Hannah And The Hellion (Silhouette Treasury 90s)

by Christine Flynn

  “If that’s the case, then you’re free to leave anytime,” Hannah said, and picked up the next order herself.

  Inga quit. Hannah wasn’t particularly surprised, but she wasn’t pleased, either. Especially when it became clear that the woman expected her to beg her to stay, then left in a huff when she didn’t. But she didn’t have time to worry about the ramifications of letting the loquacious woman go. The last two weeks of August were the busiest Pine Point had seen. The café was open from seven in the morning until nine at night, seven days a week through the summer months. Without another cook to spell her, Hannah practically lived in the kitchen.

  If she wasn’t working on an order, she was preparing food for later, ordering meats and produce, checking deliveries or cleaning. There were always dishes and pans to wash, a floor to mop, a grill, a stove or a rest room to clean, a linen order to count, a vendor to pay. The thought of taking a break, much less getting out for a while, was a fantasy she didn’t even have time to indulge. The only break she managed was the six hours between falling asleep as she hit the bed in her apartment upstairs and dragging herself into the shower the next morning to start all over again.

  She didn’t know what she’d have done without Brenda and the twins. When Astrid quit out of loyalty to Inga, Brenda volunteered to work double shifts and Erica and Eden went from part-time to full. Between the four of them, they managed to survive with no real problems at all right through Labor Day.

  It was then that the face of the town changed overnight. The people who owned summer cabins closed them for the winter and returned to the cities. The pleasure boats were trailered away, leaving the new dock all but abandoned. Many of the locals who owned the quaint little antique, curio and art shops along Main boarded them up and headed off to stock up for next year, or took a vacation themselves before spending a winter creating the paintings or pottery to be sold once the tourists returned.

  Only the nine hundred locals remained. They were the true “lake people,” and they seemed to emerge as if they’d been in hiding, coming out to enjoy the crisp air now that there were fewer cars to pollute it, and to venture into the establishments the summer people had overrun. Bowling leagues started up. The community theater posted notices in the businesses along Main for tryouts for its winter production. High school football was the focal point of every Friday night. And the biggest crowd in the café, if a dozen people at any given time could be called that, came at breakfast.

  Morning was when people would stop by for a cup of coffee, a plate of Swedish pancakes and news of their neighbors before heading on to work. Dinner was more sporadic, but she had a small group of regulars at lunch, too. It was through those people that the bedrock of the community was exposed, and through them she learned that, in Pine Point, people were definitely judged by the strength of their character, who they were related to and the company they kept.

  She hadn’t seen Damon since he’d returned her keys two months ago. But thanks to Inga, word had spread like a swarm of honeybees that Hannah had been “friendly” to him in her café. The result of that behavior had been all manner of unsolicited advice from good people who wanted to protect her from what they thought she didn’t know. She’d nearly lost count of well-intentioned locals who’d stopped in to see what she’d done to “their” café and to share a memory of her mom and her grandparents along with their warnings.

  Fortunately, by mid-October, comments about Damon were limited mostly to brief mentions of someone having seen him at a gas station or down at the old dock. Inevitably, the mention of his name would get someone going about an old transgression, but for the most part, the warnings had ended.

  At least, they had until Dorothy Yont, the retired postmistress, stopped in for a slice of Hannah’s Tosca cake.

  “I remember when you were not more than six or seven and your grandpa would bring you and your big sister into town to show you off,” Dorothy said, methodically dipping a piece of the tender, almond-crusted pastry into the decorative swirl of whipped cream beside it. “He was so proud of you two. And protective,” she added, eyeing the bite through the bottoms of her blue-rimmed bifocals. “I’m sure he’d be spinning in his grave if he knew you’d been talking with that Jackson boy.”

  Dorothy was presently between her visit to the beauty shop, where her short gray curls had been teased into a bubble, and her trip to the grocery store. She’d heard at the Curl Up and Dye that Hannah had Tosca cake, Danish apple pudding and chocolate torte on her dessert menu today. Since she hadn’t had good Tosca in ages and she always spent more when she shopped for groceries on an empty stomach, she’d headed over the minute her spray was dry.

  “That was two months ago, Dorothy.”

  “Well, I’ve been in Springfield with my sister. She got a new hip, you know. So I only heard about it last week. And your grandmother,” she went on, since the news was still fresh to her, “she never was one to pass on talk. You remind me of her that way,” she confided, “but surely she’d warned you about the less savory characters on the docks. My son’s a fisherman, and the stories he tells of what goes on in that tavern on the south shore during the season is enough to keep a parent on her knees for a week.”

  Hannah’s only response was a forbearing smile as she refilled the woman’s coffee. She didn’t recall any warnings from her grandparents about the docks. But they probably hadn’t thought them necessary. Her grandparents’ house had backed up to one of the bizillion little lakes in the area, and the dock where she and her sister had played and swam and tanned had been a ten-foot floating plank where their grandpa had tethered his rowboat. The only unsavory character they’d encountered had been the marmot that kept making off with their potato chips.

  “Of course, Peter doesn’t patronize that tavern,” Dorothy qualified, speaking of her son. “But I understand Damon does.”

