When she didn’t say anything, he seemed to realize he hadn’t given enough of an answer. “Atlanta, mostly, for the last few years.”
“What do you do?”
“Do?”
She slapped her palm on the table. At their feet, the dog jumped and sat up. “You’re infuriating! You have to eat, right? What do you do to earn money?”
He chuckled at her temper tantrum. “Calm down, Abigail. I’ve worked a lot of different jobs over the years. Landscaping, moving furniture, construction, restaurant work—”
“Really? What kind?”
Noah gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Short-order cook, maître d’, dishwasher, waiter. I did some sous-chef work at one place in Florida, but didn’t stay long enough to get anywhere.”
“You’ve been to Florida? And Georgia. Where else?”
When he shook his head, she insisted. “Come on, Noah, tell me where all you’ve traveled. I’ve been stuck in this little town since the day I was born, and as far as I can tell, I’ll be here till I die. But I love hearing about other people’s adventures.”
Still, Noah hesitated. Abby didn’t really want to know about the majority of the adventures he’d had—too many low-rent apartments and bar fights, too much experience with the police and the prison system, too few good meals to eat and good people to talk to. Wherever he’d been, he hadn’t spent time on the right side of the tracks.
But he tried to give her what she wanted. “I hitched my way to California when I left here. Learned to surf and do some in-line skating.” The entire two years had passed in an alcoholic haze. “Then I went to Wyoming and learned to ski at Jackson Hole. I was a lift operator for a season.” He pretended to shiver. “Talk about cold.”
“I can’t imagine that much snow. And the Rocky Mountains—are they just spectacular?”
Somehow, she got him to describe what he’d seen of the Rockies…and Hawaii, where he’d only been able to afford a couple of months. He had stuff to tell about New York, Chicago, Dallas and San Antonio, too.
“And yeah, I have been overseas,” he said finally, getting to his feet. “But it’s after midnight and I need my beauty sleep. I’ll just take the mutt and go on back to my mom’s.”
“Wait.” Abby put her hand out as he bent to pick up the dog. “I—I feel bad about deceiving your mother.”
Noah straightened up, leaving the dog on the floor. “You wouldn’t be. Don’t worry about it.”
“But—” She grabbed his arm and held on tight. “Noah, why did you come home?”
“I…” He glanced away, rubbing a palm over his chin. “What difference does it make?”
“Because if you came to make peace with your mom, sneaking a dog into the house is not the way to go about it.”
He put his palm over her fingers where she clutched him. “Abigail, this isn’t your problem.”
Her hand turned, linking their fingers. “I’d…like to see you stay around. For…a while.”
Dangerous words. Her gold-green gaze searched his face, and Noah didn’t know what to say.
The next moment became even more dangerous, as Abby stood, stepped closer and brought the fingertips of her free hand to his cheek. She tilted her face up, looking at him through half-lowered lashes. “Would that be so bad?”
“I—” Resisting temptation had never been one of his strong points. The sane half of his brain fired every possible weapon of logic in an attempt to keep things from going any further. But Noah touched his mouth to Abby’s, and sanity popped like a soap bubble on the point of a pin.
She filled his arms sweetly, her generous breasts soft against his chest, her back supple and warm under his hands. Her kisses invited anything he chose to give, and Noah explored the entire spectrum, from tender to harsh, innocent to erotic, testing, playing…hell, resurrecting feelings he thought he’d killed years ago.
He came back to consciousness with one hand tangled in Abby’s hair and one hand under her shirt, cupping her breast, while he could feel both of her hands gripping his butt.
“Abigail.” He closed his mouth, settled for a few more innocent kisses, managed to drag his lips across her cheek, into her hair and finally away. “Not smart. Not smart at all.”
“Who cares about smart?” She pressed a deep kiss against the base of his throat, and he felt his knees start to shake.
“You. Me…maybe.” He groaned as her teeth nipped at his collarbone. She could devour him right here, right now, on her dad’s kitchen floor….
