that what he’d said to her bothered him as much as it had. It still bothered him. And he hated that, too.
Raising his beer, he drained the can and crushed it in his fist. He didn’t know where she lived. Only that she owned the café, and he really didn’t want to go there. As long as he stuck to his boat and his house, he was fine. In town, he could seldom go anywhere without raising an eyebrow or being whispered about. He didn’t care what the locals thought of him. He was irredeemable in their eyes, and they might well be right. He just didn’t want to create the opportunity for someone to accuse him of something he didn’t do. Half the locals were looking for any excuse to see him gone, but he hadn’t done anything in the months since he’d returned except mind his own business. That was all he intended to continue doing, too.
He decided to wait until midafternoon, when the café was likely to be the least crowded, to return Hannah’s keys.
The decision made, he pocketed the keys, grabbed another beer from the cooler and headed for the cable wench.
Damon had miscalculated. He realized that even before he stepped inside the little restaurant. Beyond the ruffled gingham curtains on the windows, he could see that most of the cafe’s tables were full. Thinking only that he wanted to get this over with, he walked in, anyway.
The tinkle of the bell over the door sounded seconds before he breathed in the tantalizing aroma of good, hearty food. Reminded by the savory scents that he’d worked through lunch, he glanced from the customers at the short counter to those at the tables along the windows.
The place was smaller than he remembered it. But then he hadn’t been in the café since its previous owner had kicked him out some fifteen years ago because “his type” wasn’t welcome there. The frilly green curtains looked new, but the heavy maple tables and chairs seemed vaguely familiar. So did the silence that fell over the small group seated at the counter.
He figured most of the diners were summer people—couples and young families that had come up for the day, the weekend or the week. The middle-aged couple at the nearest table and the two older men downing hamburgers at the counter were definitely locals, though. They were the ones who’d stopped talking the instant he’d set foot inside the door. As if prompted by some invisible signal, their glances simultaneously raked from the tattoo visible below the short sleeve of his dark olive T-shirt to his worn khaki fatigues.
The few defenses he hadn’t already raised locked firmly into place. He hated the suspicion and hostility he’d always encountered in this town. Even now, after having been gone for years, it was still there, fueling the anger building inside him. He hadn’t realized until that moment just how much of the rage he’d once battled still existed. It wasn’t usually so close to the surface, so demanding in its need to be acknowledged.
That anger burned like acid in his gut when the door from the kitchen swung open. The woman he’d come to see was suddenly there, two heaped plates in her hands. She hesitated, too, but more out of surprise than wariness.
“Hi,” Hannah greeted him, suddenly aware of the quiet descending over her busy little establishment. The clatter of silverware continued to lessen. Conversations turned to murmurs. Only the kids were talking in normal tones.
She moved closer to the rugged man blocking the door, offering him the same smile she skimmed past the couple at the table beside her. She had no trouble understanding the hush falling over the room. Damon was not the sort of man a person could ignore. There was a powerful, rather intimidating air about him that tended to stop people in their tracks, make them want to back up a step. But, at the moment, the raw tension he radiated made that power seem down-right... dangerous.
Hannah And The Hellion (Silhouette Treasury 90s) Page 4