Chapter 4
Chapter Four
I’d read the manual for this carburetor rebuild ten times, and it still made no sense.
How the hell could it be any clearer? I’ve done this kind of job a hundred times, yet this morning I couldn’t seem to get the damn thing running properly.
I tore it apart, cleaned it, and replaced the bowl gasket and intake gasket.
The fuel lines were new as was the gas, but it still wasn’t running right.
I also called the old Tecumseh a few choice words, which sometimes helped, but not even cussing was getting this thing to stop sputtering.
“I have a hammer,” I warned it and let my head fall to my forearm as it lay on my workbench.
Lack of sleep was making things more difficult.
Gilda and I had a rough night, but we were forging on.
She’d been incredibly hard to wake up this morning.
Once she was relatively coherent, I asked if she wanted to stay home.
She didn’t. She said the cramping was less, and she didn’t want to miss play practice.
So I packed her lunch and walked her to the door, where she left me behind as she ran for the bus.
Mr. Plankett, the bus driver, knew to give her a few extra minutes.
He’d been driving bus for Grouse Falls since I was a kid, so he was well-versed with terminally late preteens.
Hopefully her day was progressing better than mine.
Probably it was. She was a kid who bounced back incredibly quickly.
I’d seen her and her friends stay up all night for sleepovers—why they called them that when the kids never slept, I never did grasp—then charge around all day at top speed.
Me? Not too much charging. If I didn’t get at least eight hours, I looked like Nosferatu and not the sexy Bill Skarsg?rd version either.
I was the old black and white vampire with big ears and wild eyebrows.
As I rested my weary head on my arm, I could feel my eyebrows growing out. Yep, frightful sight in three…two…
The bells over the front door rang out, startling me awake. I jerked upward so quickly I nearly fell backward off the stool.
“Be right there,” I shouted as I got my ass under me, as Wilson liked to say.
Yawning widely, I wiped my hands on an old rag and then ambled out to the showroom.
I was expecting a rush delivery from the auto parts store out on Old Kenner Road.
I had a cranky ice auger that needed a new solenoid on order for Frank Miller.
Big ice fisherman Frank was. Caught the biggest pike once and never let anyone forget it.
Schnell Lake in the next county west of us was having a big ice tourney in a few weeks.
The cold weather of late had frozen the small lake well, so Frank and the rest of the ice fishermen were chomping at the bit to get out and snag a monster.
“If you want some coffee, I just made a pot.”
I blinked at the man in the doorway. It wasn’t Larry, the deliveryman from Auto Parts Express. Standing there with the morning sun glinting off some vibrant dark brown streaks in his curls was Blue Coat Man.
“Good morning,” he said, his dark amber eyes flicking to me then returning to the line of scarves, mittens, and hats.
“Looking for a hat to match the mittens you’ve taken?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible. This man had been tiptoeing around inside my head for days.
“No, the hats won’t fit her,” he replied and turned to face me. “Do you have any of the smaller mittens? The ones for infants? She keeps chewing up the ones that I take.”
“Oh.” Huh. So he had a toothy baby. “Well, I might have a few in my knitting bag. If you give me a moment. Please feel free to browse.”
“Thank you,” he replied, his accent barely there unless you listened closely.
European for sure, Scandinavian perhaps, but I wasn’t sure.
Katie had a cousin who had studied and lived in Norway for many years and sounded much like this man.
He shrugged out of his coat as the showroom was quite warm.
Most of the heat ran into it via some fans and ductwork to keep the customers warm.
My workspace held the woodstove, so I was always toasty, even if much of the heat was blown into the front room. “You have some very nice saws.”
“I try to keep a few of the newest models in stock. You should take a gander at that new Snow Goose snowblower over there. Electric start, 252cc engine, twenty-six-inch clearing width with a twenty-inch intake height. Comes with hardened gears in the auger gearbox so you won’t have to worry about sheared pins that need replacing all the time.
Self-propelled. Three-year warranty. Reasonably priced. ”
He glanced at the bright blue snowblower and back at me, his coat lying over his forearm.
I snuck in a fast once-over while he was admiring the snowblower.
