“Vanessa,” he’d begun, hoping to send her on her way before Lily came into the room, “I’m a little busy right now. Go on home.”
He remembered the glint that entered the girl’s eyes. That should have warned him, and had he been thinking clearly, it very well might have. But his mind had been on the woman in the kitchen.
“Sure you want me to do that?” Vanessa had purred.
The next thing he knew, she’d dropped the parka from her shoulders. As it began to slide down her arms, he’d realized that she hadn’t a stitch of clothing on underneath.
He’d grabbed the parka before it could get past her hips and slid it back up her arms with a jerk.
“I’m sure,” he’d informed her sternly.
That was when he’d heard Lily gasp. The next thing he knew, she’d run by him. Run by him uttering only one word in her wake.
“Bastard.”
She hadn’t stopped to listen to a single word from him.
Hurrying after her, he saw her climb into his Jeep and drive off. Part of him had wanted to jump into Vanessa’s vehicle and chase Lily down. But the other part of him had balked at having to explain himself, at being convicted without so much as an indictment, much less a trial.
What did he want with a woman who couldn’t even give him the benefit of the doubt?
Everything, it seemed. Because he’d been wrestling with his emotions all night, followed by more of the same today.
He’d hustled a pouting Vanessa into her car, threatening to tie her hands behind her back if she so much as tried to take her parka off again or to reach for him. Thwarted, the girl had sat in the back seat, fuming, calling him names.
“Just what the hell does she have that I don’t?” Vanessa had demanded.
He wasn’t about to get into that with her. He knew how badly damaged the girl’s self-esteem really was beneath that bravado.
“Right now, my car. I want you to get it into your head, Vanessa, I’m too old for you. You can’t force a person to have feelings for you when they’re not there. I think of you as my little sister.”
She’d cursed roundly in response.
His eyes had met hers in the rearview mirror. “Someone should have cared enough to wash your mouth out with soap a long time ago, Vanessa.”
She turned in her seat, the top of her parka parting slightly. “Don’t you find me pretty?”
“You’re more than pretty, Vanessa, but it takes more than that for anything to happen between two people.” He’d heard her sigh. “Don’t sell yourself short,” he’d told her. And then he paused before continuing. “I don’t usually say this, but maybe you should start thinking about leaving Hades, going somewhere else and starting a new life.”
“Maybe I will,” she’d snapped angrily.
Vanessa hadn’t said another word until he’d brought her home. When he’d gotten out of the car, she was still sitting in it, pouting. Maybe hoping he’d change his mind about the offer she’d initially made in his cabin.
He’d left the keys in the ignition.
From there, Max had walked the two and a half miles to Alison and Luc’s house. He’d been relieved to see that his Jeep was parked out front. That meant that Lily had gotten home safely.
The relief quickly turned to anger as he thought of the way Lily had run out of the cabin without giving him so much as a single chance to say anything in his own defense. In the blink of an eye, she’d conducted her own kangaroo court and found him guilty.
He’d stewed about it all night and most of today, his disposition turning more and more surly. He’d walked into the Salty less than three minutes ago and ordered a stiff drink, not that he thought it would do him any good, but he was officially off the clock—as off the clock as a sheriff could be when he was the only law in the area—and he felt he owed it to himself to unwind.
“She’s inside if you want to talk to her,” Ike said to him without missing a step as he walked around to the side of the bar.
Max took a long hit of his drink before he turned around to look at Ike. “What makes you think I want to talk to anyone?”
One side of Ike’s generous mouth rose higher than the other.
“Hey, standing behind this bar, you get to be half father confessor, half psychic. But in this case, just being brighter than a potato would have led me to the conclusion I just reached.”
Ike leaned over the bar, placing one hand on Max’s shoulder. “But one word of warning, friend.” He glanced back toward the kitchen. The noise had stopped. Temporarily. “Woman’s got a meat cleaver in her hand and from the way she’s swinging it, she really knows how to use it. I’d stand in the doorway doing my talking if I were you.”
Max spent exactly five seconds debating his next course of action. Throwing back the rest of his drink, he placed his glass on the bar and then approached the kitchen in purposeful strides.
Watching, Ike could only shake his head. He’d been betting it would only take Max three.
Opening the door, Max saw that Lily was alone in the small, steamy kitchen. It felt at least fifteen degrees hotter in here than it was in the bar.
It figured, seeing as how he felt he had one foot in hell.
Stepping inside, he let the swinging door close behind him before saying anything. “Why did you run out last night?”
She knew he’d come.
She’d been bracing herself all evening, all day. With a pronounced swing that had the cleaver almost cutting into the board, as well, she didn’t even bother to look up. “I don’t do threesomes.”
He felt like grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. The surge of anger surprised him. He hadn’t felt this angry since he’d watched his mother pine away for his father, not listening to any of her children’s pleas to “be like you used to, Mama.” The helpless feeling had made him impotently furious.
“Neither do I.” His words were measured out tersely.
Lily jerked up her head, her eyes accusing. “So what was she, the second shift? Or did the promise of fresh meat just make you forget to tell her you were going to be entertaining?”
