Her grandmother waited expectantly.
“Griff and I will be working at the bakery tomorrow so you can have the day off.”
“I don’t need a day off,” Sadie told her. “I like baking.”
“Trust me, Grandma, you need a day off.”
In the lantern light, Sadie’s face looked even older than her seventy years and very wise. “I see.”
“See what?” Reba asked.
“I’ll explain later,” Sadie told her, then turned back to Tessa. “This is going to backfire in your face, sugar.”
“I won’t let it,” Tessa said, but in her heart, she was more than a little worried that her grandmother was right.
Chapter Five
Griff stood by Tessa, who was bent over a long work-table in the middle of the kitchen of the Shady Shoppe, expertly folding squares of pastry dough that were half stuffed with peach goo. Not goo. Filling—that was what she’d said. Oh hell. Even if he’d wanted to learn about making little pies—which he didn’t—concentrating on what she was showing him was impossible. He was too busy watching the way her fingers danced over the pastries as she pressed the dough into place and made fancy scallops along the edge, and thinking about how her fingers had danced the same way over him when they’d made love—
“Ready to try making a pie?” Tessa asked, lifting hopeful, jewel-blue eyes to gaze at him.
He shook his head.
Tessa pursed her lips in disappointment as she bent over and started working on the second row of pies. Finally her fingers paused as she flexed her hands and gazed up at him. He was so quiet, and she had to know what he was thinking—if all this reminding him of what he had run from was making him want to run again. “I guess you find this all kind of boring, huh?”
“‘Kind of’ doesn’t half cover it,” he said, giving her a wicked grin.
“Smart aleck.” She dipped her fingers in flour and flicked them, sending a white cloud of powder over his shirt, which he had refused to cover with an apron. “It might not be so bad if you got into the spirit of it.”
“Okay, I’ll get into the spirit of it.” He dipped both hands into the flour, and she stepped back, her eyes narrowing. But instead of showering her with flour, he dusted his hands, grinned and stepped over to her mixing bowl where she had cookie dough. Taking out a couple of tablespoons full, he quickly rolled the dough into one miniature ball, then another, which he put on top of the first, and then a last on top of that. Some confectioner’s sugar, two chocolate chips for eyes, a few red sprinkles artfully applied for a mouth, and he turned to her with a triumphant grin.
“A snowman.”
She couldn’t stop the smile that covered her lips.
He tried to transfer it to the baking sheet, but the head went askew, giving it a cocky look.
“A snowman with an attitude,” he added.
For precious seconds, she laughed, and so did he. She’d forgotten how much fun being around Griff could be. She’d forgotten that the same spontaneity and love of life that had taken him away from her had been exactly what had attracted her to him in the first place.
She’d forgotten how wonderful it had been to kiss him.
Realizing this, she took a deep breath. “I need to finish the pies. Go wash the tables off, would you?”
She’d refused to let him up front where the customers sat the whole hour and a half they’d been working there, so Griff figured he must have just flustered her. For the life of him he didn’t know how, but that was all right since he wanted to be where he could be approached by the e-mailer.
Taking the spray cleanser bottle and a roll of paper towels, he headed out into the small dining area. There was only one customer, and she smiled at him and went back to sipping her coffee from the white mugs the shop used, which were heavy enough to be classified as lethal weapons. They were the same mugs he remembered seeing on tables when he’d come here on Sunday mornings with his mom to pick up doughnuts. He had changed, Tessa had changed, but this area was never going to change. He’d known it even when he was ten, and that knowledge had felt like it was choking him around the neck for some reason.
Funny, it wasn’t bothering him now. In fact, the familiarity was nice.
Whistling, he starting wiping down the tables, bringing himself closer to the customer to see if she might be the one to approach him, but she ignored him. After she left, he headed over to her table to collect her dishes and found a dollar under the small plate.
“Didn’t she pay you already?” he asked Tessa, holding up the dollar.
