Her Secret Love

by Paula Altenburg

  “Everyone changes, Jess. People grow up and get smarter. They learn to forgive and forget.” He glanced at his watch, then rapped his knuckles on the Formica table as if to signal their conversation was over. “Have fun while you’re in town.”

  He walked away, his broad back weaving a path through the sprinkle of tables in the center of the crowded diner on his way to the door. He paused a few times to speak to some of the other patrons, his handsome face smiling and friendly. He really hadn’t changed. He was as popular as he’d ever been.

  Envy pinched Jess’s insides. So did humiliation. He’d taken the high road by stopping at her table to tell her he’d gotten over that night long ago.

  That pretty much meant he hadn’t.

  The waitress came by to wipe the table and ask if she needed anything else. What she really wanted was for Jess to hurry along, so Jess handed over her almost-empty cup, along with her money and a generous tip she couldn’t really afford.

  By the time she’d eased her tired feet into her shoes and gathered her purse, Damon was long gone. Relief chased disappointment. She’d planned to buy gas at his station on her way home and now seemed like a good time. Since he hadn’t been dressed for work, and that was a travel mug he’d had in his hand, there was a good chance he wouldn’t be there.

  She tried not to think where he might be heading, instead. What Damon Brand did with his evenings was none of her business. She’d seen to that.

  Chapter Three

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  Damon couldn’t say why he hadn’t been able to walk past Jess’s booth without stopping. Nor could he explain the need he’d felt to make that dig about forgiving and forgetting, since the knot in his gut reminded him he hadn’t done either.

  But she’d looked so lost and alone, and out of step with the rest of the crowd. A fancy white dress and those high-heeled red shoes peeping at him from under the table didn’t help her blend in—not that she’d ever tried very hard.

  He took a sip of his steaming coffee as his long legs ate up the length of sidewalk between the diner and his service station. So far, spring had been wet and cold. Today, however, the sun was out and the air smelled like turned earth and new beginnings. The blossoms were finally beginning to emerge on the cherry trees.

  He picked up a candy wrapper tumbling across the asphalt and tossed it in the garbage bin next to the gas pumps. Juggling the mug and his keys, he unlocked the station door. He’d hung a sign in the window saying he’d be back in ten minutes so he could grab a coffee to wash down the grilled cheese sandwich left over from lunch because the high school student he’d hired to watch the till for him after school had called in sick. That meant Damon was working this evening, too. He had to do something about hiring more permanent staff to take care of the cash register, but as yet, he couldn’t really afford it.

  Inside, he set his mug on the counter beside the cash register. The service bay closed at five o’clock and he’d learned the hard way to make sure it stayed closed. Otherwise, people would be dropping by until midnight to ask him to “take one quick look” at some minor car problem and he already had a use for his spare time in the evenings.

  From under the counter, he dug out his sketchbook and pencils. He had a new design he was working on for his art show in September. He liked to create by feel, but sometimes, when he had an idea for a more intricate piece, he put it on paper first to get a sense of whether or not it would work.

  He’d barely settled in with his sketchbook when a car pulled up to one of the pumps. He didn’t look up when the bell rang to let him know he had a customer, but instead, reached over and pressed the button to authorize the pump’s flow of gas. After a few minutes, however, he realized not much was happening outside and lifted his head.

  A familiar blonde figure stood beside her rickety old car, repeatedly kicking the passenger side front tire with the toe of one bright red high heel. It wasn’t hard to see what offense the tire had committed to deserve the abuse. It was noticeably low. But it was anyone’s guess how long she’d been driving on it that way.

  He tossed the sketchbook onto the counter and hopped off his stool. As entertaining as this was, that skin-tight white dress she was wearing was far too pretty for her to be changing a tire. Not that he thought for a second she’d know how to change a tire, anyway. Based on her performance, this was only the second time she’d ever even pumped her own gas.

  Her shoulders slumped. She ran her hands through that thick mass of curly blonde hair, pushing it away from her beautiful face. Damon’s heart did a backflip. He remembered exactly how that soft, silky hair felt as it slid through his fingers.

  Damn, she was sweet.

  On the outside, at least.

  He opened the door. “Need a hand?” he called, crossing the asphalt toward her.

  She looked around as if startled to see him. Then her shoulders straightened, pulling her up to her full height of five foot two—not counting the heels.

  She flashed him a bright smile. “I just need a match. I’ve got the gasoline right here.”

  She was as saucy as ever. He’d give her credit for that.

  “Setting it on fire at the pumps might not be the safest solution. Why don’t I take a look at it first?” he suggested.

  “Be my guest.”

  He crouched down and examined it. The tire was flat, all right. He didn’t see any obvious punctures. The treads were worn, and the rubber was dried out and brittle, but there weren’t any cracks. There was a good chance the rim was rusty and the seal was no longer tight. He’d have to remove the tire, clean the rust from the rim, and put it all back together, but his service bay was closed and he wasn’t about to open it. Saucy would only get her so much.

  “I’m not going to be able to fix it this evening,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans as he stood. “Do you have a spare in the trunk to at least get you home?”