Shit. With a growl, Noah jerked his head back, gripped Abby’s shoulders and pushed her away to arm’s length. “Stop it. Just stop.”
She closed her hands around his wrists. Her lips were swollen, probably bruised, her eyelids heavy with desire. “Why?”
“Because your dad could decide to get a glass of water, for God’s sake. Because it would be criminal—” What a word to choose. “It would be ridiculous for this to go any further.”
Abby lifted her chin in defiance. “I’m not pretty enough?”
“What? Where’d that come from?”
“Not sexy enough? Talented enough? What does it take to catch Noah Blake’s interest?” She shook her head. “I wondered all through school what was wrong with me, that you wouldn’t actually ask for a date. I finally decided you just didn’t want to be seen with me in public.”
Noah swore again, dropped his hands from her shoulders and walked to the other side of the room. “Believe me, Abigail, you would have been a lot more miserable—then and now—if I had asked.”
He shut the hall door silently behind him, the front door not quite so gently. Only when he reached his bike did he realize he’d completely forgotten to take the dog with him.
ABBY USUALLY LIKED getting to the diner early on Saturday mornings to enjoy the peace and quiet before the big crowd started arriving around eight. Even in December, folks in New Skye got up early on Saturday to get breakfast before they went shopping, before the golf match or the horse show, before they spent the day decorating the house and yard for Christmas. And Abby usually enjoyed hearing about their plans for the day. This morning, after yet another sleepless night courtesy of Noah Blake, she didn’t want to wait tables, didn’t want to cook or clean up, didn’t want to hear about other people’s lives. She wanted to crawl back into bed, pull the blanket up to her eyebrows and sleep the day away.
Not an option, of course, especially when the rush started almost an hour early.
“If you’re cookin’, you’d better get hoppin’,” her dad ordered as he came into the kitchen. “I got two over medium, bacon, two scrambled, sausage, pancakes and ham, biscuits.”
Almost by reflex, Abby started the food. She pulled trays of biscuits her dad had made out of the oven, slid them into the warmer, then turned to flip the fried eggs, pour out the scrambled onto the grill. Charlie went out with a coffeepot and two glasses of orange juice, returning in a few minutes with three more orders.
She noticed he was breathing a little fast. “Want to take over the grill, Dad, and let me do the running for a while?”
He started to refuse, then nodded and held his hand out for the spatula. “Sounds good.” Billie would be in at seven-thirty to cook and so Charlie could go to the register and the counter. The three of them together could handle the breakfast rush just fine.
Abby took the first order out, brought in four, served the next three. The tables were filling up fast. As she waited for a customer at the corner table to decide between grits and hash browns, she glanced across the street to see that the weekly basketball game was under way. Dixon, Adam, Rob, Pete and Tommy had been playing Saturday mornings since high school—maybe even junior high. The sixth person varied, though for the last couple of years Dixon’s stepson, Trace LaRue, had been a regular. Afterward, the guys came in for a huge breakfast, as predictable as clockwork.
This morning, though, the game looked different. Abby stared for a minute and finally realized that she missed seeing Pete. His ar
m had been broken by a bullet when he was on duty, taking him out of the game for a good long time. She recognized Adam, dark-haired like Pete but not as tanned. Dixon wore his dark brown hair longer. Tommy was the shortest player, compact and strong. Rob stood tallest, with silvery blond hair under the edge of his baseball cap. Trace was a darker, spiked blond.
The sixth man had a chopped-up cut to his black hair and a sharp look to his face. He wore black sweats hanging loose on a frame that needed filling out. Noah.
“I’ll have potatoes,” the man at the table said.
Abby looked down at him. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“Potatoes,” he said with impatient emphasis, as if she was the reason he’d been dithering.
“Right.” Abby scribbled down the order and turned away from the window.
She glanced back in time to see Noah go for a layup. When he and Dixon slapped hands, she gathered he’d made it, and couldn’t help smiling.