Tessa took a quick look through the kitchen door and then went right back to working on her pies. “That’s the tip.”
“Pretty generous for less than a three dollar order.”
“People love Sadie.” That should be obvious, her tone said. “And they know they get a lot for their money here.”
Griff brought the dishes around back. “That’s why those pies are mostly peaches and very little goo.”
“Syrup,” she corrected without looking at him. “Sadie doesn’t worry about profit. She’s got the most generous heart in the world. I’ll never leave her.”
“You mean like I left my family? It isn’t wrong to want to break away, Tessa.”
“No, it isn’t, anymore than it’s wrong to want to stay with people you love. But somewhere along the way, you started looking at your family as something to be left, instead of something to be loved. And that was the wrong part.”
He guessed she was right. But he had no idea how to fix the gulf between his parents and brother and himself, even though it would be nice. They had been apart for too long, he still had his dreams, and they’d all become nothing more than polite strangers.
The door opened, pulling him from his thoughts and causing Tessa to glance up and over the dividing section. “Oh, glory. Sadie’s coffee club is here.” The same crowd of retirees who had shown up at Casey’s Kitchen the previous afternoon filed in, one by one, until six men seemed to fill the small front room.
“You think they’re back to spy on us?” he teased.
She shook her head, her fingers flying over the little pies. “They always come in to have midmorning coffee. They’re just a trifle early today.”
“I’ll handle them.” Grinning at his opportunity to thwart Tessa’s plans to keep him from talking to anyone, he launched himself through the open door.
“Griff—”
He glanced over his shoulder.
“Sure you can handle taking orders, Lieutenant?” The corners of her small mouth rose ever so slightly.
“After all my practice at work, piece of cake,” he replied. She giggled. He stood where he was, watching her, enjoying the way her face lit up.
“You fixin’ to take root there, Lieutenant, or get us some coffee?” Jasper called.
The last thing Griff wanted to do was take root anywhere. He grabbed the full coffeepot from the main counter and began filling mugs. When he was done, he put the pot back, grabbed the order pad and pencil from where Tessa had left them on the counter and stood next to the table, waiting for their orders.
“What happened to the cream and sugar?” one of the men asked.
Cream and sugar. Of course. Griff glanced up the countertop and spotted a large divided dish that held little packets of sugar and creamers. He put that in the middle of the table and stepped back, once again holding up his order pad. The men stared back at him.
“Spoons?” one finally asked.
Dang. This job wasn’t as easy as Tessa made it look. Trudging back into the kitchen, he grabbed a handful of silverware out of a drawer, which, seconds later, he piled on the table.
“Help yourself.” He got the order pad back out and stared around at the circle of open mouths, recognizing most of the faces as men he’d known forever. All except one. “Look, you all know this isn’t my regular job.”
“Good thing,” Jasper interjected. The others snickered.
“I’m just helping o
ut here so Sadie can have a day off.”
“Where is she today?” the only stranger to Griff, a distinguished-looking man seated next to Jasper, asked. Griff thought he seemed a little out of place among the dungareed men in his slacks and pullover sports shirt.
“I think she was heading to the boats in Bossier.” “The boats” was verbal shorthand for the riverboat casinos on the Red River. “She’ll be back tomorrow.”
“So you’re helping her out by trying to close her down?” Jasper asked, getting another round of laughter from the men, all except the one who had asked about Sadie.
“As if y’all would stop coming and risk breaking Sadie’s heart,” Tessa said from behind Griff. He turned, and she reached out and gently plucked the order pad and pencil from his fingers. “I’ll take the orders if you’ll go in the back. Please go in the back.”
“But you need help.”
“I know,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. “Maybe I should call Sadie home.”
He saw her eyes were twinkling, and she was barely holding back a grin.
“I guess I’m fired, huh? Please fire me,” he said, mimicking her tone.
“No…” she said, and then her eyes got big as he grinned from ear to ear and started toward the door. “Griff, where are you going?”
