by Gina Ardito
“I know you’re jumpy. Can’t say I blame you. I hate reporters. And they’re usually nice to me. I don’t know how I’d react to somebody raking up muck from my past for ratings.”
I shrugged. “They’re doing their job.” I couldn’t believe my ears. I was justifying their actions? Yeah, well, Iggy jumbled my brain, turning logic inside-out. I refused to consider why. “I just have to get through the next few weeks until the scent of a new story hits their nostrils.”
“Uh-huh. And I’m doing my job, which is to bar them from hurting you.”
I looked askance at him. “Aren’t you afraid I might hurt you?”
“Nah. You don’t have it in you.”
“How do you know that?”
“When you kill someone, even if you’re not the one to pull the trigger, you lose a piece of your humanity you can never get back. It’s in your eyes, in the way you walk. It’s like this bag of wet cement you carry on your shoulders. You don’t have that burden. I hope you never do.”
What he didn’t say at that moment resonated more than what he did. I watched him, studied the grim set of his mouth, the erect bearing. Cara said he was a war hero. How heavy was his cement bag? Did he have anyone to share the weight with him? God knew, I didn’t.
“Everyone I know thinks I’m guilty,” I told him, my cheeks burning with shame. “Even my parents.”
“Then you’ve surrounded yourself with idiots. Sorry. I don’t mean to disrespect your parents, but if they don’t have your back when you need them the most…” He let the statement trail off, and an awkward silence filled the SUV’s interior.
I stared at my hands folded in my lap, lost for a reply. The dutiful daughter in me wanted to defend them, but the betrayed me couldn’t come up with a single justification for their doubts.
Maybe I’d misjudged this town. And Iggy, in particular.
We drove to my house without another word. When he pulled into the driveway, he put the car in park and turned to me, his expression solemn. “If I make you uncomfortable, I can stay out—”
“No!” The word came out a shot in the stillness. “What I mean is,” I said in a much softer tone, “you don’t make me uncomfortable.” He gave me a sharp look, and I added, “Not really. Strangers make me nervous these days.” I gave a shaky laugh. “Believe it or not, I used to be a lot friendlier, more…open.”
“I have no trouble believing that.”
Whatever else he planned to say remained his alone. Headlights bouncing in the distance lit up my car’s interior, and we both jerked upright. When did we start leaning toward each other? I had no time to ponder the mystery. My fans were about to descend on us again.
“Let’s get inside.” I scrambled out of the Jeep, and we sped toward the front porch. “My keys!”
He handed them over like a marathon runner passing a baton, and I unlocked the door. We tumbled inside less than a minute before the news van pulled up outside. The living room was dark, and I reached to flip on a light, but Iggy’s grip on my wrist stopped me.
“Don’t.”
I didn’t understand. “We’re not fooling anyone. My car’s out front. They know we’re here.”
“It doesn’t mean we need to star in Silhouette Theater.”
Right. Shadows. “So we’re just going to sit in the dark for the rest of the night?”
“Your eyes will adjust soon enough. Why? You’re not afraid, are you?”
Safe in the darkness, I found my second smile of the day and a playfulness I thought had died with David. “Not at all. Are you?
“Don’t you know? I’m a war he-ro!”
I guessed by the way his voice rose on that last syllable, he’d just come into contact with my roommate. “That’ll be Midnight,” I told him, my amusement arching higher. “My cat. I did warn you about him.”
“You could’ve warned me again. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten you mentioned a cat.”
“Stay on your toes, war hero. Who knows what other surprises are in store for you?”
Chapter 7
Terri
I had trouble tamping my excitement the next day at work. I must have checked my phone a million times between when Max plugged his number into my contact list yesterday—under the pseudonym “Al” (not so clever, but I’m guessing he thought it up on the fly, making its lack of originality totally forgivable)—and the end of the morning shift.
