Chapter 21
morgan
The storm had died down during the night, so it was clear and cold just before lunchtime on Wednesday as Morgan did his best to focus on his accounting task and not on Jack. Who’d slept on the futon next to him after they’d watched Netflix in the glow of the small fire in the cast-iron stove.
Their conversation had been nonexistent, but that hadn’t been a problem. Jack’s nearness, the hard curve of that flannel-shirt-covered shoulder, had been. That and Jack’s scent in the warm air, soap-clean with a lingering trace of diesel beneath. The fire had glinted dark orange against his hair.
He needed a haircut, though there wasn’t a barber in town and Morgan wasn’t up to coming at him with a pair of scissors.
Jack probably wouldn’t sit still for it anyway, and, in any case, the length of Jack’s hair shouldn't be what Morgan was thinking about.
He needed to focus on the task at hand: updating the books.
His cell phone rang, jerking him back to the present. With a sigh, seeing it was Mabel, he answered it.
“Hello, this is Mabel,” she said, and Morgan sighed again.
“Hello, Mabel, what can I do for you?”
“I’ve made peach cobbler,” she said brightly. “I know nobody is supposed to be out on the roads, but if your truck can make it, you and Jack can come by today and make an old woman happy by giving her and Mister Rocket some company. Besides, I made a double batch, and it’s just too much.”
Jack was standing at the door.
As Mabel blathered on, Morgan held the phone to his chest and hissed, as though his conversation with the old lady had been going on for half an hour or more, “It’s Mabel.”
Then he went back to the call and did his best to cut her off. “That sounds fine,” he said, over whatever she was saying. “Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Bye for now.”
With a click, he ended the call and looked at Jack, remembering just in time that he needed to nip their relationship—whatever was happening between them—in the bud. Be ready to take Jack to the airport or bus station or whatever and move on with his life. Focus on the task at hand.
“She okay?” Jack asked. “She need help with something?”
Of course Jack would ask. Of course Jack would care. Of course, he would connect himself to people in a town that wasn’t his.
Even if the expression on Jack’s face when he asked about Mabel was soft and sweet, making Morgan want to get up and kiss him, he wasn’t going to.
“She made peach cobbler,” Morgan said, putting dire resignation in his voice. “Too much for her and that dog to eat, apparently.”
“I could go get it,” Jack offered. “The sun is shining.”
“No,” Morgan said. “There’s no need for that. Besides, we still have rhubarb crumble.”
“Oh.” Jack looked a little morose, hands in his pockets. “Okay.”
He turned to leave. The clonking of his boots upstairs resumed, and before too long, he reappeared with a tray of fried bologna sandwiches and chicken soup. A meal from his East Coast childhood, perhaps, but it smelled good. Greasy and filling. Comfort food.
“Thank you,” Morgan said. “I appreciate it. This shouldn’t take me longer than a couple more hours,” he said, gesturing to the desk. “Later we can eat dinner and watch Resident Alien again. Sound good?”
“Sure,” Jack said, though it didn’t sound like he meant it. Or maybe his mind was occupied with thoughts that didn’t involve Morgan. Which was possible, and perfectly his right. Jack might be working for Morgan, but Morgan didn’t own all of his time.
Morgan worked while he ate, getting grease and mustard on one of the receipts, one of the only clearly written and fully filled-out receipts. Who in the hell still used carbon copy order forms, anyway? His aunt and uncle, that was who.
Well, there wasn’t anything to be done about it now, and complaining, out loud or not, wasn’t going to make the work go any faster. He focused on the next stack of paper, thinking with half his mind that the store had grown awfully quiet. There wasn’t any sound from upstairs, either.
Maybe Jack had taken a nap in front of the cast-iron stove. That was his right as well, though it did make Morgan want to make an excuse so he could stretch out on the couch while Jack was on the futon. Which was foolish. Jack deserved not to have Morgan around all the time.
Morgan’s cell phone rang, and he picked it up absently, using the eraser on his mechanical pencil to move the top paper on his desk around, floating it on top of the other papers.
“Hello?”
“Morgan?” asked an all-too-familiar voice.
“What can I do for you, Mabel?” he asked with as much patience as he could, pretending his irritation didn’t rear up like an untrained horse. Pretending he’d not just talked to her only an hour or two ago and that talking to her again so soon wasn’t a huge strain on his last nerve.
“I sent him along with the peach cobbler,” she said, “but then I called Young Tommy to see if he could find him on the way and give him a lift home to you. Young Tommy wasn’t too pleased about that, but in this weather, what else was I to do?
Just because the sun is shining doesn’t mean it’s warm, young man, and I couldn’t let Jack walk all the way home with it growing colder every minute. ”
It took him a moment to realize that the young man in that pile of words referred to him, though none of the rest of it made sense.
“What peach cobbler?” Morgan looked up and leaned back in his chair a little, taking in the angle of the light and the fact that his office had grown cold while he’d worked. “Oh, that peach cobbler. We were going to pick that up in a day or two. Is that all right?”