“To pick up Jeb and go fishing,” he said.
“You are not!” Throwing down the pad and pencil on the nearest table, she raced after him, catching the door just as he went through it. Outside, she caught his arm, laughing.
“Please come back, Griff. I promise, I’ll let you be mean to the customers.”
“You think that was funny, huh?”
“You did us a favor. After the likes of you, they’ve learned what good service is. I’ll bet even Jasper starts tipping.”
He laughed. She bit back her own laughter and stared up at him, trying to be serious. “You can’t leave. I want to go fishing with you, and I can’t close until one.”
“It’s safe to leave me alone with Jeb, Tessa,” he said. “I won’t make any promises to him about staying. I’ll even try not to get too fond of him.”
The air around them became deadly serious. Tessa swallowed over a lump in her throat and let go of his arm. This was all wrong, not the way it should be. Jeb should be Griff’s number one fan.
“Oh, Griff, I am so sorry,” she whispered, not realizing what she had said until the words were out and Griff’s stare had deepened into puzzlement.
“About what?”
For a few seconds, she hesitated. She couldn’t tell him the truth, so she searched her mind desperately for something else she could be sorry about. As she did, she realized there was a lot where Griff was concerned.
“I’m sorry things turned out this way for you and your family. I hope you can get close to them again.”
“Doesn’t seem likely. Just like with you, there’s too much water gone under that bridge.”
“I’m sorry about that, too,” she admitted, stepping back, her heart clenching with sympathy. She couldn’t fix what had happened between her and him—there would be no point in it anyway. They were too different still, and there was her secret that had to be kept from Griff at all cost. But she knew then, that in some way, in addition to keeping him away from whoever might have brought him here to begin with, she had to help him to leave town with family ties that were at least repaired, if not close. She didn’t know how yet—she would need to talk to Clay about it. Perhaps he knew a way. “Very sorry,” she said again.
“Yeah, so am I. People always say you can’t go home again, and I guess that’s true.” He shrugged as though he didn’t care, but Tessa knew the expression on his face, and the longing in his eyes.
He did care. He cared a lot.
The whole afternoon he was fishing with Jeb and Tessa, Griff tried to figure out what was on Tessa’s mind. At one point, he thought he’d caught her gazing intently at him and Jeb when he’d leaned down to help the child with his hook, but then she’d walked over and picked up her purse as if she’d really been looking for that. Another time she had walked up to them as they were talking about Jeb’s school, and sat down in the middle, as though she were trying to keep them separate, which was silly, since she’d already heard him tell Jeb he was leaving, probably after his parents’ get-together picnic on Saturday. The truth be told, she was starting to get under his skin, coming in between him and his nephew, and he didn’t irritate easily. Before he could say something he would regret, he decided it was time for them to go fill up his gas tank at the station on Highway 9 and then head home.
The three of them piled into his truck, since Tessa had left her car at home, where she’d gone after work to change into the tight blue-jean shorts and halter top she was wearing. As if watching her walk around in that outfit wasn’t bad enough, Jeb insisted he sit by the window, which put Tessa in the middle—again—next to Griff, with her long, already tanned legs right there within reach. He swallowed and thanked God he didn’t have a stick shift and a smaller truck. Otherwise he would have touched her every time he switched gears.
After he got gasoline, she was amazingly silent as Jeb chattered on, pointing out the new Athens post office, the church where he’d attended Vacation Bible School, and that the road crew had fixed the steep dropoff on the other side of the railroad tracks since the last time he’d been home.
“Good thing,” Griff said as an eighteen-wheeler hauling a double-wide trailer coming in the other direction practically filled the two-lane road, and he had to drive on the grassy part to clear it.
Jeb watched the huge rig, his eyes wide, and said, “I’m going to drive trucks when I grow up!”
