Chapter 2 #2
He’d just set up a new account at the bank in Apple Pie Creek, and he needed to start making the monthly money transfers he’d sent to Susannah every month for the past three years out of the new account.
He’d been forced to have a private conversation with the president of the bank before the bank’s manager agreed to send the transfers anonymously for him.
The next check was due to be sent in eleven days.
He filled out the online form to wire the money out of his account and hit send.
That unpleasant, but necessary, task done, he shut down the laptop and went out to sit on the front porch.
He sank into one of the deep Adirondack chairs Dillon had built recently and propped his foot up on the matching ottoman Dillon had made for him the week he got home from the hospital after his surgery.
The porch faced south, looking out on the valley’s rolling landscape. Dotted here and there with ranches, the rolling terrain rose gradually, and then steeply, into the mountains that formed the Stillwater Valley’s long south rim.
Walter lay at his feet and looked at the view with the air of an old man who’d observed it several thousand times and continued, broadly, to approve. He laid his head down on his paws and closed his eyes with an audible sigh.
“All right,” he said to the dog, after a minute. “Dillon told me to follow your lead and take it easy for the next few months. A nap it is.”
Reno laid his head back against the chair’s cushion, pulled his black baseball cap down over his eyes, and went to sleep. For once, he didn’t dream of Susannah. Instead, he dreamed of a blond angel with flour on her wings, smelling of his grandmother’s bread.
He and Walter dozed on as the afternoon passed them by.
When Dillon trudged up the porch steps a little after five, he moved with the dragging stride of a man who’d been out most of last night on an emergency call, and on his feet all day today.
He stopped at the top of the steps and studied Reno, who lounged in the chair, blinking sleepily at him.
At Reno’s feet, Walter did the same, blinking up at Dillon.
“How’s the knee doing?” Dillon asked.
“Hank says it’s coming along. I say it’s healing slower than I’d like.”
“Mm.” Dillon sank into the second chair beside him.
“I heard your truck pull out of the driveway around two AM. but didn’t hear it come back this morning. Everything last night go okay?”
“Rancher’s cow spooked at something and bolted through a barbed wire fence.
Got tangled up in the wire and panicked.
Tore up her hide something fierce. I had to set almost a thousand sutures to patch her back together.
She’ll be fine as long as she doesn’t pick up an infection.
By the time I was done stitching her up, I needed to head to straight to the clinic.
Had a full day’s worth of appointments on the books. ”
“No rest for the weary,” Reno observed dryly. “Maybe you should hire a vet tech to handle the routine clinic visits.”
“I would if I could find one. They’re in short supply nationwide, and Cobbler Cove’s pretty far off the beaten track for most folks to consider moving here.”
“Fair.” A pause. Then Reno asked, “How’s Tessa?”
Dillon’s entire face transformed, the fatigue falling away, replaced with delight.
“She’s fantastic. She got the first sales numbers from the fancy New York boutique she sold Charlotte’s wedding designs to.
They’re going to have to hire more seamstresses to keep up with the demand.
The dresses are flying off the . . . not shelves . . . whatever dresses fly off of.”
“Racks?” Reno supplied.
“Right. Racks. At any rate, Tessa and Charlotte are over the moon.”
“That’s great,” he replied with genuine pleasure. “They deserve huge success after all the hard work they put in building their company. How come you’re not with Tessa right now, celebrating?”
“She and Charlotte are working tonight. Revising their five-year plan for the business and figuring out how to grow much sooner and faster than they anticipated. I’m taking Tessa over to Apple Pie Creek tomorrow for a fancy dinner and night out.
Speaking of which, how do you feel about hanging out with Makayla tomorrow evening? She’s a great kid.”
“You mean, like babysitting her?”
“Nah. She’s totally self-sufficient. But Tessa worries about leaving her all alone on the farm way out in the country. Normally, Tessa would ask the next door neighbor, Arlo, to keep an eye on her, but he’s out of town this week. He’s taking his first vacation in forty years.”
“Good grief. Forty years? Where’d he go?”
“California. Says he always wanted to see the giant redwoods.”
