by Sara Davison
Ouch. That hurt a little, although he should have expected it. Summer had always been good at setting boundaries. And there was nothing ambiguous about the ones she’d just erected. “All right. We can keep things neutral.” He reached for his fork. “Tell me about your bucket list.”
The question wasn’t as neutral as he’d suggested it might be. Having her share her hopes and dreams, if she did, might help him strategize a little. Her dark eyes locked with his for a few seconds, as though assessing his intentions, then her shoulders relaxed. “I’ll give you my top five.” She held up her hand and ticked off a finger with each item on the list. “Go up in a hot air balloon, learn to ski, meet Javier Hernández Balcázar in person, become fluent in French, and travel to the seven modern wonders of the world.”
He blinked. How had she come up with that list off the top of her head? Had she prefabricated a few answers to possible questions herself? The hot air balloon item on the list pricked more than a little, since he knew for a fact she’d done that six months ago. He hadn’t realized she wanted to learn French though, if she actually did. The fact that she wanted to meet the popular footballer Javier Hernández didn’t surprise him—that was her Mexican showing. Although he hoped it was the man’s soccer prowess she was interested in and not his famous good looks.
The skiing thing made sense too, since she was one of the most fearless people he knew. He tore a small piece of bread from the slice he’d grabbed out of the basket. “Can you even name the seven modern wonders of the world?”
“Umm…”
Ha. Not as prepared as she was pretending to be. Jude pressed his lips together.
She lifted her chin. “The Coliseum. The Great Wall of China. Uh, Machu Picchu. That statue of Jesus Christ in Brazil…”
Not bad, actually. Jude wasn’t sure he could have come up with that many without more time to think about it. Or without Google.
“The Taj Mahal.” She smacked the table lightly as she flashed him a triumphant smile.
“That’s only five.”
“Oh. What are the other two?”
“No idea. You came up with about three more than I would have.”
She laughed. “If I get to see five of them, I’ll be doing well.”
Jude set the bread down on the small plate and stabbed a few rigatoni noodles with his fork. When he shoved them into his mouth, flavor exploded across his tongue and he barely suppressed a groan of pleasure. Daphne hadn’t been wrong. This place was incredible.
Summer smiled as she twirled her pasta around a fork. “That good, huh?”
He swallowed and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “Incredible.” For a few minutes, they ate in what felt like comfortable silence to Jude, other than the odd comment about the food or the ambience. Far too soon, he was down to the last few noodles on his plate and forced himself to slow down. “So which of the wonders would you visit first, if you could?”
She chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and took a sip of water. “I think the statue in Brazil.”
Interesting. “Why?”
“My faith is important to me.” Summer rubbed the condensation off the side of her glass with her thumb. “So I guess that one would be the most meaningful.”
Jude was almost afraid to breathe. She remembered that? Summer was being far more open and vulnerable than he would have expected, and he was terrified to say or do anything that might shut her down. “I get that,” he said, softly.
“You do?”
He nodded. “Yeah. My faith is important to me, too.”
For a moment she didn’t speak, only scrutinized him.
Jude met her gaze steadily, watching for something, any tiny flicker of recognition in her eyes. None came. She let out a quiet laugh and looked away. “So much for keeping things neutral.” She balanced her knife on the edge of the plate. “I’ll have to take the rest of this home. As it is, I’ll need to jog up and down the main street a few times tomorrow to work off this meal.”
“Me too.” He smiled and gestured to their server. As Summer packaged up her food, Jude tugged the wallet out of his pocket. He started to pull out his credit card, but realized she might notice it had a different name on it and grabbed cash instead.
Summer lifted her bag onto her lap. “We can split it.”
He started to protest, but she held up a hand. “It’s not a date.”
So you said. Twice. No use arguing with her. If he had a nickel for every minute of his life he’d spent doing that, he wouldn’t be staying in one of the cheapest motels in town, that was for sure. “Fine. 50-50. But I’m buying next time.”
She’d been removing a ten and a twenty from her wallet but stopped and glanced over, a sparkle in her dark eyes that he knew from experience would have weakened his knees if he’d been standing. “That’s a little presumptuous.”
He lifted his shoulders. “I prefer optimistic.”
Summer pursed her lips as she dropped the money on top of the bill. “All right. In the interest of familiarizing myself with the town, maybe we can do this again. As long as you understand that it won’t be a—”
“Date. Got it. When?”
She zipped her bag closed. “Friday?”
Three days. Sounded like an eternity to him at the moment. “Friday it is. You choose the place this time.”
“Deal.” Summer pushed back her chair and rose.
Jude followed her out of the restaurant and into the cold evening air. At her car, she stopped and faced him. “Thanks, Ryan. I had a good time tonight.”
He didn’t like hearing the alias on her lips but managed a smile. “Me too.”
She opened the car door and slid behind the wheel. “See you at the bakery?”
“You can count on it. I’m hooked now.” He waited until she was in before lifting a hand. “Good night.”
She nodded. “Good night.”
Jude closed the door and stood in the parking lot, staring down the road long after her vehicle had turned onto the street and disappeared. Had their evening together advanced his cause at all? Maybe. He did have what he absolutely considered a date with her on Friday night. And as that was more than he’d had a couple of hours ago, he was going to call the night a win.