The day was cold with a gray pall that could either turn to icy rain or wet snow, depending on Mother Nature’s mood. It was the type of day made for curling up on a sofa in front of a roaring fire with a good book and a hot cup of tea. Since I had no fire and no books, few customers braved the wet, dreary air to venture into my shop. Some days, a cup of Lipton at home could provide better comfort at a third of the cost and with little to no inconvenience. Despite the dearth of customers and the fact I sent my two new employees, Chelsea and Rachel, home due to the lack of business, I found it hard to keep from Snoopy-dancing around the shop. In fact, I did hum along with Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and that drew some unwanted attention.
“What is up with you today?” Paige asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You keep checking your phone. And you’re humming. And when you aren’t humming, your mouth keeps twitching like you want to smile, but you’re biting it back. You used to do that when you were sneaking booze out of your uncle’s collection.” She leaned closer, her face a mask of desperate concern, and sniffed my breath for fumes. “You didn’t fall off the wagon, did you?”
“No.”
“Oh, crap,” she exclaimed over my denial. “We were afraid this might happen. I told your uncle we shouldn’t open the tea shop so soon after you got home. He thought it would be good for you. Nia and I weren’t so sure. Thank God we’re slow today. Stay here. I’m gonna go get Gary.”
Get Gary? For what? So he could berate and humiliate me like he was my dad or something?
“No, wait—” I didn’t get any farther in my argument because Paige took off into the kitchen. I barely managed a sigh before Gary hustled out with Paige on his heels. Great. Tag-team guilt-tripping. And I didn’t even do anything wrong!
“How you doin’, Terri?” Gary’s face puckered with concern, but he kept his tone light, slow, and gentle—as if talking to a senile dog.
“Great,” I said with a big grin, which probably wasn’t the smartest way to handle this particular intervention.
Paige took on the role of runaway train. “When was your last drink? This morning? Last night?” She waved a hand. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Gary, fire up some coffee—”
“Paige! Stop!” Under normal circumstances, before I rediscovered sobriety, I might have burned with resentment at their quick accusation. But to be fair, under normal circumstances, the flyer I’d found slipped under my door yesterday would have undoubtedly led me straight to the nearest bar for some liquid fortification. So they’d have every reason to show concern. This time, though, I went to a meeting, like a good recoverer. And I made a friend, a famous friend. I squelched the giggles rising up like soda bubbles inside me. I had to get ahold of my emotions or they’d drag me back to rehab before I could explain.
“I’m clean,” I assured them, looking them both in the eye, one after the other so they could see the truth for themselves. “I swear. Stone cold sober. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since that night at the Lookout.” A disastrous episode they’d both witnessed where I’d started a food fight, then nearly shattered my cheekbone against the ladies room toilet. Not exactly my finest hour. And believe me, I’ve had twenty years of not-so-fine hours.
“You sure?” Paige pressed.
I nodded.
Gary took his time studying me, assessing every inch of me from head to toe. I guess he thought maybe I’d accidentally stepped in some spilled bourbon and the alcohol somehow got absorbed into my bloodstream. “Why don’t you have a seat?” he said to me, gesturing to the nearest lov
eseat—the one I’d shared with Max yesterday.
Did he know about that? No. He couldn’t possibly know. And even if he did, so what? It was none of his business who I had in the shop after hours.
“Paige,” he directed while his gaze remained fixed on me. “Be a good girl and bring us two coffees.”
Paige’s blue eyes flared fire like a gas flame, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Be a good girl?”
“Please,” he said with an intense look directed toward me that had me wondering if I’d stumbled into some good cop/bad cop game they played. Did he plan to beat a confession out of me when we were alone?
“Okay,” she said on a heavy sigh. “But watch that ‘good girl’ stuff.” She strode toward the kitchen, leaving me alone with my interrogator.
Before he could give me a stern lecture, I decided to head him off at the pass. Sinking into a different chair than the one he’d indicated, I blurted, “Hey! Know what I was thinking? Do you know what this place could use? Books. For rainy days like this. So our customers could cuddle up with a cup of tea, a scone, and a good story. What do you think?”
