She deliberately masked a flash of unease. “Are you coming in to eat?”
“I came to see you.”
At the deep rumble of his voice, even the children fell silent.
Not caring to interrupt her customers, or provide them with a sideshow, she signaled Brenda with the lift of her chin. “Come on back,” she told him, then handed her curiously silent waitress the plates, smiling at the two ladies they were intended for, and headed back the way she’d come.
On the other side of the kitchen door, the muffled hum of the stove fan met the scrape of a metal spatula against the grill.
“As I was saying,” Inga continued, picking up her interrupted conversation as deftly as she flipped the burger, “Elsa and the deacon got into an argument over the ladies auxiliary using the church hall for bingo on council meeting nights, and the whole congregation...”
Within a split second of peering up from her task, the woman cut herself off. Suddenly looking as if she was about to choke on whatever she’d left unsaid, she bounced a startled glance over Damon.
Had Inga been anyone else, it would have been logical to think it was the unexpected sight of the tall, decidedly tense stranger that made her forget what she’d been saying. Knowing the opinionated woman as she did, Hannah was more inclined to think it was Damon’s appearance that earned him her quick, thin-lipped disapproval.
Looking quite disgusted, the cook ran her narrow-eyed glance from the strands of dark hair tumbling over his forehead to the grease streaks on his pants. It was as plain as oatmeal that she didn’t think a man in soiled work clothes belonged in what she not-so-secretly regarded as “her” kitchen.
“Excuse us for a minute,” Hannah said, more than willing to remove him from her presence.
Touching Damon’s arm, thinking a chunk of marble would have more give to it, she motioned him into her office. The dishwasher was directly across from its door. Since it was running, she pulled the door to cut the noise and to block Inga’s patently nosy glare, and turned to face him.
The instant she looked up, she wished she’d left the door open.
The room was little more than an oversized closet, barely big enough for the desk and file cabinets crammed into it. Even with each allowing the other as much space as possible, only three feet of floor space separated them.
It might as well have been three inches. His brooding presence seemed to fill the space, touching her with a force that was almost physical.
“I found your keys.”
“You did?”
“They were wedged in the seat.”
She watched his hand slide into the front pocket of his pants, then slip back out, past a small, mended rip in fabric worn soft from washing. His belt loops sported a few stray threads and the fabric near his zipper was faded from wear. Rather than looking as if he couldn’t afford better, his clothes gave the impression that he simply took care of what he was comfortable with.
She was trying to imagine his big hands mending that tear, finding the thought totally incongruous, when she realized she was staring at the front of his pants. With a mental groan, she jerked her glance to the middle of his impossibly wide chest. The view there was only marginally less disturbing.
“When I didn’t hear from you, I thought that meant they weren’t in your truck. I couldn’t imagine where else they could be.” She met his guarded gray eyes, her smile coming more easily now that she knew why he was there. “I know how busy you are. You’re very kind to bring them.”
Seconds ago, Damon’s only thought had been to hand over the keys, tell her he’d have returned them sooner if he’d known where she lived, and to head straight back to his boat. But she’d called him kind. Again. What amazed him more was that she looked at him as if she actually believed he was.
The anger he’d felt a minute ago receded like an outgoing tide. No one had ever called him kind before. No one had ever before looked to him for help, either. Not the way she had done with old man Lindstrom. He’d wanted to believe that hadn’t mattered. But it had. And he couldn’t deny how good it had made him feel.
All he’d done for her in return was make her feel bad when he’d told her she didn’t belong there. The unwanted and totally unfamiliar empathy he’d felt for her refused to let him forget that.
Feeling big and awkward, he reached for her hand, hesitating a moment before he set her keys in her palm. Even as badly as he’d treated her, she’d still been gracious enough to wish him well with his catch.
“You asked me something the other day. About where I’d suggest you go if you don’t belong one place or another. Please,” he said, stopping her when she started to pull her hand away. He relaxed his grip, trying to get past his own guard. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
He looked down at her hand, drawn by the softness of her skin, the delicacy of her bones. Her nails were short and unpolished, her fingers long and tapered. Her hand looked so small in his, so fragile. He’d scrubbed his own hands before he’d come there, but they were still rough, callused, scarred. Like him.
“Some people never fit in anywhere, Hannah. Or they try to fit where they can’t.” He skimmed his thumb over the delicate veins in her wrist, felt the flutter of her pulse. “If you ever find that happening, you just make a place where you do belong.” His voice dropped. “Even if you’re the only one in it.”
He hadn’t realized how badly he’d wanted to touch her until he’d felt her soft skin against his. And now that he was touching her, he didn’t want to let go. But he was good at denying himself what he wanted. He’d had a lifetime of practice.
He slipped his hand away before she could pull back herself, a little surprised that she hadn’t already.
“I better get out of here.”
“Damon. Wait.”
She stopped him as he took a step toward the door, her hand catching his arm. The top of her head barely reached his chin, and she had to tip her head back to look up at him. When she did, the vulnerability in her lovely face nearly stole his breath.
