by Zoe Chant
"We'll be closed today," she said decisively. "If anyone asks, I'll just say a family situation came up."
It was already sinking in that she couldn't let the town know about this. Autumn Grove was a close-knit place, with both the good and bad qualities of small towns. If she needed to, she could probably rely on a dozen neighbors for emotional support and food and help cleaning up. But at the same time, letting it get around that her ex's debts and misdeeds had brought a criminal element to town who might threaten their businesses, or even threaten them if they were seen eating at the diner ... she could easily imagine how that might bring about the collapse of the local business that the diner relied on.
"Meanwhile," she added, "I'm going to make us some coffee. We're going to need it. If you can find one of the coffeepots—oh." Her inward resolve collapsed a bit as Mitch wordlessly held up a coffeepot handle with a little glass clinging to it. "In that case, I'll—I'll go back to the house and make us some coffee and bring it back over here." And also, not incidentally, check on her kids.
The kids were fine. The house was fine. She peeked into both bedrooms and looked out at the porch, which looked exactly like it had last night. The loan sharks had confined their attack to the closed business.
Next time could be worse.
She swallowed hard and made a pot of coffee that she poured into two large thermoses. Austin came into the kitchen, yawning and rubbing his eyes, just as she was finishing up. He stopped at the sight of her.
"Whoa, Mom—why aren't you at work?"
"The diner is closed today, sweetheart," she told him, keeping herself brisk and businesslike. "There was some damage last night."
"What sort of—"
"Austin." She put her hands on his shoulders. "I really need you today, all right? You cannot leave your sister alone in the house this morning. Just get some breakfast ready for both of you. I'll be back over to check on you soon."
He looked at her in silence, and suddenly she could see hints of the man he was going to be, serious and strong. "Something's really wrong, isn't it, Mom?"
Paula bit her lip. She couldn't lie to him. Wouldn't lie to him.
"We were vandalized last night," she said. "I think they were people who are angry at your father." She saw Austin's brows start to draw together into a thundercloud scowl. "I'm taking care of it," she said quickly. "They didn't come to the house. I think they did it while we were at the carnival. I'm going over to clean up, but as soon as I can, I'll be back over to help out, okay? I'm going to drive you two to school. I don't want either of you taking the bus today."
For once, Austin's air of teenage sarcasm gave way to sincerity. "I promise, Mom," he said solemnly, and to her surprise, he hugged her. "I'm really sorry about Dad," he said into her shoulder.
"Oh, baby." Her heart broke, and for yet another time that morning, she hovered on the edge of crumbling into tears. "You listen to me, Austin. It is not anything to do with you. Nothing your dad has ever done is your fault."
She disentangled herself and patted him on the shoulder, then, because that didn't seem like enough, kissed his forehead.
"You're a very good kid, Austin." She picked up the thermoses. "I'm taking these over to the diner. If you want coffee, you know I don't like you having it all that often, but I've already loaded up the pot again, so all you have to do is press the button. I'll see you very soon."
She juggled the thermoses while locking the door behind her. The back door let her out onto a narrow strip of snow-covered lawn and the wooden privacy fence with a gate in it that led to the alley and diner. In her entire life, she had never felt nervous walking through that gate. About the worst that could possibly happen, the worst that had ever happened was a delivery truck blocking the alley or a stray dog wandering by.
This time, she had to brace herself inwardly to open it. It was only by girding herself with fury that she was able to do it. They have no right. They don't belong here. I won't let them make me afraid in my own yard, in my own business.
They have no RIGHT!
The back door to the diner was standing open. Yellow light poured out into the alley—with the short January days, it wasn't even starting to get light yet this early—and framed in that light was a man's large, broad-shouldered figure. Adrenaline raced through her like cold water and then dissolved into an aching sense of relief when she recognized Dan.
"Paula," he said. His voice cracked.
He didn't even hesitate, just took her in his arms, coffee thermoses and all. She leaned into him as relief crashed through her like a tidal wave. She didn't have to bear this alone. Even if he didn't lift a finger to pick up a broom (and Dan really didn't strike her as a guy who stood by idly while other people worked), just being able to stand here with his arms around her, lifting some of the burden off her shoulders, was worth more than she could ever say.
He kissed the top of her head. As she pulled back, she saw that he was wearing sweat pants and a T-shirt underneath his coat. It looked like sleeping clothes.
"I really didn't mean for you to rush out of the house," she said, embarrassed.
Dan shook his head. "I told you. I was on my way anyway."
And from the look of things, he had rolled out of the house half-dressed. She was baffled.
"So are you psychic or what?" She tried to play it off as a joke, but she really did wonder how he could possibly have known.
"I just had a feeling," Dan said, very seriously.
Before she could ask him any more questions, Mitch called out from inside the kitchen, "Miz DeWitt, what d'you want me to do with anything that's still good? We got a lot of flour and buns, that kind of thing, that wasn't spoiled, but there's nowhere to put it."
Paula dashed at her eyes with the backs of her coffee-occupied hands. She leaned a shoulder against Dan for a moment and then went past him, braced this time for the state of the kitchen. "Just put them out in the front," she said. "We won't be using it today for anything else, so we might as well move everything that's salvageable out there so we can clean up in here."