  Her hazel eyes shifted to green, a sure sign she was frustrated. “I have no idea.”

  He reached into the front seat and tugged the key from the ignition, then moved to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk. He paused before lifting the lid. “Any bodies in here I should be worried about?”

  “Not yet. Give it a few more minutes.”

  For some reason, the thought of dainty little Jess stuffing him into her trunk struck him as funny—even though he wouldn’t put it past her.

  He jerked open the lid. A faint, funky smell slapped him in the face. While her trunk appeared empty right now, he wouldn’t swear in court that it hadn’t been used for transporting bodies in the not-too-distant past. Someone had stuck an air freshener in here, but for all the good it was doing, it must have died, too. He pried up the flooring to expose the wheel well beneath. He found the spare tire—and the source of the smell.

  The partially desiccated remains of a ground squirrel stared up at him, its shriveled lips peeled back from long incisors in a weird-ass, creepy grin. Damon leaped away, throwing his hands in the air. “What in the hell…?”

  Jess leaned around him to see what his problem was. She stared at the dead squirrel for a few seconds. “I guess that explains the air freshener.”

  He wrestled his masculinity back into place. “I take it you haven’t owned the car long.”

  “Less than a week. It was parked in the last owner’s backyard for a few months.” She pulled a face of what appeared to be genuine sympathy. Not, however, for him. “That poor little thing must have crawled in here to die.”

  “You bought the car smelling this way?” He didn’t have words.

  “The price was right.”

  She sounded defensive underneath all that faked casual indifference, and finally, Damon put two and two together. He’d already figured she was in Cherry Lake to get money from her grandfather. But it hadn’t occurred to him until this very second that she might be flat-out broke.

  It didn’t explain why she was still in town, though. Nathan Jackson might not do his banking online, but t
he bank had been open all day.

  Another car pulled up to the pump next to them. Mrs. Terlecki, the high school’s secretary, got out.

  “Hang on a second,” he said to Jess. “I’ll be right back.”

  He jogged inside, activated the pump for Mrs. Terlecki, grabbed a wrench, and returned to Jess’s car. She’d already grabbed a handful of paper towels from the dispenser on the island and was lifting the dead rodent from the wheel well with an impressive stoicism that didn’t quite mask her disgust. She disposed of its carcass in the trashcan and reached for more paper towels, scrubbing at her hands like Lady Macbeth.

  Maybe he should think about installing that hand sanitizer for the ladies, after all.

  “I could have done that for you,” he said.

  She flipped her curls over her shoulder with a toss of her head. “Fix my tire and we’ll call it even.”

  “Fair enough.”

  As he lifted the jack and the tire from the wheel well of her car, it struck him he’d gotten the raw end of the deal. That dead critter and the flat tire weren’t his responsibility, and yet, he’d just claimed them.

  She’d always done this to him—made him believe that helping her was all his idea. She was back in town a little more than twenty-four hours, and already, his brain cells were dying.

  He examined the spare tire. It needed air too, but other than that, it looked safe enough.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Mrs. Terlecki waddle around the front of her new Mazda CX-5 on ankles as thick as his calves and head for the cash register inside. Most people paid at the pumps with their credit or debit cards. Not Mrs. Terlecki.

  “Back in a second,” he said to Jess, dropping the tire on the ground next to the jack.

  He jogged after Mrs. Terlecki.

  “Is that Jessica Palmer?” she asked him as she passed over her credit card. “Never mind. It can’t be. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse aren’t riding with her.”

  Damon had to fight not to laugh. “Come on. She wasn’t that bad.”

  “No?” Mrs. Terlecki raised one over-plucked, penciled-in brow in dispute. “She talked Jason Tiller into jumping off the roof of the recreational center with nothing but a scrap of old tarp for a parachute. He broke his leg in three places.”

  Damon had heard that story, and at least three variations, but it was before his time in high school with Jess. He knew Jason though, and the guy could come up with bad ideas like that all on his own. “If memory serves me, they were twelve.”

  “Little Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth didn’t get so much as a spanking for her part in it.” Mrs. Terlecki punched her PIN number into the debit card reader Damon passed her. “She was always leading boys into trouble.”

  Damon couldn’t argue with that. He had first-hand experience. He didn’t know why he felt the need to defend her, either. She’d been a holy terror. It was no town secret.

  But Jess had an added layer of vulnerability to her these days—an air of sadness—that he didn’t like. He could see it in the subtle changes of color in her eyes when she spoke. He’d noticed it earlier, in the diner, in the way she’d stared at her coffee cup as if it contained her whole world. She used to be good at hiding her feelings.

  Supposedly, she was an actress. So why wasn’t she even better at hiding them now?

  He closed the till and followed Mrs. Terlecki outside. Jess smiled at the older woman as she walked by, but Mrs. Terlecki either didn’t notice or pretended not to.

  “Sorry about that,” Damon said to Jess. He wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for Mrs. Terlecki’s rudeness or because he wasn’t getting her tire fixed as fast as she’d probably like. “The kid I hired to work evenings for me called in sick so I’ve got to cover my pumps.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t apologizing for anything. He wanted her to know he owned the gas station and that he wasn’t an employee.

