“This is Cold Springs. It wasn’t too hard to figure out.”
“Martha.” Burt crossed his arms in front of his chest. “How’s Bill?”
“He’s fine, except for the gout again. Can’t even walk this time.”
“You two know each other?” Sam asked.
“It’s Cold Springs,” they both said at once.
Sam pulled out another chair. “Okay, well…I was just interviewing. Martha, why don’t you join us and I’ll interview both of you together?”
Sam hadn’t planned on a dual interview, and her heart raced with nerves. She’d never interviewed anyone for anything before. Part of her wondered if they would find her a fraud, and soon the whole county would know she had no clue what she was doing. That all of this was new, all very much out of her league, and she would fail. Fall flat on her face and be known to the people of Cold Springs as the niece who had ruined Jean’s Diner.
Sam squared her shoulders. “Chrissy, this is Martha. Martha, Chrissy. Chrissy was just telling me about her work experience. Martha, how about you?”
“I have been in the food industry for over twenty-five years.”
Burt got himself another cup of coffee and sat down. “Martha was the lunch lady up at the high school for ten of that. Until she told off Henry Kegg.”
“He mowed over my rose bushes!” Martha defended. “His wife’s the school superintendent. Thinks she can pull her weight around the whole neighborhood. I told them I want to be paid for my rosebushes. They weren’t cheap and the Keggs make damn more money than I do.”
“They still don’t get along,” Burt added.
“Everybody running that school thinks they’re better than everybody!” Martha slammed her fist on the table, making Sam jump. “And they never paid me for the roses.”
Sam wrote down Martha’s name. “Where else have you worked?”
“La Trattoria, The Coffee Mug, most recently The Rustic Crab.”
“I like to eat,” Chrissy piped up. “I like helping people eat.”
“You’re hired.” Burt didn’t even hesitate.
“Burt—”
Martha stood. She pulled a business card from her pocket and handed it to Sam. “This is my card with my phone number. When she doesn’t work out, call me.”
“She’ll work out,” Burt said. “Martha, give my best to Bill.”
“Chrissy’s not hired yet.” Sam took the card. “No one’s hired yet. Martha, please excuse Burt. Burt, you are out of line.”
“Why?” Burt looked insulted. “Chrissy can do the job just as good as anybody.”
“I can.” Chrissy beamed and placed a hand on Burt’s.
Sam put her head in her hands and sighed. “All right. You’re hired.”
“Yay!”
“You’re both hired,” Sam called as Martha started to leave. “On a trial basis.”
“What do you mean?” Chrissy looked confused.
“That means you work and we’ll see how you do before we make you permanent.” Sam noticed Martha standing by the door frowning. “What do you say, Martha?”
Martha was silent for a long while. Sam wondered if she was guessing that she’d probably be doing all the work while Chrissy served as eye candy for the male customers. Had that been what Sam had done? Oh Lord, she was a horrible boss already! Martha would probably be calling the labor board on her within a month.
“You never discussed the pay,” Martha finally spoke.
“Three seventy-five an hour plus tips.” Sam had researched what the average wage for a waitress was. New York State said that one didn’t have to pay minimum wage as long as waitresses could collect their own tips to equal minimum wage. Sam wondered if that was enough. She didn’t see how one could live on waitress wages and she felt more than guilty about it.
Martha nodded toward Chrissy. “I want more than her.”
Sam hadn’t expected Martha’s reaction. “I really—”
“I have more experience.”
“Chrissy has more personality,” Burt chimed in.
“Thank you, Burt!” Chrissy touched his arm.
“And I can cook.” Martha pursed her lips.
“Why don’t we see how it goes?” Sam stood. “Can you start Sunday at five a.m.?”
Martha nodded. “That will be fine.”
“And Chrissy, I’ll start you out afternoon shift. Will that work?”
“I have all morning classes, so that’s fine.”
“I’ll try to be here in the afternoon then.” Burt sighed.
~ * ~
Sam woke with the alarm at four a.m. the next morning. Grabbing her clothes, she headed into the bathroom, only to find cold water in the shower. Still in her cotton jammie pants and T-shirt, she hurried down to the basement to check the hot water heater. Not that she knew anything about how to fix it, if that was indeed the problem.
The basement was a scary place. The crooked wooden stairs was enough to easily break an ankle. Stone foundation, crawling with spiders and sounds of dripping water everywhere. Sam had been down here before, but it was not a place she willingly looked forward to visiting. If an ax murderer could hide out anywhere, it would certainly be here. Where was the hot water heater? If she had no hot water heater, how did she once have hot water? She stared at the monstrous boiler that took up much of the space. It was a maze of piping and valves, looking like a villain in a steampunk novel. If hot water came from that thing, she hadn’t a clue where to start. One person was sure to know.