“Cool.” Reno sighed. “Yeah, I guess I can hang out with your kiddo. She’s gonna be my niece, after all.”
Dillon grinned and Reno rolled his eyes back. “Speaking of which, have you and Tessa picked a wedding date, yet?”
“I just proposed to her a few weeks ago. Maybe let us get used to that for a minute before you chase us down the aisle,” Dillon retorted.
“Not chickening out are you?” Reno teased.
Dillon’s expression went dead serious. “Not a chance. I can’t wait to marry her.”
Reno was startled. Since when did any Steele man wear his heart on his sleeve like that? Granted, it was a nice change from Dillon’s usual stoicism and I-don’t-deserve-to-be-happy-or-loved vibe.
Dillon pushed to his feet and went inside. He came back out a minute later, though, with two beers. He handed one to Reno and they sat side by side, sipping them in silence.
“I got out of the house today,” Reno said.
“Yeah?”
“Stopped at the bakery on Main Street. There’s a cinnamon roll on the counter in the kitchen for you.”
“Don’t you want it? Dillon asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Then why’d you get it?”
“To have an excuse to walk somewhere,” he answered honestly.
In front of him, the mountainsides burned fiery orange, cooled to pink and lavender, and started to fade toward black. Walter snored on at his feet.
“Did you meet Grace at the bakery?” Dillon asked without inflection.
“Yep.”
“What’d you think?”
Reno chose his words carefully. “She’s not what I expected.”
“How so?”
“My first impression was that she doesn’t belong here. I don’t mean in Cobbler Cove. I mean on Earth. She looks exactly like I expect angels to. Except then I talked with her, and she’s so down to earth. Just a normal, nice person. It was . . . jarring.”
“Mm,” he said. Then, “Did you like her?”
“Can’t say that I know her well enough to like her or not. I did find her intriguing.”
“Did you ask her out?”
“Bro. Our mama taught us that rule one with the ladies is to go slow. Be polite, talk with them, listen to what they have to say. Flirt a little. See if they flirt back. Then, maybe you ask them out.” He threw Dillon a disparaging look.
“How did you ever land a great gal like Tessa if you don’t even know rule number one about women? ”
“Sheer dumb luck, I guess.”
“Emphasis on dumb,” Reno muttered.
Dillon retorted, “I don’t see you with a beautiful, amazing fiancée and a great daughter-to-be who both make you so happy you could bust.”
“Lord save me from my besotted brother.”
Dillon grinned. “You wait. Some woman’s gonna come along and knock you flat on your butt. I just hope I’m around to see it so I can say I told you so.”
Reno snorted. “Not me.”
Nope, he wasn’t wired for things like love and romance.
His brain worked in complex logic chains and thought in carefully constructed arguments.
When a sappy love song came on the radio, he never made it more than a few lines in before he rolled his eyes and changed the station.
Feelings and emotions were weaknesses other people indulged in. They were not his jam. At all.
They sat there in silence, the way the Steele men sat with most big things, while the sun went the rest of the way down.
That night, as Reno lay in bed not sleeping at one AM.—he really shouldn’t have napped all afternoon if he wanted to sleep tonight—he told himself sternly that he wasn’t going to drive back to the bakery at the crack of dawn in the morning.
He told himself the same thing again at two AM., and again at four, and again at six when he took his coffee out to the porch and watched the sun rise.
By seven he was in his truck and headed for town. He couldn’t stand the worry of not knowing if something else creepy had happened to Grace or her bakery overnight.
The cinnamon roll bag he’d come home with the day before was empty. Dillon had stolen his cinnamon roll and snarfed it for himself. He needed a replacement cinnamon roll for himself. That was the best cover story he could come up with in the ten-minute drive to town. It would have to do.
Buns ’N’ Roses smelled like yeast, sugar, and coffee when he stepped inside.
Several people were waiting groggily in line to order, all of them obviously pre-caffeinated.
The bouquet of yellow tulips in a cut crystal vase on the counter was new.
He liked the variety of yellows, creamy butter to lemon, to a brilliant golden yellow.
