by Nora Roberts
“Habit.” She turned the key, but before she could shift to reach for the box, he’d pushed by to take it in himself.
“Well, thanks.” She stood beside the open door, knowing it was not only rude, but that she was letting in cold air. “Sorry for the imposition.”
“Uh-huh.” He turned a circle, hands in his pockets now. Small, depressing space, he thought, until you took in the view. It was all about the view. And it was clean, that would be Joanie’s doing. Empty or not, she’d have banished any dust or cobwebs regularly.
“Could use some fresh paint,” he commented.
“I suppose.”
“And some frigging heat. You’ll freeze those bird bones of yours in here.”
“No point in turning up the heat until I move in tomorrow. I don’t want to hold you up.”
He turned back, aimed those eyes at her. “You’re not worried about holding me up, you just want me out.”
“Okay. Bye.”
For the first time, he gave her a quick, genuine smile. “You’re more interesting when you’ve got a little bite to you. What’s the special tonight?”
“Fried chicken, parsley potatoes, peas and carrots.”
“Sounds good.” He strolled to the door, stopped directly in front of her. He swore he could almost hear her body brace. “See you around.”
The door closed quietly behind him, and the lock snicked before he’d gone down the first step. He circled the building and, to satisfy his curiosity, looked up when he reached the front.
She was standing at the center window, staring out at the lake. Slim as a willow stem, he thought, with windblown hair and deep, secret eyes. He thought she looked more like a portrait in a frame than flesh and blood. And he wondered just where she’d left the rest of herself. And why.
SPRING THAW meant mud. Trails and paths went soft and thick with it, and caked boots left it streaked over the streets and sidewalks. At Joanie’s, the locals who knew her wrath scraped off the worst of it before coming in. Tourists, who would flock to the parks and campgrounds and cabins in another month, were in short supply. But there were those who came for the lake, and for the river, paddling their canoes and kayaks over the cold water, and through the echoing canyons.
Angel’s Fist settled down to the quiet interlude between its winter and summer booms.
At just past sunrise, when the sky was blooming with pinks, Reece navigated one of the narrow, bumpy roads on the other side of the lake. More a trail than a road, she thought as she twisted the wheel and slowed to avoid a dip in the hard-packed dirt.
When a moose wandered across the track, she not only gasped out loud in surprised delight, but sent up a little prayer of gratitude that she’d been going about ten miles an hour.
Now, she’d sing hosannas if she wasn’t lost.
Joanie wanted her there at seven, and though she’d given herself twice the time needed, she feared she’d be late. Or end up driving to Utah.
Since she’d been looking forward to spending the morning baking, she didn’t want to end up in Utah.
She passed the stand of red willows, as advertised. At least she thought they were red willows. Then caught the glimmer of a light.
“Round the willows, bear left and then…Yes!”
She saw Joanie’s ancient Ford pickup, mentally pumped her fist in the air. And then just stopped the car.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. A rustic little cabin, maybe. A small western bungalow. Either would have suited her image of where her sharp-tongued, impatient boss might live.
But she hadn’t been expecting the style and space she saw in the log-and-glass house, the long sweep of porches, of decks that butted out to rise over marsh and into glade.
Nor had she expected a small flood of winter pansies, all cheery and purple, spilling out of window boxes. She thought: Gingerbread house, though it had straight, practical lines rather than curlicues. But there was something about the way it was tucked into the woods, like a secret, that made it fanciful.
Charmed, she followed the orders she’d been given and parked, then climbed out to walk around to the back.
Windows in every direction, Reece noted. Generous ones that would offer views of mountain, of marsh, of lake and of the town. More pots of pansies, others that held spears that would bloom with daffodils and tulips and hyacinths once the weather warmed.
Light beamed against the glass. She could see Joanie through one of the kitchen windows, wearing a sweatshirt with its sleeves shoved up to her elbows, already mixing something in a bowl.
Reece made her way around to a door, knocked.
“It’s open!”
