Lucky For You

by Jayne Denker

  “I see what you did there.”

  “That one didn’t work. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is . . . I think it’s pretty cool.”

  “Shut up. You do not.”

  “I do! Your quilt was really pretty. Plus . . . I should lay off you. I owe you a lot lately. The job with George and everything. Not to mention making people be nice to me.”

  “I’m not making people be nice to you.”

  “You’re at least legitimizing me by hanging out with me, risking being dragged into my anti-social quagmire. So watch your step, Nash. Don’t get too close.”

  Will’s stomach clenched at the blatant opening he had right there. Grab it, he ordered himself. Say something. Say you want to get close. Or say it’s too late—you’re already there. But nothing came out of his mouth.

  “What I’m trying to say, Officer, is . . . you know.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t finish her thought. Will glanced over; she was fiddling with the hem of her coat. If it were anybody but Jordan Leigh, he’d swear she was feeling a little bashful.

  “What?” he prompted again.

  That now familiar lightning-fast smile flashed across her lips. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  Dear God, it was like seeing a unicorn. Hell, it was like capturing a unicorn. Jordan Leigh, thanking him? Thanking anyone? He never thought he’d see the day. But she hadn’t teased him about his quilting talent, so he wasn’t going to make fun of her for showing her gentler side.

  “You’re welcome,” he answered, just as softly.

  The smile returned, and she hid it by looking out the window again. After a moment, she murmured, “I’ll bet he’s a secret millionaire.”

  “Who?”

  “Burt Womack. There he is again.”

  She was right; Burt’s truck was hard to miss, rolling down Main Street once again. Nobody quite knew what kept Burt traveling all day, every day, yet never leaving the area. He had friends, and he apparently had some sort of business to conduct, as he always seemed busy. It gave him plenty of opportunities to act as a rolling roadblock for other drivers in town.

  “And you think he’s got a fortune stashed away where? In the bank? Under his trailer?”

  She shrugged. “In a hollow log. In a Cayman Islands account. On Wall Street. Who knows?”

  “I can assure you he is most definitely not a secret millionaire,” Will said, laughing.

  “It’d be a lot more interesting if he was.”

  Will was sure Jordan had started speculating on Burt’s secret life just to relieve some of the tension in the car, and he let her have that. He didn’t want her to get too nervous, after all. Because someday— soon, he hoped—he wanted to be able to start over with her. To ask her out on a date and have her say yes. She wouldn’t agree if she was still skittish around him. He needed to get her to trust him, and he knew he had to wait a while longer before—oh, hell. Life was short. Fuck it.

  “Jordan?”

  “What?”

  “I was thinking, maybe we could—aw, crap.”

  “Not sure what to do with that.”

  “Sorry. It’s just . . . hang on.” Swinging his vehicle into an open spot at the curb, he said, “Something’s going on at Ray’s place. Stay here. It should only take a minute. I’ll leave the engine running.”

  Jordan was out of her seat faster than he was. “Screw that. I want to see you do some policing. Let’s go.”

  As they got closer to the shop, Jordan edged out into the street to get a good view of Ray’s awning. She’d spotted the same thing he had.

  She tsked. “Naughty. Somebody’s getting coal in their stocking this year. Nice touch that it’s spelled out in Christmas lights, but I don’t think Santa’s going to let ’em get away with it.”

  In front of the print and copy shop, Ray was pacing and shouting into his cell phone, heedless of anyone around him, which was quite a few people, since it was a prime Christmas shopping Saturday.

  “I said I want you down here right away. I don’t care if the creature from Alien is busting out of you! Are you on the job or not?”

  Several people stopped to watch the show; others were cruising past the irate businessman, “accidentally” batting him with their shopping bags and calling out loud season’s greetings. Ray just shoved his stubby finger in his other ear and focused on yelling at poor Ricky, who probably had his head in a bucket at the moment.