“You can’t,” Tessa said. Griff felt her shoulder touch his as she took a deep breath. He also glanced over and saw Jeb had leaned a bit forward and was frowning at them both.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I’d miss you too much,” she told him. “Besides, you said you were going to stay right here and be a fireman not two weeks ago, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” Jeb said, and then fell quiet.
Griff was torn. On one hand, he could understand why, once Tessa was married to Clay, she would be reluctant to let go of her new little family because of her past. He could even sympathize. On the other, it seemed as though Jeb was starting to see the wonders of the world and what he could become, a pilot or a truck driver, and all he was hearing was “Tessa wouldn’t like it.”
He knew what that was like. No one had ever respected his dream, either, when he was young. His parents had told him they doubted they could afford to help him with college, and that they hoped both he and Clay would stay home after high school and help with the farm they would inherit. As he’d grown older and Clay had married and moved out on his own, finally becoming a police officer in Dallas for a while, they’d started laying on the guilt for him to give up his dream and stick around. Just like Clay, the day before, and Tessa, now, were laying on Jeb’s shoulders.
“You can be a truck driver or a pilot, like you mentioned yesterday, Jeb,” Griff said. Immediately Tessa turned to stare up at him, looking as if he’d betrayed her. He gazed back to the road and signaled for the turn down the long lane that led to the house Tessa shared with Sadie, and tried to fix things a bit. “Or you can be a cop, like your dad, or a farmer, like your grandad.”
Tessa let out a faint sound of protest. So much for making her happy, Griff thought.
Jeb’s face lit up with a big grin. Griff was glad Jeb couldn’t see Tessa’s scowl. He continued, “The only thing to remember is whatever you decide you want to do with your life—do it with your whole heart. You promise that?”
“Sure!” Jeb said, leaning back against his seat.
Parking by the house, Griff saw a car that hadn’t been there earlier, along with a small pickup truck. “I think Sadie’s back.”
“Good,” Tessa said. “Jeb, you can scoot inside and ask Miss Sadie for a drink, okay? I want to talk to
Griff.”
With typical six-year-old energy, Jeb opened the truck door and skedaddled around front to the porch. Tessa climbed out next, shutting the door and rounding the truck to open Griff’s.
“Boy, that look hasn’t changed in the last seven or so years,” he said. He couldn’t remember when she’d last cared enough about him to be this angry.
“Out.”
“Couldn’t we fight in here where it’s cooler?” he asked.
Her head tilted sideways. “Surely the heat isn’t going to bother you when you’ve been out in it all afternoon.”
“That was just a little sunshine. You look like you’re fixing to roast me in your grandma’s double-decker barbecue pit with the gas turned up high.”
“If you get too worried about a little heat, Griff, you could leave town. You’re really good at that.”
He got out. With a gentle push on his door, he walked over to Sadie’s cushioned, green-and-white striped swing, sat down under the awning and stared at Tessa as she started to walk up to him.
“You’ve been ready to bite all afternoon, Tessa. Go ahead.”
That stopped her cold. “I have not.”
“Uncharacteristic quietness, long stares—I figure I must have done something wrong this morning. Go ahead. Tell me what it was.”
Tessa gazed at the woods that bordered the yard. She had been watching him, but anger hadn’t anything to do with why. Oh gosh. When she’d seen him with Jeb, the way they’d interacted, she’d started thinking about what could never be. The three of them together. He, Jeb’s dad, and she, Jeb’s mom—and Griff’s wife—living with their son.
But she had been thinking about the impossible. Jeb belonged to Clay, and Griff belonged to his dreams. She had accepted both facts long ago, and the best she could ever do would be to marry Clay and fill a part of the aching gap inside of her. She was sad about that, but not angry.
“The only problem I have with you,” she said, shifting her eyes back to him, “is that you would think of encouraging Jeb to think about careers that would take him away from his home. That’s not right.”
“Is it right that you want to stifle his dreams?”
Kidnapping His Bride (Silhouette Romance) Page 7
