***
Logan dug deep, pushing himself hard on his early morning run. He hadn’t slept and didn’t feel like facing the day. His breath came in short, sharp gasps as he ran along Main Street.
Usually a long run cleared his head, put his life into perspective. But it wasn’t working this morning. He felt drained and so damn tired.
He could see the glow of lights from inside Angel Wings Café. He glanced at his watch. Five-fifteen. Tess was on time.
She’d be in the kitchen, mixing cookie dough and making pie crusts. If the café was open, he might have called in and ordered a stack of pancakes. He would even have offered to make them.
He still couldn’t believe he’d made blueberry pancakes from scratch. He’d never been much of a cook, but he liked good food. Which was part of the reason he was a regular at Angel Wings Café. The other part wasn’t worth thinking about.
He slowed down as he ran past the café, then stopped completely.
Tess had strung a brown paper bag over the door handle. His name had been written across the front in big bold letters. He lifted the bag off the handle and looked inside. Two fresh blueberry muffins were sitting inside. The smell made his stomach rumble, made him remember that he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch at Pastor Steven’s home yesterday.
He wiped his face on the bottom of his T-shirt and wondered what he should do. He was sweaty and tired, not a good combination this early in the morning. But he hadn’t been much better on Saturday morning and Tess had still hauled him inside the café.
Before he changed his mind, he knocked loudly on the front door. Tess walked out of the kitchen and smiled. He waited for her to unlock the door. He’d say thank you, leave her to her baking and try to get past what was eating him up.
“You got the muffins?”
“Thanks. What are they for?”
Tess’ cheeks turned red. She looked too good for this early in the morning. Her blond hair was caught in a ponytail and soft strands had worked their way loose over her shoulders. She leaned against the door and looked up at him with a gleam in her eyes. “I appreciated your help yesterday. Especially after you saw everyone in my car.”
“Did you work out what you’re going to do next?”
“We’ve got a plan. Yesterday we visited a couple of stationery stores. Sally and Annie called all of the Thompsons and Browns in the phone directory. I’m going to visit the last few stationery stores this afternoon.”
He held back from asking her if she wanted company.
She turned toward a beeping noise coming from the kitchen. “My pies have finished cooking. You can come and talk to me out back for a couple of minutes, if you like?”
Logan looked down at his shirt.
“Yeah, I know. You’re hot and sweaty. I don’t care if you don’t.”
“I might have to invest in a can of men’s deodorant for your café.”
Tess smiled as they walked into the kitchen.
If he thought his stomach had rumbled when he’d smelled the muffins, he was practically drooling on the spot now. Tess pulled the pies out of the oven and they smelled amazing.
“Beef, mushroom, and onion. Do you want one?”
“I didn’t bring my wallet.”
“I don’t want your money.” She took a plate out of the pantry and slid one of the pies onto it. “Sit at the counter and tell me why you look as though you haven’t slept in a few days.”
He ran his hand over the three-day growth prickling his jaw. He would have disagreed with her, except she left the pie in front of him.
“Eat,” she said softly. “Besides, I’ve got more to do than convince you that my meat pies are amazing.” She turned back to the counter and added milk to the bowl in front of her.
He bit into his pie and sighed. It was good, so good that he could imagine coming back at lunchtime for another one. Tess kept mixing ingredients into the bowl, then flipped the dough onto a floured board.
It was quiet inside the kitchen. So quiet that he couldn’t imagine how Tess worked here on her own each morning. She grated some cheese and cut sun-dried tomatoes into little pieces. She worked in silence. He ate in silence. It was comfortable, relaxing, and from his perspective, so much better than running.
“Do you like working in a quiet kitchen?” he asked.
“It’s not usually this quiet.” She smiled as she sprinkled sliced bacon over the rolled out dough. “I’ve got my trusty boom box on the shelf over there.” She nodded at the wall behind him. A red radio, tape, and CD player filled a shelf. “I left it at grandpa’s house when I moved away from Bozeman. He never got rid of it, so I play it now. I’m still waiting for you to tell me why you haven’t had much sleep.”
He would have preferred to ask her why she’d left Bozeman, but she was looking at him as if she expected him to answer her question first. “I had things on my mind.”
“Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps.”
He’d never been comfortable talking about what had happened in Afghanistan. It brought back too many memories, a guilt so deep and sure that it tore him up each time he thought about what he’d done.
“I’d sooner talk about you.”
“I’m sure you would,” Tess mumbled.
Logan finished his pie and walked across to the stack of paper napkins in the pantry. He ignored the stubborn tilt to Tess’ chin. He’d seen that look too many times to pay it much attention now.
He wiped his mouth and scrunched the napkin in his hand. “Have I done something to make you dislike me, or do you have a problem with all reporters?”
Tess used a knife to cut the rolled dough into thick slices. “Can you pass me a baking sheet for the pinwheel scones?”
