by E V Lind
I've seen girls get like that in town when they've seen a handsome young man go by and I always thought them unbelievably foolish. Not anymore. I know now why they feel that way, what happens inside your heart when a man touches a woman like that. It can be a beautiful thing, touch. It arouses such feelings in me and I want to touch him again. Touch more of him. Touch all of him.
I am a bad child. A wanton. The thing Mamma always warned me against and the thing she has tried to beat out of me almost all my life. How is it that she could see this imperfection in me and fight against it so hard for so long and yet it still rears its ugly head? Ugly? I am so confused. Always confused. Ugly, to me, is bad things done by bad people. Jonathon Jones is not a bad man. He's handsome and he's kind and is held in the highest regard by everyone around here. So, what does that make me?
I am too fearful to find out and yet so painfully curious at the same time.
Mamma attended dinner in her special wheeled chair and was none too pleased to see us seated at the table. She glared at me the whole evening—daring me to put a foot wrong. I did my best, remembering my manners and minding Aggie's as well, but I know that somehow, I will have displeased her. No doubt, when she is well enough to return home, I will discover just how much.
TWENTY-ONE
Beth entered the café via the back door, using the numbered code on the special lock as she’d been instructed by Mary-Ann last night.
“Good to see you back,” commented the short order cook as he slid a tray of muffins into the industrial oven. “You’re looking better.”
Beth ducked her head and murmured her thanks.
“Here.” He thrust a clean apron and a notepad and pen in her direction. “You better have neat handwriting. Last woman’s looked like a drunken damn spider crawling across the page.”
“I’ll do my best,” Beth promised and wrapped the apron around her.
“You’ll have to tie your hair up, love,” came another voice from behind her and Beth recognized the older woman entering the kitchen as one of the waitresses who’d worked the other day when she’d been here. “Have you got a hair tie?”
“I...uh, no. I don’t. I didn’t think...”
“It’s okay, I always carry spares.” The woman dug into her pocket and pulled out a band and passed it to Beth. “Staff washroom is through there,” she said with a nod of her head in the direction toward Mary-Ann’s office. “I’m Val, by the way, and this surly bastard is Norris. His bark is worse than his bite.”
“And you’d know,” Norris muttered as he knocked fresh loaves of bread out their pans and stacked them up on wooden shelves to one side of the kitchen.
Beth scurried to the bathroom. Realistically she knew that the banter between Val and Norris was just that, banter, but even so, the thinly veiled animosity between the two set her stomach on edge. It reminded her all too much of Dan’s words to her. Of how he could make a compliment sound like an insult. Of how praise could sound like a threat. She shuddered and tried to push the memory from her mind.
What was she meant to be doing? That’s right. Hair.
In the washroom she eyed her reflection with trepidation. She hated looking at herself now. Once, she’d been, not vain exactly, but certainly proud of her appearance. There’d be no minimizing the scars once her hair was tied back off her face.
The urge to turn tail and leave the café welled inside her. She’d been stupid to think this would work. That she could stop here in Riverbend and be forgettable. Right this instant, she wanted nothing more than to run and keep running. Anything was better than facing this, she thought, as she met her worried hazel eyes in the mirror.
“You okay in there?” Val called from the other side of the door. “First customer’s arrived. Your table.”
“I’ll be just a minute.” Beth took in a deep breath and pulled her hair back and turned away before she could see the evidence of Dan’s hatred again.
“Good girl, that looks better. We can see that pretty face of yours,” Val said with a smile.
Couldn’t she see the scars? Didn’t they revolt the other woman as they revolted her? Apparently not, she discovered, as Val quickly explained the layout of the tables and who serviced which area then pushed a coffee pot into Beth’s hands and shoved her in the direction of the dining room.
Before long Beth was so busy that she couldn’t even think about the marks on her face and she’d become adept at approaching tables so that her scars were not the first thing people saw. And, if they noticed anything, no one said a word. When things finally settled down a little, and she was about to take a break, she felt a prickle of awareness run the length of her spine. She didn’t turn straight away, instead she instinctively analyzed the feeling. Was it a threat? Her senses told her otherwise and she was learning to trust them. She turned. Ryan Jones. She should have known.
He’d taken a seat at one of her tables and was studying the cardboard menu propped between the condiments on the table, even though she knew he probably knew the contents of the menu like he knew every line and bristle on that handsome face of his. Handsome? The thought shocked her. She didn’t want to notice that kind of thing. Especially not about him.
“Boss’s son is waiting, Beth,” Val said with a nudge of her hip.
“Can you take care of him?” Beth asked without thinking.
“What’s the matter? You afraid of him?” Val teased and gave Beth a salacious wink. “You go on and look after him. I’m sure he’d rather see your pretty face than my wrinkled old mug any day of the week.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Norris muttered from the server hatch.
“That’s enough out of you, old man,” Val snapped back and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen, leaving Beth to do the job she’d been hired for.
