The rain had turned to snow by morning. The light, crystalline flakes fell steadily, slowly blanketing Pine Point in white, and lightening moods as surely as sunshine. Within two days, the merchants along Main began putting up their holiday decorations, and displays of pilgrims and turkeys graced windows surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights. Rain was wet and miserable. Snow was cleaner, brighter, drier.
It also had to be shoveled.
On the upside, Hannah considered being outside straining muscles in the frozen air infinitely preferable to being inside with nothing to keep her mind off the man who so clearly regretted having touched her. Thinking about those explosive moments in Damon’s arms and the shuttered look on his face when he’d pulled away was something she avoided as much as Damon now avoided her.
The downside to the welcome physical activity was that nearly every time she’d get herself bundled up to tackle the task, a customer would stray into the café and she’d have to hurry back in, unbundle and start all over again a half an hour later.
It had taken two attempts that afternoon to clear the sidewalk in front of the café. When she turned the corner to start on the hillside, wondering if she should even bother because hardly anyone used it this time of year, her progress was interrupted once more.
A single set of footprints trailed through the eight inches of snow covering the narrow sidewalk. Those large, heavily treaded steps ended where Mr. Lindstrom leaned against the café’s sea green siding. The short brim of his plaid flannel hat hid his thinning gray hair, and a heavy tan canvas hunting jacket hung on his lanky frame. His shoulders were hunched, his head down and his wrinkled, liver-spotted hands covered his face.
Hannah’s heart lurched an instant before she propped her snow shovel against the side window and started crunching her way toward him. “Mr. Lindstrom?” she called, hoping he wasn’t having a stroke or something, “are you all right?”
He’d stopped at the far end of the building. From the pattern of his footsteps, he’d been heading downhill when he’d turned to lean against the siding for support.
“Mr. Lindstrom?”
The earflaps of his flannel hat resembled drooping bird’s wings when his head came up. The first thing Hannah noticed was that he had a lighter in one hand and a pipe clamped between his teeth. The next thing she registered was the ruddy glow of his cheeks.
Removing the pipe, he peered at her through the top half of his clear-rimmed bifocals. “Yah. Sure, I’m all right,” he replied, sounding genuinely puzzled by the panic in her tone. His pale blue eyes narrowed in curiosity. “Who are you?”
He truly did look fine—which was more than she could say for herself just then. The moment she’d thought there was something wrong, her own heart had kicked into double time. It was still knocking hard against her ribs when relief made her smile.
“My name’s Hannah.” She drew a calming breath, exhaled it in a thready cloud. “We met once before. On the docks,” she reminded him. “I own the café.”
“Ah, yes. I remember hearing that Lilly had sold it.”
The elderly man obviously had no recollection of having heard that particular piece of information from her. Hannah didn’t consider that especially peculiar, though. Not when she considered the shape he’d been in that day.
Biting down again on his pipe, he gave his lighter a few quick flicks.
“Can’t get the dang thing to flame.” He held the lighter up, disgust written in his wrinkles. “Flint’s shot.” With a frown that caused his fleshy lower lip to protrude even farther, he opened his coat to unsnap a pocket on his fishing vest. “I think I’ve got a spare here, somewhere.”
He hadn’t been using the building for support, after all. He’d only been blocking the breeze blowing up from the lake so he could light his pipe. Realizing that, Hannah’s concerns faded a little more—until she considered where he’d seemed to be going.
“There isn’t much down this direction,” she told him, trying to sound conversational rather than nosy. “Where are you headed?”
“Forgot.” He mumbled the word, frowning at his pipe as if it were the cause of this afternoon’s forgetfulness. “Got to the corner. Turned it and flat couldn’t remember where I was headed. Young as you are, I don’t suppose that’s ever happened to you.”
“Sure it has,” she murmured, smiling. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve put the sugar in the fridge or walked into a room and forgotten what I’d gone in there for. Where were you coming from?” she asked, thinking he looked more annoyed than bewildered by his forgetfulness. “Maybe if you retraced your steps, you’d remember.”