“No need for that now,” she said tartly, sounding like she’d bitten into a lemon.
“Jack just left with the cobbler in hand—I’ll need that pan back, if you please—and, as I told you thirty seconds ago, he was on foot, so I’ve sent Young Tommy to pick him up and drive him the rest of the way.
He’s none too happy about it, like I said. ”
“Young Tommy is bringing Jack here?” he asked. It was the only part of what she was rattling on about that made sense. Because Jack was supposed to be safely upstairs, or maybe working in the store somewhere. When had he left?
“It is zero degrees outside, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Mabel said. “And that young man of yours was hardly dressed for the trek.”
“Trek?” he asked, getting up and going to the front door, where, sure enough, he could see the steam coming out of the tailpipe of Young Tommy’s SUV as it plowed through the thick snow in the parking lot, sunlight glinting off the chrome. “He—”
“Sure, he was wearing your coat, but he had on those ratty old boots of his and no gloves, let alone a hat,” she said, cutting him off.
“His blue jeans have no more than grease and holes holding them together.” She paused to take a hard breath.
“It’s a crying shame you can’t take better care of such a fine young man. I wouldn’t trust you with a stray dog.”
And then she hung up on him.
Through the glass front doors, the light of the afternoon sun was glinting off the layers and dunes of snow, making it look as though some kind of distant lantern was panning across a goblin’s den of rough-hewn jewels.
The sky was edged with dark purple, bleeding toward an early sunset as bundled-up clouds began to spread themselves across the sky.
Robe flying behind him, cane barely used, he was at the door before they reached it and stepped outside, instantly up to his knees in snow.
This time, like last time, Young Tommy led the way. He herded both Morgan and Jack in front of him, pulling off his plastic-clad brown hat and tucking it under his arm as he urged them inside the feed and grain.
Jack was wearing Morgan’s coat, but that was the only accommodation he’d made to the weather.
And while the coat had a faux fur–trimmed hood, a sensible person would have worn a tuque with it. And gloves. As it was, the fur was dusted with frost, along with his eyelashes, and Jack’s hands were red with cold as he gripped the edges of an oblong metal pan covered in aluminum foil.
Morgan could barely breathe for the frustration that rose inside him. Why did things have to be so complicated between them? With Jack about to freeze to death and Morgan about to rip his head off.
Jack blinked, and a flicker of frost fell from his eyelashes onto his lips, where it melted instantly into a slender slice of water. Morgan wanted to wipe the moisture away with his thumb, but he restrained himself. Mixed messages were the last thing he needed to be delivering.
“Thank you,” he said to Young Tommy, as if the local sheriff bringing Jack home was an everyday occurrence. Which it was getting too close to becoming. To Jack, he said, as politely as he could, “I said we’d go in the truck. In a day or two, if the weather held.”
“Needed the fresh air,” Jack said, shivering.
What Morgan needed was for Young Tommy to leave, and for Jack to get out of his frozen clothes and into something warm and dry.
“He’ll be fine.” Young Tommy put on his hat and adjusted it as though he’d just received his marching orders.
“Leastways he wasn’t out there long enough to freeze, but I tell you what, when Mabel called me, she was having a fit about you letting him walk over to her in this cold.
That coat’s a good one and all, but, hell, nobody’s out in such weather unless they have to be. ”
There was a tone in Young Tommy’s voice.
Had Deputy Hartland been there, the tone, as well as the disapproving looks, would have been doubled.
Giving Morgan the very real impression that Young Tommy, and Mabel, and probably everyone else in town was looking out for Jack better than he was.
Those demerits were racking up against him.
Morgan opened his mouth to make it very clear that he hadn’t let Jack do anything.
That he’d said they’d go over to Mabel’s in the truck.
That he’d not asked or encouraged Jack to walk there in subzero temperatures.
Jack had made his own choice to freeze his ass off. All this brouhaha was Jack’s fault.
He snapped his mouth shut. Throwing Jack under the bus like that would take more asshole than he had inside of him to give.
“I should have planned better,” he said after a moment. “I shouldn’t have brought it up to Jack like I did, but I didn’t want to miss out on Mabel’s fine cooking, especially not her peach cobbler.”
Jack blinked at him.
With a nod, Young Tommy stomped out to the SUV, whose engine was still running, steam puffing up from the exhaust, heater presumably going full bore. He drove slowly away, sending up twin sprays of snow from his back tires.
“I’m sorry,” Morgan said. “I’d have taken you over there if I’d known how much you wanted that.” He nodded at the pan in Jack’s hands.
“I went to get it for you,” Jack said simply. “We could have it with ice cream.”
The thoughtfulness behind this, plus the—Morgan glanced at the sturdy thermometer just outside the front doors—yes, subzero temperatures that Jack had braved on his behalf, overwhelmed him. Jack was kind, unlike a lot of people in Morgan’s life, Bradley included.
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it in a way that felt genuine for the first time in a long while. “That’d be great. But first, let’s get you warm.”