A few seconds later, Beth heard Val arguing with Norris about one thing or another. Ryan chose that moment to look up. His eyes met hers instantly and Beth felt rooted to the spot. He had secrets behind that gaze. Well, he could keep ’em, she reminded herself. He wasn’t the sharing kind and she wasn’t interested, she reminded herself. She grabbed a fresh coffee pot and walked toward him.
“Are you ready to order?”
“How’s it going?” Ryan asked, ignoring her question.
“Well, so far I haven’t quite figured out the combination to the safe and, since I haven’t been working the register, your mother’s takings for the morning are safe—but I’m sure I’ll get around to one or the other eventually. Maybe even both.”
He grinned at her acerbic response and she felt the effect of it all the way down to her toes. No. No. No, she told herself. You cannot be attracted to him. You cannot be attracted to anyone—especially not someone whose moods swing from angry and accusing to laughingly friendly and helpful in the blink of an eye.
“Good to see you found a bit of spunk when you got up this morning,” he drawled.
Beth didn’t reply. But even though she doubted he’d strike her for her impudence the way Dan would have, she took a step back—beyond the reach of those broad, work-roughened hands of his.
“Hey, it’s a good thing, Beth,” Ryan reassured her, a frown pulling his dark brows together in a line. “Don’t worry about it. Even I can tell when a person is kidding. You were kidding, right?”
“Your order?” she asked with her pen poised and her eyes firmly fixed on the notepad.
“The breakfast special, thanks. And keep the coffee coming.”
She didn’t say a word, just poured his coffee and went to the window to place his order. As she crossed the floor she felt her back burn, as if Ryan watched her take every step. Val came out of the kitchen looking a little rumpled and her lipstick slightly smeared. Beth turned her face away. Not her business, although it did seem a bit odd that if she and Norris were constantly sparring, why did Val look as if they’d been doing a great deal more than that. Again, not her business.
Val sidled up next to her. “Mary-Ann tells me you’
re staying at the MacDonald place.”
Beth nodded.
“Seen any ghosts yet?” Val asked then laughed loudly at her question before leaning in a little closer. “They say the place is haunted, don’t you know?”
Beth held herself rigidly still. Val’s scent flowed around her, wrapping her up in a suffocating cloud of coffee, perfume and cigarettes.
“I guess not, huh?” Val continued, oblivious to Beth’s discomfort, and stepped away. “Sad business that. Even after all these years, no one knows what happened to Elizabeth MacDonald. Some say she ran away to get free of that controlling mother of hers. Others said her mother killed her and hid her body. As if you’d get away with something like that in a town like this. You think everyone knows everyone else’s business now? It was way worse back then. Old man Tyler’s cow couldn’t fart without the neighbors gossiping about it.”
Again, Val roared with laughter.
“Order up,” Norris called at the hatch.
Beth didn’t think she’d ever be relieved to have to take something to Ryan but at least it would give her some respite from Val’s storytelling. She knew that deep down the woman didn’t mean any harm by it, but then she didn’t know Beth’s past, or the fact that she carried more than enough of her own trouble to be worried by a few tall tales. She scooped the coffee pot off the warmer and picked up Ryan’s plate and headed to his table.
“Here you are,” she said, sliding the plate in front of him and then topping off his coffee cup. “Was there anything else?”
“This’ll do, thanks.”
She turned to go but Ryan snagged her wrist between loose fingers.
“By the way,” he said, letting her go just as easily. “Don’t pay Val any mind. She doesn’t mean any harm by it.”
“I don’t,” she replied coolly, desperately trying to ignore the fact that although he’d let her go, she could still feel the imprint of his fingers on her skin—and not in a bad way.
“Good. It is true that Elizabeth MacDonald went missing but the public consensus is that she ran away from home when her sweetheart, my grandfather, was reported MIA in the Pacific during World War Two. At the end of the war, he came home—she didn’t. So much for love, huh?”
“People run away for all sorts of reasons. Maybe she didn’t have a choice,” Beth surprised herself by saying.
What did it matter to her anyway? It wasn’t as if she believed in ghosts. It was the people you knew who could be so much more dangerous. Even people like Ryan Jones who, on the surface, looked like a good ol’ farm boy from a small town and a good family had an edge about him that constantly had Beth in a state of high alert.
“Yeah, maybe she didn’t. Whatever—don’t let it worry you.”
“I won’t.”
Another couple came into the café. Tourists by the look of them, Beth thought taking in their clothing and the fancy camera slung around the man’s neck.
“Oh, isn’t this quaint?” his wife exclaimed as they took a table in Val’s section near the windows overlooking the river. “Get some photos, Herb.”
Herb dutifully raised his camera and aimed it almost directly at Beth. Startled, she ducked her head and hunched her shoulders and all but scuttled to the kitchen to get away from the probing lens before she could accidentally be included in any of the new-comers’ shots. She didn’t want her face turning up anywhere unexpected, even if these people probably had no connection to Dan in any way or form. She couldn’t take the risk.
*
Ryan watched her go. She had a cute butt, he thought with surprise—both that he’d noticed it and that hers was so sweetly rounded. His cock twitched and he quickly turned his eyes away from her. He already knew she wasn’t the kind of woman who would just have a sweet roll in the hay and then walk away. And he wasn’t interested in her that way anyway.
