Second Chance (Cold Springs Series Book 1)

by Henderson, Nancy

  She wouldn’t have guessed what happened next would’ve occurred in a million years. What could have been the largest rat she’d ever seen scurried across the kitchen directly in front of the inspector. Chance scurried after it, catching it in his mouth.

  “Oh my God!” The inspector jumped three feet.

  Sam caught Chance in her arms, and with the rat still in the kitten’s mouth, threw them both out the back door.

  “I’m so sorry.” She had no idea how the cat had gotten in. She’d purposely double checked and made sure Chance was securely shut upstairs in the apartment. She’d been so certain she had shut the apartment door…at least she thought she had. Maybe because she was so hurried and stressed today she had forgotten.

  The inspector was writing so fast, he could run out of ink in no time. “This is a 4K violation. Condition five is rat infestation. Condition four zero is live animals in an establishment. You, madam, will not be opening tomorrow.”

  Sam couldn’t believe what was happening. “Isn’t there some way around this?”

  “How about money?” Burt was standing behind him. He held a handful of bills. “Two thousand should keep your trap shut.”

  The inspector stared. Sam stared. Chrissy was frozen like a statue.

  “Burt, no.” A 5C, a 4K rat infestation violation, now Burt was bribing the inspector. What next? A night in jail?

  The inspector snatched the money from Burt’s hand, filled out another form and handed it over to her. “Best of luck on your opening day tomorrow.”

  And with that he packed up his briefcase and left.

  Chrissy sat down at the counter. “That was so wrong. He just took the money. It was like something out of a movie.”

  “Burt, I can’t let you bribe… Who walks around with two thousand dollars in their pocket? Who does that?”

  Burt just grinned.

  “No, really. In New York they’d kill you for that.”

  “This ain’t New York.”

  “Burt, I can’t let you do this.”

  “It’s already done.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “You open tomorrow, right?”

  Sam got Burt another cup of coffee. “Right.”

  “You hire Ian as your cook, and put Jean’s eggs Benedict and sausage gravy back on the menu, and we’re even.”

  ~ * ~

  Sam spent the remainder of the day preparing for tomorrow’s opening day. She let Chrissy go home after explaining the ropes for tomorrow to her. She was just about to head upstairs and nuke a frozen dinner when Ian Woods knocked on her door.

  She held the door for him. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  He stood in the diner like a giant towering over her. His clothes were covered with white paint, and his jeans were torn. “I came over to talk to you about what happened last night.”

  His voice was soft, rugged, and one hundred percent sexy.

  “There’s no need. Your past is not my concern.”

  “No, I wanted to tell you. And I wanted to thank you for listening. It feels good, you know? To let it out, especially to someone I trust.”

  “You trust me?” Warmth coiled in the pit of her stomach. She’d never really given trust much thought, but coming from Ian Woods, after everything he’d been through, trust from him was certainly something rare and she felt honored that he gave it to her.

  He was standing too close, and she had the incredible urge to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him until he was dizzy. Heat rose to her cheeks as they stood there staring at each other. This was all too much, too intense, and she wasn’t ready for any of it.

  “Would you like a job?” she blurted. “I mean, to work with me, for me. Here. I need a cook, and Burt says you can cook.” It wasn’t a lie. Martha had called her and informed her that she had thought things over and wouldn’t work the same shift as Chrissy. Which meant that Sam would need another cook since no one had ever answered her ad for a full time one.

  Ian smiled. He didn’t answer right away but was silent for so long she expected him to say no. “I learned to cook in prison.”

  She didn’t know if he expected a response from her. “If you don’t take the job, I’ll owe Burt two thousand dollars.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story,” she answered.

  “Well, we wouldn’t want to be beholden to Burt.” Ian flashed her an infectious smile. “I can start tomorrow. Do you want to have dinner with me tonight? I was going to grill burgers, nothing fancy.”

  This wasn’t a good idea. Everything in her told her to decline. She had no business spending any more time with him than necessary. He was bad news, and now he was her employee.

  No, that first part wasn’t true. He wasn’t bad news. He was a friend who had an unfortunate thing happen to him, and he had been defending his family. However, now they had an employer employee relationship.

  “Sounds good.” She headed toward the stairs. “I’ll get my jacket.”

  ~ * ~

  Ian couldn’t believe Sam was coming over to his apartment again, any more than he could believe she’d offered him a job. He could certainly squeeze in the odd jobs he was working around the diner’s hours. He didn’t anticipate his construction business being a going concern for some time.

  Things were looking up. Things were also getting complicated. He shouldn’t have asked Sam to dinner, and now as she rode in the passenger seat of his truck, the reality of things were sinking in. He’d told her that he trusted her. And he did. Trust was something that prison had taught him to never give away.

