by Mel Sterling
Sometimes he craved simple human contact, but this was more than that. This was something else he'd have to examine later, when he was alone, but meanwhile—
"Have dinner with me," he said.
She blinked. Her lips parted and he could see the word "no" forming.
"Please," he urged.
Lexie straightened, her cheeks flushing, her hand dropping from his shoulder to rest at her side, where her fingers pleated the cloth of her skirt. She glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure Ben was not watching, but Ben's shift had ended shortly after lunch, when his college classes began. They were alone in the store, as far as Jack could tell, though he hadn't been paying much attention to his surroundings for the past few hours.
"I'm working late tonight. There's just so much to do, you know?"
"You still need dinner," Jack pointed out reasonably. "We don't have to go far. How about to the diner at the corner? They make a mean Reuben."
"I—thank you, Jack, but I really need to get things done here. It's stuff I can't leave for later, like cleaning the bathroom. I haven't had a chance to wrap the books we sold online today, to get them ready to mail out tomorrow. I have to do that before I go home tonight."
Though she had stepped back, she hadn't gone far, and Jack could smell her skin, that scent of Lexie's. The floral note had faded, leaving the balsam and the odor of old books and leather. "Tell you what. How about I get us some Chinese take-out, and bring it back here? Best of both worlds."
She resisted a moment or two longer, but Jack could see she wanted to give in. He tried his most winsome smile-with-head-tilt, the one that had always made his grandmother relent, even as she swatted at his behind for his bad-boy ways.
"I like lots of veggies, and spicy chicken, and I want steamed rice, not fried." She tried to look sternly at him, but did not succeed. "Thank you, Jack."
"My pleasure. Back in a flash. Mind if I leave my gear here?"
"It's fine. I'm locking the door behind you. I'll be in the back, wrapping the books. Do you know the alley, and our back door? I'll hear you if you knock."
"I can find it," he assured her, and left. With his hands shoved deep into his pockets, stride crisp and jaunty as he headed down the leaf-strewn sidewalk in the dusky twilight, he reminded himself of one of the younger Marines who'd been part of his team in the Humvee. Chum Bucket, a pimply-faced nineteen-year-old, had forever stood around with his hands crammed in his pockets. The running joke was that Chum had to hold up his skivvies through his pockets, so they wouldn't sag to his knees and hobble him, he was so skinny. Mostly Chum had been a kid, brash and committed to his unit, but terrified of the war. He hadn't known what to do with his hands.
That had all changed the moment Chum realized he couldn't grab his gun when he needed it. Chum had seen the enemy combatant rise above a desert berm near a canal, but his hands were in his pockets, and his gun was slung across his body. The enemy drew a bead on a fellow Marine…
…it was a brutal lesson for Chum, and for Jack as well. After that, Chum was no longer a kid, and Jack…well, Jack had the first of many nightmare seeds planted.
Jack pulled his hands from his pockets, scowled, and kept walking. The ugly thoughts came out of nowhere sometimes, even when he was happiest, ruining a moment. He didn't wish them gone, but he wished he could let go, at least a little. Gardner Dawson kept telling him that, whenever he and Jack spoke on the phone. He didn't know how Gard could be so zen about what had happened over there, the IED that exploded too near the Humvee and blew off Gard's right leg below the knee, ending Gard's career.
Jack shook his head and stopped, staring up at a streetlight's pinkish glare, willing the memory to stop, willing his eyes to clear the distorting lens of tears.
Shortly, he could go on, and the Chinese take-out was only another few doors away. In its brightly-lit, steamy heat, he chose a selection from the menu and added a quart of hot and sour soup, his personal favorite.
The alley behind The Cup, the bookstore, and the lingerie shop dead-ended in a shared wall with the next building, with a big dumpster crowded up close, and not much else. The alley door to the bookstore was slightly ajar, and Jack frowned as he pulled it open.
"Lexie?" he called, shifting a bag from his right to his left, so that he had a hand free.
