“Well, thank you, ma’am.” He shuffled to the door of his truck. “I’ll tell her mom it’s fine. She’s got enough to worry about with Darryl. We never worried about the girl before.”
The girl. Jami didn’t think he’d said Andrea’s name once. She was the girl or just her. Jami concluded, without a doubt, how Andrea had come to denigrate her drawing—from her own parents. Okay, it wasn’t a big shocker, but she’d hoped it was a friend or someone who didn’t have as much influence.
She stepped to the edge of the curb. “You know, her sketches are very good.”
Waving a hand, he opened his truck door. “Yeah, yeah.” He climbed in. “But she’s finally figured out she wants to be an accountant,” he added through the open window. “Maybe, being a bookkeeper and all, you could tell her how great it is.” The truck jerked as he let out the clutch, and he drove away with a belch of smoke from the exhaust.
If Andrea wanted to be an accountant, why did Jami need to tell her how great it was? Because her parents were the ones who wanted the accounting career for her. Andrea had called her sketches stupid stuff and said it was for babies.
After meeting him, those words sounded like something her father would say.
“He’s a creep,” Frank said through the window.
“Would you get back to work?” She glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s almost opening, and I bet you haven’t even filled the soda machine.”
Frank saluted her. “Yes, Sir.”
She didn’t know how the soda machine worked or exactly how one filled it, but she’d heard Frank bellow the order several times over the last three days. It felt strangely good to banter with Frank, especially when he backed off, muttering to himself. It seemed she’d known him for years, as if she’d been doing Easy Cheesy’s books for just as long. Warm. Comfortable. Friendly.
When she turned, Cole stared at her through the window. Just stared. With the glass obscuring a clear view of his expression, she had no idea what he was thinking.
She still wasn’t sure what last night’s phone call meant. Probably nothing. Despite being female, she did believe women put more angst in what a man meant by an act or a statement than he’d actually put into it when he said or did it.
Chapter Thirteen
Frank wasn’t one to pass up a golden opportunity. Watching Andrea cross the parking lot after the bus dropped her off that afternoon, he knew this one was truly golden. They all—him, Cole, and Jami—thought Bagotti’s trip to Easy Cheesy that morning was weird. Jami, though, was all for not making a mountain out of a molehill—“He’s a concerned father, you should feel good about that, Frank.”—and Cole was doing his usual hands-up-back-away—“It’s not our business, Frank.”
But what if he made it their business?
Frank had to admit the sketchbook made him feel bad for the kid. She hadn’t thrown it out because she got tired of drawing faeries and unicorns, and she didn’t look all hang-dog because she was feeling peachy-keen about life. He was sure it wasn’t anything dire, but what if overstating Andrea’s situation meant that Jami and Cole had to spend a little time together plotting how to save Andrea. At the very least, they’d have to plot together to keep Frank from doing something stupid.
That was the beauty of having a reputation for being volatile and unmanageable; people figured they had to rein you in before you did some major damage. Either way, Cole and Jami would be on the same team.
Andrea plopped her knapsack under the back counter and tucked her long hair under the net he made her wear. She’d barely mumbled hello.
“Your dad was here this morning.”
Her jaw dropped in what could only be shock. “My dad?”
Frank threw the rag in the sink. “He said you wanted to be an accountant. So I figured you should talk to Jami about it.”
“An accountant?” she echoed.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “I’m sure Jami can tell you the best schools and all that. She’s from the City.” Which could mean Los Angeles or San Francisco or any old metropolis but something way more important than Masterson.
“Yeah, sure.” Then she backed away as if he had head lice, which would be pretty darn near impossible given his baldness.
Still, she’d talk to Jami because he’d told her to, and Jami’d get all riled up that Andrea’s daddy had gotten the kid to give up drawing for accounting. Not that there was anything wrong with accountants, but from their conversations, Frank figured Jami for the kind of person who believed a kid had the right to follow her dreams.