She brought the guy by the window his breakfast then had to go back for potatoes because she’d written down grits. She poured regular coffee for her decaf trio, and brought milk to a little girl she knew was lactose intolerant.
When she’d added up the fourth—or fifth—ticket incorrectly, Charlie scowled at her. “Where’s your brain this morning? You’re acting like you’re sick or something.” His eyes widened. “You’re not sick, are you?”
“No, Dad. I’m fine.” She patted his shoulder, set four mugs and a coffeepot on her tray and headed back to the tables. Almost nine o’clock…the game would be ending anytime now. And then he’d be coming in to eat.
She happened to be by the window again when the six guys crossed the parking lot toward the front door. Noah hung back, shaking his head. He didn’t want to come inside.
But Dixon and Adam walked on either side of him. Rob, Tommy and Trace blocked escape to the rear. Noah would have breakfast whether he liked it or not. Pete Mitchell pulled his car to a stop in the parking lot just in time to join them at the door. Heart thumping, Abby hurried to set up their regular table.
NOAH KNEW HE COULD HAVE—should have—insisted on leaving without sitting down to breakfast. He didn’t have the money to be spending on meals in restaurants, even the relatively cheap food at the Carolina Diner. And he didn’t have any business seeing Abby again.
But there appeared to be a conspiracy aimed at getting him inside the diner and seated. Most of the tables in the place were full, and conversation hummed in the air. In the center of the dining room, though, three tables had been pulled together and set with places for all of them. Glasses of iced tea and cups of coffee already sat in front of most of the chairs.
“Somebody’s drinking hot chocolate.” Dixon claimed an iced tea chair and leaned over to sniff the steam coming from the mug on his left. “Smells good.”
Noah glanced around and decided no one else was moving in that direction, so he sat down and took a sip of chocolate. The richness of the taste echoed Thursday night’s expensive brew. Recklessly, he searched out Abby’s face in the crowd. She stood at Pete’s shoulder, across the table. Catching his gaze, she gave him a wink and a quick smile, then looked at Dixon. “Who won the game?”
“There was no beating Bell, Blake and Crawford this morning.” Adam shook his head in feigned disgust. “The rest of us might as well have stayed in bed.”
Rob Warren nodded. “Nothing like rolling out early on a cold morning just to get your butt kicked.”
“Noah’s long shots are impressive,” Tommy Crawford explained. “All Dixon and I had to do was keep the defense back and let him throw. Whoosh, every time.”
Noah felt his cheeks heat up. “Not every time. Maybe…three out of five.”
“Maybe two out of three,” Dixon countered. “You must have played some pretty regular ball to be that consistent.” The expectant faces around him, if not the words, asked a question.
“Uh, yeah. In Atlanta, I lived in a neighborhood where we played ball most nights for a couple of hours.” A prison was a neighborhood, of sorts. Right?
“I guess I’ll find something else to do with my Saturdays,” Pete said, to no one in particular. “I’ve been replaced by a professional.”
“Nah, you’ll come back.” Tommy slapped him on the back, just as he took a sip of coffee. “We’ll just find somebody else to play with us—make it four on a team. Hey, Abby—you want to play b-ball on Saturdays?”
While Pete sputtered, Abby shook her head. “I think not. Basketball’s not my sport.”
“What is your sport?” Trace LaRue, Dixon’s stepson, spoke up for the first time.
“Aerobic burger-flipping,” Adam suggested.
Pete joined in. “Long-distance table-waiting.”
“Marathon pie-making,” Rob added.
Abby laughed at the jokes, but Noah thought her gaze was harder than usual, her jaw set. She took orders from the rest of the table, coming to him last. “What can I get you for breakfast?”
“I’m not too hungry. The chocolate’s enough, thanks.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than his empty stomach betrayed him with a loud rumble.
Abby lifted an eyebrow. “Eggs scrambled or fried?”
“I’m okay.”
