Czytaj książkę: «The Bridal Quest»

Chapter Two

For a long moment, Sam stood by a kitchen window and watched a hummingbird hover near a feeder in his next-door neighbor’s silver oak. In April, days passed lazily. Before the tourist season of summer, his duties centered on too many meetings with the mayor about requisitions for new cars or uniforms, answering complaint calls and patrolling the town.

He heard chair legs scrape across the kitchen floor behind him, but instead of turning around, he let his mind wander to last night, to the woman he’d seen. About five foot seven and willowy, she’d hardly be a threat to anyone. He hadn’t seen her clearly, but she looked out of place standing alone, in the dark, reading a Help Wanted sign. He had questions, but had seen no purpose in keeping her. If she stuck around, got the job, he’d find out more.

As the smell of coffee drifted to him, he turned away from the window. Hinting of the warmer weather to come, bright morning sunlight bathed the kitchen in a warm glow. He moved to the coffee brewer, and began counting drips, waiting for the last one to drop. He needed to quit or cut down, do something. He’d given up smoking long ago, but still needed a quick fix of caffeine to get going in the morning.

“I want to eat the chocolate bears, Daddy.”

Grabbing a blue mug from a cup tree first, he swivelled a look over his shoulder at Casey. On a yawn, his youngest plopped on a chair at the kitchen table.

“You should have something more nutrichess for breakfast. Shouldn’t she, Daddy?” her older sister piped in. At six, Annie believed in her ability to mother her dolls, her younger sister and sometimes him.

At certain moments, she looked so much like his late wife that his heart twisted. Rail thin, she had shiny brown hair that she’d recently asked to have cut in some trendy bob style. He hadn’t resisted. The short cut meant no more mornings struggling with a hair clip or one of those doughnut-looking cloth things, or having to French braid her hair. Now there was a challenge. Give him a perp in an alley any day.

He smiled at the thought. He hadn’t encountered one in five years, since he and a pregnant Christina had left Las Vegas, when he’d chosen to be a small-town sheriff instead of another big-city cop.

“Daddy, I want them,” Casey insisted, her bottom lip thrusting out.

Back to the chocolate bears.

“There aren’t enough left for even one bowl,” Annie piped in. “Daddy didn’t go to the grocery store yesterday.”

Sam cringed at the accusing tone in her voice. She could make that transgression sound like the crime of the century.

Disbelief edged his youngest daughter’s voice. “Didn’t you, Daddy?” His urchin. With her silky blond hair brushing her shoulders, at four, Casey cared more about making mud pies and riding her new bike with the training wheels than her looks. While her sister had mastered a tone that one day would deliver a reprimand with a few choice words, Sam’s youngest needed to say nothing. With one look, she’d drill someone into the ground. He watched her blue eyes narrow. She was a second away from leveling that look at him.

“I bought some,” he told her.

Sunshine returned. “You did?” Her face broke into a smile.

Saved by a quick stop at a convenience store last night, Sam mused. “I did.”

Annie delivered a pleased grin. “That’s good. If there hadn’t been more, I would have given you my share,” she assured her sister.

Sam closed one eye in her direction. Who was that strange child sitting there? Was this some new phase she was embarking on? He sure had a hard time keeping up. He opened the box of cereal, poured it in two bowls, and set them on the table.

With the girls busy crunching away on the chocolate bears that were swimming in milk and turning it the color of cocoa, he finally poured himself a cup of coffee. He’d bought one of those two-cup coffee brewers for his survival. He never had time to wait for a full pot, and figured there was less waste this way.

“Mrs. Mulvane is here,” Casey said with the opening of the back door.

Sam gazed over the rim of the coffee cup at the girls’ nanny.

“Good morning.” Arlene Mulvane’s voice cracked with her bright, cheery greeting. The elderly woman, a grandmother of four, and great-grandmother of two, lumbered into the kitchen. Several months ago after his third nanny had quit, she’d arrived at the door, and said she would take the job. He’d wondered if Arlene and several of the other town do-gooders had drawn straws to see which of them would volunteer to help “the poor dear man alone with those two little girls.” Regardless, Arlene had blended in well, treated the girls like her own granddaughters. Though she didn’t live in, she would stay late when he couldn’t get home on time.

