by Lacey Baker
“Jana said there’s less caffeine in the hot chocolate,” he said when he caught the slight frown.
“How did she know who you were buying it for and why it needed less caffeine?” Drew asked cautiously.
Parker took a sip from his cup and handed her a muffin. “The same way I know that Jared and Diana paid you a visit yesterday. Louisa and Marabelle were already sitting at their favorite table when I came in.”
Drew sighed. “So the entire town knows now. I should have known this would happen.”
“Drew, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you’re starting to show. There’s no way you were going to keep this pregnancy a secret.”
“And no way I was going to keep the parentage secret either, not in Sweetland,” she quipped.
Drew broke off a piece of her muffin and stuffed it into her mouth, chewing without really tasting it. Parker toyed with the paper that had wrapped his muffin, not looking up at her. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Would you rather move to the city?”
She almost choked. Coughing, she picked up her cup of hot chocolate to take a sip. It was delicious, and she frowned again. “Why would you ask me that?”
He shrugged and looked over to her. “You worked so hard to get your education and your goal was to move to the city to work. Then you ended up here running a flower shop. Last weekend when we were in the city you enjoyed everything from the National Aquarium to riding on the subway. Besides, there’s a sense of anonymity you can achieve there that is practically impossible here.”
“When are you going back?” she asked quietly. Drew had known this moment would come. Her mother had told her, Louisa and Marabelle had told her, and even Diana McCann had said so yesterday. Parker wouldn’t stay in Sweetland, and he wouldn’t stay with her.
He didn’t get a chance to answer, as the bell to the flower shop buzzed throughout the kitchen. Uncle Walt had wired it so that she could hear it from any location in the building. She jumped at the sound, and Parker frowned.
“Expecting company this early?”
“Ah, no, well, it could be the deliveryman.” She stood and so did Parker. He walked in front of her and by the time they were downstairs had moved to open the door after they both saw the UPS truck parked in front.
Drew signed for the delivery while Parker carried the boxes inside. When the driver was gone, Drew noticed it was only a few minutes until nine, so she kept the door unlocked. No sense in locking it when it was just about opening time.
“Another big job?” Parker asked.
“The window display,” she told him as she moved around the counter where he stood. She had to reach past him to retrieve the scissors, then cut into the first box. “The previous order was all wrong.”
Drew smiled as this time she pulled out the burnt orange and brown decorations. “The judging starts on Monday and the winner will be announced the following week. I’ll have to work through the weekend to get everything ready.”
“Work through the weekend doing what?” Parker asked.
He’d leaned forward and was also looking inside the box. He pulled out two fluffy balls of yellow, looking at them as if they were foreign weapons.
“Designing my window so it’ll beat Delia’s. She’s doing a Midsummer Night’s Dream theme that sounds fabulous, so my Falling into You has to be just as good,” she told him. “I’ll need the ladder from the back and that fish wire that’s on the big spool beneath the sink.”
She was already giving orders, and in no time she and Parker were in the front window—working around Rufus, who refused to move from his perch. A few familiar faces walked past, waving to her and to Parker as they moved by. When a customer came in, Drew stopped and handled their business. Parker, who had finally caught on to her idea, measured netting, strung the fluffy balls he still commented were weird looking onto the fish wire, and hung them from the top of the window seal as she’d instructed.
In anticipation of receiving the rest of her supplies, Drew had dyed her flowers yesterday. After setting the stems into the different vases of colored water, she had let them sit overnight. Now she went into the back storage area to retrieve them herself. She’d chosen Gerber daisies, carnations, and baby roses. They’d all absorbed enough dye so that the petals were the perfect shades of rich browns, exuberant yellows, and pert oranges. She would use some white as well, but these colors were really going to pop on a bright, sunny day, which she prayed Monday would be.
They worked side by side for hours without any interruption, which was a good and bad thing, since apparently she wasn’t doing any business today. Around four o’clock, Parker suggested they call it a day.
“Let’s go out and grab an early dinner. Walt stopped by with a delivery for Michelle this morning and mentioned he had some fresh oysters and flounder as the special today,” he told her.
“I kind of want to finish this,” was her reply.
She was surprised to feel his hands at her waist. There had been no touches, no kisses, since they’d returned from Baltimore. What there had been were lots of deep silences where she’d wondered what Parker was thinking. There had been moments when he would stare off, or he’d spend time looking out the front window. She’d wanted to ask but refused to, not really certain whether she should pry.
So the warm tingles that rippled up and down her spine at his touch startled her momentarily. She turned in to him just to make conversing more convenient, but she wasn’t looking for anything more, didn’t want to be disappointed if the intimacy with him she’d secretly craved didn’t come.
“We can finish up when we get back. I’m hungry and I’m sure you and our daughter are as well. So let’s go out for a while and work later. Besides, there’s supposed to be a storm tonight, so we can stay in and watch those old movies you love so much.”
Drew smiled; she couldn’t help it. Not only did he remember she liked old movies, but he was offering to watch them with her, which meant two things—one, he was definitely paying attention, which was better than the physical intimacy she’d been thinking about a few seconds ago; and two, he was planning on staying with her tonight instead of heading right back to the inn after the shop was closed.
