He couldn’t let himself consider any other reason now, either. He was an outcast, and, whether she wanted to believe it or not, if she stayed with him, she would be, too.
Arguing with her about that would be pointless, though. She’d never listened to him before, and, stubborn as she was, he had no reason to think she’d start now. Once he put the boat in the water, he could go back to his old routine and he would be out of her life. In the meantime, he’d just work a little harder, and learn to live with the fact that, inevitably, the day would come when he would walk away from something he’d truly hate to leave. Since his job would go faster working in the shop, and with help, he’d do what she wanted and have Louie work with him. The old guy was slow at times, a little forgetful, but he was worth his weight in advice.
The incident with Neil still had Damon concerned, though. He just hoped that Hannah was right. When they returned to reality the next morning and he asked if she’d be all right in the café, she seemed to think that Neil’s insinuations about her were dead already, since everyone had heard what the two of them had said to each other in the kitchen. That circumstance amused her since they now were lovers, but as she pointed out, gossips rarely got anything right, anyway. She was also of the opinion that a woman named Dorothy and a guy named Gun would keep the more outrageous versions of what happened between him and Neil in line.
As for what Neil had said about him scamming Louie, she had an opinion about that, too.
“I think he’s feeling defensive about your relationship with his uncle,” she explained later that night when she brought him a bowl of stew she saved for his supper. The café was closed, her apartment quiet except for the groans and creaks of the building settling in for the night
“Brenda was talking about how competitive Neil has always been,” she continued, sitting across from him at her small table, “and she thinks he did it because you embarrassed him. It doesn’t reflect well on him that his uncle gets along better with you than he does his own nephew. Saying what he did makes it look like you’ve duped a defenseless old man into liking you. It’s his way of saving face.”
Hannah had a few things she’d like to say to that face herself, but she didn’t want to burden Damon with those musings. He would never have asked what she thought of the incident if it hadn’t been weighing heavily on him already.
When his brooding expression indicated that he didn’t buy that bit of admittedly amateur psychology, she pushed the rolls toward him and moved on. “So how was Louie today? When I brought your lunch, he seemed kind of quiet.”
“He’s been sort of preoccupied lately.” He poked at a chunk of potato. “Neil’s trying to talk him into moving to a retirement center.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No,” he returned, echoing the flatness of her tone, “I’m not.”
“Is he considering it?”
“That, I don’t know.” Damon’s eyes met hers over the steam rising from the bowl. He no longer tried to hide the concern in the hard lines of his face. Only the magnitude of it. “He said he’s not leaving his garden, but it’s almost like the idea’s got him too depressed to put up much of an argument.”
That didn’t sound like Louie at all. “The retirement center on the north end of town is actually very nice. But I can’t picture him there.” She could hear him now, saying it was full of nothing but old people. “And I can’t picture him giving up his home without a fight. Not as feisty as he can be.”
“It doesn’t seem like something he’d do, does it.”
The flatness of his tone made his words a statement. Louie had his moments, but they had both come to know him as a rather spirited man who was decidedly set in his ways and who returned favors wherever he could. Because Hannah made him his favorite soup, he tended her herbs, something he enjoyed enormously. And after she’d sewn a dangling button back on his shirt cuff so he wouldn’t lose it, he brought her an African violet from his living room. They had also discovered a certain logic to his eccentricities.
The fishing vest he always wore did look a little strange. Especially when he’d worn it under his heavy winter coat. But Hannah didn’t consider that his odd way of dressing meant he was as daft as his nephew insisted he was. When Damon, blunt as he was, had asked him why he wore it, Louie had maintained that by the time a man was in his eighties, those with any smarts at all opted for practical over conventional. Aside from the tackle he carried for lake or ice fishing, he found the little pockets handy for carrying everything from his tobacco pouch to his medicine, and the loops were good for hanging things when he was gardening. It was sort of like wearing a purse, he’d claimed, except he’d look like an idiot doing that, so the vest worked for him just fine.
She still smiled every time she thought of how Damon had cut his finger on a hacksaw and Louie had whipped an adhesive strip out from one of those little pockets. But the smile that threatened now immediately faded.
With the boat nearly finished and his nephew talking of a retirement home, maybe that spirit was beginning to wane. She felt fairly certain that Damon hadn’t responded to the remark he’d made about meeting him on the dock this summer. Maybe not knowing he could look forward to that was contributing to Louie’s odd mood, too.
She mentioned that to Damon, quietly asking if he’d considered Louie’s offer, but he evaded her, saying he simply wasn’t letting himself think that far ahead. His focus was on finishing the boat.
No one was more aware of that than she was. Damon worked fourteen hours a day—six of those with Louie—to accomplish his goal. The only time she had to be alone with him was after she closed the café. Then he came up every evening to share the supper she’d set aside for them. Sometimes they ate in her comfortable apartment, sometimes in the café’s kitchen. But he never failed to thank her with a kiss that turned her knees to water, which inevitably meant he had to carry her up to her bed. And always, always, he left her arms to go home before they fell asleep, just so his truck was never behind her building overnight.