Liar, his conscience whispered back.
His cock twitched again. Shit, it had been a while. He knew that all he needed to rid himself of this inconvenient reaction was a long, hot shower and a vigorous workout with mother palm and her five daughters, but since he’d returned home he’d denied himself even that pleasure. His gaze returned to where Beth moved around the dining room clearing tables.
Ryan pondered her reaction to the guests taking pictures inside the café. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that she was hiding, but her cut and run just now made him all the more curious as to why. Her reaction had put his spidey senses on alert, making him scan the café over again. Identifying no threat, he shrugged and applied himself to Norris’s most excellent breakfast. The man might be ugly as sin and probably had warrants for his arrest somewhere, but he certainly could cook.
As he ate, Ryan thought again about Beth and the house, and about the ghost stories that abounded in Riverbend. The town went back a couple hundred years and had always enjoyed a thriving dairy industry.
While Riverbend wasn’t quite the boomtown it once was, it still ticked along nicely and tourism brought its fair share of dollars into the town coffers. The MacDonald place probably wasn’t the only one that had secrets, but it was the only one in recent memory. It wasn’t surprising that some folk still talked of Elizabeth MacDonald’s disappearance.
Ryan wiped up some runny egg yolk with a slice of his mom’s fresh, baked bread. Norris might be the king of the grill but his mom’s baking beat everyone else’s hands down. He could always tell when she’d been busy at the ovens.
His thoughts U-turned back to Val’s teasing of Beth and the mystery surrounding Elizabeth MacDonald. The only person who might still know the truth about Elizabeth would be her sister, Aggie—but then Aggie was so far gone in her mind that nothing that came out of her mouth could be relied upon to be truth anymore. As long as Ryan had known her, and to him she’d always been an old woman, she’d been vague and prone to telling the stories that roamed through the recesses of her mind, each one more fantastical than the last. In fact, if Aggie’s rambling was to be believed, her mother had taken a frying pan to the back of her father’s head and buried him right there under the shed that still stood on the property.
Ridiculous, really. He’d given her stories no more thought than anyone else had. For as long as anyone could remember, and there were a few old-timers who still did, Aggie had lived inside a very vivid imagination and outside of a normal world.
He pushed his chair away from the table and threw down some bills to cover his food and Beth’s tip, then headed for the door. Sharp pain shot from his hip, making him stagger and curse out loud just as Beth came through the kitchen’s swing door.
“Are you okay?” she said, coming quickly to his side.
As if her slight figure could support his weight, he thought disparagingly. “I’m fine!” he snapped grabbing onto the back of a chair to steady himself, then felt bad as she flinched at his tone. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s an old injury. Just still catches me by surprise now and then.”
She backed off. “Okay, if you’re sure about that. You’ve gone really pale.”
That was probably because he was fighting to keep his breakfast down as a new wave of pain arrowed down his leg.
“I’m fine,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Norris!” Beth called out to the cook.
“I don’t need any help,” Ryan insisted, even as beads of sweat rose on his forehead. “Just need a minute.”
“It’s either him or I call Mary-Ann to come downstairs,” Beth said, her voice surprisingly firm.
She met his gaze with a stubbornness he wouldn’t have guessed she was capable of. “Fine, Norris it is then.”
“What is it?” growled the short order cook, coming out of the kitchen and wiping his hands on the tail of his apron.
Beth inclined her head in Ryan’s direction. “Mr. Stubborn here needs help getting to his truck.”
“Sure,” Norris said and positioned his shoulder under Ryan’s to support him. “Those shrapnel wounds still troubling you, mate?�
��
Ryan gave the man a short nod and glared at him, daring him to offer sympathy when none was wanted. “I just need to get home.”
“Can you drive?” Beth asked, propping him up on the other side.
“Do teddy bears have fluffy balls,” Ryan said through gritted teeth as Beth lifted his arm and placed it over her slender shoulder.
“Ryan?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “I can drive. Okay?”
She might be tiny, but she held firm beneath half his weight. Just as well, he thought, because he was about to pass out. He dragged in a breath and willed his vision to clear. Finally, the spots in front of his eyes faded and with Norris’s and Beth’s help, he got outside to his truck.
“Thanks, you guys can get back to work now. You wouldn’t want Ma to dock your pay.”
“Dock me, that’ll be the day,” Norris snorted, but did as he’d been told and went back inside.
Beth, however, stayed on the sidewalk watching him. “Are you really all right to drive? It’s a stick shift, isn’t it?”
The pain was beginning to ease and Ryan knew that once he got home and took the heavy-duty painkiller his specialist had prescribed him that it would go altogether. Until the next time.
“I’ll be fine.”
Ryan pulled himself to his full height and stared her down. She met his gaze for about two seconds before dropping her eyes to the gutter.
“Good. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself or anything,” she muttered lamely.
“How sweet of you to care,” he drawled.
She flinched at his tone. “Mary-Ann cares, that’s the only reason why I asked. You know she’d skin us alive for letting you go if you weren’t okay.”