He looked around the room, stroking a hand over his chin. The idea struck me that now that he’d shaved off his bushy beard, he had a pretty interesting face. Hmmmph. Maybe they were right and I’d accidentally sipped something I shouldn’t. Why else would I be thinking about Gary Sullivan’s face?
“I think that’d be a really good idea,” he said as he took the chair across from me. “And maybe we should add free wi-fi. We could draw in more students if they could access the ‘net from here. God knows, we’ve got healthier fare than that coffee shop down the street. Let’s do these kids a favor and wean them off those lattes and frozen cappuccinos before their bodies are rotted from the inside out.”
I shook my head at his professorial tone. “Uh-huh.”
He quirked a brow. “What?”
“Nothing. I just never took you for a health nut, I guess.”
“You never took me for anything—except ‘the Scary Bartender.’”
Oops. Caught. My cheeks went from ninety-eight-point-six to four thousand degrees. I looked away from his accusation, staring out the rain-streaked window where a couple huddled under a green-and-white-striped golf umbrella as they hurried past my shop. Mother Nature must have opted for the icy rain.
“I’m sorry I called you that. I’m an idiot. Even when I’m sober. But when I’m full of booze—”
“Stop it, Terri.” His hand covered mine in my lap, and my pulse jumped. “Stop apologizing.”
“Why? I’m supposed to, you know. Step Nine of the program. Actually, it’s in a coupla steps because first, you have to catalog your wrongs, admit them, and turn them over to your higher power, but you atone for them in the ninth step.” I babbled. Like an idiot. No one could say I hadn’t warned him about that flaw. Not my problem if he didn’t believe me.
He squeezed my fingers—not hard, but with enough pressure his callouses scratched my skin. “You’ve done enough penance. If people can’t forgive you by now, they’re not worth your time.”
“Yeah, well, not everyone’s so generous.” The memory of last night’s flyer swam in front of my eyes, but I swallowed the brewing upheaval it brought on. Instead, I returned the topic to our former discussion. “So. How do we go about putting these ideas together? Who do we call about doing the wi-fi thingie? And the books? How much do you think all this is gonna cost?”
“The books are easy,” he said. “We can hit up the library for their discards. Miss Lydia would probably be happy to put aside a little bit of everything for us during her next purge—fiction, nonfiction, children’s…”
Miss Lydia. A fixture at the circulation desk, she’d been at the library so long, I had always assumed they actually erected the building around her. Her last name was something ridiculously Polish—or Russian, maybe—with lots of k’s and z’s in it. With all those consonants in a row too much for us locals to pronounce, everyone just called her Miss Lydia.
“Children’s.” I considered the idea. “That could be a big draw. Maybe we can set up a corner of the room for kids, with toys and books. Don’t they have those special kid carpets that look like roads or train tracks and stuff?” My excitement rode a tsunami as I pictured a corner play area with kids laughing and screeching and wreaking havoc—have I mentioned I’m not good with kids?—while their moms met with friends for tea and adult conversation. And that thought led me to another. “I told you about the woman who wants to throw a tea party for her daughter here, right? Wouldn’t it be cool if we could make that a regular thing? And have stuff for other kids—maybe even boys? What would boys like? You should know. What does your son like?”
“He likes to bake with me.” Gary shrugged. “Sometimes. But, Terri, I—”
I clapped once, sharp in the silence of the empty shop. “Okay, that’s good. That could work. Tea parties, rainy day activities, story hours, you might even be able to do a baking party, where you can teach the older kids how to make a simple cookie or cake or something. That’d be a great draw around the holidays: make a mini-cake for Mom for Mother’s Day, some kind of basic cookies for Thanksgiving or Christmas, baking classes for adults at night—”
He held up his hands. “Whoa, slow down, babe.”
Babe. If his upheld hands hadn’t crushed my happiness wave, the endearment did. Babe? I was nobody’s babe. Not because I was a card-carrying member of the men-haters club, but because I wasn’t the loveable sort. Never had been. No one considers the town drunk a babe.