His clothes fit him well, clean black jeans, and a soft-looking sweater of pale blue.
His shoulders were wide, and his waist was lean.
A nicely put-together man with curls for days.
“It seems quite nice, but I don’t really need a large piece of equipment like that. ”
“Oh, I see. You must live in an apartment then. They have some nice ones over at Pinnacle Place Complex.”
I was being incredibly nosy, I knew that, and I shouldn’t be.
His life and his story were his to tell or keep to himself.
If he had recently moved into the low-income housing complex and was strapped for cash, then I should ease off.
I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable, but I was so damn curious.
Then again, he had left thousands of dollars for the church over the past few days, so would he be living in a low-income apartment?
Gah. The mystery surrounding this man was making me twitchy.
I was not doing well with my investigation.
Ellery Queen would be ashamed of my questioning technique.
He took a step closer. I could smell his cologne now. It was deep woods, thick with spice and something earthy. My dick reacted instantly. That was something that hadn’t happened since I buried Katie. I wiggled behind the counter to hide my erection.
“No, I don’t live there.” His reply was short but not sharp. He placed his coat on the counter as he and I conversed. The man was not jumpy or suspicious in the least. “I am spending time in the woodlands. There’s a small camping area called—”
“Kerry Run Kampground. I know it well. So you’re camping in December?” That seemed odd to me, but hey, people do all kinds of crazy things. If he had a warm place for him and his baby, who was I to judge? Hard times came for us all.
He nodded. “Mm, yes, for a while. I like it here. The people are very kind, and I’m the only one at the camping grounds. I think it’s going to snow soon. I heard snow geese flying overhead, and they usually herald snow.”
“Oh wow, I didn’t know that.” He smiled sweetly as he leaned an elbow on the rough wooden counter.
My sight darted down to the counter to make sure he didn’t put his coat or his elbow into a puddle of grease, oil, or old coffee.
That was when I spotted the nametag in the collar of his coat.
Prada, it said. My brain stalled much like the Tecumseh I had been working on just a few minutes ago.
Okay, so this man with his toothy baby was camping out at Kerry Run in December while wearing Prada coats and dropping hundred-dollar bills like they were breadcrumbs at the park.
What the hell was going on here? “Let me go dig around in my bag. Be right back.”
I surreptitiously—I hoped—locked the register as I should do all the time when I’m in the back but never do because this was small-town USA and all that. Now I was worried that Prada Coat Man was possibly an international thief.
With a toothy baby?
Oh right. Well, maybe he stole the baby!
And brought it to Bung Lick, Pennsylvania? Come on, Mitchell, get a grip. There’s a story here, and you need to keep a cool head and examine the facts. Like Columbo, but without the nasty stogie.
Right. I was right. I needed to rein in my imagination and ferret out the facts. Throwing Prada Coat Hunk a smile before I slipped through the raggedy curtain, I hurried to grab my tote bag and darted back to the storeroom where I’d left him standing, reading one of my dusty business cards.
“Mitchell Baxter,” he read my name as he peeked at me through stupidly long lashes. God above, he was pretty. I liked the little lilt his accent added to my humdrum name. “You own this shop?”
“I do, yes. It’s been in my family for three generations.
” I plopped my overflowing cloth bag on the counter beside his coat.
His Prada coat. What the ever-loving hell was a man who wore Prada doing in my depressing little village?
“I think I have a few left at the bottom from what I made last year.” I glanced at him on the sly.
He was slipping my card into his back pocket.
I hurried to get my attention back on my yarn bag.
“There aren’t a lot of babies around here, so I usually only make a few.
Most of the people who need outerwear seem to claim bigger sizes.
Does your baby need more? I can knit up a few pairs of them in a couple of hours. ”
His expression shifted from placid to amused.
“My baby? Well, I suppose she would consider herself to be my child. I certainly spoil her like one. Thank you. She gets very cold quite easily.” That was definitely a cryptic reply.
Of course the child thought she was his.
And while it was nice to hear that he spoiled the infant, I wasn’t sure—“It’s amazing that you knit. ”
My gaze flew from the tiny yellow mittens I’d just dug out to him. “Are you saying that men shouldn’t knit?”