“I try.” Carlos glanced over Bran’s head. “Bet you’re here looking for a cute blonde.”
Bran started, and then, following Carlos’s gaze, saw Jenna approaching the counter. His body snapped to full alert. This afternoon, she’d been wearing a perfectly acceptable lacy, sleeveless blouse and denim shorts. For coffee at Sang Freud, though, she’d changed into one of those flirty little summer dresses women wore on sun-soaked days at the beach. His mouth went dry, and he reached for a swallow of his drink, forgetting that it was—
Holy shit, hot! he thought, coughing as the liquid burned a path down his throat.
Smiling, Carlos slid a glass of ice water across the counter. Eyes watering, Bran chugged it. “Thanks,” he wheezed.
Carlos nodded, then called, “Afternoon, Jenna. Your usual’s open by the window.”
“Thanks, Carlos. Love your shirt.”
“Thank you. Croissant?”
“Nope, just a green tea.”
“On it.”
Jenna paused at Bran’s side, adjusting a huge tote bag that hung from her shoulder. “You all right?”
“Never better.” Bran squinted, waiting for the stinging in his throat to subside. He gestured toward the two large windows forming the front of the coffee house. “Table?”
“Yep. Let’s go.”
Carrying his coffee gingerly, Bran followed her, trying, without success, to put his mind on anything but the swing of her hips. In a waist apron, she’d been distracting enough. In that dress, she fried his common sense. The damn thing hugged her perfect, heart-shaped ass so well it made him jealous.
Sweet Jesus. How long had it been since he’d gone out with a woman? He couldn’t remember.
Which was just too damn pathetic for words.
Jenna settled into a chair by the window then put the giant bag on the seat beside her. Bran followed her lead and took a seat opposite her at the table. “You look nice.”
“I’m meeting a client this evening.”
“Oh?”
She nodded toward the bag. “A lady in Ellsworth commissioned a quilt for her grandson, and I’ve finished it.” Her eyes shone. “Want to see?”
Unable to refuse that glowing expression, he smiled. “Sure.”
She dove into the bag and then emerged with the corner of the quilt, a patchy thing in light blues. It reminded him at once of his nana’s warm hugs and yards of fabric swatches. “It’s nice.”
She laughed, and he glued himself to that light in her eye. “Thanks, I think.”
He sat back with an answering grin. “Sorry. That’s about as much compliment as a meat-and-potatoes guy can gush out for a project that doesn’t involve power tools, Tink.”
“A quilting machine actually is a power tool.”
“Bet you can’t build houses with it.”
“Okay, but what are you going to decorate your house with?”
“I’m gonna pay you to come and make it look nice with your quilts.” He hooked his arm over the back of the empty chair beside him, enjoying the blush coloring her delicate cheekbones. On business, he might be, but something about Miss Sanborn brought out the tease in him.
Carlos materialized with her tea and a plate of some triangular sort of pastries. “Blueberry scones,” he announced.
“We didn’t ask—” Jenna began.
“Of course, you didn’t. I’m road testing a new recipe on you,” Carlos said.
“Oh!” Bright-eyed, she reached for one of the scones. “Are these the ones you were talking about, with the cinnamon chips and walnuts?”
“Your idea,” Carlos said. “When are you going to let me steal you from the diner?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Jill and Maggie have me on indentured servitude for at least twelve more years.”
Carlos groaned. “All right, but I’m still going to pick your brain on breakfast sandwiches.”
“Wouldn’t expect any less,” she said.
Carlos left, and Bran took the moment of silence to study Jenna. A “townie” in the best sense, firmly entrenched in Lobster Cove and all its goings-on. He couldn’t have asked for a better guide…but he might have been better off with a less distracting one. Along with all that small-town know-how, Jenna Sanborn possessed good looks that would’ve been just as at home in a big-city modeling studio. He could count several women he’d known who’d consider homicide for lashes like Jenna’s.
Her soft voice broke into his thoughts. “You had questions?”
He realized he’d been sitting there, staring at her like the stalker he’d said he wasn’t, for several minutes. He scrambled to get back on topic. “Boat charter,” he said.