It seemed he’d done it again, touched on something she related to all too well. But at least hurt wasn’t clouding her eyes this time. This time, she held his glance with an openness that gave her no defenses at all.
Hannah didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know why she’d stopped him, except that she couldn’t just let him go. As she searched the gray eyes steadily holding hers, all she could think was that she’d had no idea he’d realized how badly she needed to find a new place for herself. Or how she’d once tried so hard to fit where she had never belonged. She couldn’t imagine him sharing something so telling about himself, either. It seemed as unlikely as the patience he’d shown a confused old man.
A dull thump sounded from the other side of the wall. The instant the sound registered, Damon’s guarded glance moved to where her hand rested on his arm.
Aware of the tension creeping into his body, she slowly eased her hand away. It was entirely possible that he didn’t even realize how much of himself he’d just revealed. Or maybe he knew exactly what he’d done and that was why he again looked so defensive. But, because of the advice he’d just given her, she had the feeling that Damon had been forced to create a world for himself—and that he was very much alone in it.
Deeply touched, oddly shaken, she finally murmured a quiet “Thank you.”
His response was nothing more than the tightening of his jaw. Looking as if he wished he hadn’t come there at all, he reached past her and pushed open the door
Inga, on the other side, promptly backed into the steaming dishwasher.
“Where’s the back way out?”
At Damon’s low demand, she aimed her spatula toward the end of the short hall. “Right there.”
Hannah scarcely noticed her cook’s dour expression. She wasn’t aware of much of anything except Damon as he disappeared into the bright sunshine outside, and the totally unexpected understanding he had offered. He knew nothing about her. Yet,
he knew everything that mattered.
She opened her hand, staring at the keys he’d folded into her palm. It was possible, too, that he had just told her everything that mattered about him.
“Good Lord, Hannah. Do you know who that is?”
Chapter Three
Hannah had worked with Inga Olafson for over a month. It had only been after she’d asked a few judicious questions of Brenda about her, however, that she’d really gotten a handle on her relief cook. The fact that she’d overheard the twins refer to her as Brunhild the Hun had more or less confirmed her conclusions.
Inga was a woman who had an opinion about everything, and who spared no one her thoughts. She loved to meddle, and since her children were grown and had moved away and her husband worked a freighter out of Duluth for a week at a time, she had no one around to castigate, dominate or irritate. As a result, she tended to make up for that lack by pouncing on any impropriety, real or perceived, with the zeal of the newly converted. At the moment, however, there was definitely something more to her censure than disapproval of a man’s physical appearance. Her demand had bordered on incredulous.
“His name’s Damon,” Hannah replied, though it was apparent Inga already knew that.
“What on earth was the likes of him doing here?”
“He was returning my keys,” she replied, quite reasonably. “They fell out in his truck when we took Mr. Lindstrom home the other day.”
“He’s the one who helped you?”
“I asked him to. I couldn’t manage Mr. Lindstrom by myself.” Hannah’s frown now mirrored Inga’s. She was hardly accountable to her for her actions, but she had no reason not to answer, either. “What do you mean by the likes of him? What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” she pronounced, since Hannah was so obviously clueless, “is that Damon Jackson is nothing but trouble waiting to happen. He’s looking for trouble right here, too,” she insisted. “I could tell when I watched him follow you into your office.”
“You could?”
“Absolutely. He was looking at you like he wanted you served up for his supper or something. That was pure lust in that man’s eyes.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest, seeming to shudder at the very thought. “No decent woman would have a thing to do with that one.”
Hannah had gone utterly still. It was hard for her to tell which disconcerted her more: the woman’s observations, her conclusions or what she meant by “trouble.” Since the latter almost seemed safer, she decided to start there. “What has he done?”
“It’s more like what hasn’t he done,” Inga muttered. Looking more like a mother hen now than a wet one, she lowered her voice as she always did when she was getting into something truly juicy. “That boy was always raising Cain, getting into fights, destroying property. He’d get to drinking and use that highway out there like it was a racetrack.” Her rounded features pinched, giving her the appearance of a plump, desperately anemic prune. “He has the morals of an alley cat, too. He nearly ruined the reputation of a nice girl from a fine family here. Heaven only knows how many others he led astray.
“He never had any respect for anyone,” she continued, lumping all his transgressions under that one glaring flaw. “He still doesn’t. I can’t believe he’d come in here as dirty as he was. And I could smell beer on him. Couldn’t you?”
Hannah ignored the query. She also didn’t bother pointing out that Damon had obviously been working before he’d stopped by, or that he’d appeared quite sober. She didn’t mention, either, that having a beer or two was hardly cause for criticism. Half the fund-raisers in town would suffer if there wasn’t a keg to go with the polka band and spiced herring. Inga’s other accusations had raised more disturbing questions.
What had he fought about? Who was the girl? There was lust in his eyes? “What did he destroy?”