Chapter Twenty-One
Díaz flopped onto the bed and lay staring up at the crack in the ceiling that started at the light fixture and crawled halfway to the door. With a heavy sigh, he rolled onto his side and reached for the small framed photo he’d set on the table beside the bed. He ran a finger over the glass. The beautiful faces of his wife Juanita and their two young daughters, Maria and Josefina, six and three, smiled back at him. His heart twisted.
It was time to check in with the boss, but he needed a few minutes with his family to fortify himself. Díaz lay back on the musty-smelling floral bedspread and clutched the photo to his chest. The three of them were his life. Everything he did, he did for them. He closed his eyes for several minutes, holding them close, then he lifted the picture, pressed his lips to it, and set it back on the table.
He had to prop three of the flat pillows against the wall that served as a headboard in order to get comfortable. When he couldn’t put it off any longer, he grabbed his phone and punched in the far-too-familiar number. The boss answered with a terse, “¿Qué hay de nuevo?”
Díaz swallowed. “It’s me.”
“Al fin. ¿Qué está pasando?”
“She’s got a place to live. With some old lady in a big house in town. And she has a job in a coffee shop.”
The boss grunted. “Ha estado afanosa.”
Yeah, she’d been busy. Busier than his boss knew. Unfortunately, it was his job to enlighten the one who signed his paychecks. “Yeah. And she went out for dinner last night.”
“¿Con quién?”
Díaz hesitated. His boss wouldn’t like the answer. He shrugged. He was paid to tell the truth, not what anyone wanted to hear. “McCall.”
He moved the phone away when the voice on the other
end erupted in a response heated enough to practically singe his ear. When his boss ran out of steam, Díaz pressed the device to his ear again. “You want me to do anything about it?”
“¿Se acuerda quién es él?”
“I was a few tables away from them, but no, from what I could hear, she doesn’t appear to remember him. Not yet anyway.”
He winced at the loud exhalation of breath. “Entonces esperemos.”
“Wait for what?”
“A que ella lo reconozca.”
“So if I think she’s starting to remember him, I grab her?”
“Exacto. Mendoza me contactó hace dos días.”
Díaz swallowed. “Mendoza contacted you?” That was never a good thing. “What did he say?”
“Me dio un plazo de treinta días.”
Mendoza had given the boss thirty days. Two days ago. Not a lot of time. And what would happen after—
The voice on the other end of the line droned on, and Díaz forced his attention back to the conversation. He’d missed a bit, but the final words, that after that they would all have to pay, turned his blood cold. Who would make them pay, Mendoza? Or his hired assassin Kendrick?
Díaz pushed to his feet and lumbered over to the window. Standing to one side of it, his back against the wall, he swiped aside the dingy striped curtains and peered out. Nothing moved in the gravel lot outside the motel. He had no proof that Kendrick knew the girl was in Elora, and no evidence that he was in town. Which didn’t mean the man they called the Dragon wasn’t there. In fact, Díaz had seen him. Around every corner. In every crowd. Fact was, he was starting to see Kendrick everywhere he looked. Without stepping out of the shadows, the man was already driving Díaz more than a little crazy.
The boss uttered a sharp, “Espero su llamada cuanto antes,” before the line went dead.
Díaz scowled at the device. Soon was an ambiguous word. He’d call again when he was ready to call, not before. At the moment he had enough to worry about. His jaw tightened. The Dragon. Díaz wasn’t sure whether the nickname had come about as a result of the man’s uncanny ability to terrorize entire villages, or because his chain-smoking habit meant that he was rarely seen without a Lucky Strike clamped between his lips, smoke drifting above his head in a slow, menacing cloud.
He didn’t know much more than that about Kendrick, because if anyone was willing to discuss him at all, it was in a hushed voice accompanied by furtive glances around to make sure the Dragon wasn’t anywhere nearby. Not that they would know.
With an impatient hiss, Díaz let the curtain fall back into place. He couldn’t allow the threat of Kendrick showing up in Elora to distract him from his job. While he’d watch out for the man, his primary task was keeping an eye on Summer Velásquez. And Jude McCall. If the boss had been given thirty days—twenty-eight now—that meant that, even if Kendrick did come to town, he wouldn’t likely make a move before then.
It meant one other thing too. The clock had started to tick.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Summer stirred the Mexican chicken chili in the pot on the stove, inhaling deeply as the movement released the aromas of chili powder, cayenne pepper, and cumin into the air. In spite of its name, the dish was actually Tex-Mex, but it was still one of her favorites. They’d had a cook in their home when she was growing up, and Rosa had taught Summer how to make a few simple dishes. If Summer had added any recipes to her repertoire in the last few years, she had no idea what, so she was sticking with the ones she’d loved as a child.
“So?” Nancy plunked a plate down on the table.
Summer threw a glance over her shoulder. “So, what?”
“Come on now.” Nancy planted a fist on her bony hip, bunching up her robin’s-egg-blue cardigan. “Throw a lonely old lady a bone. You came in after I went to bed last night, so I’ve been waiting all day to hear how your date went.”