The fact that it wasn’t locked made Reece wince. What if she were a madman with a club? Shouldn’t a woman, especially one living alone, consider such possibilities and take basic precautions? But she stepped into a tidy mud/laundry room where an old flannel jacket and a shapeless brown hat hung on hooks, and a pair of ancient work boots stood handily by the door.
“You got any mud on your shoes, you take them off before you come into my kitchen.”
Reece checked, hunched her shoulders guiltily, then took off her shoes.
If the exterior of the house had been a revelation, the kitchen was the answer to every prayer.
Spacious, well lit, with an acre of solid-surface counter in gorgeous tones of bronzes and coppers. Double ovens—oh God, she thought, a convection oven. Sub-Zero fridge, she noted, almost quivering with pleasure as a woman would before sex with an Adonis. She nearly salivated at the sight of a Vulcan range, and oh sweet Jesus, a Berkel mixer.
She literally felt tears burn the back of her eyes.
And with the high-end efficiency was charm. Forced spring bulbs bloomed in little glass bottles in the windowsill, interesting twigs and grasses lanced out of a burl-wood vase. There was a little hearth with a fire simmering. And the air was redolent with the perfumes of fresh bread and cinnamon.
“Well?” Joanie set the bowl she held on a counter. “Are you just going to stand there gawking, or are you going to get an apron and get to work?”
“I want to genuflect first.”
Joanie’s pretty mouth twitched. She obviously gave up, and she grinned. “Kicks ass, doesn’t it?”
“It’s fabulous. My heart sings. I figured we’d be…” She broke off, cleared her throat.
“Baking in some broken-down oven and working at a spit length of counter?” Joanie snorted, walked over to a stainless steel coffeemaker. “This is where I live, and where I live I like some comfort, and a little style.”
“I’ll say. Will you be my mommy?”
Joanie snorted again. “And I like my privacy. I’m the last place on this side of town. There’s a good quarter mile between here and the Mardson place. Rick and Debbie, their kids. You see their youngest girl out with her dog by the lake every chance she gets.”
“Yes.” Reece thought of the little girl, throwing the ball in the water for the dog to fetch. “I’ve seen her a few times.”
“Nice kids. Other side of them—with space between—is Dick’s place. The one I let you practice on when you first came in. Old coot,” she said with some affection. “Likes to pretend he’s a mountain man, when what he is, is gay as the daisies in May. In case you haven’t noticed.”
“I guess I did.”
“Then just beyond that is the cabin Boyd’s using. Couple others planted here and there, but most of them’re rentals. So it’s a nice quiet spot.”
“It’s a beautiful spot. I ran into a moose. I mean, I saw one. We didn’t make actual contact.”
“Get so they’ll come up and all but knock on my door. I don’t mind them, or any of the other wildlife comes around. Except when they start in on my flowers.”
Studying Reece, Joanie picked up a dishcloth, wiped her hands. “I’m going to have coffee and a smoke. Water’s on simmer there in the kettle. Go ahead, make yourself some tea. We’re going to be working for the next three hours or
so, and once we get down to it, I don’t like idle conversation. We’re going to get that out of the way first.”
“Sure.”
Joanie took out a cigarette, lit it. Leaning back against the counter, she blew out a stream. “You’re wondering what I’m doing, living in a place like this.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Had it nearly twenty years now. Over those two decades, I’ve added on, fiddled and fooled when I had a mind to.” She paused to sip her coffee, crossed ankles covered in gray, woolly socks. “It’s about what I had in mind now.”
Reece took the kettle off the burner. “Your mind has really good taste.”
“And you’re wondering, since it does and I do, why my place isn’t spiffier. I’ll tell you,” she said before Reece could comment. “People come into Angel Food because they want to be comfortable. They want good food, and they want it fast and at a good value. I had that in mind when I opened it, almost twenty years ago.”
“You do a good business.”
“Bet your skinny ass, I do. I came here because I wanted my own, and I wanted to give my boy a good, solid life. Made a mistake once upon a time and married a man who wasn’t good for anything at all except looking handsome. While he was damn good at that, he sure wasn’t good for me or my boy.”