  “I don’t imagine Peter’s fishing today, is he?” Hannah didn’t want to talk about Damon Jackson. Every time someone mentioned him, she inevitably found herself remembering how he’d stood brushing his thumb over her wrist, making her skin tingle and her pulse leap, while he’d shown her an understanding she would never have expected him to possess. And every time she thought of that, an indefinable longing would begin to fill her. She’d never felt so drawn to anyone in her life as she had at that moment. “It’s getting pretty nasty out there. Don’t you think?”

  She nodded toward the wide, plate-glass windows. Outside, the rain turned the morning a dull, glistening gray. Dorothy didn’t seem at all suspicious of the deliberate change of subject. Weather was more than just an idle topic in the north country. During fall and winter especially, the elements ruled everyone’s life.

  The burly man at the end of the counter looked up from his newspaper and plate. He was one of the truckers she’d discovered among her regulars, a guy named Rick who drove a twice-weekly route from Duluth to Grand Portage on the Canadian border.

  “This could be more than a typical blow,” he said, using the native term for the fierce wind and rain that swept in from the northwest this time of year. “I heard on my radio that it might turn into a gale. It seems the fall storms are on us.”

  Looking as if her appetite had suddenly disappeared, Dorothy set down her fork without taking her last bite. “I always hate this time of year. Ships go down when the weather turns, you know.”

  “They sure do,” the trucker added, hefting his girth from the stool to remove his billfold from the back pocket of gray work pants. “Last I heard there were three-hundred-and-fifty wrecks on the lake’s floor. The Edmund Fitz is down there, you know?”

  That sobering bit of common knowledge had Dorothy paying her check and gathering her purse and her umbrella. There wasn’t a person living near Superior who didn’t know about the lives the lake had claimed.

  Years’ worth of worry lines had creased the woman’s brow by the time Hannah handed her her change and she’d removed her raincoat from the rack by the front door.
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  “I can’t imagine that my son would be out today, but I think I’ll run by his house and see on my way to the store. I suppose I should get my shutters up, too.” Pulling a plastic rain bonnet from the pocket of her coat, she tied it over her freshly coiffed hair. “Lovely Tosca, Hannah. Thank you. You’re doing a nice job here.”

  Having left his money on the counter, Hannah’s only other customer shrugged into his jacket. “Catch you later,” he said, just like he always did, and snatched up his cap.

  She thanked them, told them both to be careful on the road, then watched the husky trucker hold the door for Dorothy and her umbrella before they headed into the downpour.

  Normally, she would have set to work bussing the counter and rinsing dishes. Instead, after putting the meal checks on the spindle and the trucker’s money into the cash register, she stuffed her hands into the wide pocket of her burgundy apron and rounded the counter.

  She stopped at the front window of the empty café, watching the rain and thinking of how worried Dorothy had looked at the thought of her son being on the lake. She couldn’t see the water from where she stood. It disappeared beyond the horizon behind the building, stretching as far as the eye could see in either direction, a body of water so vast and unforgiving that thousand-foot-long freighters were swallowed whole.

  She had never seen a storm on Superior, but she’d heard that the waves sent forty-foot sprays crashing against the high cliffs to the south, and that those waves could be as powerful and destructive as any to be found on the seven seas.

  Damon could well be on the lake—in a boat that had looked to her as if it were falling apart. She had the distinct feeling there wasn’t anyone out there worrying about his welfare the way Dorothy was worrying about her son’s. Or the way the other fishermen’s friends and family were undoubtedly worrying about them. She had the feeling, too, that was exactly how Damon wanted it.

  Her arms tightened over the hollow feeling in her stomach. Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to forget what he’d said the day he’d returned her keys, or the absolute conviction in his voice when he’d said it.

  You make a place for yourself, even if you’re the only one in it.

  A year ago, she wouldn’t have understood the need for creating such a place. She did now. Her ex-husband had shown her how much safer it was to pursue solitary dreams, to simply not allow yourself to count on someone else. Getting past the loneliness was the hard part. Even when she was surrounded by people, new friends, actually, that hollow feeling was often still there.

  She was wondering if Damon experienced that same feeling when she noticed Bill Andersson across the street. Looking like a giant lemon drop in his yellow sou’wester, he was nailing boards on the front window of his appliance store. Glancing up the street as a pine bough skidded down the sidewalk, she noticed that the florist and barber shops were already shuttered. Hattie, the florist, even had a Closed sign taped to her door.

  Two minutes later, Hannah had changed the movable hands on the little clock-shaped sign on her own door to indicate that she’d be back in five minutes, and was in the cavernous space below her restaurant. The area had once housed a welding shop. Now it held only the café’s freezers and the sheets of plywood used to shutter the building. The previous owner had made a point of showing her the tracks above and below the plate-glass windows where the boards were supposed to fit.

  In theory, putting up the boards shouldn’t be much trouble at all.

  Damon was halfway up the hill when his glance automatically cut to the left. He didn’t know why he checked out the café when he drove past it on his way home, but he always did. He never saw her. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have done anything about it.