He was only thinking of her, she reminded herself each time he left—and would try very hard not to believe he was leaving because waking up next to her implied more of a commitment than he was willing to make. But rationalizing no longer worked the way it once had. She was painfully aware of the distance in him. Despite all that they shared, there was still a part of Damon she simply couldn’t reach. A part that seemed to draw farther away the closer he came to finishing his task.
That distance was never so great as the morning she went downstairs to see what he and Louie wanted for lunch, and found Damon preparing to pull the gleaming white boat out the open doors.
Damon was working alone. That was unusual in itself because she knew Louie had planned to launch the boat with him. But it was the fierceness of his movements as he jerked on a rope that warned her something was very wrong. He wasn’t just cinching the rope; the abrupt motions were a way to vent anger.
The boat and trailer were already hooked up to the black truck he’d backed up to the gaping doorway. She didn’t know what sort of equipment he had under the tarp at the front of the bed, but that was where he’d lashed the rope he yanked on. Apparently deciding it was tight enough, he finished off the free end in a knot, shoved his fingers through his hair, then visibly forced himself to slow down.
“Damon?”
The sound of her voice caused his head to jerk toward her. The rain had stopped for the moment, but a frigid spring wind blew in from the lake, fluttering his dark hair around his head. He wore no coat. No hat. Just khaki cargo pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt that made his chest look a mile wide.
“What’s wrong?”
His response was to glance from her and stalk the length of his beautifully restored boat, with its gleaming hardware, new propellers and bright blue Naiad painted on the stern. When he reached the empty boxes behind it, he started filling them with the paint and thinner cans he’d stacked there. His motions were deliberate, bu
t she could see him consciously slowing them as he brought himself under control.
He had the first box filled and started to reach for another when he stopped. All Hannah could think was that he’d needed to calm himself down before he spoke.
“I went to pick up Louie just like I usually do,” he finally said, his words terse and biting. “But he wasn’t there. Neil was waiting for me, though. With the sheriff.” He lifted his foreboding glance to her, the chill in his voice visible in his eyes. “It seems Louie didn’t get to spend his Sunday resting. Neil moved him to a retirement center. And I’m to stay away from him.”
A knot had formed in her stomach the instant he’d mentioned Neil. It had doubled itself on the word sheriff. “The retirement center isn’t that much farther than his house. They can tell you to stay away, but they can’t stop him from walking down here. He’s probably on his way right—”
“That’s not where he is.” His skin drew taut over the bones in his face, carving his angry features tighter. “They moved him to Brainerd. That’s over a hundred miles away.”
For a moment, Hannah didn’t know what to say. She could only stand in the chill of his glare, hoping this was someone’s idea of a sick joke. Until a couple of weeks ago, she couldn’t have imagined Louie caving in to Neil’s unnecessary suggestion. But she’d watched him grow more melancholy with every bit of progress Damon had made on his boat, and she could see where he might have finally allowed it. It had been as if he was watching his usefulness come to an end, and his dejection over that made him care about little else. She’d thought there would be plenty of time for Damon to see how important he’d become to him, and for Louie to see that he had friends in her and Brenda, too. She’d just never dreamed Neil would move him so far away.
“Did they say why?”
“I didn’t stick around to ask.”
She didn’t imagine that he would. Knowing Damon, he’d banked his rage beneath an exterior of pure ice, subjected both men to the glare that could cool a jalapeno and walked away. The answer seemed obvious, anyway.
“What can I do?”
She started to reach for him, only to find her hand stalling before she touched his arm. Whether consciously or not, Damon had retreated a step, denying her the contact, and himself the support. She could practically see him pulling into himself, locking his emotions down, cutting himself off.
Praying it was only his feelings about what had just happened that caused the withdrawal, she crossed her arms over the knots in her stomach and watched him turn from her.
“You can’t defend me on this one, Hannah.” He lifted the box he’d filled, set it aside and started another. “This one’s all mine. Tell me,” he said, silencing any disagreement she might have had, “how much more has your business dropped off?”
She didn’t trust the change of subject at all. Especially to that particular topic. But attempting to figure out how he’d tied what had happened with Louie to the decline in her business wasn’t a priority. At the moment, she didn’t trust him, either. His tightly spoken words held as much self-blame as anger, and that anger now seemed directed at himself.
She’d apparently hesitated a little too long.
“Forget it,” he muttered, heading for the door with a box. “You’ll just feed me excuses. I’ll ask Brenda.”
That was obviously what he intended to do, too. He walked away before she could say another word, not that he’d left her anything to say. And when he returned that evening after launching the Naiad and bringing her around to dock, he headed straight up the stairs to the kitchen. Hannah heard him coming up the stairwell even as Brenda was coming through the swinging door.
Brenda didn’t work on Mondays. But that was the day she dropped her nieces off at the dance studio for her sister, then came to the café to kill the time waiting for them. Since business was slower than a geriatric snail on Monday evening, Hannah enjoyed the company.
Tonight, however, Brenda didn’t appear at all her usual, smiling self. Between the oddly worried expression on her face when she saw the man who’d just opened the stairwell door, and the tension so apparent in Damon, Hannah didn’t know which direction to head, or who to greet first.