Cautious now, Reece picked up the tea she’d made. “You’ve done well without him.”
“If I’d stayed with him, one of us would be dead.” Joanie shrugged, took another drag. “Better all around that I kicked his ass out, pulled up stakes. Had some money, a nice nest egg.” Her lips quirked into something between a smile and a sneer. “I may have been stupid enough to marry him, but I was smart enough to keep my own bank account and not tell him about it. I worked my butt off from the time I was sixteen. Waitressing, doing short-order work, fry cook. Went to night school and studied restaurant management.”
“Smart. All around.”
“When I got rid of that weight around my neck, I decided if I was going to work my butt off, I’d work it off for me and my boy. Nobody else. So I landed here. Got a job as cook in what was, back then, The Chuckwagon.”
“Your place? Joanie’s was The Chuckwagon?”
“Greasy burgers and overfried steak. But I made it mine within four months. Owner was an idiot, and was losing his shirt. He sold me the place for a song, seeing as he was about to go under. And when I was done wheedling him down, it was a damn short song at that.” Satisfaction over the memory showed on her face. “I lived up above, me and William, we lived up above where you do now, for the first year.”
Reece tried to imagine a woman and a small boy sharing that space. “Hard,” she murmured, with her eyes on Joanie. “Very hard for you to start a business, raise a son, make a life on your own.”
“Hard isn’t hard if you’ve got a strong back and a purpose. I had both. I bought this land, had a little house put up. Two-bedroom, single bath, kitchen about half the size this one is now. And it was like a palace after being cooped up with an eight-year-old in that apartment. I got what I wanted because I’m a stubborn bitch when I need to be. That’s most of the time, to my way of thinking. But I remember, I damn well remember what it was like to pick up and go, leave what I knew—no matter how bad it was—and try to find my place.”
Joanie gave a half shrug as she drank more coffee. “I see what I remember when I look at you.”
Maybe she did, Reece thought. Maybe she saw something of what it was that made a woman wake at three in the morning and worry, second-guess. Pray. “How did you know it was yours? Your place.”
“I didn’t.” With quick jabs, Joanie stubbed out her cigarette, then drank the last swallow of her coffee. “It was just someplace else, and better than where I’d been. Then, I woke up one morning and it was mine. That’s when I stopped looking behind me.”
Reece set her mug down again. “You’re wondering why someone with my training is on your grill. Wondering why I picked up stakes and landed here.”
“I’ve given it more than a passing thought.”
This was the woman who’d given her a job, Reece thought. Who’d helped her with a place to live. Who was offering her, in Joanie’s no-nonsense way, a sounding board. “I don’t mean to make a mystery of it, it’s just that I can’t talk about the details. They’re still painful. But it wasn’t a person—not like a husband—that had me pulling up stakes. It was…an event. I had an experience, and it damaged me, physically, emotionally. You could say it damaged me in every way there is.”
She looked into Joanie’s eyes. Strong eyes, steely. Not eyes full of pity. It was impossible to explain, even to herself, how much easier that made it to go on.
“And when I realized I wasn’t going to heal, not really, if I stayed where I was, I left. My grandmother had already put her life on hold to take care of me. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I got in my car one day, and I drove off. I called her, my grandmother, and tried to convince her I was fine. I was better, and I wanted some time alone.”
“Did you? Convince her.”
“Not really, but she couldn’t stop me. Over the last few months, she’s relaxed with it. She’s started to think of it as Reece’s Adventure. It’s easy for me to color it that way when it’s e-mail and phone calls. And sometimes it’s true. It’s an adventure.”
She turned to take an apron off the hook by the mudroom. “Anyway, I’m better than I was. I like where I am now, for now. That’s enough for me.”
“Then we’ll leave it at that. For now. I want you to make up some piecrusts. If I see you’ve got a decent hand with that, we’ll move on from there.”
5
WITH ONLY a scattering of customers, Linda-gail took counter duty. She dumped a piece of apple pie in front of Lo, topped off his coffee. “We’ve sure been seeing a lot of you in here the last couple of weeks.”