She thought about calling someone else. She knew she should call someone else, but Ian was the first she called.
And he came right over. She barely had time to change into jeans and a clean shirt and pull her hair up in a ponytail. She held the flashlight as she followed Ian down the basement steps. “Where’s the hot water heater?”
“You don’t have one.” He inspected the boiler like he had been working around them his whole life. “You don’t need one. You have a boiler that makes hot water. This is an indirect-fired hot water heater.”
He must have seen her looking at him like he had three heads because he explained, “Your boiler makes your hot water.”
“Well, it’s not making hot water today, so what’s the problem?” Sam’s head began to pound. She hadn’t meant to snap. Aunt Jean just served meals and coffee. She couldn’t have known anything about boilers.
Ian didn’t seem the slightest bit affected by her irritation. He pulled the front cover off the boiler and tinkered around with something. “Here you are. The thermocouple’s bad.”
“The what?”
“Your pilot’s out.” He removed some kind of probe-like thing. A copper tube stuck out of one end of it. “The pilot won’t light, so—never mind. Look, it’s twenty bucks and I’ll fix it for you.”
“That’s all?”
Sam hadn’t realized she was shining the flashlight in his face until he took it from her. For a brief moment, his hand touched hers. It was calloused but warm.
“On second thought,” he said with a wink, “I’ll be back for breakfast and we’ll call it even.”
Sam had bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast ready by the time Ian returned with the new boiler part. He’d had to drive into the city and find a hardware store willing to give him credit for his business. He said it like that was something rare. Sam wondered if Ian had credit problems. Sam had always had excellent credit, and she couldn’t imagine having the inconvenience of not getting credit. Good credit had always just been commonplace to her.
He ate at the counter as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “Thank you. Again.”
He bit half a slice of toast in half and swallowed it down with a gulp of coffee. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“Can I at least pay you for the part?” She felt cheap. Anyone would have charged her more.
He looked down at his plate. “This was probably twenty bucks worth of food.”
“Not hardly.”
“Okay, pay me for the
part then.”
Sam gave him the money for the part. He seemed to be in a foul mood. She wondered if it was because she’d ruined his plans for the day by calling him so early for a boiler repair. That was what he was in business for, she told herself, yet she couldn’t help but feel his moodiness was something more.
She wondered if it was true, that he’d killed someone. She didn’t understand how someone could break the law, let alone kill anyone, especially someone who was once the school’s star football player. She didn’t understand how he could be capable of that kind of violence.
He was staring at her. Ice cold eyes. Hard, intense. Dangerous. Sam wondered if he realized that she was judging him, but how could he?
“Do you ever want to go back and relive high school?” Where had that question come from?
“No, not really, but you must. You were the popular one.”
He chuckled, thoughtfully took a drink of his coffee. “Yeah, once.”
“You probably could be again.”
“Probably?” He gave a bitter laugh. “There’s no turning back from where I came from, sweetheart.”
There it was. Prison. Sam wanted to ask about it. She tried to think of what could have driven him to murder, if that was what he’d done, but couldn’t. Maybe Mother and Theresa had their stories wrong. How many times had either of them been wrong about rumors? She’d seen it over the years when her mom told everyone that Theresa was pregnant—again. It had only been wishful thinking on Mother’s part. She was prone to stretching the truth. She made her living writing fiction, after all. Maybe Ian just wrote bad checks or embezzlement or something. That would certainly be better than murder.
Sam thought of the flyer she’d received in the mail. It had been her first piece of mail delivered to this address. An invitation to her high school reunion, and it was tonight. She’d given no thought to going and had tossed it in the trash. Still, she remembered the date, just like she remembered the dates of all the dances and proms she’d never went to. Just because nerd girl didn’t fit in didn’t mean she’d forgotten about them.
She squared her shoulders. This was all wrong, the most senseless thing she’d ever done. She cleared her throat and met Ian’s hard stare. “Do you have plans tonight?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Our high school reunion is at Buster’s tonight. Would you want to go…with me?” When he didn’t answer, she tried to make light of his impending rejection. “It’d be fun. Jock and nerd girl going…together.”
“Don’t call yourself that.”
“It’s what I was. Besides, I don’t consider being a nerd a bad thing. I made a living off books.”
“You liked to read. You weren’t a nerd.” He frowned. “Don’t put yourself down.”
“Well, anyway. Forget it. It was just an idea.”
“What time?”
She turned around, surprised. “Cocktails start at seven.”
“Should I meet you here?”
He could have knocked her over with a feather. “Yeah, sure.”
Ha! She was going to her high school reunion with Ian Woods, captain of the football team…now ex-convict.