He looked behind him and reached for a metal tray. “For the last twelve months I’ve eaten here at least three times a week. Each time you go out of your way to ignore me. When you haven’t got a choice, the best I can hope for is cold indifference. What’s happening now?”
She put the scones in the oven and set the timer. “You’ve grown on me.”
Logan clutched his sweaty chest. “Be still my beating heart. Does this mean I can look forward to a civilized word here and there.”
Tess’ lips twitched. “It’s only temporary. Don’t get too comfortable.”
“So what did he do? Leave you at the altar for a news story? Print a story about how blueberry muffins weren’t so cool anymore?”
She walked to the fridge and took out a jar of what looked like stewed fruit. “If I told you why I don’t like reporters you’d probably sue the pants off me for defamation.” Tess opened a drawer and pulled out a spray-on deodorant. “It’s blue this time. Arms up.”
Logan made sure he scowled at her as she sprayed deodorant on top of his T-shirt. “How about a trade? You tell me why you don’t like reporters and I’ll answer one question for you.”
Her brow crinkled as she thought about what he’d said. “My answer to your question is complicated.”
“Most important things are.”
She lifted a ball of dough out of the fridge. “If I answer your question, you’ll do the same for me?”
Logan walked across to the sink and helped himself to a glass of water. He had a feeling both of their answers would be complicated. “I’ll truthfully answer any question you throw at me.”
Tess sprinkled flour onto the stainless steel counter and started rolling the dough. “I don’t like reporters because I’ve seen firsthand what they can do to a person’s life.”
She glanced at Logan. He kept his expression neutral.
“Three years ago my best friend died from a drug overdose. I found out her boyfriend was the person supplying her with drugs. I told him I was going to the police. Within days, he’d smeared my name across the newspapers with so many lies that I needed to leave New York. The reporters were like vultures.”
Tess kept her head bent over the pastry. She turned a pie pan upside down and cu
t around the edge. “Because of who he was everyone thought I was lying. I couldn’t prove anything to the police. Evie’s boyfriend walked away looking like a grieving hero.”
“Is that why you came to Bozeman?”
“My grandparents left me their home and this building when they died. I hadn’t been back since their funeral.” Tess looked at the shelf holding the boom box. “This was my soft place to fall.”
She undid the lid on the glass jar and poured the fruit into the crust. “That’s my dark past out in the open. And the only broken heart was mine.”
Logan waited for her to ask him about why he wasn’t sleeping, but she didn’t. Her hands moved quickly over the pie, adding a lattice top without hesitating once. With the pie in the oven and the pinwheel scones nearly finished, the kitchen smelled incredible.
“What do you want to ask me?” Logan watched her eyes land on his face, on the dark stubble on his jaw and the rings under his eyes.
“I’m not sure. I’ve got a feeling you won’t let me ask another question so easily, so I want to make this one count.” Tess walked across to a whiteboard attached to the wall. Someone had written a daily menu in big black letters. She drew a big smiley face beside the pinwheel scones and apple and blueberry pie. “One day I’m going to forget something, but it won’t be today.” The timer on the oven beeped and Tess took the scones out of the oven.
“When do you stop baking?” Logan watched as Tess started to pour more flour into a bowl.
“When I’ve made everything on my list. I’ll make some extra cookies for the after-school kids, then I’m done until we open.”
Logan glanced at his watch. “I need to leave soon. Otherwise, I’ll be late for work.”
“Do you want a ride home?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be okay. I just need to stretch again and then I’ll be off.”
Tess poured a cup of sugar into the bowl. “Why did you come to Bozeman?”
For a second Logan froze. Why he’d come here had nothing and everything to do with why he wasn’t sleeping. He didn’t know if he could summarize what had happened in a few short words. But he’d made a promise, so he’d try. “I was a war correspondent in Afghanistan. A suicide bomber destroyed a school in the village I was living in.”
He breathed in the smell of apple and blueberry pie, of bacon and sun-dried tomato. It pushed the smell of death and desperation away, focused him on the here and now and not what had happened half a world away.
He took his empty glass back to the sink and filled it with water. “The Army evacuated as many people as they could, but they couldn’t take everyone. We left behind…” His hand shook as he lifted the glass to his mouth and gulped back the water. “I went home to Seattle and quit my job. When the position at the Bozeman Chronicle was advertised, I applied for it and moved here.”
“You won three top awards.”
Logan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You did your homework.”
“Hard not to when you eat here so often.”
“That was my old life. I’m not that person anymore.” He left his glass on the counter and walked toward the door. “I’ll see you later.”
He glanced at Tess and saw the worry on her face, the questions buzzing around her brain.
“Wait.” She reached for the brown paper bag he’d left on the end of the counter. “You forgot your muffins.”
He walked back and took them out of her hands. “Thanks.”
She shrugged her shoulders and picked up a spatula. “They’re too good to forget.”
Logan took another deep breath before leaving. He wished all of his memories were too good to forget.
All of Me Page 12
