“My guess is that we’d better not leave anything on our plates unless we want Miss Joan scowling at us,” Shania commented to Daniel once Debbie had put their dinners on the table and withdrawn again.
“Not a problem,” Daniel assured her. “This smells even better than it usually does. I skipped lunch.”
“Dedicated or dieting?” Shania asked. Realizing that it sounded as if she was being critical, she quickly said, “Not that you should. Diet I mean, not be dedicated. You should be that.” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together as if to hold back any further torrent of words. She flushed as she raised her eyes toward Daniel. “I don’t usually babble like this.”
Daniel found the pink hue that had suddenly risen to her cheeks rather sweet. The next second, he realized that he was staring. Daniel forced himself to look away. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Yes, you had,” Shania contradicted. “But I think that it’s very nice of you to pretend that you hadn’t.” When she heard Daniel laugh softly to himself, she asked him, “What’s so funny?” before she could think to stop herself.
“I’m not accustomed to hearing the word ‘nice’ used to describe me,” he admitted.
Didn’t the man have any close friends? Someone to bolster him up when he was down on himself? “You’re kidding.”
The lopsided smile answered her before he did. “Something else I’m not known for.”
She pretended that he was a student and she did a quick assessment of the man before her. “You know you’re being very hard on yourself.”
“Not hard,” he contradicted. “Just honest.”
She had no intention of letting this slide. If he had been one of her students, she would have done what she could to raise his spirits—or maybe it was his self-esteem that needed help.
“Well, I think you’re nice—and you do have a sense of humor.”
“If you say so,” Daniel replied, not about to dispute the matter. He had a feeling that arguing with Shania would be pointless. “But just so you know, I’m not about to chuck my career and become a stand-up comedian.”
She grinned at his words. “See, I told you that you had a sense of humor,” she declared happily. The next moment, she looked down at what was left on her plate—just the denuded bone. “I am really glad you talked me into getting this. This steak is really good.”
That wasn’t his doing. “Angel really knows her way around a kitchen.”
“Angel?” she repeated quizzically.
He nodded, then got that she probably didn’t know about the woman. A lot of things had happened in the years that she had lived in Houston.
“Miss Joan has her cooking most of the meals. Angel’s another one of Miss Joan’s secret good deeds. Gabe found her unconscious in a car,” he said, mentioning the other deputy who worked for the sheriff. Gabe was also the man who became Angel’s husband. “There’d been an accident. When she woke up, she had no memory of who she was or how she got there. Miss Joan took her under that very large wing of hers. When it became obvious that Angel could work miracles in the kitchen, Miss Joan put her to work in the diner.”
She appreciated Daniel filling her in on the things that she had missed while she’d been away. “Did Angel ever get her memory back?”
“She did,” he recalled. “But she liked being useful and cooking, and she was so grateful to Miss Joan for all her help that she went on working for her at the diner even after she got married. And before you ask,” he said, “the guy she married was the one who rescued her out of her car.”
“And did her name really turn out to be Angel?” she asked.
“No,” he answered, “but that’s the name she goes by because, as she told Miss Joan, she was reborn in this town, so having a new name fit right in with the narrative.” Finished with his meal, he pushed aside his empty plate. “Anything else you want to know?”
“Not offhand,” she admitted. And then she smiled. “But I now know who to go to if something else occurs to me.”
“Fair enough.” Daniel paused for a moment as he framed the question he wanted to ask in his mind. “Okay, I’ve got one for you.”
“A question?” she asked. When the deputy nodded, Shania braced herself a little bit then said, “Okay, go ahead.”
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
She thought they’d already covered that earlier. “I already told you, Daniel. Miss Joan sent Violet to come get me.”
He shook his head. She didn’t understand what he was asking. “No, I mean why are you in Forever? Why did you come back to Forever?” Daniel clarified.
She would have thought that he of all people would have understood. “Wynona and I were both from here. We saw the kind of life that they don’t write about in storybooks. Both of us would have wound up in the foster care system by the time we were eleven and twelve. And then, out of nowhere, a miracle happened,” she remembered with a smile. “A great-aunt neither one of us even knew about suddenly popped up in our lives and came to Forever to collect us.”
He was curious as to how the dots were connected in this case. “If you didn’t know about her, how did she wind up suddenly coming to your rescue out of the blue like that?”
She could see the suspicion in his eyes. He either didn’t believe her story, or he was suspicious of this woman who materialized just in the nick of time. A woman who took them in, provided for them and, when the time came, sent them off to get their college degrees so that they could have careers. In her own way, her great-aunt was as tough and demanding as Miss Joan. And she’d had an equally soft heart.
Shania was surprised that he hadn’t figured it out already. “Same reason that the two of us are sitting right here, talking to one another.”
“Are you talking about ‘fate’?” he asked her, sounding even more skeptical about this story than before.
“No, Deputy Tallchief,” she informed him, “I’m talking about Miss Joan.”