It wasn’t easy curbing his temper or the words that sprang to his lips. But matching her retort for retort wasn’t going to solve anything, or clear this up. And he wanted it cleared.
“I didn’t forget to tell her because I don’t tell her anything. She wasn’t the second shift, she wasn’t the first shift and, before you ask, she wasn’t any shift.”
Lily threw the cleaver down. The blade hit the side of the board and fell off the table to the floor. Lily narrowly sidestepped it, but didn’t miss a beat of her anger.
“Oh, then she just appeared on your doorstep like that?”
What did it take to get that through her thick head?
“Yes.”
Lily fisted her hands at her hips. Did he think she was an idiot? “Barefoot up to the neck for no reason at all.”
“Oh, she has a reason all right,” he contradicted, barely keeping his own voice under control. If this turned into a shouting match, the kitchen would be filled to overflowing with nosy miners and lumberjacks in no time. “She’s trying to rub it in her father’s face.”
“Making love with you,” Lily sneered.
“Making love to anyone,” he emphasized. “It doesn’t matter who.” His eyes narrowed. He’d had enough. He didn’t even know what he was doing here. “And not that it’s any business of yours, but I haven’t even held her hand. I’ve just tried to keep her out of trouble, but that doesn’t seem to be working.”
For just a moment, there was something in his eyes that almost made her believe him. “Not much of a negotiator, are you?”
The sigh was angry, frustrated. “Doesn’t look that way.” He took a step back. “I just wanted you to know.”
With that, Max turned to walk out.
She bit her lip, telling herself that she didn’t believe him, telling herself to just let him walk away.
But the man had such a straig
ht back…
Straight as an arrow, was what Jimmy had said about him.
“I surprised Allen that way.”
He stopped, just as his hand was on the swinging door, ready to push it open. Against his better judgment, he turned around again.
“What, wearing a parka?”
She shook her head. She shouldn’t even be telling him this. Why let someone else in on her humiliation? But if he was on the level and she’d maligned him…
“No, coming to his apartment with a picnic lunch. Finding him in bed with another woman…” Hesitating, she ran her tongue along her dried lips. “Seeing Vanessa standing there like that last night just brought everything back to me.” She lowered her eyes, not wanting to see pity in his at the impromptu confession. “Made me feel like a fool.”
Before he could think better of it, Max crossed to her. “Just because your fiancé is an idiot doesn’t make you a fool.”
“Ex-fiancé,” she corrected with feeling. Even saying that rankled. How could she had been so stupid, so blind? And why hadn’t Jimmy said anything to him about Allen’s reputation? Was she really such a dragon lady?
She knew the answer to that and it bothered her.
Max gave a short, sharp nod of his head. “So much the better.” The brief moment of vulnerability he’d glimpsed in her eyes had him softening instantly. “But in either case, what someone else does doesn’t make you a fool. Just because that guy didn’t know a good thing when he had it, that’s no reflection on you.”
She wanted to ask him how he could say that, how he could profess that she was a “good thing” when she’d all but separated him from his head? Instead she asked, “And what about Vanessa?”
Suspicion raised its head. Were they going to go around about the girl again? “What about her?”
“Well, from what I saw,” Lily began with a smattering of caution, beginning to believe in his innocence, “Vanessa seemed to think you’d welcome her coming over like that.”
“No,” he contradicted, “she hoped I would.” He was surprised she didn’t know about Vanessa yet. Stories made the rounds quickly. He would have thought she would have heard by now. “Vanessa is a sad little girl whose mother died when she was very young and whose father never paid any attention to her, other than to have her wait on him hand and foot. Vanessa was a very plain little girl, but when she turned fifteen, she blossomed.”
Lily couldn’t help wondering just how much of that “blossoming” Max had noticed and how he had viewed it.
“Suddenly a lot of people were paying attention to her and she got her head turned around.”
“By a lot of people,” Lily echoed. “Are you in that crowd?”
For the first time since he’d opened the door to Vanessa last night, Max allowed himself a smile.
“I make it a habit of never being in a crowd. That way, you don’t get hurt if there’s a sudden stampede.” He took off his hat and held it as he looked at what was going on in the closest pot. “Now, how long are you going to be working on those things?”
She didn’t even have to look. “The first batch is almost ready. Why, are you hungry?”
He pretended that his hunger was restricted to food and not the woman who had been on his mind these past twenty-four hours.
“Well, as I remember, you still didn’t give me that meal you promised. By the way, I brought the pots back to Alison just before I came here.” He’d done it hoping to find her. That was when Alison had told him where Lily had gone.
She nodded. “All right,” she decided out loud, “you get the first taste.”
He smiled at her as he looked into her eyes. “I’ve already found out I like being the first.”
Lily turned to reach for a ladle. But before she could begin to give him a serving, Max swept her into his arms and kissed her.
Making the kitchen and the immediate world fade away.
Chapter Thirteen
“Hey, no squeezing the cook,” Ike warned, walking in.
Like a spring that had suddenly been released, Lily jumped back, away from Max. Flustered at being caught in a totally unguarded moment, it took her a moment to compose herself.