“Scrambled,” she said, writing on her order pad. “Bacon, sausage, ham?”
“I—”
“Sausage. Hash browns or grits?”
He could starve tomorrow. “Grits.”
Her sweet mouth curved into a smile. “Biscuits or toast?”
“Biscuits.”
“Coming right up.”
A couple with two kids walked behind him just as Abby completed the order. She stepped to the side, giving the family room to pass, and steadied herself with a hand on Noah’s shoulder. The press of her hip against his back, the weight of her palm on his collarbone, melted something deep inside of him—something that should have been harder, colder. He could not let her get to him like this.
He didn’t look back as she left for the kitchen. A small victory, but he’d take it.
The other guys at the table replayed the basketball game for Pete’s benefit, employing traditional exaggeration techniques that produced a lot of squabbling and laughing. Though most of them had been playing together since high school, Noah had never been part of this crowd and he listened to the jokes with a half smile. He knew nothing of what had happened in their lives for the last fifteen years. And if they’d known about his life, they wouldn’t have invited him to play basketball to begin with.
Dixon took a long draw on his glass of tea and then glanced at Noah. “You’ve been in Atlanta all the time since high school?” The other guys heard the question and looked in their direction.
Noah slid down a little ways in his chair. “Mostly.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
Careful. “My last job was in furniture construction.”
“You’re a carpenter?” Adam leaned forward. “What kind of furniture?”
“Better watch out,” Tommy said. “DeVries’ll have you on his construction crew before you know what hit you. He’s always on the lookout for a good carpenter.”
Noah grinned. “I’ll remember. I’ve made desks, bookcases, cabinets—office furniture.”
“For a big company?”
“No, not one of the major brands.” The state of Georgia didn’t qualify as a significant furniture manufacturing concern.
“How long did you build furniture?”
“Three years. Before that,” he volunteered, since he had no doubt he would be asked, “I worked in landscaping.” For a son of a bitch who was better off dead than alive.
To his relief, Charlie Brannon stepped up with a tray of food. “Wish I could eat like you young guys. She keeps me practically starved and loads your plates like you haven’t eaten for a week.” He glared at Pete, who had started to speak. “And don’t give me any bull, because I know all of you have wives who put a damn fine meal on th
e table.”
Noah’s plate thunked onto the table in front of him. “Except you, I guess,” Charlie muttered. “Your mother never did learn to serve up a decent meal.”
Though true, the comment soured Noah’s mood. “She struggled just to survive,” he pointed out. “She didn’t have the time or energy to cook fancy.”
Charlie had moved down the table and didn’t answer. Noah stared down at his huge mound of eggs and sausage, and the big bowl of grits. He’d lost his appetite completely.
“Don’t let him rile you,” Dixon advised in a low voice. “He’s tough on people he cares about. You should hear him go after Abby.”
“He yells at her?” To keep his face hidden, Noah stirred a pat of butter into his grits.
“Gives her a hard time, occasionally. And she takes it, because she loves him.” Dixon turned to his own plate.
“Why’s she still working here?” The question was out before Noah realized he’d intended to ask.
Adam, on his other side, stopped eating. “I ask myself that question sometimes. She’s talked about seeing other parts of the country, even other countries.”
“Why’s she still living in her dad’s house? Shouldn’t she be married by now?”
Dixon shook his head. “Don’t let her hear you say that. I don’t know why Abby didn’t marry somebody here in town.”
Rob leaned around Dixon’s shoulder from the center of the table. “I always got the feeling she was waiting for something…or somebody.”
Noah’s heart slammed against his ribs. “Waiting for somebody? Who?”
Rob shrugged. “He never came, I guess. She’s never said.”
Abby arrived at that moment with a pitcher of iced tea in one hand and a pot of coffee in the other. “Refills? Noah, you want more cocoa?”
He shook his head and took a gulp of the ice water she’d provided. Echoing in his brain was Abby’s question about high school and why he hadn’t dated her.
Had she been waiting for him?
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