A Highlander Christmas

by Janet Chapman

  By the second night, she’d talked Dave Bean—who owned the Go Back Grill—into letting Fiona bus a few tables to pay for all the greasy, fattening food she’d been wolfing down as if she had a hollow leg.

  But it was Sunday afternoon, and Camry was feeling more like a worried parent than a roommate as Fiona got ready for work. That’s why she had Dave on the phone, giving him hell for giving the girl a permanent job!

  “You can’t have a sixteen-year-old on staff at a bar, Dave,” Cam growled into her cell phone. “Child Services is going to come after you for hiring a minor.”

  “That’s not what you said last night, when you kindly pointed out that her busing tables was perfectly legal,” Dave growled back. “Make up your mind, Cam.”

  “It’s only legal when I’m working there. Hey, wait. If you hired her, what name did she put on the W-2 form?”

  “Fiona Smith.”

  Camry snorted. “She had to give you a Social Security number. What is it?”

  “Now, Cam, you know I can’t give that out to anyone.”

  Camry looked around to make sure Fiona was still in the spare bedroom getting dressed, and turned her back and lowered her voice. “But she’s a runaway, Dave. I called the police Friday, but they don’t have any missing teens fitting her description. I need that number to find out who she really is so I can call her parents.”

  A heavy sigh came over the phone. “I know. But you’re putting me between a rock and a hard place here. I promise, first thing tomorrow morning I’ll turn Fiona’s W-2 over to my accountant and ask him look into it. But it’s probably a bogus number, just like Smith is obviously fake.”

  “Yet you hired her anyway.”

  “Because I’m desperate to find bus staff. Kids today don’t want to work for an honest wage; they want Mommy and Daddy to just hand them money. And besides,” he said, lowering his own voice. “I didn’t dare say no when she asked me for a job, because like you, I want her hanging around long enough for us to find her parents.”

  Cam sighed in defeat. “At least it’ll buy us time. But how am I supposed to keep an eye on her when I’m not scheduled to work? She’ll be running around your bar, being watched by every single and married male in the joint.”

  “It’s Sunday night, and I have nearly every table reserved up until nine,” Dave countered. “And you know why? Because all the flyers I’ve been passing out have let everyone know that I’ve classed the place up and hired new staff.”

  “Then I want to come to work tonight, too.”

  “Betty’s covering the bar tonight.”

  “Then I’ll wait tables.”

  “I’m still recovering from the last time you waited tables. You’re a good bartender, MacKeage, but you suck as a waitress.”

  “I promise, I won’t dump anything on anyone.”

  A pained sigh came over the phone. “I’ll keep an eye on your kid. She’s just busing tables.”

  “She can bus on Fridays and Saturdays.”

  “But I’ve never had more than two reservations on a Sunday night.”

  “Which must mean you need extra staff.”

  He sighed again. “You promise you won’t get smart-mouthed with my patrons, or dump any food on them?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “And you’ll wear one of my new waitress uniforms?”

  “Those . . . things hanging in the back room are uniforms?” She snorted. “I thought you wanted to turn the place into a family pub, not some pseudo-colonial bar with waitresses dressed like wenches. “

  “Go Back Cove was supposed to have been a hideout for pirates back in the 1800s, and I’m simply playing up the old legend. I spent all last night and this morning redecorating the place.”

  “Fiona is not wearing a low-cut blouse and one of those leather bustier thingies. I swear I’ll call Child Services myself if you put her in one of those sexist costumes.”

  “I have mostly bus boys, Cam. Fiona can wear jeans and a T-shirt, just like they do. But,” he said before she could say anything, “you can wait tables tonight if you’re willing to wear the new uniform.”

  Dammit, dammit, dammit. She didn’t want to dress up like a wench!

  Then again, she didn’t want Fiona going to work without her, either.

  But if she tried to talk the girl out of going to her new job, that made her no better than Fiona’s parents. And she’d be damned if she was going to mother the child.

  “What’ll it be, Cam? You coming to work or not?”

  “I’ll be there,” she snapped, hitting the End button when she heard Dave chuckle and slinging the phone at the couch.