  He could fall for her very easily.

  The thought shocked him. He didn’t need this complication in his life. He remembered everything his P.O. had said upon his release from prison. Keep your nose clean. Don’t get involved. With anything or anybody. Stay a loner. Keep close to family but stay away from romantic relationships, and you’ll have a better chance of making it on the outside.

  What bad could come from Sam? She was gentle, kind, so different from the life he’d known behind bars. He didn’t deserve someone like her in his life, and the last thing he wanted was to cause her any trouble. Ian had no idea where these feelings of protection were coming from. When had he started caring for her? How could it had happened so fast?

  He could also be bad for her business. He could drive customers away. Maybe if he stayed in the kitchen when customers were there, and he could walk to work to avoid others seeing and recognizing his truck. Bottom line was he was bad for Sam and bad for her business.

  But he needed the money, and he couldn’t say no to her. She needed him, and no one had needed him in a very long time. He would just have to be very careful.

  When they reached his apartment, he pulled his key from the ignition, hopped out, and held the door as Sam slid across the seat. He picked up the bag of groceries from the truck box. “I won’t be able to work full time.”

  “Oh, I understand. Sometimes is better than nothing, right?”

  He didn’t answer. Every time he looked at her, he felt like the same kid who knew her in high school. Life was so innocent then. Played out so differently than what he had planned. He hated that arrogant kid he was before prison. That Ian had taken everything for granted, was too cocky for his own good. He wondered if he had never gone to prison if he would use the familiar cheesy pickup lines on Sam, possibly just use her for a one-night stand as was so common of the arrogant kid he used to be. The thought sickened him. Sam deserved better.

  He had no business working for Sam or making her dinner. She was too good for him. And if someone saw them together romantically, her business would be ruined.

  They climbed the stairs to the deck where he sat down the bag of groceries. His grill was a simple charcoal portable that he’d picked up at a yard sale for five dollars. Nothing fancy, but it cooked a nice burger.

  After unlocking the door, he grabbed the seasonings for the burgers and
some plates. He noticed Sam stayed outside on the deck. He wondered if it was because of the kiss. Had she liked it?

  “Do you see your family?” she asked when he was back on the deck.

  Okay. He hadn’t expected that.

  “No.”

  “Don’t they come over?”

  This wasn’t something he wished to discuss, but he didn’t want to be rude to his future employer either. “They want nothing to do with me.”

  “But you defended your sister.”

  He shrugged, reliving the memory of his mother throwing him out the day he’d been released. “My father died while I was still in jail, but he refused to come see me. My mother felt the same. They said I’d made my bed and so lie in it.” He flipped the burgers with a long spatula. “They were tired of hearing what the townsfolk around here said to them. So they sold the house and moved to Watertown. They thought being in the city would make them less of a spectacle.”

  Ian didn’t blame them for that. Cold Springs was hardly a town where people minded their own business enough not to judge. The only reason he’d come back to Cold Springs was because of Burt. Burt had convinced him that he belonged here, where’d he’d always lived, and Burt had been the only one to help him out. Ian’s past was what it was. There was no changing people, so the only thing he could do was try to change how he felt about what others thought of him. And right now the only person whose opinion mattered was Sam.

  The thought surprised him, scared him. He had no right to feel anything toward her. However, in the past few days what she thought of him mattered a great deal. It shouldn’t, but it did.

  The burgers done, he flipped them onto a plate and took them inside where he set them on the counter. They each dished up a plate and sat on the sofa.

  “I can’t believe Burt was actually carrying two thousand dollars cash in his wallet.” Sam took a bite of her burger, ketchup squirting out the side of her mouth. It was cute and adorable, and he fought the urge to lean over and wipe it away. Or lick it off with his tongue.

  The thought made him hard almost immediately. He couldn’t recall his last sexual encounter. Before incarceration, sex had always been a physical release. Emotions never had to be factored in. However, spending so much time locked up did something to a person. Made him want things, permanent things like respect, understanding, and companionship with a woman. A woman like Sam.

  He watched her wipe the ketchup off her face with a paper towel.

  “Burt gets a good pension from the phone company. Trouble is, he spends it as soon as the check comes.”

  “On what?”

  “He goes out to eat nearly every meal.”

  “He can’t be spending all of it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had two thousand dollars in his wallet.”

  “True.”

  Ian chuckled.

  It was the first time he’d laughed in ten years. And it felt good.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The morning rush was busier than Sam had hoped and showed no sign of slowing well after noon. If not for Martha and Ian, Sam didn’t know how she would have gotten through it. Everyone wanted something all the time, and Sam’s feet had never ached so much in her life. She had decided to stay open from the hours of five a.m. to three in the afternoon. Burt had complained because he wanted it open for dinner too, but then again complaining seemed to make Burt happy, regardless.