  “Ray,” Will said, in his calm, even, placate-the-unstable-person voice. No response. Oblivious to the fact that it was another police officer trying to help, Ray turned his back and kept lecturing Ricky on the other end of the line. “Ray!” Will said, sharper this time. “Leave Ricky alone. I’m coming on duty now; talk to me.”

  Finally Ray looked up, registered who was talking to him, and hung up on Ricky without an apology. “Well, it’s about time somebody got here.”

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  “The problem? If you can’t see the problem, you’d better head over to Marsden Optical and get yourself a pair of glasses!”

  Yeah, good ol’ Ray. Will had learned to put up with his tantrums ages ago, as did most everyone in town, but an irate grunt from behind him revealed Jordan was less tolerant of his abrasiveness. He felt her move closer, and he put out an arm to stop her.

  “Why don’t you just tell me what happened, okay?”

  “What happened? What happened? I had Christmas lights up—in a tasteful display. When the timer came on at four o’clock, they were like this.”

  A group of teenage girls who had stopped to watch the show started giggling behind their hands. Not the most angelic of ninth graders. Will knew them all, if not personally, then by reputation: shoplifting, fighting, truancy. The usual. Ray glared at them, which got exactly the response he should have expected: none at all.

  “Huh.” An older gentleman, one of the three permanent fixtures behind the counter at Smithson’s Hardware up the street, stopped and looked up, hands on his hips. “Quite the four-letter word you got there, Dubois.”

  “Don’t need your two cents, Henry.”

  “But I’m thinking you got room for at least seven letters on that awning.”

  There was a moment’s silence while everyone within earshot started counting the letters in unacceptable words, then random snickers sounded as each person worked it out for him- or herself. Ray was one of the last ones to figure out which word Henry was thinking of, but only because he was busy raging about the whole situation.

  “Henry! Get out of here! Nash, why don’t you earn your keep—disperse the crowd or whatever it is you do?”

  Will sighed, resigned, but Jordan wasn’t so mellow. “Hey! That’s just rude,” she snapped at Ray, then said to Will, not softly enough, “Are you gonna let him talk to you like that?”

  Dear God, this was all he needed. “Jordan . . .”

  “Oh. Jordan Leigh.” Ray looked her up and down like he’d just scraped her off the bottom of his shoe. “Back in town again, are we?”

  “What’s it to you, Dubois?”

  “And charming as ever, I see.”

  “All right, cut it out, both of you,” Will interrupted. “Jordan, you’re not helping.”

  “I’m just saying. Who’s wearing the badge? Who’s got the taser, huh?”

  “Just let me do my job, all right?”

  “Well, if you’re going to do your job, then do it,” Ray said. “Go arrest Nate Carroll right now.”

  As if Ray hadn’t been pulling pranks of his own on the guy. Nice try. Whether he’d been emboldened by Jordan angling for a fight or whether he’d just had enough of the recurring Christmas Wars, Will decided to challenge Ray. “How do you know it was Nate?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Well, nobody caught him in the act, did they? Do you have any witnesses, Ray?”

  “Witnesses? Look here, Matlock—”

  Jordan snickered. “Don’t you mean Sherlock?”


  “I meant what I said. Get yourself more culture, girlie.”

  “Look, you—”

  Jordan pushed forward; Will held her back. “Quit it,” he hissed. He felt her slacken against his rigid arm, so he addressed Ray again. “When did this happen?”

  “How should I know? It couldn’t have been during the day. I was in the shop; I think I’d have seen somebody on a ladder.”

  “Could they have done it last night, and you didn’t notice till the timer went on just now?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Well, I’m going to need more to go on, Ray. I can’t assume it was Nate.”

  “Have you lost your mind, son? Of course it was him!”

  “I can talk to Nate, but honestly, I doubt he’s capable of climbing a ladder and rearranging your lights. Not at his age, and not with his hip problems.”

  “Not to mention there was a meeting at the Moose Lodge last night,” Henry added. “I was there myself. Nate was in no condition to be climbing ladders after the meeting adjourned.” In case anyone didn’t catch his drift, Henry raised a fist to his lips, extended his thumb and little finger, and tipped his hand up, making glugging noises.