“Claws and Effect Boat Tours is right here in Lobster Cove. Are you looking to take a tour?”
“I want to know about the staff.”
Jenna frowned. “Robert Mathison and his niece Sandra Godfrey own it. They keep a few guides and office personnel on staff. Is something wrong?”
“Probably not. I’ve just heard some oddball stuff today.” Not from folks in town, he added mentally, but Jenna didn’t need to know that. Rudy had shared some hunches that their black hat might be putting out to sea for some of his stunts. As Rudy’s last resort—an eye far afield when he couldn’t be, himself—Bran figured he should check out every possible lead. The poor man was running on no sleep and almost no budget, whereas Bran had the advantage of a wealthy, horse-breeding family to back his ambling around the country. That, and he’d considered Rudy his best friend ever since the man saved his butt from an investigation gone wrong.
“How long has—Claws and Effect, was it?—been in business?” he asked.
Jenna traced the rim of her teacup with a fingertip. “Longer than I’ve worked at Maggie’s. Are you a police officer?”
“No,” he answered readily, and prepared to lie like hell after that. Until he knew more about Obsidian’s presence in Lobster Cove, he wasn’t about to breathe a word regarding his sniffing around. If the crook got wind of it, he’d blow town, and the hunt would begin all over again.
“They volunteer in booths every summer at the Lobster Crawl, and in the winter, they work in the food pantry at the community center.” Jenna pierced him with a defiant look, as if her word should be enough for him as a character reference.
He stalled a bit by taking a sip of the coffee. Good stuff, when he wasn’t trying to swallow three burning-hot gulps at once. Setting his cup down, he eyed the dish of pastries, or scones, or whatever fancy thing Carlos had called them.
With uncanny perception, Jenna pushed the plate toward him.
Shrugging, he picked one off the little pile, then bit into it. The sweetness of cinnamon mingled with the faintly tart blueberries. He chewed thoughtfully. “Not bad.”
“Carlos knows his baking,” she said. Her gaze stayed fixed, unnerving him.
“I’m just in town for a while, then I’m headed back to Lexington,” he offered.
“Kentucky,” she said, in an a-ha sort of tone. “Thought so.”
“You did, did you?”
“We get tourists from everywhere. I’ve started to pick up on the accents, over the years,” she said.
Bran chewed on that. As a waitress at what looked like a very busy diner, she’d be in a good position to filter information back to him on people in town who might not seem on the level. Who might sound just as southern as himself. He might be able to find an appropriately discreet way to slip in a few inquiries about that.
“Well, you’ve already found the best place for a cup of coffee,” she added, “and that’s saying a lot, considering I work at the diner. Where are you staying?”
“The Sea Crest Inn.”
She clasped her hands around her teacup and gave him a brilliant smile. “My best friend’s bookstore is right next door. The Sea Crest is a wonderful place to spend a vacation.”
The light in her eye softened into a dreamy expression that had him wondering about her significant other. Alarmed, he crushed the
thought under a landslide of undone casework then polished off his scone. “It’s nice, but no offense. If I was gonna vacation on a shellfish allergy, I wouldn’t pick Maine.”
She blinked. “That’s why you said ‘no fish.’”
Nodding, he fiddled with his coffee cup and stared at the thin blue band around the outside of its rim, still rattled by his reaction to her.
Their gazes met across the scones, and Bran couldn’t look away. Her eyes were as blue as a Kentucky summer sky.
She seemed to make up her mind about something then retrieved a pen from her enormous bag. She scribbled something on a napkin then slid it across the table to him.
“Listen…if you need anything, that’s my number…or you can find me at the diner.” Her cheeks reddened. She rapped the table. “Okay. I’ve got to go.” She sprang up so fast, she almost upset their drinks. Slapping a hand on her cup to keep it from tipping, she called, “Carlos, can I get this in a to-go cup?”
Before he had a chance to react, Jenna was gone in a whirlwind of blonde hair and a fluttering skirt. Bran was left sitting there with a mountain of confusion and the flowery suggestion of her perfume.