  “Are you going to stay and have supper when you drive me in?” Fiona asked, walking into the room. “Because there’s still nothing in the fridge.”

  Camry closed her eyes and counted to ten, suddenly having a whole new appreciation for her own mother, who had managed to raise seven girls without losing her sanity. She opened her eyes, and, yup, her roommate was still dressed like a prostitute. “Um . . . is that one of the outfits your father objected to?”

  Fiona looked down at herself, then smiled at Cam. “Yeah. He asked me if I’d stolen it off some hooker the last time he took me to New York City.”

  “Well . . . at the risk of sounding like your father,” Camry said with a crooked grin, choosing her words carefully, “is there any chance I could get you to wear an oversize T-shirt and a pair of my jeans tonight?”

  Camry held up her hand to forestall the objection forming on Fiona’s lips, took a deep breath, and jumped right into the quagmire. “It’s not that I don’t think that’s a fabulous outfit, but you’re working in a bar, Fiona. And you’re certainly old enough to realize that some men, when they’ve had a little more beer than they should, forget this is the twenty-first century and that women were not put on this Earth merely for their entertainment.” She shrugged. “I know it’s archaic, but I also know that you’re bright enough to realize that sometimes we women are better off downplaying our assets instead of . . . accentuating them.”

  Oh God, those words could have come straight out of her mother’s mouth!

  Fiona stared at her for the longest time, saying nothing, then suddenly smiled. “Okay,” she said, spinning around and heading back into the bedroom. “Can I wear your black jeans?”

  “Yeah, go ahead,” Cam said, closing her eyes in relief, suddenly remembering why the mere thought of having kids scared the hell out of her.

  Chapter Four

  Luke slid into the booth at the Go Back Grill, the smell of greasy food all but making him salivate. Though he was still trying to recover from two months of living on nothing but trail mix and rehydrated soup, he had to admit the results felt pretty damn good.

  When he’d seen himself naked in the bathroom mirror at Gù Brath that first night, he’d been stunned to realize that he’d lost over twenty-five pounds of fat. But he’d probably added ten pounds of lean, hard muscle, and for the first time in years, Luke was more than casually aware of the six-foot-two, broad-shouldered body that housed his brain. He really had been spending too much time in the lab, and once he got back to work, he’d have to remind himself to get more exercise.

  “Beer?” the waitress asked just as he opened the menu.

  “What do you have for imported wine?” he asked absently, scanning the various food offerings that were thoughtfully accompanied by pictures.

  “Red, white, or blush.”

  “What do you have for imported red?”

  “That’s it. Red house wine, white house wine, or blush,” she said dryly. “You want anything fancier, you have to drive to Portland. We serve forty-two different beers, mixed drinks, and house wines.”

  Luke finally looked up with a frown, only to come face to . . . chest with a set of creamy white breasts being pushed out of an indecently lowcut blouse by an impossibly tight black leather corset.

  The woman belonging to the breasts lifted his chin with the end of her penc
il, forcing his gaze up to her scowling face. “Red, white, or blush,” she repeated through gritted teeth.

  “I’ll have a Guinness,” he said, carefully lifting his chin off her pencil and looking back at his menu. “And your largest steak, a baked potato—loaded—and coleslaw. And,” he said a bit more forcefully when she started to leave, “a large salad, no onions, with blue cheese dressing.”

  As she stomped away, Luke heard a soft giggle over the din of patrons. The young woman clearing the table across the aisle continued to laugh behind her hand as she watched his waitress leaving, then looked back at him.

  Luke glanced around to make sure he was the one causing her amusement, then smiled at her. “Do you think I should give her a bigger tip for that stunt, or not leave her anything?” he asked.

  The young girl tossed her rag in the bucket on her cart of dirty dishes, and walked over. “It took an act of Congress to get her into that uniform tonight,” she said. “Add to that how uncomfortable that leather bustier is, and you’re lucky she only used that pencil to close your mouth, instead of using it to poke out your eyes.” She suddenly held out her hand. “Hello, I’m Fiona.”