"Here," she called back, coming into view around a towering hulk of a storage rack, her hands holding a small box and smoothing down a label on its front.
"You shouldn't have left the door open. I'd've knocked."
"What? I didn't." Then, realizing he'd come in without needing to be let in, her lips rounded into a gasp of surprise. "That's not good. I guess the door didn't get shut after one of Ben's breaks, or something."
"Or someone went out the back when you weren't looking, maybe." Jack pulled the door closed, checked to be sure the knob was locked, and stared hard at Lexie. "Do you or Ben check this door during the day?"
He saw a flush creep up her cheeks again and tried not to be distracted by the way it brightened her eyes. "It's not a part of the routine, no, at least not until closing time. We sometimes take breaks out back for a change of scenery and air, where customers can't see us and interrupt."
"So someone could slip into this back room and unlock the door, or leave it ajar, and sneak back in this way after hours? Do a little breaking and entering, snitch a rare book, raid the register?"
"What are you, my security consultant?" Lexie folded her arms across her chest.
Jack put down the bags of food on a small coffee table that stood in front of the room's only seating, a battered, overstuffed, antique Victorian horsehair sofa.
Dyed pink.
He stared at it for a moment.
Lexie shrugged. "It's not anything I would have bought. It's a place to sit, that's all. You knew Horace too. You know how odd old things just…accreted around him, kind of like a coral reef. Getting back to the alley door—no, we don't check it until closing time, but we do keep an eye on whether or not someone goes into the back room. I haven't seen it happen since I've been here. We're getting worked up for nothing."
"Mind if I just make a quick pass through the store, check the restroom and the aisles? You wait here."
Lexie rolled her eyes. "I'll drink all the hot and sour soup I'm smelling while you prowl. How's that sound?"
Jack grinned. "Don't try it, Alexia."
"Lexie."
Jack grinned harder. It worked every time.
The store was dim; she had turned off most of the banks of lights, leaving only the frontmost to illuminate the store window and doorway, where Melville was still settled on his cat tree, blinking wide green eyes at Jack. Nothing looked out of place, and there was no one in the restroom, behind the desk, or in the aisles. Maybe it really was just an honest oversight, but coupled with the lurker in the hedge the night before, and the shoplifter earlier in the day, it left a prickle at the back of Jack's neck.
When he returned to the back room, Lexie was putting packages into the tote bag. "Want to hear something funny? I'm starting to think Gilly from next door has the Midas touch, or something. The last couple of books she borrowed to read have both sold online within a day of her bringing them back into the store. I'll have to see if she can't read more and help improve our bottom line! I take it the store gets the all clear, Officer Tucker?"
Jack nodded. "It does, but Lexie—I mean this. You should be more careful. Ben too. There's something going on. I don't know what it is, but I don't like it."
She straightened from the bag and pushed floppy curls off her forehead. Her gaze met his for a long moment, and he watched her expression shift from mildly amused annoyance to a more serious consideration of him. "All right. I'll have a talk with Ben."
"That makes me feel better." He took a seat on the pink horsehair sofa and began unpacking the dinner onto the coffee table. Rice, entrees, crab puffs, egg rolls, sauces, and a quart of hot and sour soup.
"We could eat for days on
this, Jack."
"I skipped lunch, I think. I don't remember. I'm starving."
"You were writing." Lexie went to the room's tiny employee refrigerator and peered inside. "There's mineral water and a quart of milk to drink, or I'll run next door to The Cup before they close and get you—"
"Water's fine." Now that he had her to himself, Jack wasn't interested in losing her, even for the few minutes it would take to get a latte. He treated himself to the view of Lexie bent in front of the refrigerator as she fished out two clanking green bottles. He wasn't quite in time to avert his gaze before she caught him at it, but all he did was grin, channeling his inner teenager. Her lips thinned a little, but that didn't make him regret an instant. She came slowly over to the sofa and handed him both bottles.
"You get to open them, smart-aleck."
"No problem." He dropped each cap on the table, then handed her a bottle. "Are you going to join me, or are you just going to stand there making comments?"