Besides, how else was he supposed to amuse himself besides butting into people’s lives, making mountains out of molehills, and generally stirring the Easy Cheesy pot when he got bored?
* * * * *
Jami didn’t know what Frank expected her to do.
Andrea had snatched a five-minute break at the wooden picnic table under the big oak out back. Frank reserved it for employees only; she’d seen him chase off customers yesterday.
She chalked it up to practice for when she was the mom of a teenager. Jami almost choked on her sip of soda. Good God, at her current rate, she’d be fifty!
“You know what I want to do some day?” Jami hoisted herself up on the table and planted her feet on the bench.
In the middle of the seat, Andrea said nothing. But at least she looked at Jami.
“Come on, guess,” Jami urged.
Andrea shrugged. “Sky diving.”
“Why sky diving?” She hadn’t expected that.
Up went the shoulders again. “A lot of old people do stuff like that when they’re middle-aged. It’s called a midlife crisis.”
She wasn’t midlife yet. She had another fifteen years to go. “Well, no, that’s not what I want to do.”
A spark of interest flickered in Andrea’s eyes. “What?”
“I want to walk the Great Wall of China.” Jami had never even thought about it before. But it sounded good.
“It’s hundreds of miles long. You can’t walk it all.”
What the Great Wall had to do with being an accountant or an artist, Jami had no inkling, but she found herself warming to the subject. “If I looked it up on the Internet, I bet I’d find they have tour packages where you walk a certain amount every day, then stay the night in a nearby town.” She watched a squirrel leap from branch to branch overhead. “I wonder how long it would take? When I speedwalk, I can do four miles an hour.”
Andrea moved her cup around in the condensation circle it had left on the table. “If you want to go, how come you haven’t checked out this stuff already?”
Jami did her own shrug. “Because it’s just one item on my list of things to do before I die.”
She didn’t have a list, but it seemed like a good idea. Hadn’t there been a movie about it? “Every person should have a list of must-do things. Otherwise you’ll get so busy with work or school that all of a sudden you realize you’ve never done anything.”
God. For a moment there, it sounded like her life, and she rushed on before the thought could sink in too deeply. “What would you put on your list?”
She waited for the girl to scoff. Instead, Andrea gave her a rare moment of eye contact. “I’d go to the Louvre in Paris.”
That was a good start. She made up another item for her list. “I’d like to drive coast-to-coast across the Great Canadian Highway.”
“I’d like to walk along the Seine and pretend I was like Van Gogh or Lautrec or Cézanne.”
“You really like art, don’t you?”
Andrea dipped her head, then nodded.
“Ever been to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco?”
Andrea shook her head slowly.
“They’ve got The Thinker by Rodin, and there’s a whole room of painters like Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, Cézanne, Degas.” Weren’t they all Impressionist painters in Paris at about the same time? She had to admit she was sadly lacking in art history. “It’s a pretty cool place. My favorite things were the tapestr
ies from the fourteenth century. Maybe you should put the Legion of Honor and the de Young Museum on your list, too, since they’re almost right in your backyard. Compared to Paris, anyway.” San Francisco was a doable goal for a sixteen-year-old. “Maybe your parents might take you up there sometime, and your brother Darryl. How old is Darryl, by the way?”
Andrea stood abruptly. “My break’s over, I gotta go.” She threw her empty soda cup at the trashcan and didn’t even notice that she’d missed.
“Hmm, okay, guess I said something wrong,” Jami muttered aloud as she bent to retrieve the empty cup.
Andrea was silent for the remainder of her shift. Jami should have left at five thirty, but she couldn’t stop watching the girl. Frank’s anxiousness was playing on her, and she kept noticing all the little oddities. Andrea never smiled, she spoke only when spoken to, she rarely made eye contact, she showed no enthusiasm whatsoever. Severe depression?