Smoothing down her apron, she turned and reached for a ladle.
“That’s ‘chef,”’ she corrected tersely.
Why had Ike picked this minute to walk in? She’d just begun sinking into that fiery cloud that Max created. Couldn’t Ike have at least waited for a couple of minutes? Now she was probably going to be the topic of conversation without having had a chance to at least enjoy some of the mind-spinning effects.
“That’s standing next to a dead man,” Ike informed her, correcting her correction, “if you don’t hurry up and start serving those spareribs soon.” He glanced over his shoulder to the door and the saloon that lay beyond. “I’ve never seen such a surly bunch out there.”
“Sure you have,” Max scoffed. “That bunch only comes in two grades. Surly and surlier.”
“Then they’ve gone down to a new low. Surliest,” Ike told him. He looked over Lily’s shoulder and breathed the aroma in deeply. He could feel his own taste buds begin to stir. “Anything I can do to help?” he asked Lily as she looked up at him. “Other than taking your place with the sheriff here?”
She felt herself blushing and turned back toward the pot again. Hoping that the men would attribute the red color in her cheeks to the heat coming from the burner rather than the heat coming from within her.
“All right,” she told him, giving the pot closest to her a last stir, “I need willing hands. The ribs are ready to go.”
Ike went over to the cupboard and got down the first stack of dishes. “Great, because every mother’s son of them has put in for double orders.” He put the dishes down on the counter. “There’s going to be enough money flowing out there to help feather the new restaurant fund.”
This was the first she’d heard of that. “What new restaurant fund?” Lily wanted to know.
“Town’s growing,” was all Ike said as he returned to the cupboard for a second stack of dishes.
She looked to Max for an explanation. She was sure Alison would have mentioned something to her if they were thinking of building a restaurant. Both her sister and her brother were trying subtly and not so subtly to convince her to stay in Hades. As if.
“Ike and Luc have become Hades’s resident entrepreneurs,” Max told her when Ike said nothing. As Lily placed an order on a plate, he moved the plate to the rear, creating a manual assembly line for her. “They started out by buying the Salty, then the general store, then brought back the movie theater.”
Ike set down a third stack of dishes beside the other two. He was going to have to get Isaac back in here to wash dishes, he calculated, if they were going to have enough clean plates to go around. He wondered if Luc would mind going to his house and rounding up some more flatware.
“Been thinking on this for a while now,” Ike confessed. “I figure it’s time to build someplace for the citizens to go and have a little atmosphere with their meals, other than staring at a moose head, of course,” he laughed, referring to the one that had come with the place when he and Luc had purchased the Salty. He pinned her with a look. “Know where I can find myself a good chef, darlin’?”
With Ike, it was hard to tell when he was putting her on. But that didn’t seem to be the case right now. “You’re serious.”
He winked at her in response, then confided, “Don’t let this smile fool you, darlin’, I’ve got my serious moments. Just ask my wife.”
Serious or not, it made no difference in her life, Lily thought, fishing more spareribs out of the pot and placing them on the nearest plate.
“No,” she replied. “I don’t know where you can find a good chef. But I’ll ask around for you when I get back to Seattle.”
She was leaving, Max thought.
Of course he’d known it all along, had never thought anything else, yet hearing Lily say it so casually made some
thing inside his gut tighten. For the first time, he realized what his mother must have felt like, anticipating his father’s imminent departure. Wayne Yearling talked about leaving Hades incessantly and there’d never been any reason for her to doubt that he would, even though they’d created together three children. No reason but hope.
He knew where things like that led. Nowhere.
His hands filled with plates, his back against the swinging door, Ike noticed the look on Max’s face and wondered how long it would take two intelligent people to reach the conclusion that had occurred to him right from the start. With a shake of his head, he went out into the main room.
The moment Lily came through the swinging doors several minutes later, a cheer went up. It had less than a second to sink in before she was being hoisted onto the broad shoulders of two robust, heavy-set lumberjacks who towered over the crowd.
She squealed with surprise as she suddenly found herself six feet off the ground. Twisting around, she looked down at Max with a touch of panic in her eyes.
“I think they want to show their appreciation,” Max shouted over the din.
Lily grabbed a fistful of each man’s shirt, sure that she would fall off if she didn’t. “How, by getting me airsick?”
He heard a touch of nervousness in her laughter. He knew the men meant well, but he didn’t want her spooked. Time to ride to the rescue. “Let the lady down, Ivan, Klaus,” he told the two men.
Like oversize children whose fun had been curtailed, the two giants reluctantly complied. The next moment they turned their attention to acquiring second helpings.
Hands filled with bills began coming at him from all sides. Ike couldn’t put the money into the register fast enough as the men chowed down. His eyes met Lily’s across the counter. “Sure I can’t make you an offer you can’t refuse?”
A smile curved her mouth. She had to admit she’d never had such a rewarding hands-on experience, even counting the best night they’d had at Lily’s. But her life, her career—not to mention the restaurant she’d worked so hard to make a go of—was back in Seattle, not here. She had to remember that.
Lily and the Lawman Page 15