Damon saved her having to decide. Framed by the doorway, he gave a tight nod toward the service window.
“Is there anybody out there?” he asked Brenda, since she’d just come through.
She shook her head, curls bouncing. “No. But listen, you guys, did you know Neil moved Mr. Lindstrom to Brainerd?”
Hannah cut a cautious glance toward Damon. “We heard.”
“Did you know he’s talking about having a competency hearing so he can take over his affairs?”
“What?”
The thunder in Damon’s voice set Brenda back a step. The cold fury in his eyes made her take one more.
“Alice over at the dance studio just told me,” she said, clearly distressed by the news herself. “One of the Lindstrom girls takes dance over there, and she’s telling her friends that her dad had to hire an attorney because their Uncle Louie is demented.”
Hannah’s eyes had fastened on the broad back disappearing from the doorway. “Where are you going?” she called, darting across the polished beige linoleum.
Damon’s low, heated rasp rose from the stairwell. “This isn’t about anybody being demented.”
“Damon,” Hannah called, a little frantic when he didn’t slow his stride. “Where?”
“To have a little talk with Neil.”
“There’s a pastor selection meeting at the church,” Brenda advised over Hannah’s shoulder. “I saw his car over there.”
“Brenda!” The glare Hannah aimed at her friend was diluted considerably by apprehension. “You didn’t have to tell him that.”
With a helpless gesture, Brenda murmured a quiet “Sorry,” then jumped at the slam of the stairwell door.
Seconds later, a second, more muffled report sounded as the entry door of the shop was subjected to Damon’s exit.
Apprehension turned to pure worry as Hannah glanced back to Brenda. She didn’t know whether to lock up first or just leave.
Brenda was already ahead of her. Grabbing Hannah’s coat and pocketbook from her office, she pushed them into her hands, gave her a shove toward the door and simply said, “Go.”
Chapter Eleven
The members of the pastor selection committee were just taking their seats when Damon strode down the brightly lit hall of the church basement. Over the roar of blood pounding in his temples, he could hear the scrape of chairs, the murmur of conversation and a sharp bark of laughter.
Straining at the reins of self-control, he stopped in the open doorway. There had to be fifty people in the room, many of them the town’s more prominent movers and shakers. The knot of people near a wall of colorful children’s drawings included a face or two that looked familiar. The one he recognized for certain was Hannah’s old cook. Caught midsentence when she noticed him, the big woman with the coiled braids went dead silent.
By the time his glance sliced past the Feldsons, Ernie Pederson and the back of Sheriff Jansson’s head, the noise level in the room had subsided considerably. When his eyes finally locked on Neil chatting amiably with a couple in the front of the room, the sandy-haired ex-athlete was the only person still talking.
Even Neil finally shut up when he realized the people he spoke with were no longer looking at him. There wasn’t a soul in the place whose attention wasn’t focused on the man looming in the doorway. Damon’s face was as impassive as rock. It was the leashed fury coiled in his body that had everyone glancing around so uneasily.
Neil appeared to suffer a brief moment of distress himself—just before he slapped on a bored expression that might have worked had the veins in his forehead not suddenly popped out.
“We’re having a meeting here, Jackson.”
Eight months ago, Damon would never have exposed himself to such potential for trouble. The thought wouldn’t eve
n have occurred to him. But as often as Hannah had stuck up for her principles, for him, the least he could do was stick up for his old friend.
Friend, he thought, the muscle in his jaw jerking. Before he’d met Hannah, he’d never even had one. And look what he’d done to him.
“This won’t take long,” he assured Neil, his voice tight with control. “Come out here for a minute.”
Neil was not a fool. The idea of stepping out into the hall, alone with two hundred pounds of banked wrath, was not only preposterous, it was suicidal. Though the movement was barely perceptible, he edged toward the man rising importantly from an end chair. Sheriff Jansson had turned around and was tucking the back of his plaid sport shirt into his slacks, his chest out and his expression a mix of resignation and dislike.
“We don’t have time for this,” the sheriff informed Damon, as determined to be rid of this particular intruder as he was to keep the peace. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I can’t have you disrupting—”
“The problem is what he’s done to an innocent old man,” Damon shot back. “I know you hate my guts, Sheriff, but if you’re going along with him about Louie just to get back at me, then you’re as big a hypocrite as he is. What he’s doing to his uncle is downright criminal.”
“Wait a minute,” Neil sputtered, his skin turning red.
The sheriffs arm barred Neil’s chest, his eyes fixed on Damon. He looked a tad pink himself. “You be careful who you accuse, Jackson. Neil moved his uncle for the man’s own good. We all know Louie is old, and his mind and his judgment aren’t what they used to be. Neil did what any of us would do to see that an elderly relative isn’t taken advantage of.”
“By his judgment, I assume you mean his association with me.”
“It was certainly a consideration,” Neil blustered, pushing the sheriff’s arm away.
Fueled by the same sense of inequity that had always haunted him, Damon stalked forward. It was one thing to swallow prejudice when it was aimed at him. He knew defending himself was so much wasted energy. But when bias against him hurt someone else, no way would he let it pass.
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