"I'm trying to figure out what to serve the soup in."
"Is there a reason we can't just share it? I brought plenty of spoons."
Lexie frowned a little, then seemed to make up her mind to make the best of the situation. "Right. OK. That's fine with me, as long as you don't mind if I eat all the mushrooms and tofu." She sat at the far end of the sofa from him, her skirt settling with a quiet swish and huff against the pink horsehair, and reached for the soup.
Jack smiled. She could have all the squeaky black fungus and squishy curd she wanted, as long as he got to watch her slurping the hot, tangy broth from the little plastic spoon.
Jack felt as if he were awakening to blinding daylight after months of dark, drugging sleep. But why here, why now? Why did this woman, in this goofy little college town bookstore, make him want to burnish the tiny sense of homecoming he'd found within himself?
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN THEY HAD EATEN as much of the Chinese take-out as they could, Lexie and Jack leaned back in their respective corners of Horace's pink sofa and groaned.
"Thank you," said Lexie.
"Don't thank me, thank you for agreeing to dinner."
"Not very graciously, I'm afraid. I just have a lot on my mind. Running a business is so much more work than I thought it would be. I think about it all the time." It wasn't the only thing she thought about. Jack Tucker had occupied her thoughts a little more each day; she just hadn't paid attention to how the flicker of interest had grown into a healthy near-crush.
Well, all right.
An actual crush, if she were honest. This evening, when Jack asked her to dinner, the strength of her interest had sideswiped her. Her first impulse had been to shout an unqualified, gleeful Yes! But then responsibility intruded. Tonight she'd had books to ship, and she still hadn't cleaned the restroom, or made the evening sweep through the aisles to straighten up and reshelve books customers had left roofed atop others. Sometimes she found coffee cups from next door in amongst the inventory, or on sparsely populated shelves. Some evening very soon she needed to wrestle Horace's ancient vacuum out of the back room and clean everywhere.
Maybe she could come in on Sunday, the only day of the week the store was closed, and do that. She glanced up from her bottle of mineral water and found Jack observing her with a relaxed, sleepy expression.
"Penny for them," he said.
"This has been nice. I'm glad you insisted."
"Anytime."
"I really have to get back to work, though."
"What's left to do? Ship more books?"
"Clean the restroom, and pick up around the store."
He gazed at her a long time. Lexie was surprised not to feel the urge to squirm under that calm, brown-eyed perusal. "It'll all work out, you know. But tonight you look tired. Let me walk you home. You can come in early tomorrow and clean, and send Ben around the stacks in the morning."
It was tempting. She really was tired, and aside from a slow walk home in the fragrant autumn darkness with Jack, the only other thing that appealed was crawling into her bed and sleeping for a week.
"I've at least got to check for coffee cups on the shelves. All paper cups leak, after a while."
"I'll do that. You get your things ready."
"What about these leftovers? They should go home with you. I'll bag them up."
Jack got to his feet, taking a step or two toward her and holding out his hand to help her up from the sofa. She unfolded her legs. Her feet were half asleep, so she wiggled her toes for a moment before letting him take her hand. When he pulled her up, she was only a few inches from him, head tilted back to look up into his face. She could feel the heat of his body warming the air between them.
"They're our lunch tomorrow," Jack said firmly. "Just put them in your fridge over there."
"I…" Lexie began. "Jack, what are we doing?"
"Getting to know each other."
"I don't have time or space in my life for a relationship right now—"
"It's only lunch."
And it had only been dinner, but here he was, standing so close, still holding her hand. I can't do this, she thought. Only dinner, only lunch, only a walk home, only herself wanting a good-night kiss at the end of a surprisingly sweet evening in the crowded, cluttered back room of Horace's bookstore…
She turned blindly away before her fingers could betray her and twine with his. Stumbling into the coffee table, she barely saved the last cup of the hot and sour soup from becoming part of the ratty carpet forever.