  “Maybe he hired somebody.”

  Will and Ray, and everyone else who’d stopped to hear the exchange, looked at Jordan.

  She glanced around, startled at all the attention, and stammered, “Well . . . I mean . . . he could be the mastermind behind it, but maybe he didn’t actually do the deed. Maybe he got somebody more, you know, agile to get up there.”

  Will nodded; he’d been thinking the same thing. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the gaggle of teens nudge one another, exchange glances, and sidle away. He made a mental note of it.

  “Is that a confession?” Ray fired at Jordan.

  “What? Screw you, Ray.”

  “We all know your history, jailbird.”

  “Oh, I swear to God—”

  Again, Jordan launched herself at the older man, and again Will held her back. This time he had to use more force.

  “All right. Enough. Jordan, maybe you want to wait in the car.”

  She pushed his hands off her shoulders. “I’m not a dog.” With one last withering glare at Ray, Jordan adjusted her coat and hat, then looked Will in the eye. “I’ll see you around, Officer Billy.” And she turned on her heel and stalked away.

  “Watch yourself, Nash,” Ray said, contemplating the girl as she pushed past some shoppers on the sidewalk and turned the corner, heading for her grandmother’s house. “You don’t want any of that rubbing off on you.”

  Will bit his lip, hard, to keep from speaking his mind.

  Oblivious, the older man went on, “How she can manage to be related to our sweet little Celia, I’ll never know. Bad branch of the Leigh family tree, I guess.”

  When Will felt his hands forming into fists at his side, not to mention drifting toward the taser Jordan mentioned, he knew it was time to go. “I’ll look into this, Ray, and get back to you. But I don’t want to see these pranks escalate, you hear me? Or somebody’s getting hauled in for it.”

  Ray looked a little shocked at the venom in his voice, and Will didn’t much care. A ride in the patrol car and a few hours getting processed at the county jail might convince both him and Nate to stop this stupid yearly battle once and for all.

  Chapter 17

  “Can you believe that shit? I mean honestly—”

  “Uh, Jordan?”

  “I don’t know what was worse—Ray’s insults or Will defending him and not me!”

  “Jordan . . .”

  “I swear, I hate this town so much sometimes—”

  “Jordan!”

  “What?”

  “Step away from the apples. Now.”

  For once, Jordan did as she was told. Knife aloft and dripping with apple pulp, she looked up from the enamel-topped table in George and Casey’s kitchen. “What?” she asked again.

  George rose up on her toes to peer over at the other woman’s workspace from her station, where she was wrist deep in pie dough. “You’re not supposed to be making applesauce.”

  “I’m slicing them. Like you said.”

  “You’re pulverizing them.” George wiped her hands on a cloth and crossed the room for a closer look. “Okay, you’re only pulverizing some of them. Others look like they’ve been gnawed on by raccoons. What did I tell you about uniformity? Thin slices so they all cook evenly in the pies . . . You know what? Maybe you should do something else.”

  Jordan’s heart sank. Had she just failed at another task George had given her? Was she ever going to be able to do something right around here? Judging by the look of consternation on the petite woman’s freckled features, the answer was most likely a big fat “no.” George slipped the paring knife out of Jordan’s hand and set it on the counter near the sink. When George came back to the table, she was looking a lot more sympathetic.

  “I know what you’re going through. Believe me, if anybody’s going to get it, it’s me.”

  “That’s why Officer Billy asked you to give me a job, didn’t he?”

  George smiled. “I think it might have crossed his mind, yeah. He’s pretty perceptive. And you should trust he knew what he was doing with Ray as well.”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Not Ray’s, that’s for sure. I’m just saying Billy might have been a little short with you, but egging him on to tase Ray—much as pretty much everybody around here would support the idea—doesn’t fit the proper procedure. He was going by the book with his police work, which is what he does best.”

  “Police work? Or going by the book?”