He wasn’t sure that he followed her. “Come again?”
She gave him the background behind what happened. “Somehow, Miss Joan stumbled across the information that we had a great-aunt—Great-Aunt Naomi, I think she found it in my mother’s papers—and Miss Joan got in contact with her. I don’t know exactly what she said to the woman, but whatever it was, it did the trick. By the end of the week, Aunt Naomi was here, snatching us out of the clutches of the foster care system and taking us to her home in Houston. There,” she concluded with a smile, dropping her napkin on her empty plate. “I think you’re officially all caught up.”
Looking at Shania, he didn’t quite share that opinion, but for now, he kept it to himself.
Chapter Thirteen
His sense of obligation had Daniel glancing at his watch a number of times, wishing there was a way to make time stand still. But there wasn’t. There was no putting it off any longer. He had already lingered far too long over dinner, but sitting here opposite Shania had made the time go by so fast.
“Well, I’d better be heading back to the sheriff’s office,” Daniel said rather reluctantly. Looking around he saw Debbie and signaled to the waitress to have her bring the bill.
“Right. And I’ve got a lonely dog to get home to,” Shania told him.
Twisting in her seat to see if Debbie was coming, she decided she had enough time to say something else since the young woman was still half the length of the diner away.
Shania turned back to face Elena’s brother and told him quietly, “This was nice.”
“Yes it was, wasn’t it?” Because she’d opened up the door, Daniel felt it was safe to ask, “Would you like to do it again sometime?”
She hadn’t expected him to ask that. Caught off guard, her response came out before she could think it through and weigh the pros and cons of telling him yes so fast.
“Yes.” Then, since she probab
ly sounded way too eager to him, she tried to backtrack and temper her answer. “That is, I mean, I need to check my schedule and see if—”
“Too late,” Daniel told her, stopping Shania before she was able to negate her answer. “Sorry, no do-overs allowed.”
Staring at him, Shania blinked. This wasn’t the response of the serious, semisomber person she had gotten to know. “Excuse me?”
“Your first response was spontaneous,” Daniel explained. “In view of this rather...” he hunted for the right word before saying, “Unusual first dinner we just had, we could give this another shot, see if this was just a fluke, or if maybe we could guide this into a friendship.” He was making this up as he went along. The words that came out weren’t really what he wanted to say, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to risk scaring Shania away—or himself for that matter. He felt that too much pressure and too many expectations could ruin something before it ever even had the proper chance to evolve.
“A friendship,” Shania said, repeating the word he’d used. Daniel wasn’t sure if she liked the idea of their having a friendship or if she was annoyed by it.
And then she smiled and he felt as if he had just completed a triathlon and had raced across the finish line to capture first place.
“Sure,” she told him. “That sounds good.”
Debbie came just then and placed the check facedown in front of Daniel. “I hope you both found everything to your satisfaction,” she said, her bright blue eyes sweeping over both of them.
Looking at the bill, he took out a twenty and a ten and placed them on top. He also placed a five on the table as a tip.
“I have no complaints,” Daniel told the young woman.
Flattery was definitely not this man’s strong suit, Shania thought, amused. It made her reexamine what he’d said to her before Debbie came to their booth. Shania realized that she should be flattered.
Looking at the waitress now, she made a point of saying, “Everything was delicious.”
Debbie grinned. “I’ll be sure to pass that along to Angel,” she said, leaving.
They rose almost in unison. Daniel accompanied Shania to the diner’s entrance. He glanced back at Debbie, who waved to them.
“I guess what you said sounded a lot better than what I did,” he speculated.
That he even took note of the waitress’s reaction in each case meant that there was some hope for the man.
Shania tried to make him feel better about his response. “You’re just not an effusive guy,” she told him.
Daniel held the door open for her. “I save effusion for the really important things,” he deadpanned.
“Got it. Remind me to be there when it finally happens,” she told him, walking past him and stepping outside.
They went down the two steps that were in front of the diner, which officially brought them to the diner’s parking lot. The temperature had dropped by at least ten degrees since they had walked in. He noticed Shania pulling her coat closer to her. She was cold, he thought.
“Where’s your car?” he asked her, looking around the area. He didn’t see it.
“In the shop,” she told him. A slight sigh accompanied her words. “It decided it didn’t feel like running for me. I called Mick and he came by and towed it to his shop.” Mick Henley was Forever’s exceptionally capable—as well as its only—mechanic. “He told me that it should be all fixed up and running like new in a couple of days. Meanwhile,” she concluded, doing her best to focus on the upside of her situation, “walking is good for me.”
“Yeah, but freezing isn’t,” he commented. “C’mon,” he urged, “I’ll take you home.”
She didn’t want to be the reason that he got into trouble. “I thought you had to get back to work.”