  Her eyes shifted color again. This time, the flecks of gold, and hint of brown, suggested pure calculation. “You should hire more people.”

  No way was he going to admit he couldn’t afford to. “I’ll get around to it. Good help is hard to find.”

  “You could hire me.”

  He started to laugh. She couldn’t be serious. He could just picture her, in her fancy white dress and those high-heeled red shoes, perched on the grimy, grease-stained stool behind the cash register, counting out change.

  Then he imagined her naked, bathed in moonlight, on a soft blanket of grass, her hair a golden halo around her, and the laughter died in his throat. He’d never expected that to happen, either. It didn’t take a psychic to know that the cash register scenario would also end in disaster.

  “Exactly how hard up are you for money?” he asked, only half-joking.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  She was dead serious. Damon’s jaw slackened. Cherry Lake’s princess was broke.

  This wasn’t pity he felt. “I’m not hiring you,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  There were so many good reasons, none of which he was willing to recap or share. One of the biggest was that he couldn’t afford to hire a second person, not even for minimum wage. Another was that the past still stung. And damn it, she still gave him brain freeze. “As I recall, you were never really cut out for customer service.”

  She didn’t try to deny it. “I’m a trained actress. I can pretend to be nice.”

  “Do you have any experience working a till?”

  “How much experience did the kid who just called in sick have before you hired him?” she challenged in return.

  She had him there. “I don’t have to worry about leaving him here by himself in the evenings.”

  Those gorgeous hazel eyes narrowed. She dropped her hands to her hips. “So your real objection to hiring me is because I’m a woman? And the Department of Labor and Employment, of course, is completely fine with that double standard. Am I right?”

  “What? No. Of course that’s not my objection.” It totally was. Plus, he didn’t want her in his workplace. He liked peace and quiet around him, not chaos and conflict. Besides, he needed his brain cells. “Mrs. Terlecki remembered you. And not with fondness, I might add. I’d lose customers with you working here. Guaranteed.”

  He saw the hurt flash in her eyes. Damn. She’d left him buck-naked and mortified, not the other way round, and yet still, he was fixing her tire. How had he become the bad guy?

  “I’d be willing to work for less than minimum wage.”

  He positioned the jack under the car, buying himself time. Not looking at her seemed safest. He couldn’t possibly lose an argument this foolish. “If you need money,” he said to the jack, “Then that doesn’t make any sense. Besides, I can’t pay you less than minimum wage. If you think the DLE has issues with sexism, wait until you see how they react when an employer tries to cheat his employees.”

  “I could work as a volunteer.”

  He picked up his wrench and began loosening the nuts. “Again, that doesn’t make sense. If you need the money, you’re bartering in the wrong direction.”

  “The money’s not as important to me as the work. Besides, it would only be for a few months.”

  No, no, no. All he had to do was say no. “How many months are we talking?”

  “Six.”

  “That’s pretty specific.” The whole scheme made him suspicious. It took him a few seconds to work it out in his head, but he did. He rocked back on his heels and balanced the wrench on one thigh, then made the mistake of looking in her direction. She had a streak of black on the tight skirt of her dress, like someone had dragged a dirty fingertip up the curve of her hip. “Your granddaddy told you he’d only give you money if you worked for it, didn’t he?”

  She shrugged. “So what if he did?”

  Because Damon wasn’t going to become a charity case again just so Nate Jackson could teach his spoiled granddaughter a lesson. She had other options. Her uncles ran the single largest seasonal o
peration in the county. And the last thing Damon wanted was for the Jacksons—the town’s most prominent citizens—to think he couldn’t afford to pay his hired help.

  Make that the second-last thing.

  He removed the flat tire with unnecessary force and lifted the spare into position. “Forget it. Ask one of your uncles for a job in the cherry orchards.”

  “They won’t have six months’ worth of work for me. Besides, I’m not asking family to hire me.”

  “Why the heck not?” he demanded. “You didn’t mind asking me.”

  “Please, Damon.” She turned on the charm, her kitten-soft voice caressing every live nerve ending in his body. “It won’t cost you a thing.”

  Only his pride. And his peace of mind.

  He wasn’t going to be able to say no to her and it made him angry—with himself, true, but it didn’t make him any happier with her. She’d always done this to him—turned him upside down and inside out.

  On the plus side, if he did take her on, it shouldn’t be too long before she quit. He’d see to that. The job was noisy and dirty. The people who dropped by to socialize throughout the day were hardly her type. He allowed homeless people to use the facilities—which she’d have to clean.

  The idea of her working for him began to take on a certain appeal.

  He gave in to the inevitable. Somehow, he’d have to find the money to pay her.

  One by one, taking his time, he tightened the nuts on the tire. “I suppose the place could use a good cleaning,” he mused, just to gauge her reaction. “And the rat traps need to be emptied more often.” He shot a glance at the garbage bin. “Aaron refuses, but you don’t seem to have a problem with that.”

  He got a bit too much pleasure out of the varied expressions crossing her face—first triumph, then uncertainty, and finally, suspicion. Garbage from the diner down the street meant he really did have a problem, although not as bad as he made it sound.