Chapter Four
Mortified. There was no other word for it. Sally had told her to take a chance, but as soon as Jenna took her hand off that napkin, she regretted it. Bran was probably wondering, right now, if she made a habit of handing out her phone number to men she’d just met. How desperate could she possibly look?
Her cell rang as soon as she escaped the building. She flinched. The caller ID registered a number she didn’t recognize. Did he…? No. She answered it.
An amused southern drawl greeted her, obliterating all doubt. “Just making sure you didn’t fake your number.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” she protested. Her ears burned. Maybe she should have done that.
“I believe you.” His voice, with that languid Kentucky accent, caressed her ear. The echo of that caress settled into all sorts of places that only multiplied her jitters. “If I have more questions about the town, I’ll call back. Have a good evening, Jenna. It was nice having coffee with you.”
“You, too,” she blurted, then, after babbling a goodbye, she hung up.
So close. She ducked into her car with her cheeks aflame. The engine started on the first try, for once. She hardly waited until she’d buckled her belt to zoom out of the coffee house’s lot.
Bran Cudahy had no right to look that tempting. She fumed—mostly at herself—on the way home, already yearning for the soothing feel of knitting needles in her hands. That ought to distract her long enough to get her to this evening, when she’d have the distraction of delivering the new quilt.
Maybe.
Tess Highland hailed her just as she was unlocking the door to go up the creaky staircase to her duplex apartment.
Oh, no.
Tess was nice enough, a tall, redheaded woman in her thirties, who worked as a secretary at the Lobster Cove Police Department. Her fatal flaw was her inability to stop talking. Jenna wished she’d moved up the quilt delivery to earlier in the day, just to have the excuse to make a run for it.
“I was just visiting a girlfriend. You’ve got to see the fresh pickings in town, Jenny,” Tess bubbled.
Jenna sighed. Tess never got her name right, even when she read it every Sunday on Jenna’s name tag during breakfasts at the diner. Or maybe Tess thought it was cute. One never knew, with Tess. Jenna raised her brows and tried for polite attention.
Tess’s bright-red lips formed an O. “You don’t know? Big, dark-haired guy? Baseball cap? Looks like a five-star dessert wrapped in yummy, with a side of Godiva chocolate sauce?”
Oh, no, was right. Apparently, Tess had the same chocolate fixation…and she’d fixed it on the new dish in town. “Um…actually, I have met him, yeah,” she murmured, but Tess was already off and running on her one-woman exposé show.
Branson Cudahy was a cyber crime investigator from Lexington, Kentucky. He was up here investigating suspicious monetary activity like that committed by a guy they’d been chasing for six years. “Do you believe that, Jenny? Six years, and now this creep’s in our own backyard! I hope they throw the book at him.”
Jenna forced back a twinge of guilt. She’d wanted to know more about him. Trust the town gossip to have the scoop.
Tess went on to give Jenna everything but a set of Bran’s fingerprints. He was the youngest in a big family, and his parents lived outside Lexington. He’d started out as a homicide detective, a whiz kid who’d helped solve some of Kentucky’s worst crimes until injuring his knee in pursuit of a suspect. After that, law enforcement paled for him, and he went private. Now, he chased his suspects online and worked for himself.
A pang of dismay joined Jenna’s guilt. If the investigation was still open, Bran probably didn’t want his life history and presence in town to get around. “You sure found out a lot about him already,” she murmured.
Tess didn’t seem to notice Jenna’s hint to stop sharing. She beamed, showing brilliant white teeth framed by those fire-engine-red lips. “I know, right?”
With an inward sigh, Jenna said, “I’m sorry, Tess, I really have to go. Um…thanks…for the info.”
“Oh. Sure, honey. ‘Bye,” Tess called after her.
Jenna closed the door to her apartment then threw the deadbolt, her head swimming with images of Bran. She wondered if he knew he’d been profiled by the town’s most dogged amateur investigator.
Jenna hung her key on the rack beside the door then turned with a hopeful look toward her home. It wasn’t much—barely a home, really, unless you counted the quilted table runners, handmade dishtowels, and cheery polka-dotted curtains that gave the space a little personality.