“Well, since you put it that way, I guess we can take a break now,” she replied.
A very happy Rufus danced around their feet, jumping up only once and then stopping when Parker gave him a hand signal. Rufus immediately sat, looking up at the two of them expectantly. From his pocket Parker pulled a dog treat and offered it to him. It was the silliest thing, but Drew was touched. She knelt down, rubbing Rufus behind the ears.
“Good boy, Rufus,” she said a couple of times.
“All right, all right, don’t spoil him,” Parker scolded her. “Let’s get the place locked up.”
“I’ll get the keys from behind the counter,” she said as Parker pushed the boxes they’d emptied up against the wall and moved to the door.
“Toss ’em over,” he said. But when Drew turned to do that, she stopped to watch Parker staring out the door as if he’d seen a ghost or something equally devastating.
She quickly came from around the counter and went to stand behind him. She didn’t see anything, but it did sound as though a car had just passed by. Across the street two women were walking toward Godfrey’s Market, but Parker was looking in the opposite direction, closer to the coffee shop.
“What is it?” she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He was tense and stood perfectly still, and he didn’t answer her.
“Parker? Did you see something or somebody? Was it Jared? Because I can call Carl. I told him yesterday about Jared and Diana’s little visit and he said he’d speak to Jared again about bothering me.”
Parker turned at that. “You told Carl that Jared had come to see you but you didn’t tell me?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it quickly because she didn’t know what to say.
Parker took the key from her han
d and locked the door. Then he walked past her, saying only, “I’ll be out back in the truck. Rufus, come.”
Drew wondered if he meant for her to follow as meekly and obediently as the dog had. If that was the case, he was sadly mistaken. She went upstairs to freshen up first, joining him in the truck almost twenty minutes later.
* * *
Parker wasn’t crazy, although he was pretty certain Drew was probably thinking he was. This had been a strange week, and although he’d tried to act as if all were normal, he knew she was beginning to pick up on the fact that it might not be true. It was a fact that had been hard for Parker to swallow as well. But today had sealed the deal: He was being followed.
“Hey, pretty girl, you’re still hanging with this bum, I see,” Walt Newsome said by way of greeting as Parker walked into The Crab Pot with Drew at his side.
Walt was a tall, burly-looking man. His graying beard and bushy eyebrows gave his face a menacing quality, while his booming voice and beady-eyed gaze put you in mind of Bluto, the not-so-tough bully from the Popeye comics. Drew stepped into his towering embrace immediately, and the old man stuck his tongue out at Parker as he hugged his niece tightly.
“What’s good today, Walt?” Parker asked when Drew was once again at his side.
“Everything’s good here all the time, you know that, Cantrell. Take a seat over there by the window and I’ll have Wendy bring you some drinks.”
That’s how it worked at Walt’s, when he knew you. There was no sense taking out the menus or even asking about the daily specials as Parker had just done, simply to tick him off. Walt would call back to the kitchen what he wanted and he’d put it on the table. It was either eaten and enjoyed or hated and the diner possibly banned from The Crab Pot forevermore. There wasn’t a thing that Parker hadn’t eaten on the many occasions he’d come through that door.
He held the chair for Drew to sit and she did, but she didn’t say anything to him. A female’s famous silent treatment, oh goody.
Sitting down, Parker figured he might actually deserve the silent treatment this time, so he decided to go ahead and get started with the groveling.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” he said, sitting back in his chair.
She sat forward, dropping her elbows onto the table and crossing her arms. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d had Jared investigated? Did you think I was lying about the assault?”
Silence or lethal candor, Parker wondered which was worse.
“No. I believed every word you told me. I had him investigated because experience warns that a sexual assailant rarely strikes only once.”
Her look told him that was something she hadn’t thought about, then she toyed with the cutlery that was so elegantly wrapped in a white paper napkin and held together with a strip of Scotch tape.
“Well, did he do it again?” she finally asked quietly.
Parker nodded. “He did.”
She looked up immediately. “Has anyone told Diana about this?”
“Glad we’re back to that point.” Parker leaned forward. “Why didn’t you tell me Jared and Diana had come by the flower shop?”
“I,” she began, then stopped. Yanking her hands away from the table as if she hated the idea of fidgeting with the cutlery, she sat back and huffed. “I’m not used to having someone to run to. I called Carl because legally I want Jared to stay away from me. Then I went to Delia, but she was busy with customers.” She hunched her shoulders. “Next thing I know, I was at the B and B talking to your sisters.”
“All those people you could turn to and I wasn’t one of them.” He hadn’t wanted to make her feel guilty, but he’d been pretty sore about that fact all morning. Actually, it had begun last night when Mr. Sylvester had come into his room like an old-school gangster getting in his face about not protecting his woman.
“You’ve got my cell number and my private phone at the B and B. I’d give you the number to my apartment, but that’s futile since I’m here. I’d really like it if you could move me up on the totem pole the next time something like that happens.” That was as cordial as he could manage. He’d really wanted to demand she tell him everything all the time, but something told him that wasn’t going to work.