By early afternoon, the kitchen was restored to a level of order that Paula wouldn't have believed possible. To her astonishment, Gaby had left the bakery in the hands of her kitchen assistant and come over to help. Paula hadn't wanted to get the Rugers involved, but there was really no way not to—they obviously knew that Dan had rushed out early for some reason.
"You know, we're literally bodyguards," Dan pointed out. "I mean, Derek and Ben are. We could protect you."
"I can't afford to hire anyone," she protested as she pushed a mop across the floor.
Dan looked aghast. "You don't have to pay for it."
"Dan, I can't expect your friends to do their work for free. It would be like someone coming into the diner expecting free sandwiches."
"You just got done giving free coffee and sandwiches to everyone in here."
"Because they're helping me clean up!"
"Paula, listen." Dan moved into her space, arms going loosely around her waist. She was very aware of the warm weight of his broad hand at the small of her back, the light touch of the steel hooks on the other side. "It's not an imposition. If anything, they'll appreciate it. They're trying to get a security business off the ground. You'll give them practice and a good reference from a respected local business."
"Respected if I manage to keep from tipping off all my customers that I had to hire security guards to keep loan sharks off my back," she muttered.
Dan took his hand off her back so he could lightly curl his fingertips under her chin, tipping her head back to look into her eyes. His gaze was sincere, and so intent that it almost hurt her, like looking directly into the sun.
"For what it's worth," he said, "I think you're wrong about people judging you if they knew. I think they'd help if you needed it, like Gaby did. But you know what you want, and I won't second-guess you." The corner of his mouth tugged into a slight grin. "Look, it'll be good practice for Derek and Ben a
t working around the small-town gossip mill. They won't tip anyone off, I swear. You can trust them."
Her resistance crumbled like a house of cards. There was just no saying no to those eyes.
"All right," she sighed. "It would make me feel a lot better to have someone around, you're right."
The person she really wanted to stay with her was Dan. She hovered on the verge of just asking him.
But she couldn't quite bring herself to come right out and say it. He had a life. She had no right to pull him away from it and expect him to drop everything to protect her.
Even if he had literally dropped everything to come out here today.
"So I don't suppose you're going to tell me how you knew I was in trouble, are you?"
"I ..." Dan looked like he was groping for words. "It's like I told you. I just had a feeling. It woke me out of a dead sleep."
"That's really weird. Maybe you just happened to have a nightmare at the same time."
Dan gave his head a short, hard shake. "No. It was definitely about you. It ..."
He trailed off, and she got the weirdest feeling that he was right on the edge of telling her something, and had backed off. There was something there.
In her years of marriage to Terry, she had started to develop a finely honed sense for when he was lying to her. Terry had been good at lying without actually lying, just letting her assume things. She didn't get quite the same feeling off Dan. He wasn't deceptive; in as short a time as she'd known him, she had figured that out right away. Dan put everything out there. What you saw was what you got.
And yet, there was something he wasn't telling her. She was absolutely sure of it.
"Definitely about me?" she prompted.
Dan shook his head. He brushed his hand down her cheek and neck—it was all she could do not to lean into it—and took a step back. "So if you're okay with it, I'll call the guys to come out and have a look around, okay? I'll make it clear that it needs to be kept totally on the down low. They'll respect that."
"Yeah," she said. "That's a good idea. Let's do that."
She couldn't help feeling intensely disappointed. There was some kind of secret between them now, and after everything with Terry, she wished that she could trust that it was something that wouldn't hurt her. But she just couldn't.
What are you hiding? she wondered.
Paula
Ben Keegan showed up later that day.
Paula sort of knew the Keegans, in the way you knew everyone in a small town, by sight at least. But despite hanging around them a bit at the winter carnival yesterday, she didn't really know them. She didn't think they had ever exactly been introduced. She just had a general impression that Ben had a cabin somewhere outside of town and his wife ran a cat rescue out of the old building up on the highway that used to house Karpet Kountry and an insurance office.
Ben Keegan wasn't what she expected of a bodyguard. He wasn't big like Derek, or even like Dan. He was unassuming and quiet, and from his general demeanor she would have expected him to be something like ... she wasn't even sure, a doctor or an engineer or something. He had black hair and gray eyes and an air of quiet, graceful competence.
After he had shaken her hand and offered condolences on the vandalism, he walked all around the diner, looking things over. Paula trailed him, curious. Dan was still around—he had been helping her bleach the fridge in the kitchen; she had decided to deep-sanitize everything before opening again—and he joined them after a little while.
"What are you doing?" Paula asked as Ben went down to one knee to look at her door.
"Thinking about security," he said, glancing up. His steady gray gaze went past her to Dan. "This place isn't very secure."
"It's a diner," Paula said, feeling embarrassed. "It's not supposed to be secure."
"C'mon, man, I didn't bring you in here to pick on her," Dan said, putting an arm around her shoulders.