“I do, but it’s not exactly like Forever’s having any sort of a crime spree,” Daniel told her. “In the last week, I had to bring home an inebriated husband who apparently was drinking to forget he was married and I had to break up a fight between two men who couldn’t hurt a fly between them if they tried. So,” he concluded, “my being twenty minutes late getting back from my dinner break isn’t going to make much of a difference. You, however, will definitely feel the difference between walking home from here in this weather or getting a ride home.”
The wind was picking up. The weather was definitely on his side. Still, she hesitated just a little. “If you’re sure it’s okay—”
“Just please get in the car,” he told her. His eyes met hers. “Don’t make me have to pick you up and deposit you in the backseat,” he warned. “Well?” he asked when Shania made no move toward his vehicle.
“I’m thinking about it,” she told him with the straightest face she could manage. However, when her mouth began to curve the next moment, Shania gave up her pretense. “Okay, the answer’s yes,” she told him, then added, “And thank you.”
“Just doing my job, keeping the good citizens of Forever safe—and warm,” Daniel added as they walked to the extended parking lot that was behind Miss Joan’s diner. His car was parked at the very edge.
She looked at him when they stopped next to his vehicle. “I didn’t know the ‘warm’ part was part of your job description.”
“My job description envelops everything and anything,” Daniel told her, opening the passenger door for Shania.
She slid into the seat and buckled up. Daniel firmly closed her door.
“I appreciate this,” she told him once he had rounded the hood of his car and gotten behind the wheel.
Gratitude made him uncomfortable. He never knew how to respond, but this time, at least, he had something to fall back on. “Not nearly as much as I appreciate you going the extra mile with Elena.”
“No extra mile,” she protested as Daniel started the car. “It’s my job.”
He had a different view of that. He’d attended the school system in Forever. More specifically, the reservation schools. Anything he had accomplished, he had done on his own. There hadn’t been a “Miss Shania” in his life.
“It’s your job to show up and to go over the curriculum,” he told her, pulling out of the parking space. “According to the manual, finding ways to reach a stubborn sixteen-year-old and get her to buckle down to do her work is not considered to be part of your job.”
He’d done his homework, as well, Shania thought. “Okay, let me rephrase that then. It’s what I consider to be part of my job.”
“And that is the reason why I’m grateful,” he pointed out.
Still, she didn’t want him thanking her, not until the job was completed. “Save that until after Elena takes her test and passes.”
“Why?” he asked as he drove. “Are you expecting there to be a problem?”
A smile played on her lips as she thought back to another time in her life. “I learned a long time ago not to count my chickens until they not only hatched, but took their first steps, as well.”
Daniel heard the fleeting grim note in her voice. Pulling up in front of Shania’s house, he turned off the ignition and then turned to look at her. “I think that you and I had the same lesson. Except that, for the most part, you came out of it being pretty optimistic.”
“I work at it,” she told him. And at times, it was a challenge not to just throw her hands up in the air. “I also learned that just thinking dark thoughts gets to be really depressing, so I do my best to think happy thoughts when I can. In other words, I prepare for the worst but hope for the best.”
He gave the woman credit, he thought. A lot of the people he had grown up with had gone the other route. More than a couple were dead, having given up and abandoned life altogether.
“I supposed that’s a good philosophy if you can manage it,” he told her.
“I work at it every day,” she told him.
And then she pulled back. She hadn’t meant f
or the conversation to get this serious. There was something about the man that seemed to coax her innermost thoughts out.
There was also something about him that spoke to her soul, making her think things and feel things that she realized were normally buried so deeply, she gave them no thought at all.
Until now.
Shania took a deep breath. “Well, I should get out of your car. I’m keeping you from getting back. And, like I said, I don’t want you getting in any trouble on my account.”
The space within the car felt as if it had somehow grown smaller. Daniel looked at the woman sitting in his passenger seat for a long moment. Unbidden thoughts and feelings were inexplicably ricocheting madly around inside him.
He thought of what she’d just said. “Might be worth it,” he murmured more to himself than to her.
Shania had heard anyway. She felt her face growing hot in response to his words, could almost feel the pink color creeping up along her cheeks.
You’re past this, she silently insisted, impatient with herself and her reaction. She was a grown woman, for heaven sakes, not some prepubescent girl nursing her first crush.
The word crush caught her up short.
Why had she just thought that? Where had it even come from? Had it really been that long since she’d had even the mildest form of a relationship in her life?
She suddenly realized that even though she was trying to remember just how long ago that actually was, the truth of it was that she couldn’t recall when she had been in a relationship. It had been that long ago.
Feeling unaccountably nervous, Shania cleared her throat. “Belle probably thinks that I must have run away from home.”
Daniel surprised himself when he told her, “Can’t have that.”
“No, we can’t,” she murmured. One hand on the door latch, she still hesitated. What was she waiting for? she asked herself.
Forcing herself to open the door, she heard Daniel call her name.
Turning around to look at the deputy, Shania asked, “What?”
The Lawman's Romance Lesson Page 12