  “Both. Why?” George’s smile turned sly as she spirited the pulp-covered cutting board and apples away. “Are you saying he’s ‘by the book’ in other ways? That’d be boring.”

  Jordan glanced away before George could catch what was likely a hungry look on her face. Because she was remembering the way Will had kissed her on Halloween and good grief, was it hot in here all of a sudden? Must be the ovens preheating.

  George caught on anyway. “Oh. Apparently not. At least, not where it counts.”

  “I don’t know about any of that.”

  “Really? I thought you two were . . . you know.”

  “Nope, not ‘you know.’ Can we talk about something else, please?”

  George looked like she wanted to press the issue, but she only said, “Fine. Dinner rolls. You can do those, can’t you?”

  Several aerospace engineers were arriving from downstate late in the afternoon for a think-tank sort of retreat. George and Casey had explained to Jordan how Bowen Farms Inn and Conference Center couldn’t live on the revenue from the pumpkin farm, since it only operated for about eight weekends out of the year. They had been working on getting the “inn and conference center” part of the place up and running with varying degrees of success, so the rocket nerds were more than welcome. Jordan had no doubt their business was going to be a roaring success sooner rather than later. But right now, this conference was the only thing on the roster for the entire month of December, so the main goal was to impress the engineers and get some good word of mouth going.

  “Put dough on a baking sheet? Yeah, I think I can manage it.”

  “No, not just . . . plop,” George said, whipping the cloth off a large mixing bowl to reveal a mound of risen dough. “Make them small—but not too small—and . . . I don’t know. Nice.”

  “‘Nice’?”

  “Attractive.” George rolled her amber eyes. “Just do it, all right?”

  “Man, you get grumpy when you go outside your comfort zone.”

  The other woman laughed a little as she returned to her desserts. “Yes, I’m confident with the pies and not much else, but that’s got to change, hasn’t it?”

  “I dunno, it could be your ‘thing.’ ‘Bowen Farms: We serve nothing but pie. Deal with it.’”

  “That’d keep the weight-loss groups away.”


  “Or pull them in. What about weddings?”

  “Sure, we’d do a wedding if somebody asked us to. Under the trellis in the rose garden in nice weather; otherwise, in the formal drawing room.”

  “So you’ve thought about it.”

  “Well, yeah. Nothing’s off the table, you know?”

  Jordan stared at the large whitish dome in the bowl. How did you make a dinner roll attractive?

  “Don’t mess with the dough too much, or it’ll get tough,” George advised. “Just shape it and leave it. How about a knot, or a braid?”

  “I only know knots or braids in hair.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t mix the two—hair and food—okay? I’ve got enough problems.”

  The women worked in silence for a while, Jordan frowning in concentration as she tried to make nice-looking dinner rolls, and George working her magic on several apple pies. Jordan started to relax a little; maybe this was something she could do. Maybe she had a knack for cooking she’d never known about (apple hash notwithstanding). She usually lived on takeout and frozen stuff—a habit formed in her childhood, as her parents never cooked much either. When they had a housekeeper/cook, they ate well, but that ended, and they were left to their own devices in the kitchen. That was when delivered pizzas and microwaved Hot Pockets became her diet staples.

  Around lunchtime the back door slammed, and the sound of clomping boots preceded Casey’s appearance in the doorway.

  Immediately George snapped, “I warned you about wearing work boots in the house. Now you get to mop the hallway.”

  Casey grinned, his green eyes twinkling, but he backed out of the room then reappeared, this time without the boots. He headed straight for George, hugged her from behind, and nuzzled her neck.

  “Should I leave you two alone for a while?” Jordan offered, trying not to be jealous of the bond between them. She didn’t want that—what was she envying? But damn, they looked so happy together. Like they just . . . fit.

  George laughed as a lock of Casey’s dark hair tickled her ear, and she elbowed him in the ribs. “How many times have I told you not to bug me when I’m making pies?”

  “And if I obeyed, I’d never be allowed near you. You’re always making pies. How’s it going, Jordan?”