“Coffee’s good, pie’s better.” He forked up a huge bite, then grinned. “View’s not bad.”
Linda-gail glanced over her shoulder to where Reece worked the grill. “Heard you struck out there, slugger.”
“Early innings yet.” He sampled the pie. Nobody baked a pie like his ma. “Got any more of the story on her?”
“Her story, I figure. Her business.”
He snorted over his pie. “Come on, Linda-gail.”
She struggled to stay aloof, but damn it, she and Lo had loved talking the talk since they were kids. When it came down to it, there was no one she liked dishing with more than Lo.
“Keeps to herself, doesn’t shirk the work, comes in on time, and stays till it’s done or Joanie shoos her along.” With a shrug Linda-gail leaned on the counter. “Doesn’t get any mail, from what I’m told. But she did get a phone for upstairs. And…”
He leaned in so their faces were close. “Keep going.”
“Well, Brenda over at the hotel told me while Reece was staying there she moved the dresser over in front of the door to the next room. If you ask me, she’s afraid of something, or someone. Hasn’t used a credit card, not one time, and she never used the phone in the hotel except for the dial-up, once a day for her computer. Room had high-speed access, but that cost ten dollars per day, so dial-up’s cheaper. That’s it.”
“Sounds like she could use a distraction.”
“That’s some euphemism, Lo,” Linda-gail said in disgust. She pulled back, annoyed with herself that she’d gotten drawn back into an old habit. “I tell you what she doesn’t need. She doesn’t need some horny guy sniffing at her heels hoping to score. What she could use is a friend.”
“I can be a friend. You and me, we’re friends.”
“Is that what we are?”
Something shifted in his eyes, over his face. He slid his hand over the counter toward hers. “Linda-gail—”
But she looked away from him, drew back and put on her waitress smile. “Hey, Sheriff.”
“Linda-gail. Lo.” Sheriff Richard Mardson slid onto a stool. He was a big man with a long reach, who walked
with an easy gait and kept the peace by reason and compromise when he could, by steely-eyed force when he couldn’t.
He liked his coffee sweet and light, and was already reaching for the sugar when Linda-gail poured him out a cup. “You two wrangling again?”
“Just talking,” Lo told him. “About Ma’s newest cook.”
“She sure can work that grill. Linda-gail, why don’t you have her do me a chicken-fried steak.” He dumped half-and-half in his coffee. He had clear blue eyes to go with blond hair he wore in a brush cut. His strong jaw was clean-shaven since his wife of fourteen years had nagged him brainless to get rid of the beard he’d let grow over the winter.
“You after that skinny girl, Lo?”
“Made a few tentative moves in that direction.”
Rick shook his head. “You need to settle down with the love of a good woman.”
“I do. Every chance I get. The new cook’s got an air of mystery.” He swiveled around, settled in for a talk. “Some people think maybe she’s on the run.”
“If she is, it isn’t from the law. I do my job,” Rick said when Lo raised his eyebrows. “No criminal on her, no outstanding warrants. And she cooks a hell of a steak.”
“I guess you know she’s living upstairs now. Linda-gail just told me she heard from Brenda at the hotel Reece kept the dresser pulled across the door to the next room while she stayed there. Sounds to me like the woman’s spooked.”
“Maybe she’s got reason.” His level blue gaze shifted toward the kitchen. “Most likely took off from her husband, boyfriend, who tuned her up regular.”
“I don’t get that kind of thing, never did. A man who hits a woman isn’t a man.”
Rick drank his coffee. “There are all kinds of men in the world.”
ONCE SHE FINISHED her shift, Reece settled in upstairs with her journal. She had the heat set at a conservative sixty-five and wore a sweater and two pairs of socks. She calculated the savings there would offset the fact that she left lights burning day and night.
She was tired, but it was a pleasant sensation. The apartment felt good to her, safe and spare and tidy. Safer yet as she braced one of the two stools Joanie had given her for the counter under the doorknob whenever she was in the room.