  Chrissy arrived at one just as Martha was leaving her shift. She wandered aimlessly around the dining room saying hi to the people she knew and introducing herself to the ones she did not. A couple of customers had asked her if she was the new owner. She giggled and explained that she couldn’t run a restaurant because she was going to college and wasn’t sure what she wanted to do when she graduated. She went on about how she liked being a waitress, but it wasn’t something she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

  The men loved her.

  “Sam!” Ian called from the kitchen.

  Sam hurried in to see what he wanted. He had at least a dozen burgers going on the grill. He was someone who definitely knew his way around a kitchen.

  “I can’t read this one.” He pointed his spatula to the handwritten order hanging in front of him.

  Sam plucked it down and studied it, making out nothing. This was the fourth one today.

  She hurried to the dining room and called Chrissy over.

  Chrissy was all smiles. “Hi, Sam.”

  “Here’s another one. What does this say?”

  Chrissy took the slip, studied it and laughed. “I don’t know. I can’t make out my own writing. I’ll go ask again. Sorry.”

  “Try to remember to take time to write legibly the first time. It saves customers time which is especially important if they’re in a hurry. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Sam was wiping down the counter when her mother came in. A rush of warmth filled her, which was immediately followed by guilt. Sam never expected Mother to support her efforts on opening day.

  Mother sat at the counter, where Sam had a cup of coffee waiting for her. “Hi, Mom. Thanks for coming.”

  “I need to talk to you immediately, young lady!”

  “What’s wrong?” Use of the term young lady was always serious and usually had something to do with Theresa.

  Mother leaned over the counter, speaking in the loudest whisper she’d ever heard. “Like you don’t know! I heard about you and Ian Woods. It’s all over town!”

  “What is?”

  “That you went to your high school reunion with him. Tonya Perkins heard it from Mary Atkins. How can you be so foolish?”

  “Mom, I have no idea who those people are.”

  “Everyone’s talking. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Not really. Talk is a good thing. Maybe it will bring more customers in.”

  Mother looked like she was going to explode. Without even taking a sip of her coffee, she stood up and silently left.

  “Mom!” Sam called after her. “Mom, please stay and finish your coffee.”

  Her mother brushed her off with a wave of her hand.

  Sam sighed.

  Not half an hour passed before Theresa came in. Irritation hit Sam fast and hard. For once, she’d like to have a disagreement with her mother without her sister butting her nose in.

  Sam put on her best fake smile.

  “Hello, lovely sister. Would you like to hear about our specials?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Sam.” Theresa took Sam by the arm and pulled her over by the coat rack. “Mom’s in tears. I hope you’re happy.”

  “Actually, no. I’m not happy.” Sam pulled out of Theresa’s grip. “I thought she’d come here to support me on my opening day. I had hoped that both she and you would be here because you were happy for me.”

  “How can you do this to Mom?”

  Sam turned and headed to the kitchen. “I don’t have time for this.”

  She made it into the storage room before bursting into tears.

  ~ * ~

  Ian heard the sound coming from the storeroom. His first thought was that Chrissy was crying about something incidental once again, and he chose to ignore it, but then he saw Chrissy walk into the kitchen and the sound persisted.

  Setting down the spatula and turning the grill down, he went to investigate. Sam was perched on a stack of tomato sauce cans, her shoulder sagging with each breath. Instinctively, he put his hands on her shoulders. She tensed then relaxed as soon as she realized who it was.

  He squatted down beside her. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” She frantically rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. She started to stand but Ian caught her in an embrace and pulled her down into his lap. It happened too fast, too naturally, as if he’d been holding her so intimately for a lifetime.

  “What’s wrong?” He gently rubbed her back.

  “Nothing. Everything. My mother. She’s just…and Theresa.”

  “It’ll get better.”

>   “It’s always been like this.” She shook her head. “Now just…being here. I have to deal with it more often.”

  “Me being here isn’t helping, honey.” It was the first time he’d ever called her by any term of endearment. He hadn’t meant to. It had just slipped out, but he liked how it had sounded.

  “You being here has nothing to do with it.”

  “Yes, it does. I heard your mother talking, remember?”

  She didn’t answer and he didn’t know what else to say. He should quit and run like hell out of her life as fast as possible. It would be the best thing for her. He certainly wasn’t doing her any favors by staying.

  He pulled her close and hugged her again. “I better get back to work.”

  ~ * ~

  By day’s end, Sam didn’t think her feet had ever hurt more. Not just her feet, every part of her body ached. To think that she used to spend her days in stilettos now just seemed ridiculous and…just so long ago.