She glared at him. “That’ll be sixteen forty-seven,” she said again.
“Oh. Sorry.” He filed through his wallet. He only had a ten, plus the change she’d given him earlier. He handed her his credit card.
She ran it and slid the receipt across the counter for him to sign. He scribbled his name and handed it back.
“Thank you.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes and seemed anxious to get rid of him. Nothing like last time when he’d flirted with her, and she’d flirted back, offering him a sample of a new sticky bun recipe she was testing.
Those warm, gold-flecked eyes flashed at him. Only today they flashed defiance, not the intense interest he remembered from before.
The back door opened and a tall black man stepped through. He nodded in Link’s direction. “Mornin’.” He looked at Shayla, then back at Link. “Everything okay here, baby?” He came and put a protective arm on her back, his hand cradling her neck.
Great. He’d been flirting with a married woman. And now she’d probably tell her husband that Link had almost killed their daughter.
“Everything’s fine, Daddy.” She wriggled out from under the man’s embrace, tucking a wayward corkscrew curl into the white kerchief that held her hair back. A second later, she crumpled in a heap in the man’s arms.
“What’d you do?” the man growled, taking a step toward Link, even with Shayla draped over him like a coat.
“Her little girl ran out into the street. I . . . almost hit her. With my truck.”
“That true?” He looked down at Shayla, then cut his glare toward the table where the little girl sat. His countenance visibly softened when his gaze landed on her. When Shayla didn’t answer, he tipped her face upward, as if he might read the truth in her expression.
She cast her eyes down, but nodded. “She’s okay. She wasn’t hurt.”
The man narrowed his gaze at Link. “What happened?”
Link swallowed hard. “Like I said, she ran out in front of me. I couldn’t get stopped on the ice. Truck skidded pretty good, but it didn’t even graze her. It was close though. She’s a lucky little girl.”
He wanted Shayla to come to his defense—to tell the guy that he’d bailed out of his truck and rolled to safety with the child in his arms. He was pretty sure Shayla had seen that part, despite her accusations. But he kept it to himself, suddenly more eager to get the heck out of Dodge than to stand here and paint himself as a hero.
The man looked to Shayla as if for confirmation. Link saw nothing in her eyes, but apparently the man was satisfied that Link hadn’t tried to kill anyone.
“I’ll be going now. If . . . if you have any other questions or”—he shrugged—“whatever . . . Shayla knows where to contact me.”
He gathered the cake boxes and strode to the front of the store, feeling foolish.
And confused. She’d called the guy “Daddy.” He didn’t look old enough to be her father, but a little too old to be her husband. Not that that meant anything these days. Of course even if the man was her father, she could still have a husband. She had a kid after all.
He climbed into the truck, jabbed the key in the ignition, and revved the engine. She probably was married. He sure hadn’t known that when he’d flirted with her. And in his defense, she hadn’t given off one single back-off-buddy-I’m-married signal either.
If she had, he would have run hard and fast in the opposite direction. He’d learned his lesson a long time ago.
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