Grace looked up from the espresso machine as the bell rang over his head. He saw her go still for just an instant when she caught sight of him. She looked back down quickly at the drink she was making, but her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink.
With a small smile, he went to the back of the line. Nobody in front of him felt like talking this early, and they took their pastries and coffees and left the bakery quickly. For the moment, it was just the two of them in the shop.
“Good morning, Mr. Steele.”
“Morning, Mrs. O’Donnell.”
Obviously, they’d each remembered or learned the other one’s name since yesterday.
“This makes two days in a row,” she said with a smile. “A few more days of coming here and you’ll qualify as a regular.”
The bell rang behind him as someone else walked in.
“How were things around here overnight?” he asked pleasantly while he shot her a more serious look.
She understood his meaning and set down the cloth she’d been wiping the espresso machine’s steamer wand with.
“Quiet. No surprises. I’m pleased to report that there are no rogue herbs or rebel spices of any kind in Cobbler Cove this morning.
Mary opened up with me at four-thirty and we’re working the morning rush together. ”
He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That’s good,” he said in relief. “Very good.”
“Is it?”
“It is.” He lowered his voice so the person behind him wouldn’t hear him. “Thank you for not coming in alone.”
She studied him for a moment. “Did you drive all the way into town on a knee that I gather you’re not supposed to be walking on, let alone driving with, to make sure I didn’t open up alone this morning?”
“I don’t need my left knee to drive, so it’s not impacting my ability to drive. And I came into town on a knee that I am allowed, even encouraged, to walk on for a cinnamon roll. The making-sure you weren’t alone this morning part was purely a side quest.”
A tiny smile made the corners of her mouth curve up rather enchantingly.
He smiled back just a little as well.
“What can I get you to go with your cinnamon roll?” she asked.
“How about a second one for Dillon to swipe so I’ll still have one?”
“Good idea. Anything else?”
“Put in a few more of whatever you’ve got. We’re just a couple of cooking impaired bachelors, and your pastries look amazing. Surprise me.”
She boxed him two cinnamon roll, two savory breakfast scones, and two slices of something with cream cheese filling and raspberry filling alternating between flaky layers of thin pastry and topped with whipped cream and fresh raspberries. She poured him a cup of black coffee.
She remembered how he took his coffee. Not that his order was difficult. But still. She rang him up and he paid, refraining from asking if she’d ordered a security camera and remembered not to prop open the back door with a brick today. She was an adult and could take care of herself. Right?
Still. She looked so small and fragile behind the counter.
At the front door he stopped. Turned back. Said in concern he miserably failed to disguise, “You’ll let me know if anything shows up unannounced here?”
She stared at him for a moment, as if perplexed as to why he cared. But then she nodded and said politely, “I will.”
She turned to greet the next customer and take the woman’s order, and he limped out into the bright spring morning carrying a bag of pastries that smelled as heavenly as the person who’d made them.
He sincerely hoped she meant it when she said she would let him know if anything more happened, but he couldn’t tell.
He didn’t know her well enough yet to spot her tells for evasion or deception.
Everyone had them except professional gamblers and professional liars, and even then, if he had enough time to study one of them, he could usually spot the little tics, eye movements, or fidgets that gave away when someone wasn’t being truthful with him.
Ever since Grace told him about the weird gift someone had left for her to find in her kitchen, he’d had a bad feeling about it.
His gut was warning him in no uncertain terms that something bad was going on at her store.
But he couldn’t see the shape of the threat, which meant he couldn’t predict where .
. . or who . . . the danger was coming from.
One thing he knew for sure: he didn’t like the odd appearance of the rosemary one bit.
She might not be in direct danger, but someone had managed to sneak into her bakery unseen and plant that rosemary. Either that, or the culprit had somehow obtained a key to the bakery.
Alarmed at that prospect, he made a mental note to tell her to get both the front and back doors rekeyed as soon as possible. In fact . . .
He pulled out his phone and searched for the nearest locksmith.
There was one over in Apple Pie Creek who made house calls.
Reno called the guy, but he didn’t answer his phone, so he left a message that he needed an emergency re-key on a business in Cobbler Cove.
He left his own cell phone number as the call back number.