Paula decided to relax against him. She had managed to get over her hurt, more or less. She was just being a little bit careful now. Whatever Dan wasn't telling her, she didn't think it was bad. It was just a reminder that she needed to be cautious before diving into anything.
Ben's mouth quirked. "What I mean is, you might want to think about getting an actual alarm system. That's my area. Derek handles the heavy lifting, so to speak—Derek and you, Dan, I should say; sorry, I'm used to just the two of us. I definitely can handle the physical side if I need to, but I'm really more of a security analyst. It's the engineer in me."
"You mean you are an engineer?" Paula said in disbelief. She blushed when both men looked at her. "I was just thinking earlier that you looked more like that than a bodyguard. Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude."
"You're not," Ben said easily. "Civil engineering, technically, before I was a cop and then a bodyguard. Back in the day, I used to design bridges. Actually, I met Derek and Dan while doing infrastructure analysis overseas. But I do actually have some electrical engineering background as well, and over the past couple of years I've been getting certified or re-certified in various aspects of security systems installation and maintenance. I was the one who put in the alarm system at Derek and Gaby's farm."
"I didn't even know they had one," Paula said, her voice faint.
"We've had to deal with situations like this before," Ben said. He glanced up at Dan. "Actually, while all of this is going on, we might consider moving your family out to the farm. We'd need to shuffle people around a bit to make room, that's all."
Paula shook her head firmly. She could only imagine from her own parenting experience how much of a hassle it would be for Derek and Gaby to uproot their established routines for their three kids to accommodate an entire family moving in with them, however temporarily. "No, I don't think that'll be necessary. After all, that's the whole reason you're here, isn't it? To keep us safe here."
"Well, that's the idea, anyway." Ben straightened up and dusted off his knees. "If you don't mind me staying here late, I can make a supply run this afternoon and install something quick and dirty this evening."
"Yeah, sure," Paula said, surprised by how fast this was moving. "Are you sure it's not an imposition?"
"Are you kidding?" Ben grinned. "I can't wait to do this."
"See?" Dan murmured. His arm tightened around her. "We've got this."
Dan was right, they were discreet about it. For the next couple of days, though, they were almost always around. They set up a rotation watching the house and diner—which she only knew about because Dan told her about it; she never actually saw them. Not a single glimpse of a car on a stakeout or one of the guys walking past—nothing.
The only sighting of anything out of the ordinary was Lissy claiming she'd seen a bear in the alley behind the house, but there was no chance of getting a bear in town at this time of year. They did occasionally have wildlife wander down from the mountains, but all the bears were in hibernation in the winter. Lissy had obviously been having a particularly vivid dream.
"How are you guys this good at hiding, anyway?" she asked Dan.
The diner was back open again, more or less as before, although with a slightly stripped-down menu. Dan had come in to hang out with her during one of the slow times. He was on one of the bar stools at the counter with the Rugers' baby Lulu in a front carrier and Mina eating a dish of ice cream on the stool next to him.
It was all Paula could do not to die of delight when Dan had walked in wearing the baby carrier, the little baby cuddled against his broad chest with just a tuft of dark hair showing. She had never particularly liked the phrase "my ovaries exploded," but at least now she knew what it felt like.
"It's what they do," Dan pointed out. "They're professionals." He held out his coffee cup. "Could I get a refresher on this?"
Paula frowned as she poured the coffee. She had that evasive feeling again, for some reason. Like there was something he wasn't telling her. But she had no idea what it could possibly be, or even how to ask about it. There w
as no reason why he would try to conceal his coworkers' methods from her. It wasn't like she was going to reveal bodyguard trade secrets or something. Maybe he thought she wouldn't be interested, or had been sworn to secrecy.
"Well, they're good at it," she had to admit. "I don't think anyone has noticed anything. We certainly haven't."
The alarm system installed by Ben was also very discreet and easy to use. There was a hidden keypad by the back door, behind a loose bit of siding so that it looked like part of the wall. Paula had given the code to Mitch, so he could come in early to use the kitchen and lock up after hours, and to the kids, and no one else. If the alarm was tripped, an alert would go to the Ruger farm, to Ben's cabin, and to the whole group's phones.
Paula had reduced the diner hours yet again, opening a bit later than she used to so that there were more people around, and closing right after the lunch rush so she could go pick up Lissy and Austin from school. (To Austin's dismay. Having your mom pick you up at the door of the high school probably didn't do much for your adolescent social life.)
"And you haven't had any more trouble?" Dan asked. There was a darkly serious undertone. He was still furious on her behalf about the vandalism, in his quiet way. Having that kind of protectiveness directed at her was a new and strange experience.
"None. It's like they're gone." She added hopefully, "Maybe they are? Maybe they realize they went too far this time."
Dan shook his head. "If they're willing to do this, I don't think we can assume that. They might stay out of sight for a while, but they'll very likely be back."
Paula blew out her breath. "I was afraid you'd say that."
"What's your ex have to say about all of this?" Dan asked carefully.
Paula set down his warmed-up coffee a little harder than she meant to. "I'll only find out if he ever gets in touch with me. Right now I'd cheerfully point these goons in his direction if I had any idea where to send them."
"We could look for him."