“And we’re going to the fire station on our next field trip,” Annie was informing Arlene.

Casey offered her opinion. “The lizard farm is better.”

“Yuk!” Annie screwed up her nose, but her bright blue eyes shifted to Sam. “Don’t forget our date.”

He assumed the day would come when some other male would receive that eager look. For now, he had exclusive rights to it. “I won’t forget.”

“Around twelve-thirty?” Arlene asked.

Sam nodded, then drained the coffee in his cup. On Saturday when they had no school, they met him for lunch. “I’ll be at the diner.”

The bell above the diner door jingled. Crowded, noisy, the diner, with its blue-and-white decor, held the aroma of perked coffee and freshly baked cinnamon buns. One of the waitresses poured coffee into two thick mugs and plunked them down in front of customers at the counter. Country music from a jukebox played in the background. Another waitress balanced plates along her arm and weaved her way to a booth near the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Jessica had arrived at the diner before dawn broke. Dew had clung to the ground. Now the sun lightened a sky lavish with clouds.

Hurrying toward a customer who’d asked for another glass of water, she was having a terrible morning. Twice, she’d messed up orders. She wondered why she hadn’t expected problems. After all, she’d bluffed her way into the waitress job this morning, but she’d truly believed she could handle it. How foolish, Jessica.

At the end of the counter, two construction workers from a nearby site waited for a bottle of Tabasco sauce to pour on their eggs, and the fellow in the last booth who she hadn’t gotten to yet scowled at the clock on the wall.

“Scott! Your order’s up,” Herb yelled.

It took a moment to remember to respond to the name. When she’d applied for the job, Herb had questioned why her identification said Walker. She’d claimed she hadn’t changed her name back, let him assume Walker was a married name. Briefly she’d held her breath, worried, but busy and distracted, he’d handed her a shirt and had registered no recognition to the Walker name.

Pivoting around, she picked up orders. She abandoned any notion of balancing the plates on her arm. With one in each hand, she started for the table. Better to make several trips than to dump the breakfast on the floor.

“This isn’t what I ordered,” the man growled when she’d set down his plate.

Sure it was. She was certain she’d gotten the order right. “I’ll take care of that, sir.”

She placed her reorder, then grabbed the coffee pot to fill cups. At the end of the counter, one customer, a petite woman in her mid-sixties with bright red hair and a broad smile, had been watching her ever since she’d entered the diner. Since all the servers and Herb had stopped to talk to her, Jessica assumed the woman was a regular customer.

“Name’s Trudy Holtrum,” the woman said. “I heard there was a new waitress.”

Jessica paused and filled the woman’s coffee cup. “I’m Jessica Scott.”

Trudy bobbed her head as if looking for a yes answer to a question not yet asked. “Have you met the sheriff yet?”

Jessica started to frown. Why would she ask such a question? “Yes, why?”

“I work for him,” Trudy explained. “Lots of women in town are willing to give him a run for his money. Are you?”

“Pardon?” Though stunned by her candor, Jessica laughed.

Hazel eyes met hers with heart-stopping directness. “Don’t you find him attractive?”

Jessica couldn’t mask her incredulity. “What? I don’t even know—”

Nothing fazed the woman. “Better than that, huh?” She peered over her wire-rimmed glasses at Jessica. “Handsome? Sexy?”

Politeness stretched only so far, Jessica decided. “Trudy, I don’t think—”

The charms on her bracelet clattered as she set down her coffee cup. “Oh, he’s sexy, all right.” Grinning, she placed her hands on the counter and heaved herself to a stand.

“See you,” Jessica said.

“Likely.” The woman’s eyes sparkled. “Since you and the sheriff might be an item.”

Jessica laughed as Trudy ambled toward the door. The woman was eccentric, probably a gossip and delightful.

As the breakfast rush dwindled down, she refilled water glasses, checked sugar containers and set up several sets of silverware.

By eleven-thirty, the lunch crowd began to wander in. Tables filled quickly. Every stool at the counter was occupied. She noticed that no one sat in her first booth and wondered if she’d already earned a reputation for dropping dishes, and people were avoiding her.