He pondered her question, then shook his head. “Just came from home.”
He’d been heading in the direction of the docks. If that had been his destination, though, she didn’t particularly want to remind him by mentioning it. With the boats all dry-docked now, no one went down there this time of year. There weren’t even any other tracks, human or automobile, marring the snow-covered hill. At least there weren’t any beyond the point where Damon’s truck had pulled in behind the building—hours ago, judging from how the single set of tire tracks had refilled with the constant flurries. Even the surefooted could slip on the ice and snow. An elderly man could lose his footing all too easily, and with the severest of consequences. Bones broke more easily when a person was old, and healed slower. A broken hip could be disaster. Being bedridden for months could lead to complications like pneumonia and infections.
“Do you want me to call Neil?”
“What for? He’d just dump me at home, and there sure as blazes isn’t anything there to do. I don’t like driving in the snow, so I’d just have to walk all the way back here.” He reached inside his open jacket and, giving up on finding the flint, pulled a book of matches from one of the fishing vest pockets. “I can’t garden,” he continued, enumerating the pleasures being deprived him at the moment. “The ice is too thick for boat fishing, and it’s nowhere near thick enough to fish on yet.”
In other words, Hannah thought, noticing the faint trembling of his hands when he struck a match and cupped it to the bowl of his pipe, he didn’t know what to do with himself.
“Why don’t you call a friend?” she suggested, suspecting his shaking had as much to do with cold as age. He should button his coat back up, she thought. And put on gloves. “You can come into the café and use my phone. Maybe you could go visit.”
“Could,” he returned, satisfaction moving into his eyes now that he was finally puffing smoke. “But they’re dead. Except Sven,” he amended, “but he doesn’t know who I am anymore. His daughter’s taking care of him, and I talk with her some when I go to visit, but it gets kind of depressing sitting there watching him drool, and I don’t want to take up her time. You know, once a fella’s seen the sunny side of eighty, even some of his friend’s children aren’t around anymore.”
His expression, like his tone, was absolutely matter-of-fact. But the fact of the matter was that Hannah had never considered how alone an elderly person could be. She remembered her grandmother once saying that the best thing about being older was not worrying about what others thought of you; the worst was slowly losing the people who’d once filled her life. Others came in, filled some of the gaps, but friendships that spanned decades were impossible to replace.
“Why don’t you go over to the senior center?” she suggested, thinking of the activities going on over there.
His jowls folded into his sagging chin as he eyed her through the top of his bifocals. “What would I want to do that for? There’s nothing but a bunch of old people over there. Old women, mostly. A fella doesn’t stand a chance in that place. I’ll just go down and watch the lakers. Now that I think about it, that’s where I was headed, anyway.”
Clamping his pipe between his teeth, he tipped the short brim of his hat to her and turned into the breeze coming up from the frigid water. The lakers were the huge cargo ships that hauled ore, grain and materials along Superior’s horizon
and through the locks at the Soo, nearly four hundred miles away. Sitting on a bench watching them go by sounded harmless enough. But Hannah had a bad feeling about him going to the dock. She didn’t like the feeling she had about him being so alone, either.
The faint chime of the bell over the café’s door drifted toward her, indicating that she had customers. As she took a step backward toward her door, her eyes on the slope of the old man’s shoulders as he slowly moved on, that bad feeling about the dock doubled.
“Mr. Lindstrom,” she suddenly called, hoping she wasn’t overstepping herself. “Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee with me before you go?”
He didn’t even turn. From ten feet away, still going, he lifted his hand in a little wave. “That’s very kind of you to offer,” he called back, “but I think I’ll be getting along now. You have a nice day.”