Before I could call him out on the term, Paige sauntered out from the kitchen with a tray holding three coffee mugs curling steam, a small pitcher of milk, and a box of sugar packets. “Where do you want this, kids?”
We must have both given away some weird emotion without realizing. Her gaze swept from him to me and then to our clasped hands before she asked, “What’d I miss?”
I immediately yanked out of his grasp. “Not much,” I said. “We were discussing the possibility of adding a few perks for customers.”
“What kind of perks?”
“A children’s corner, books for readers of all ages, and free wi-fi.”
Paige nodded. “Sounds good. I like it.” She picked up a mug, blew on it, and sipped. “What do you need from me?”
“You might as well go home,” Gary told her. “It doesn’t look like we’ll get any more customers today.”
Panic skittered across my shoulders. He was sending her home? Why? “You never know,” I interjected. “The weather could clear up.”
Gary swerved to stare out the window at the darkening grayness on the street. “In the next thirty minutes? Not likely.” He turned back to Paige and me. “And even if it does, I doubt we’ll be slammed with customers between now and closing. Go on, Paige. Terri and I will finish out the day. With luck, we’ll have a better showing tomorrow.”
Once again, Paige shifted her gaze between Gary and me. “O…kay. If you say so.”
Fabulous. Left to my own devices with Gary the Scary Pastry Chef.
After Paige took her mug and returned to the kitchen, Gary leaned toward me, a wolfish-looking grin stretching his full lips. “Relax. I’m not really that scary.”
I wasn’t so sure. Not that I’d let him know he had me rattled. I picked up the closest coffee mug, held it to my lips like a barrier, and replied, “You relax. I’m not afraid.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” He fixed his own coffee, black, but with two and a half sugar packets. “Anything you wanna tell your partner? You’re not holding back any other secrets, are you?”
He was fishing. He had to be. He couldn’t possibly know about Max. Even if he did, I couldn’t talk about him anyway. Anonymous meant anonymous. I sipped, swallowed. “Like what?”
He didn’t reply.
The longer he remained silent, the more I struggled to keep from squirming. He didn’t even look at me, which kinda made it worse. The air around us charged
with static. My throat dried, and sweat accumulated on the back of my neck. Still, he said nothing.
Finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I threw the focus back on him. “How’d you wind up a pastry chef?”
“I fell into it.”
I shook my head, my disbelief obvious. “Unh-unh. No one falls into that kind of delicate baking. Not if they want to succeed in the business. You have to have a certain passion, a creative artistry. A pâtissier doesn’t exactly toss pizzas all day. And even curiouser, you won an M.O.F. a few years back. So, no, you didn’t just fall into the craft.”
His eyes widened, then went flat as he pointed at me. “You looked me up.”
I shrugged. “Only fair. After all, you know plenty about me. I don’t know anything about you. I didn’t even know you had a son.”
“You could’ve asked.”
“That’s what I’m doing now. So, tell me. How did Gary the Scary Bartender win a prestigious French award for his pastries? I mean, don’t get me wrong. They’re fabulous. But don’t you have to be French to win that award?”
“I lived in France from the age of eight to about twenty-five.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
“Is that where you met your wife? Was your son born there or here in the States?”
His posture changed from easygoing to rigid. Was it something I’d said? His wife? Was there bad blood there?
He glanced at the clock and rose from the chair. “Actually, that reminds me. I should clean up the kitchen before I pick up Christian. You want me to close today? Give you a chance to get out of here early?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess.” What else could I say? I’d already sucked all the happiness out of the room. I mean, we’d had zero customers all day. How dirty could the kitchen be? No, he was trying to get rid of me. And in this case, I was happy to oblige. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With a curt nod, Gary strode back into the kitchen, leaving me to ponder his ramrod back.
Well, sunshine, you did it again, I told myself with a sigh of self-pity. No wonder people didn’t want anything to do with me. Sober or drunk, I had a real gift for ticking people off.