Summer rested the wooden spoon against the side of the pot and carried two sets of cutlery over to the table. “It wasn’t a date. And it was fine.”
Her landlady pursed her lips. “Just fine?”
Summer set a knife and spoon to one side of a plate. “Well…”
“Aha!” Nancy took two glasses down from the cupboard. “So it was better than fine. Is he cute?”
Summer added a fork to the plate setting. “I’d rather not say.”
“Which means he is. What does he look like?”
Summer sighed as she rounded the table. “He’s tall, maybe six two or three, with this sandy-brown hair that looks all, you know,” she waved a hand over the top of her head, “tousled.”
Nancy paused, the glass she’d been about to set down hovering a couple of inches above the table. “Hazel eyes? Irresistible smile?”
The knife slipped from Summer’s fingers and clattered to the table. “Sorry.” She straightened it. “You know him?”
“I wouldn’t say that. It’s a small town, though. If it’s the guy I’m thinking of, I did see him once.” She lowered the glass. “Didn’t realize that’s who you were going out with. What’s his name?”
“Ryan Taylor.”
“Hmm.”
Summer finished with the cutlery. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Just hmm.” Her landlady pulled out a chair and sat down. “So you went to Tony’s?”
“That’s right.” Summer dished the chili into two bowls before sliding onto the seat across from Nancy. “Daphne recommended it to us and it was fabulous.”
“Yes, Anthony is a superb chef. None of us can figure out why he stays in Elora when he could be working at any restaurant in any city around the world, but no one will ask him because we don’t want to put any ideas in his head.”
Summer grinned. “Please don’t.”
Nancy folded her hands and Summer bowed her head while her friend spoke a simple blessing over the food. Summer joined in silently, thanking God for providing her with this place to live and asking for guidance for her future. Including her plan to go out with Ryan again on Friday night. Was that a mistake? She didn’t want to encourage him, although something kept her from discouraging him at the same time. Loneliness, most likely. Which was a dangerous motivator.
“Amen.”
Summer hid a guilty wince. She’d kind of let her thoughts wander. “Amen.”
Nancy leaned over her bowl. “Mmm, this smells good.” She scooped up a spoonful and ladled it into her mouth. When a look of pure bliss crossed her face, Summer beamed and reached for her own spoon. Nancy looked over at her as she dug into her bowl for more. “Still waiting for details.”
Summer took a bite of the chili, buying time. It really did taste good. Not quite as good as Rosa’s but pretty close. She swallowed. Nancy was still watching her, and Summer’s shoulders slumped a little. “All right, I’ll admit it went better than I thought it was going to. I was afraid it might be a bit awkward, since we barely know each other, but actually it was surprisingly easy. Like having dinner with a brother.”
“That’s how you think of him, then, like a brother?”
Summer swirled her spoon through the chili.
“That’s what I thought.”
She exhaled. “All right, not like a brother.”
“What, then?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Like someone I’ve known a lot longer than a couple of weeks, I guess.”
“But you haven’t.”
“No. I never saw him before he walked into the coffee shop the day after I started working there.”
Nancy pursed her lips. “Hmm.”
“Nancy.”
Her landlady chuckled. “Sorry.”
Summer grabbed a dinner roll from the basket. “Are you actually lonely?”
“Not now that you’re here.” Nancy sighed. “But yes, I guess I am, sometimes.”
“Have you ever been married?”
Such a dreamy look crossed her face that Summer paused in the act of buttering her roll.
“I
have, actually. To a wonderful man, Patrick.”
“What happened?”
“We had ten amazing years together and then, without warning, he had a heart attack at work one day and he was gone. He was forty-two years old.”
Summer inhaled sharply and set down her knife. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine losing someone you love like that.”
“It was hard. I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten over it, to be honest.”
“You mentioned a son the other day. Do you have any other children?”
Nancy took a sip from her water glass and wiped a drop from her chin before setting it down. “No, just Robert. He moved out west a few years ago, so I don’t really see him. Or my two granddaughters.”
Summer reached across the table and grasped Nancy’s hand. The older woman’s fingers trembled slightly in hers. “I’m really sorry.”
“Thank you.” Nancy squeezed her hand.
Summer let her go and picked up the knife.
“I know what you’re doing, by the way.” Nancy calmly stuck a spoonful of chili into her mouth.
“What do you mean?”
Nancy jabbed the empty spoon in her direction. “You’re changing the subject so I won’t press you for more details about your date with Ryan.”
Summer let out an exasperated breath. “It wasn’t…” Her eyes met the knowing ones of her landlady. “Look, there’s not much to tell. We ate, we talked, and then he walked me to my car.”
“Did he kiss you?”
Summer’s head jerked. “Of course not.”
“Are you going out again?”
“We’re supposed to try another restaurant on Friday, but I don’t know. I’m thinking about canceling.”
Nancy leaned back in her chair and cocked her head, red curls bouncing. “Why are you fighting this so hard?”
Summer rubbed the side of her hand across her forehead. “It’s just that my life is complicated right now.”
“Oh, so you’re waiting until life is nice and simple, then you’ll think about maybe opening your heart up to someone?”