She had customers, and there was no one in the café. Since she was hardly in a position to let business walk away, that meant she needed to go. It was entirely possible that Mr. Lindstrom would be fine—if he didn’t slip and break something. Or drown. After all, he had managed to survive more than eight decades without her help or interference, and she truly didn’t want to meddle in the man’s life. There was no one around to help her stop him, anyway.
Except Damon.
The older man probably thought she was missing a few vital brain cells when she hollered at him to wait. Though she added a pleading “Please?” there was no mistaking his puzzlement when she asked him to stay right where he was, then, walking backward to make sure he didn’t move, told him she’d be right back.
The bell over the café’s front door chimed again when she poked her head inside. A young family of three stood by the counter looking around. Apologizing, she told them to make themselves comfortable and that she’d be right back. Moments later, relieved to see that Mr. Lindstrom hadn’t moved, she crunched back through the snow to his side and asked if he remembered the man he’d met on the docks last summer, the one who’d taken him home in the black truck parked a few yards away.
Mr. Lindstrom wasn’t sure if he did or not. But as soon as she told him what Damon was doing to his boat, he forgot to balk. Taking advantage of his interest, she promptly steered him toward the shop.
“He’s refitting his boat, you say?”
That was exactly what she’d said. And something about the fact that Damon was working on a boat definitely had him curious.
Curious was hot exactly how she would describe Damon, however. When she opened the entry door to the shop and ushered Mr. Lindstrom inside, Damon just looked irritated.
But not at her. Not yet, anyway.
He jerked his scowl from the piece of metal on the workbench. She couldn’t begin to identify the oil-and-grease-blackened object that had earned his current displeasure. Mr. Lindstrom apparently could, though. Hannah had no sooner escorted him over to where Damon dubiously eyed their approach, than the elderly man began shaking his head.
There were advantages to being rushed. For one thing, she had no time to dwell on the decidedly guarded look Damon gave her when she moved beside him. Keeping her back to their guest, she tugged his sleeve to get him to bend his head toward her.
With her mouth two inches from his ear, she felt his arm brush her breast. Not sure which of them tensed first, she edged back ever so slightly. “He was going to the docks,” she whispered, ignoring the knots his nearness put in her stomach. “You know how dangerous it would be for him to go down there. Keep him here with you until I can figure out something else for him to do, will you?”
He lifted his head, his glance darting to the man studying the mess on the workbench. “No way.”
It was bad enough that she was whispering about someone when that someone was standing right there. Hoping the elderly man would forgive her, she gave Damon’s arm another tug. “Come on,” she insisted, feeling a painful wrench in her chest when he tensed at her touch. “I have customers I need to take care of, and I couldn’t get him to come with me. There isn’t anyone else to watch out for him.”
“I don’t care if there isn’t anyone else,” he shot back, whispering, too. “You found him, you baby-sit him. I’m not getting involved with any—”
“I’m sure you don’t want to get involved, Damon. But I don’t think you want him to get hurt, either. Just talk to him. About boats,” she added, hating the way he insisted on isolating himself. He could shut her and the old guy out later. Right now, she was in a hurry. “Just do it like you did the last time.”
“You’re making a lot of work for yourself there, you know?” Mr. Lindstrom said.
The flatly delivered statement drew Damon’s cool expression from her to the man at the end of the workbench.
“I know what I’m doing,” he muttered.
“Suit yourself.” Mr. Lindstrom blew a puff of smoke that smelled like cherries and old leather, then gave a shrug. It clearly made no difference to him which way Damon did whatever he was doing. “But it’d be easier to break those seals if you’d run some fishing leader between them instead of trying to pry them apart. Got some here, if you’d like.”
Hannah couldn’t tell if Damon was gearing up to refuse her request, or if he was actually considering the unexpected tip. But Mr. Lindstrom was extracting a small disk from the plethora of pockets on the fishing vest under his coat, and she knew an opportune moment when she saw one.