  Surprised but utterly charmed by the beautiful young woman’s straightforwardness, Luke took her offered hand and gently shook it. “Luke Pascal.”

  “Do you live here in Go Back Cove, Luke?” she asked. “Or are you just passing through?”

  “I checked into the hotel across the street just a few minutes ago, but I plan to hang around awhile. I’m on sabbatical from work, and I thought I’d spend some time at the coast while I’m visiting Maine.”

  “The winter ocean is so desolate and lonely-looking, don’t you think?” she asked. “Sometimes it’s just a bleak gray that softly ebbs and flows, as if it were waiting for its true love to appear, and sometimes it’s churning and angry, mad because that love is taking so long to show up,” she said dreamily, her sad smile and crystalline blue eyes making her face practically glow.

  Luke decided she wasn’t charming, she was enchanting. She was beautiful, poised, and well spoken, and she reminded him of his baby half sister, Kate, who had a dramatic streak a mile wide and a romantic imagination to go with it.

  “Table three needs clearing,” his waitress told Fiona as she thunked Luke’s bottle of Guinness—and no glass—down on the table without even looking at him. “If you don’t want to get fired your first night, you better keep moving.”

  Completely unruffled by the waitress’s stern handling, Fiona reached in her apron pocket and handed her some money. “Here. This is from table three.”

  “A buck?” the waitress growled, staring at the single dollar bill in her hand.

  Fiona softly snorted. “I saw the man leave you a ten, but when he went to pay the bill, the woman with him stuffed it in her purse and replaced it with a one.”

  The waitress turned her back on Luke to whisper to the girl. “I told Dave these stupid costumes would backfire on us. Go on, you better get hustling.” She started walking away with her, still whispering. “You have to stop fraternizing with the customers, Fiona. This is a pub, not a social club.”

  “I’m sorry, Camry. I keep forgetting because I like meeting new people.”

  Luke didn’t hear any more of their conversation as they moved away, but he did turn to stare after them.

  Camry? As in Camry MacKeage? What in hell was a physicist doing working in a bar, dressed like an eighteenth-century wench?

  Naw, it couldn’t be her. The probability of stumbling across Dr. MacKeage after being in town less than an hour had to be a million to one.

  Not that Go Back Cove was a thriving metropolis or anything. And Fiona could even be the F person who had sent the Christmas card.

  What had Grace called it? Magic? Serendipitous coincidence?

  Luke picked up his beer and took a long swallow. Naw. He didn’t believe in anything but cold hard facts, and then only if he could back them up with numbers.

  Still, if he found out Miss Congeniality had piercing green eyes—assuming he could keep his gaze on her face long enough to find out—then the numbers had just turned a bit more in his favor, hadn’t they?

  “Here,” Camry snapped, slapping the dollar bill on the counter in front of Dave. “Put this toward the damages.”

  “What damages?” her boss asked, frantically looking around.

  “The damages I’m going to cause the next time one of your precious patrons stiffs me. I swear if I’d seen that woman swap my tip, I’d have chased her right out the door and stuffed that stupid dollar bill down her throat.” She tugged on the bustier, which wasn’t only cutting into her boobs but cutting off her breath, and glowered at Dave. “I told you these stupid uniforms would backfire on us. The men are leaving us nice tips, but the women with them are scoffing them up as soon as the men turn their backs. For someone who claims he’s trying to run a family pub, you seem to be moving in exactly the opposite direction. Women patrons do not like being served by wenches with escaping anatomy, and mothers do not like their children staring up their waitress’s skirt.”

  Dave sighed. “Doris told me she had a similar problem with the tipping, but she also said that the unaccompanied males are leaving double what they usually do.” He grinned, shoving the dollar bill back across the counter. “So that evens things out.”

  “I’ve nearly dropped three trays of food because of these stupid heels,” she muttered, shifting her weight to give her left foot a rest. “It has to be against insurance codes or something for waitresses to serve in heels. If we don’t kill someone with a falling tray, at the very least we could pop a tendon.”

  “It’s not like they’re stilettos or anything; they’re only two inches high.”