There was that recent school shooting where college officials hadn’t effectively handled a student’s bizarre behavior. Not that she thought it was the school’s fault, and certainly not that she believed Andrea capable of harming another person, but if a kid was in trouble, wasn’t it an adult’s responsibility to pay attention to warning signs?
Although it could just be Frank acting like a freak, getting overly emotional about nothing, and egging her on to see things that weren’t there. How did a person tell the difference?
As soon as Andrea left when her shift was done, Frank dragged Jami out of the office to Cole’s grill. He fluttered his hand at Pete, whose ears had suddenly grown as big as Pinocchio’s nose, to mind his own business, then leaned on the countertop and lowered his voice. “We need a council.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Frank?” Cole gave a low growl for punctuation and flipped a row of burgers. “We’ve got customers.” He pointed with his elbow to the line outside Easy Cheesy’s windows.
“Pete and Kelly can handle them.” Kelly was now on overtime, Jami noted.
Her stomach grumbled. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she scented the meat up close and personal.
“We need to talk about what’s wrong with Andrea and that father of hers,” Frank insisted.
“I gotta lotta orders to fill.” Cole threw on cheese slices.
Jami grabbed a slice before her stomach became embarrassing. “I talked to her during her break,” she offered.
Frank held up his hand, cutting her off. “We’ll meet at my place after Cole gets off at eight.”
She finished the cheese slice, easing the rumble. “I have no idea where you live, and honestly, you’re overreacting.”
Frank merely blinked and gave her the hand, his outturned palm in her face. “Cole knows, he’ll pick you up on the way.”
“I’ll what?”
“He’ll what?”
They spoke at the same time. Cole stopped tossing cheese slices.
“Bring some burgers, okay. And some curly fries. I’ll make up the shakes and keep them in the refrigerator.” Then Frank was gone, disappearing around the corner to...God only knew where.
“He’s lost it.” Cole simply stood there, shaking his head.
“Is he always like this?” Frank was her first real-life drama king. He almost rivaled her mother.
“He’s usually a busybody, but this one takes the cake. I have no idea what bug crawled up his a—” He finally looked at her and shut his mouth on the last word. She had the sensation of falling as he gazed at her with those deep blue eyes.
“Best to humor him,” he said, “or he’ll drive us nuts. Where do you live?”
Her heart stopped, but she managed to remain standing. Alone with Cole in his truck? In the dark? “I can drive myself.” She was suddenly terrified of spending time in close proximity. What if she accidentally lost control and tried to kiss him?
Cole shook his head, slowly, the tiniest of smiles crossing his lips. “He’ll tear me a new...” He spread his hands, his spatula in the air. “Whatever the boss commands.”
She didn’t want to be stuck in his truck. She didn’t want to be stuck waiting until Frank was ready to let her go and Cole was ready to leave.
Jami told Cole how to get to Isadora’s anyway.
* * * * *
Well, this proved it. He’d totally lost it. He was living in some altered reality, where all that existed was the scent of her hair. If that wasn’t the weirdest thing, Cole didn’t know what was. There were boob men, ass men, leg men. What man got turned on by a woman’s hair? It wasn’t natural.
Instead of the greasy burgers Frank had told him to bring, her perfume had filled the cab of his truck on the drive over. Even now, in Frank’s two-bedroom bungalow, with Ruby bouncing all over the family room like a ping-pong ball and leaving paw prints on the glass coffee table—because, as Frank said, Ruby rarely got visitors—Jami stole all Cole’s focus. Sitting on one end of Frank’s corduroy couch, she’d kicked off her sandals and curled her feet beneath her. Damn, he’d been right, pink polish on her toes. She daintily licked her fingers after she ate a fry, then closed her eyes to savor another bite of her Ruby’s Special. The smile on her face was darn near orgasmic.
Cole had yet to figure out why he’d started thinking about making love almost obsessively since she’d shown up on his doorstep. Why her, of all women?
He shoved his burger wrapper into a bag. “I stink like grease, can I use your shower while you two finish eating?”