Oh my God! What had she just done?
CHAPTER SIX
True to his word, Ian picked her up at the diner promptly at six-thirty. Sam had changed into five different outfits and had decided on a simple black dress with a white lace shawl. Now, glancing out the front window, Sam watched Ian get out of his truck and felt seriously overdressed.
He wore faded blue jeans with a hole in the left knee and a white T-shirt. No jacket. His hair tussled like he just got out of bed. Perfectly dead sexy, yet perfectly inappropriate for a class reunion. At least by New York City’s standards. Probably fine for a Cold Springs reunion. Was she overdressed?
She opened the door for him, and he gave a slow whistle. Warmth coiled in the pit of her stomach. Something that had been long since dead opened its eyes and gave a wide, open mouthed yawn. Maybe it had never been dead. Maybe it had never existed until now. Maybe it had just been born. Confidence. Sexy. Sam felt it, maybe for the first time. And she liked it.
“Look at you! I didn’t think…we were only going to Buster’s, so I didn’t dress up.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” Sam suddenly felt uncomfortable, wondering if her expression that easily gave away her thoughts. Buster’s wasn’t exactly the location one would like a high school reunion to be held. It was a burger and beer joint more than anything, but they always had a really good steak dinner too. Sam supposed in a town as small as Cold Springs with a high school class of less than twenty-five students, Buster’s was about as grand as could be expected. It wasn’t even in Cold Springs but about fifteen miles away, just a little hole in the wall that everyone always knew about.
Ian was staring at her. His eyes slowly ran the length of her, sending chills up her spine despite the October evening. “You look nice.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean, really nice.”
“Um…thanks.”
“That dress must have been expensive.”
Sam looked down at herself. It had been. She’d bought it last year to attend a cocktail event for one of her author clients. That seemed so long ago now. Never would she have thought she’d be wearing it to her high school reunion.
“Do you want to go now?”
“Sure,” she answered.
He seemed uncomfortable, and taking her lead, followed her to his truck.
“You have to get in on my side.” He held the door for her. “The passenger side doesn’t work anymore.”
“Oh.” Sam jumped behind the wheel. Cautiously, she slid to the passenger side, ever mindful of her skirt wanting to catch on the interior fabric and slide up. Ian’s gaze was on her legs, she noticed, as heat rose to her cheeks. His expression was focused, dangerous, hot as hell. She quickly slid over to the passenger seat and he got in beside her.
He turned the ignition. Nothing.
“C’mon,” he muttered under his breath and tried again. Nothing. “Dammit!”
He got out, popped the hood and did something underneath. He jumped in, turned the key, and the engine roared to life.
“We could have taken my car.” Sam should have offered to begin with. It had been her idea to come, after all.
“My truck not good enough for you?”
“No, I—” His sarcasm both shocked and hurt her, and she had nothing to say.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, no it’s not. I’m sorry.” He gave a long sigh and ran a hand through his hair.
The ride to Buster’s was long and silent. Sam tried to make small talk first about weather then about his work, but she was only met with short, clipped responses so she gave up and went silent.
When they pulled into the dirt parking lot, she was surprised to see that it hadn’t changed in years. Just a hole in the wall with a bar, occasional live music by some local band, and a limited menu with burgers and fries.
The place was packed. Getting out of the truck, Sam immediately recognized faces she hadn’t seen in years. The same insecurities of a teenager came back tenfold. Around these people, she still felt like the same nerd. What else had she expected?
Sam suddenly hated herself. She’d come here just to prove something to herself, and that was pathetic. A level even the teenage Sam would never have stooped to.
“Maybe we should go.”
Ian’s expression was concerned. “You feeling okay?”
“Fine, but maybe this was a mistake. I was never the popular one—”
“Samantha Stone!”
Sam turned to see Cara Thompson. Cara hadn’t changed a bit. She’d been the head cheerleader, still had the perfect curves, and was dressed in tight jeans and a casual sweater.
Sam pulled her shawl tightly around herself. Man, was she overdressed!
“Hi, Cara. How are you?”
Cara caught her in an em
brace. “Stone, right? I mean was Stone. You’re probably married now.”
“Still Stone.” Sam hugged her back.
Cara stepped back. “Oh, I’m so sorry. You never married?”
“It’s quite all right.” Sam shook her head. She knew Cara hadn’t meant anything by her comment, yet it still stung. High school in Cold Springs, probably in any small town for that matter, had a way of staying with you. “Cara, you must remember Ian Woods.”
Cara smiled, nodded slightly. She took a step back. “Well, I better get inside. Good seeing you, Sam.”
Second Chance (Cold Springs Series Book 1) Page 7