At twelve-thirty, she learned that she had nothing to do with the booth being left empty. She was in the middle of delivering an order of meat loaf when the bell jingled, announcing a customer and she heard Herb’s greeting. “Afternoon, Sam. Your usual booth is waiting for you.”

The sheriff’s usual booth was the empty one in her station.

What happened next really was his fault, she decided. He shouldn’t have been so good-looking. Then she wouldn’t have been eyeing him instead of watching where she was going. She wouldn’t have dropped the tray of dishes.

Plates clattered to the black-and-white tile floor of Herb’s Diner. Heads swung in Jessica’s direction. And her boss, Herb scowled.

Feeling knots in her shoulders, she rolled them slightly before she began picking up the glass.

A broom in her hand, Cory Winston sidled close to Jessica and began to sweep splintered glass in a pile. “Let me give you a hand.” A bottle blond in her early thirties, Cory had worked for Herb since she’d graduated from high school. “Don’t feel bad, hon,” she said low. “Every single female in town notices him.”

Jessica raised a hand and nudged back a few strands of her auburn hair. Him, she assumed, was the sheriff.

“But don’t get your hopes up. He’s a widower, and not looking.”

“Oh, that wasn’t—”

Cory pushed to a stand before Jessica could explain that she wasn’t interested. Better for Cory to think she was as attracted to the sheriff as every other female. She couldn’t have explained that she’d been like a runaway bride. What would she say? I’m on the run. Hiding from my family. Don’t tell the sheriff. As much as Jessica liked Cory, she couldn’t trust her with that secret. “I feel as if I’m on his wanted list,” she said, aware of his unwavering stare on her.

Cory laughed, but a speculative tone colored her voice. “He is giving you a lot of attention.”

Too much, Jessica thought. She frowned at the broken plate on the floor before her. She would rouse his suspicions if she didn’t stop acting so nervous.

There was no real reason for it. Neither her mother nor her grandfather would have notified Willow Springs or any other Nevada police or sheriff departments that she was missing. Her mother’s grand sense of propriety demanded a more discreet method for finding her daughter, like a private investigator.

While Jessica gathered the last of the large pieces of broken plates and cups, the diner’s dishwasher mopped up the slivers of glass. Jessica thanked him, then hurried behind the counter. Nearby Herb glared. How much would he deduct from her pay for that accident? She needed every penny. For someone who’d never worried about money before, she’d become obsessed with the lack of it lately.

Plastering a smile to her face, she scribbled a customer’s order for blueberry pancakes on a ticket. He was a local delivery man, and he’d flirted earlier with her until Cory had commented about his wife and baby girl. Now he halfheartedly smiled, then buried his face in his newspaper. She wished another man would follow suit and not give her so much attention.

Sam considered it part of his job as sheriff to learn about anyone new in town.

Any stranger would have aroused his curiosity. That sounded like a reasonable excuse for keeping an eye on the new waitress at Herb’s Diner as she scurried from the cook’s station with several plates of pancakes.

But Sam rarely lied to himself. His curiosity about a stranger only partially accounted for his interest in her. True, she looked out of place. Too classy-looking even in the brand-new jeans, snow-white sneakers, and the diner’s only concession to a uniform, a blue polo shirt.

She was a leggy woman with shiny auburn-colored hair caught back at the nape of the neck and held in place by a giant gold clip. She had an oval face, soft blue eyes, a straight nose, and a generous mouth. Plain and simple, the woman was a knockout.

Distracted by male voices raised in disagreement, he observed Morly Wells, sitting at a nearby table. A day didn’t pass without an argument about something between the retired postal worker and his best friend, Lloyd Guthrie. Sam listened for a moment to them, then shot a look at the clock on the wall above the counter. The girls were late. He thought about a half-finished quarterly statement on his desk that was due in the mayor’s office by the end of the week. He should be thinking about budgets and requisitions.

He would have been, but he looked up from the menu and saw Jessica Scott smile. Not at him, but an old-timer at the counter. Something slow moved through him. He was surprised by it though he shouldn’t have been. He’d always been a sucker for a sunshiny smile. But a long time had passed since a woman had really captured his interest. Not since a year and a half ago—when his wife had died.