“Sure thing. Clean towels are in the cupboard outside.”
That was the thing about Frank. He looked like a hardcase with the tattoos and bald head, but he thought about stuff a motorcycle dude wouldn’t consider. Then again, a hardcase wouldn’t be coochy-cooing a prissy dog like Ruby and feeding her bites of his hamburger.
“You know, Frank,” he said, just to be ornery, “I think I see Ruby’s nail polish chipping. She probably needs a new pedicure.”
Frank went into a flurry, checking poor Ruby’s toenails.
“That was mean,” Jami whispered, her voice laced with a laugh, as he passed the end of the couch.
She made him smile all the way down the hall, and that was damn frightening. Her scent even followed him into the shower, and he ended up taking longer than he should have.
He dressed in a clean get-up. He usually carried a few things in the truck in case he splashed himself with grease or condiments. Hah. Not in case, he generally did, it was just a matter of degree. “Everything decided while I was gone?” He could only hope.
Andrea made him nervous. He felt bad ignoring her, yet he felt bad getting too close. Again, it was a matter of degree.
“We solved world hunger,” Jami quipped, “but we haven’t figured out Andrea.”
Mustard dotted her chin, and he experienced the most insane urge to lick it off.
Maybe he needed to find a woman and have casual sex a couple of times a month. His body had awakened. Feeding it might keep this thing under control. But then he’d never been a casual sex kind of guy, not even on the road, where there was plenty of that to go around. When you got right down to it, your own hand was just as good as a woman you felt no connection with.
“You gonna sit, man?”
Damn. He’d been standing there staring at her. Trust Frank to point it out.
With Frank and Ruby taking up the easy chair, the couch was the only other place left. Cole took the far end. It still felt too close to her. She could stretch out one of those long legs of hers and touch him with her toe.
“You’re overreacting, Frank,” he said to take his mind off Jami’s leg. “Andrea’s dad was concerned because his daughter got a ride home from a stranger.”
“Right, and he was so concerned that he didn’t care enough to meet us when she first got the job.” Frank’s scalp flushed as he talked. “And what about that whole thing with her brother? Drugs, I bet. She’s living in a hostile environment.”
“Frank, you’re getting yourself all
worked up.” Jami sucked on her shake straw. “You want to know what I think?” Most people would have gone on to give their opinion, but Jami waited for Frank’s wave of permission.
Setting her cup on the coffee table, she held out one hand, palm up. “Her dad wants her to be an accountant.” She put out her other palm. “She wants to be an artist. It’s a difference of opinion that might seem huge to a teenager, but it’ll work itself out. We don’t need to call child protection or cause problems for innocent people.”
“What about the brother?” Frank protested. “There’s something going on there.”
“Why are you so worried about a girl that doesn’t mean anything to you?” Cole wanted to know.
Frank cleared his throat, hemmed a little, hawed a lot. “She’s just a kid. I like her.”
“So do I,” Jami answered quickly. “She doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends to talk stuff over with. So I vote we be nice to her, and at some point, maybe she’ll feel like talking.”
Frank harrumphed.
Hell, Cole liked Jami. She was reasonable. He didn’t necessarily have a bad opinion of women. But sometimes their thought processes were alien to the average guy.
In this case, Frank was the alien.
“And,” she added, “if you want to know what’s going on with the brother, you should ask Pete. He and Andrea go to school together. I guarantee he’ll know everything.”
Frank just stared at her. Almost like he was looking at Margaret Thatcher, Eleanor Roosevelt or the first female president of the United States. “That’s a great idea. Why didn’t Cole and I think of that?”
“Because you’re not a woman,” she said and rose, straightening the jean skirt she wore and snapping the last button that had accidentally popped open.
Cole couldn’t take his eyes off the bottom of her skirt. He should have checked it out when she was sitting down. Because she was definitely a woman. And most definitely, he was a man, something he’d damn near forgotten over the last seven years.
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