"See?" Jack took the soup container and put it in the bottom of the take-out bag. "You're too tired to stay any later." He followed the soup with the rest of the dinner boxes, then carried the bag to the tiny fridge himself and wedged it in amongst the other contents. When he went onto the sales floor to roam the shelves, Lexie ambled after him curiously. He was systematic about his search, and in the end had no cups to show for it.
"Done. What else?"
"Just the lights, and gather up Melville and the packages. You don't have to walk me home, Jack, it's fine."
"What if I want to?" His smile was slow and charming, a half-grin that made her smile in response. They were in the back room, Lexie gathering up the bag of packages, when a quiet rattle from the back door knob caught their attention. Jack's head turned, quick as a snake, and his first move was to get between Lexie and the door, just like a hero in a movie. She stared at the knob as it twisted back and forth.
Of course it was locked—they'd both checked that earlier—and the door did not open. Jack put a finger to his lips as she moved to stand even with him. He bent to murmur in her ear, never taking his eyes off the door. "Now do you believe me? Something's going on. The front door's locked too, right?"
Lexie nodded without taking her eyes from the knob, as if she could will it to stop turning. They stood frozen for a good twenty seconds, silent. Then she squared her shoulders, took a deep, angry breath, and went straight to the door. She threw it open hard enough to bang against the alley wall and clobber anyone standing outside. "We're closed," she announced.
Jack scrambled after her. "For God's sake, Lexie, get back in here!"
"Come back tomorrow when we're open, and use the front door next time—"
There was no one outside the door. No one within twenty feet. But at the street end of the alley, by the dumpster the three businesses shared, was the silhouette of a man. When he saw her, he turned with the grace of a ballet dancer and ran.
Jack pushed her aside and sprinted down the alley.
"Jack! Don't!" Lexie started after him, then remembered she didn't have her keys in her pocket, and leaped for the knob. She barely saved the door from slamming shut and locking them both out—and Melville in—for the night, and herself out of Horace's house to boot. Now wasn't the best time to realize nobody she knew in town had a spare key to the house, nor had she hidden one in the yard, but brains ran along crazy tracks in moments of stress. She called out again. "Jack!"
When there was no
answer from the gloom of the alley, Lexie muttered, "Damn it!" and ran to the cupboard next to the fridge, where she and Ben kept their belongings while working in the store. Her keys were in her satchel, and she fished them out, jamming them into her skirt pocket as she ran out the back door. It slammed behind her and she knew a moment's sick anxiety. What would she find at the mouth of the alley? She regretted not having grabbed her cell phone and swore again. This time she kept going.
She knew Jack had turned to the right as he chased the man they'd glimpsed, so she turned that way. Her ballerina flats were nearly useless as running shoes, no tread or arch support. She skidded, but ran on, her keys held like a flail in her hand.
Two streets down, nearly at Horace's house, she saw Jack's figure, legs spread, arms akimbo, head turning. She glanced for traffic and was about to cross the street when Jack turned and began to sprint toward her.
He reached her in seconds, scooped an arm around her waist, and all but carried her back to the alley. He had something in his hand, but in the rush, Lexie couldn't tell what it was.
"I lost him," he panted. "Same place in that hedge. I don't like this. Let's get you inside."
At the back door, she could tell Jack wanted to rip the keys from her hand and unlock the door himself. Even though her hands were sure and swift, they weren't swift enough to suit him. He jittered next to her, arm still around her waist, checking over his shoulder three times in the few moments it took her to turn the latch. He swept her in, yanked the door shut hard, and made sure it was locked.
"I lost him." Jack bent at the waist, took several deep breaths, then straightened and tossed the thing in his hand on the sofa. It was a navy blue knitted cap. "He left that behind, caught in the hedge."
Lexie let out a hard puff of breath. "Probably just somebody, maybe homeless, checking the dumpster for pastries The Cup threw out. I bet he checks all the doors in the alley every night, and I've never noticed."
"'Probably' isn't 'certainly.'" Jack ran his hands through his hair. "Counting on 'probably' is how you get hurt. Robbed. Worse."