They were halfway through their bowls of cream of crab soup, warm bread, and side of fresh-shucked oysters when the fun really began.
Marabelle and Louisa came in with a bustle of complaints that had Walt arguing back and forth with the two women. Walt may have been one of only a few who dared to go that route with Marabelle and Louisa, but he didn’t seem to mind one bit.
“Your sign says dollar crab night. I want ten dollars’ worth of crabs and don’t bring me those puny ones with nothing in ’em,” Louisa yelled as Walt walked away from the table by the window the waitress had led them to.
“You get what I give you and nothing more,” Walt yelled back.
“That’s poor customer service, you old coot!” was Louisa’s next reply.
“They’ll fight for the next hour,” Drew said with a roll of her eyes. “I can’t say I’ve missed that in the weeks I haven’t been here.”
Parker chuckled. “Your uncle’s time enough for her. And you said yourself how tired you are after you close the shop. Walt telling you not to come back to work here until you had the baby is a good thing.”
When she only shrugged at that comment but glanced over to Louisa and Marabelle’s table once more, Parker continued.
“They won’t even have time to notice we’re here. I mean, if you’re still worried about people talking.”
Drew looked over to him then, the tension between them having dissipated throughout dinner. “It doesn’t matter. If they’re not talking about us, they’ll talk about someone else. It’s the way of the world, I guess.”
“I guess you’re right,” Parker replied, and ordered them another round of sodas while they waited for their dessert.
It just couldn’t be enough that Sweetland’s gossip central were eyeing them every couple of seconds. No, when things in Sweetland went downhill, it was usually with a quick plop into the river and a fall to the bottom, as if rocks were tied to your ankles.
Dollar night was a huge hit on a regular basis, but tonight it as if Walt were giving away food for free. Hoover came in with his drunken stagger and some choice words for Louisa, who’d commented on his wife’s criminal history.
“She was a loudmouth thief and you married her!” Louisa tossed across the room to where Hoover had taken a seat at the bar.
Hoover swiveled on the bar stool, almost falling off before catching himself sloppily. “And you’re an old battle-ax!” was his retort.
“Oh, pipe down, Hoover. You’ve had one too many again,” Marabelle added in her sweet but vinegar-tinged voice. “I’ll bet your liver looks like a raisin by now.”
“If you think I’m plastered, what do you think Stan and Grange are doing every night? Hell, being married to you two, they can’t wait till you old hens come home so they can come out and play. They need a good drink every night just like I do.” Hoover laughed at himself as he picked up his glass and downed his first drink—the first drink he’d had at Walt’s, because it was clear Hoover was already plastered.
“Some things never change,” Parker commented with a shake of his head.
“I don’t know, I think they like giving each other a hard time,” Drew added.
“I think they’re all miserable and that’s why they give everybody else a hard time.”
She nodded. “Could be.”
They were just about to get up, Parker had already put his cash on the table. Drew had stood and was pulling her purse onto her shoulders when Parker heard the shots. Glass rained all around them as he dove over the table, knocking Drew to the floor.
Screams erupted as more shots were fired, more glass was broken, and thunder erupted that was so loud, the entire dockside restaurant seemed to shake. When Parker turned to look toward the windows, all he saw was a thick bolt
of lightning crackling through the sky and all he felt was the rush of adrenaline he’d had that night in the alley when Vezina was shot.
Without another thought, he reached down and pulled out the gun he’d had strapped to his left ankle. “Stay here and stay down,” he whispered in Drew’s ear. Then he was gone through the front door and out into the night, where another lunatic with a gun awaited.
Chapter 17
Outside, rain fell in big fat drops, pelting Parker as he made his way around to the parking lot, where he presumed the shots had come from. By this time there was chaos going on around him. He heard more screaming, then feet running down the stairs of the restaurant, over the asphalt, and down the pier. In the distance there was the sound of sirens, probably the cops and the fire department.
Parker made note of it and left it all behind in his pursuit. He moved through the night, looking at every parked car, underneath, over, and around, until a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“He’s gone,” Ryan DelRio said. Ryan was a couple of inches taller than Parker, his frame only slightly thinner. He’d drawn his gun as well. “I was out of my truck the moment he got the first shot off. He stood right down there.” Ryan pointed toward the water, where a hill of rocks created about a ten-foot drop to the river.
Parker looked back at the restaurant. “A clear view of the windows of the restaurant.”
“A clear view of you and Drew. I could see you from where I was sitting. He’d have had an advantage standing up on those rocks.”
“And you couldn’t catch him?” Parker asked with more irritation than he’d intended. Hell, he’d intended a lot of irritation because he was pissed. Someone had been shooting at him!
“Not when he had a boat waiting for him. I told you after you sent the text about being followed it was time to call in for more backup,” Ryan reminded him. “You’re a sitting duck in this small naïve town. Nobody locks their doors, nobody’s looking over their shoulders. He’s probably staying at that big fancy resort on the other side of town, participating in the festivities or going down to have ice cream.”