  “Doris is nearly sixty, Dave. She’s limping.”

  He sighed again. “I already told her to change back into her sneakers, even if they do look silly.”

  “You mean sillier than a grandmother showing enough cleavage to make a saint drool and enough leg to make a thoroughbred envious?”

  He held up his hand. “Okay. Okay. The heels were a bad idea, and maybe the skirts are a bit short.” He shrugged. “But hey, the rest of my new theme seems to be a hit. The kids really like the eye patches and swords I’ve been handing out, and I think we burned up a blender tonight making Jolly Roger Zingers.”

  He leaned over the counter toward her. “And I saw you prodding Fiona along a couple of times when she got chatty with the customers. Don’t. They like talking to her, and she’s giving the place a homey, friendly feel.”

  “Did you also see that guy try to slip a twenty-dollar bill in her apron pocket?”

  Dave straightened with a frown. “I thought she handled that quite well. Unlike your little stunt last month, she didn’t accidentally dump his drink over his head. She merely waggled her finger at him and scampered away.”

  “My guy wasn’t trying to stuff money in my apron.”

  Dave sighed louder and harder. “Tell me again why you work here?”

  Camry tapped her chin with her finger. “Gee, let me think. Maybe because on Columbus Day they rolled up the sidewalks and closed the town when the tourists left?”

  “Portland’s just down the road.”

  “I prefer the peace and quiet of this place.”

  “That’s right, Dr. MacKeage, I forgot you came here from Florida.” He snorted. “The problem with you brainy types is that you think we working stiffs don’t know how to run our own businesses.”

  Camry gaped at him. “I am not an academic snob. The only reason you even know I hold a doctorate is because your stupid employment application asked me to list all my schooling.”

  “To which you had to add an entire page for all your degrees.” He suddenly stared over her shoulder for several seconds, then glanced down the bar. “Betty,” he said, motioning the bartender closer. “No more drinks for booth nine, okay? All four of those guys have had enough. And if they give Wanda any trouble, you have her co
me see me and I’ll handle them.”

  “Okay, Dave,” Betty said, returning to the blender she’d left running.

  “And your point is?” Cam asked Dave the minute she had his attention again.

  “What were we talking about?”

  “I believe you had just implied I’m a snob.”

  “Oh, come on, MacKeage,” he said with a sudden smile. “You need to lighten up. It doesn’t look good in front of the staff when you give the boss grief. And I don’t want to have to fire you, because”—he leaned closer—”I actually like you,” he whispered, his smile widening as he straightened back up. “You sort of remind me of a Jack Russell terrier I used to have that was always growling at me, as if she needed a good fight to keep herself entertained.”

  “I remind you of your dog?”

  “I loved that dog, God rest Pip’s soul,” he said with a laugh. He arched his bushy eyebrows at her. “You want to know what finally settled her down?”

  “Not really.”

  “I got her a boyfriend, which in turn got her a litter of babies. Mellowed my little darling right out, those pups did.”

  Cam just gaped at him.

  “So the moral of this little story,” he had the audacity to continue, “is that instead of scowling at your customers, maybe you should trying smiling at them.”

  She snapped her mouth shut and scowled at him.

  He sighed. “You’ve been living in Go Back Cove and eating here for what . . . seven or eight months? And working for me for two? And in all that time, I have never once seen you with a date.”

  “Maybe I’m gay,” she snapped.

  Dave chuckled. “Nope. It’s not the girls I see you watching, it’s the men. Oh, you’re interested, all right. You’re just too scared to actually play with the big boys.”

  Camry made a point of visually searching the wall behind the counter, even going on tiptoe to look down the length of the back wall of the bar.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Your degree in psychology.”

  His laughter came straight from the belly as he took the slip and money from a customer who’d walked up to pay his bill. “My degree is from the school of hard knocks, kiddo, and it took me thirty years of tending bar to earn it.” He hit some buttons on the register, then shot her a wink. “You watch Fiona working the room tonight, Cam, and maybe you’ll learn something. That girl’s got a gift for making people smile. How was your dining experience?” he asked the man, handing him his change.