With Damon’s attention diverted, she headed for the stairwell door, hoping with every hurried step that he wouldn’t let the old man leave. He could help or he could refuse. She’d known him to do both. But if he was truly the man she suspected he was beneath that tough-as-titanium exterior of his, he’d keep Mr. Lindstrom with him until she got back. He might not like it, but he’d do it.
Hannah truly tried to hurry. Her intentions, however, hadn’t seemed to count for much lately. She’d just finished serving the young family who’d come into town to buy snow tires, when a couple of kids from the high school stopped by selling calendars to raise money for sports equipment. Hannah bought one for herself, then had the two boys leave a few with a sign and money jar by her cash register in case any of her customers were interested. It was something she did for several of the organizations in town. Last month’s project had been selling candy bars to raise money for new band uniforms. The month before, a local garden club had collected donations for the bulbs it planted every fall around the Welcome to Pine Point signs at either end of town.
By the time the kids left, the couple at the table wanted more corn bread to go with their turkey chili, and their toddler had dumped her milk over her grilled cheese sandwich, which meant Hannah had to make another one since the little girl’s was soaked. Then three more customers walked in, including a chatty pharmaceutical sales rep who’d just made calls on the local doctors and Petersen’s Drug Store. He wanted a rundown on the nearby cross-country ski trails and the bed-and-breakfasts in town.
It was obviously going to be a while before she could rescue Damon, but she couldn’t stand not knowing if he’d managed to keep Mr. Lindstrom from going to the docks. Afraid to consider what either man thought of her latent mother-hen tendencies, she got the new orders started, then dared a quick, quiet dash down the stairwell.
What she saw when she cracked open the door to the shop and peeked inside eased her mind considerably. It also caught her completely off guard.
Mr. Lindstrom had shed his coat and hat and sat with his feet planted on the rungs of a tall stool by the workbench. The bright overhead light turned his steel gray hair a shiny silver and illuminated the pink skin visible through the thinning patch at his crown. An ice scraper had replaced the trowel that had once hung from a side loop on his fishing vest.
His pipe must have gone out again. Either that, or he’d put it out because of the cleaning solvents Damon was using. He had the cherrywood bowl in his fist and was using the black stern end to point at the oily chunk of metal Damon was working on. Sh
e couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the thoughtful way Damon considered the older man made her think he was either asking his advice or following his instructions.
Holding her breath, she slowly closed the door, praying the thing wouldn’t squeak and interrupt them, and hurried back up the stairs. She could stop worrying about Mr. Lindstrom for the moment. He was inside, warm, safe and looking as content as a kid with his favorite toy.
Both men were still there when she made the same trip an hour later.
It became immediately apparent when she opened the door from the stairwell that her presence wasn’t required. Or wanted. They both turned at the same time, and both wore the same expression her father and her brother-in-law got when they had their heads together on a woodworking project. It was a rather blank look that somehow managed to say, “We’re doing something important here, so what do you want?”
More than happy to let them get back to their grease, she just smiled at Mr. Lindstrom, felt that smile fade when Damon glanced at her, then headed back to the café to add mushrooms to the large roast in the oven she was preparing for the dinner special. By the time she found a break from serving the dozen customers that constituted the supper rush and made it back down the stairs to see if Mr. Lindstrom would be interested in supper himself, Damon was alone.
He glanced up from the workbench the instant he heard the door open.
“I wondered when you’d show up,” he murmured, skimming a quick glance over the hesitation in her face. “He’s not here.”
Holding two metal cylinders in his hands, he crossed the length of the long workbench and hunkered down by three galvanized metal buckets. “Don’t worry,” he added, resigned to her concern, “he didn’t go to the dock.”
“When did he leave?”
“I took him to his house about an hour ago. He wouldn’t call his nephew, and it was too dark for him to walk.”
Had Damon not sounded so grudging about his thoughtfulness, Hannah would have felt relieved to know the old gentleman was safely back home. All she felt was caution.
Hannah And The Hellion (Silhouette Treasury 90s) Page 16