The clatter of silverware on the floor made him look again in the direction of Herb’s new server. The woman had her problems. He saw her picking up the cutlery she’d dropped. While she walked with finishing school grace, she bordered on klutzy. She stopped before Morly to fill his coffee cup, and knocked over a glass of water. Morly jumped back before he wore it. She won’t last a week, Sam decided.

Crouching, Jessica gathered the silverware and dumped it on a tray. As she expected, she received the dishwasher’s glare. When had she gotten so clumsy, she wondered?

On a sigh, she turned around. Unable to put off the inevitable, she drew a deep breath and headed toward the first booth in her station, toward Sam Dawson.

“I see you got the job.”

“Uh-huh,” she murmured. Close up, Thunder Lake’s sheriff was something, with his sun-streaked brown hair. Faint lines crinkled from the corners of the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

Again that deep, no-nonsense voice floated on the air. “Herb said you were here at daybreak.”

So he’d asked Herb about her. Her stomach clenched. “Yes.”

“Have you decided to stay?”

“I’m not sure.” Tensing, she tightened her grip on the pencil in her hand. She needed to be friendly, she reminded herself. “The people I’ve met have been really nice.”

“We try to be.”

Honest to the core about her feelings, she acknowledged the quickening of her pulse had as much to do with a male-female tug as nervousness. He unsettled her. He made her aware. All good reasons to keep her distance. “Would you like coffee?”

“Dying for one. My dispatcher at the office makes it so strong it tastes like motor oil.”

Breathe, Jessica, she berated herself. “We have good coffee here.” He knows that, Jessica. He’s a regular at the diner. “Guess you’ve had plenty of it.”

“Yeah, I have.” He presented a warm smile, a knock-your-socks-off smile, the kind meant to tingle a woman all the way down to her toes.

“Do you want to order now, too?”

“No, I’m waiting for others.”

She noticed he’d glanced at her left hand. For what? A wedding band?

“Have you been a waitress long?”

She lifted the water glass in front of him. “Oh, sure, for ages and ages.”

“That’s mine.”

Jessica stilled. “What?”

“That was my water glass.” He looked at it, then up at her and grinned. “But you can have it.”

She heard a hint of humor in his voice. Why? What was so funny? Frowning, she looked down. She didn’t need to see herself. She felt the warmth of a blush sweep over her face as she stared at the finger she’d stuck inside his glass. Silently she groaned. When she’d reached for the glass, she’d been thinking more about the gaze on her than what she was doing. What a dumb thing to do. “I’m sorry.” She shot a look at Herb, then back at him. “I’ll get you another glass.” She spoke lightly, even flashed a smile, hoped she sounded relaxed. “And your coffee.”

The sounds of two men engaged in a friendly dispute about what teams would play in the World Series this year made him look away. She used that moment to escape. She needed to stop acting so jittery. If he knew who she really was, he would have said something, wouldn’t he?

“I told you this might not work,” Herb said suddenly, falling in step beside her.

Was he already going to fire her? She wouldn’t blame him if he did. She’d dropped several orders of ham and eggs earlier that morning, nearly spilled water on a customer’s lap, and probably had caused a shortage of silverware during the diner’s busiest hour, sending all that had tumbled to the floor back to the dishwasher. “I’ll do better,” Jessica promised.

She wished the day was over.

She waited until he walked away, then snatched up the Tabasco bottle. On her way to the customer, unwittingly her gaze locked with the sheriff’s. Sympathy darkened his blue eyes. He knew just as Herb and anyone else did that she had no experience. Well, she wasn’t doing this by choice. She’d been forced into this situation.

Her mother had announced that she’d found her daughter’s perfect match in a handsome, dark-haired male named Ryan Noble. Furthermore, Jessica’s grandfather had raved about Ryan, his Golden Boy, the company’s most promising associate, and Jessica assumed she’d never convince them that their choice wasn’t hers.

All her life she’d tried to please her mother and her grandfather, done everything they’d ever asked her to do. When she declared she wouldn’t marry Ryan, an argument had ensued.