  Or so he was thinking when he noticed one of the wide double doors below the café’s back stairway hanging open. A woman was backing through it, the wind tearing at her bright blue raincoat as she dragged out a piece of plywood as tall as she was and twice as long. She was too slender to be the cook, and too tall to be the waitress he’d seen in there before. He couldn’t see the color of her hair. Not with her hood pulled up. And though he couldn’t see her face, either, something about the way she moved put a knot of recognition in his gut.

  His reaction wasn’t conscious, but the moment the knot formed, his foot lifted from the gas. Since he was going uphill, the truck immediately slowed. As it did, he watched Hannah prop the wood next to another sheet just like it at the side of the building.

  The wind promptly blew both boards over, then grabbed at her hood, blowing it back enough to confirm what his instincts had told him. That he had recognized her when he could barely see her was something he didn’t take time to consider just then. She’d covered her head again and had left the boards so she could close the heavy door banging against the back of the building. Moments later, she was lifting one of the awkward sheets to drag it up the wet sidewalk.

  His glance darted ahead, past the blur of windshield wipers trying to keep up with the downpour. Except for a couple of cars parked on the street, the area was deserted. Still, he fully expected one of her staff to come around the corner any moment to help her. It would be difficult enough to manage the cumbersome boards without the wind snatching at them. Getting them up alone would nearly be impossible.

  He was less than ten yards from the café when he saw her edge the corner of the board into the groove below the side window. The power lines were swayed when the wind tore the board from her hands, overending it like a quarter flipped for a toss. Looking slightly stunned, she stared down at her palms as if the wood had abraded them, then promptly dragged the board back from where it had landed by the power pole.

  The woman was nothing if not determined. He knew that for a fact. He’d butted heads with that determination the day he’d met her. He also knew she was going to hurt herself if she didn’t get some help quick.

  Swearing to himself, he pulled to a stop by the boarded-up art gallery across from the café. He wished someone else would show up so he could keep going, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. It was him or no one. And he couldn’t leave her struggling. Not with the power lines swinging the way they were.

  Head ducked against the rain, knowing he was exposing himself to trouble just by being there, he jogged across the street. Each footfall seemed to echo that he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

  That was the story of his life, he thought, coming up behind her.

  He reached for the board.

  “Let go.” He muttered the order over the top of her hood, spanning the width of the plywood with the full stretch of his arms.

  Hannah’s heart lurched. The voice behind her matched the low rumble of thunder in the distance. She knew that voice, and the jolt it sent down her spine caused her to step back, only to find herself bumping into the solid wall of his body. With her shoulders to his chest, she glanced up and around to find herself staring at the strong line of Damon’s jaw. An instant later, he glanced down and she saw his dark eyebrows bolt together over his smoke gray eyes.

  “Come on, Hannah. Move.”

  Too grateful for the help to care about anything else, she slipped out from between him and the board.

  “I’ve never put them up before,” she said, watching him shift the board into position. “If it wasn’t for the wind I don’t think it would be a problem.”

  “If it wasn’t for the wind, you wouldn’t need them.” Her logic obviously escaped him. Beneath the bill of his black baseball cap, a scowl as formidable and dark as the sky slashed his carved features. “Why isn’t your cook helping you? Or one of your waitresses?”

  He held the board flat against the sea green siding and guided the lower edge into the narrow metal track below the window. Tipping his head back to see what he was doing, he caught the top edge in the slot of the upper track. As he did, rain sluiced down his face and ran in rivulets over the arms and shoulders of his heavy canvas jacket.

  Seconds later, the window dis
appeared when he slid the board into place.

  “I don’t have any waitresses on during the day anymore. Not weekdays, anyway.”

  Hannah grabbed for the other board as the wind skidded it along the sidewalk. Damon stopped it with his foot, tipping it to take one end while she held the other. Walking backward, he rounded the corner, frowning at her all the way.

  “What about your cook?”

  “I’m the cook.”

  “The other one.” He grumbled the words over the muffled roar of rain pounding the pavement, angling the board to cut its resistance to the wind. “She should be out here doing this. That old battle-ax has probably shuttered this building a thousand times.”

  Ducking her head against a sudden gust, fighting for control of the board, Hannah shot him an uneasy glance. He obviously hadn’t forgotten how he’d been received by Inga the last time he’d been there.

  “I’m sure she has. But she quit. I’m the only one here.”

  Because there hadn’t been anyone else to help her, she would have told him how grateful she was that he’d stopped. She had no idea how she’d have managed the task by herself. But the wind wanted to make a Frisbee out of the board and she needed to concentrate on holding up her end while Damon wrestled the plywood into place.

  She didn’t mind the rain. And she loved the snows that would come in another month or two, though, like everyone else in Minnesota, she would grow a tad tired of shoveling it along about March. What she didn’t like was wind and thunder. And thunder was exactly what she heard rumbling inland as the other board slid between its tracks and snugly covered her other big window.

  The thunder kept coming, rolling in from the lake until it felt as if its power had gathered into a fist in her stomach. It cracked overhead like the snap of a whip, its vibration shaking the windows and Hannah with the same force. Lightning flashed at that same instant, eliciting a gasp from Hannah that had her dropping any pretense of bravery and bolting for the café’s front door.