“One makes do with what one has,” she murmured, wiggling her finger at the pair of goldfish in the living room’s little fish tank. They swam up to meet her, looking for dinner. She shook a few flakes onto the surface of the water and watched them disappear, one by one, as the fish gobbled them up.
Was this it? Was this her life? Maybe what bothered her most about Bran was not that he was handsome—which, oh, holy Moses, he was—but that he’d be trucking himself back to Kentucky once he finished with Lobster Cove. And being so handsome, in the face of that cold fact, could only spell trouble…for her. Even if she took a chance with him, where could it lead but to a dead end?
Why had she given him her number? That meant she’d have to see him again. To put herself in the path of that… What had Tess called it? A five-star dessert?
Oh, good heavens. Jenna put the fish food back in its cabinet under the tank then headed to the kitchen to get dinner. Meals were usually leftovers from the diner which Jill and Maggie allowed the staff to take home before donating the rest to the food pantry. Jenna pulled the carton of shepherd’s pie from her fridge then leaned against the counter to wait while it heated in the microwave.
Maggie’s Diner had been good to her. Jenna had worked there since high school, scraping together every extra cent for her “Someday Fund.” That eensy little bank account was earmarked for her quilt shop. It always seemed the fund shrank more than it grew, especially since her mother had been in the hospital last winter with pneumonia and her landlord hiked the rent this year. And, as for her demon-on-wheels car, who knew when it would decide to quit entirely? Jenna had often considered giving it up for public transportation, but the bus and trolley schedules were a little restrictive for her needs.
The microwave beeped. She pulled the carton out and then dropped it on the eat-in kitchen table to puff at her fingers. Potholders, Jenna, she scolded herself. Apparently, Bran had stolen her common sense along with her attention.
A quilted placemat, a glass of chocolate milk, and a hand-sewn dinner napkin. Jenna surveyed the little vignette then sighed.
Yep. This was her life.
After dinner and a strangely unsatisfying turn at the knitting needles, she loaded herself into her temperamental car and prep
ared for the half-hour drive to Ellsworth. Mrs. Bilson’s grandbaby would be turning two in a week, and she’d just about run out of gift ideas when Jenna bumped into her in Bar Harbor. Kismet, really, for both of them. The final payment on this quilt might stave off the phone company for another couple of months.
The trip to Ellsworth took longer than expected. Mrs. Bilson asked her in for tea, and Jenna decided that some time spent in another person’s company was just the thing she needed to shake her out of her dinnertime funk. She loved talking to people and learning their stories. The conversations often ended up inspiring some aspect of a new quilt, afghan, or piece of knitwork.
Mr. and Mrs. Bilson had been married fifty-two years. Their secrets, they said, were forgiving hearts and good senses of humor. Jenna watched their gentle teasing with more than a little envy, and found herself wondering about the single men in Lobster Cove. Her heartbeat didn’t start thumping, though, until she thought about Bran.
Oh, stop it! she ordered herself, then turned her attention back to the Bilsons.
But they were no help, either. “Do you have a young man, Miss Sanborn?” Mrs. Bilson asked with a wink.
“Not yet,” she admitted. “Work keeps me busy.”
“Now, why do you want to do that, a sweet young lady like you?” Mrs. Bilson said. “You need to get out there, Miss Sanborn. Get yourself a few dates with some nice fellows.”
Jenna pursed her lips on a giggle. Mrs. Bilson sounded like a sweeter version of Sally.
The thing about happy couples was that they always wanted to fix up anyone around them who was still unattached. And while it might have worked out all right for the Bilsons, Jenna couldn’t envision herself with anyone who might not want to spend their life in Lobster Cove.
Which included, most especially, a certain southern detective with a shellfish allergy. “I should go. I have a bit of a drive to get home,” she said.
They insisted she bring home some of Mrs. Bilson’s coffee cake with her. Jenna couldn’t refuse, and she started the half-hour drive back with a generous portion of the crumbly cake, wrapped neatly, on the seat beside her.
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