“A row of mailboxes for one thing. I remember that Ollie Sieverson had just put up a new one. Damon plowed right through the whole line of them with his car, drunk as a skunk. You wouldn’t have known Ollie,” she added, apparently thinking that Hannah had frowned because she didn’t recognize the name. “He was the oldest brother of Ernie Sieverson, who comes in here with the sheriff. He passed on years ago. Ollie, not Ernie. Heart attack.” She paused, concentrating. “Or maybe it was a stroke. It’s strokes that run in their family, I think.”
Hannah held up her hand, cutting Inga off before she could get any further into the Sieversons’ medical history. Privacy was a pipe dream in Pine Point. “You said Ollie had just put up a new mailbox, but that he’d died years ago. How many years are you talking about?”
“I don’t remember,” Inga muttered, not sure what that had to do with anything. The offense was what counted. “It must be fifteen or so, by now. But I do remember that they put him in detention for a few months...the Jackson boy, not Ollie,” she clarified, planting her fists on her hips. “He was more trouble than ever when he got out. Of course, that father of his was half the problem. If he’d made the boy go to school instead of working him on that eyesore of a boat, something might have come of him. He died here last winter. Late February, it was. That’s when Damon came back.”
“He’d been gone?”
“For years. Must have been ten at least. Pity he just didn’t stay wherever it was he’d taken off to.”
That conclusion was delivered just as Brenda called a brisk “Order in” through the service window. Inga’s head snapped around. Turning the rest of her body in the same direction, she headed for the window and pulled the ticket from the wheel.
Hannah followed more slowly. “So these things he did...” she prefaced, wanting to make sure she understood what she’d heard. “They happened when he was a kid?”
“That and more. If there was a problem at the high school or the docks, you could dam near bet money that Jackson boy was at the root of it.”
The outspoken cook had missed the point of the question, but her response provided enough of an answer to give Hannah pause.
“What about lately?” Everything Inga mentioned was in the past tense, and she kept referring to Damon as “that Jackson boy” as if the years that had turned him into a man counted for nothing. A hard man, granted. And a disturbing, confusing one. But he was definitely no longer a kid. “You said he’d been gone for a long time. Has he done anything since his return?”
“I haven’t heard of anything, but it’s hard telling what all he got himself into while he was away. Or what trouble he’s going to cause,” she added, making it clear she thought it only a matter of time before his past repeated itself. “Once a hellion, always a hellion. You can’t change a person like that.”
She punctuated her pronouncement with the clap of the heavy lid on a soup pot and set the bowl she’d just filled on a plate.
“Don’t worry. People will understand that you didn’t know who he was.” She offered the assurance with a benevolent smile, making it apparent that, under the circumstances, Hannah would be excused for her association with the man. “But now that you do know, you’ll be well advised to keep him out of here.”
From the day Hannah had taken over, Inga had clearly regarded herself as having certain advantages over her new boss. She knew the town better. She knew the customers better. She knew the vendors better—points Hannah willingly conceded. But Hannah had rapidly gained ground in those areas herself. Because Inga was an amazingly good cook, and good cooks could be amazingly difficult to find on short notice, Hannah tended to overlook the woman’s terminal chattiness, her nosiness and, for the most part, her tendency to want to run the café. She would not, however, allow her to dictate who she would and would not serve.
She moved closer, deliberately adding the garnish she’d repeatedly told Inga to put on each plate, but which Inga consistently “forgot” because she’d never done it that way before. Hannah considered herself a fair person, and her willingness to give second chances, and third if need be, had earned her the loyalty of many an em
ployee. Her ability to listen to complaints and concerns had also, on more than one occasion, kept temperamental chefs and staff from skewering one another. That was why her ex-husband, one of those temperamental chefs, insisted she run interference between the kitchen and the front of the house in the elegant restaurant they’d owned together.
She’d had little experience, however, with this particular circumstance.
“I appreciate what you’re saying, Inga, but we don’t discriminate in this establishment. Unless Mr. Jackson gives us a specific reason to keep him out, he’s as welcome here as anyone else.”
The woman’s eyebrows merged. “You can’t mean that.”
“I can and I do. I always reserve the right to refuse service, but he hasn’t given me any reason to do that.”
“I just gave you reasons.”
“You told me about what he’d done before he left. You said yourself that he’d been gone for years and that he hasn’t done anything since he returned. All I’ve seen him do is work on his boat, help an elderly man and return something to me that I’d lost.” It wasn’t necessary to mention that she felt a little threatened by him herself. Or to comment on the edge he possessed, the defensiveness he wore like a shield. There was a principle to defend. Just because he’d shared what he had with her, just because she suspected there was more to Damon than first met the eye, had nothing to do with anything. “I doubt he’ll come back here, anyway, considering the reception he got. But if he does, we treat him like anyone else.”
“Well, he’d better not come on my shift,” she muttered when Hannah stepped away. “Because I’m not cooking for a Jackson.”
From the set look on the woman’s face, it was apparent that she felt quite comfortable with her position. The way Inga saw it, Hannah needed her to keep the place going. After all, she’d been the summer cook for the previous owner for more than twenty years and Hannah could hardly handle lunch and dinner alone. What she failed to realize was that Hannah didn’t back down when a principle was involved.
Hannah And The Hellion (Silhouette Treasury 90s) Page 5