Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,13
working at the Broken Chimney. He wouldn’t be here now except they’d run out of coffee. As he walked in, he saw Tess behind the counter. She’d tied a red apron around her waist and pulled her hair into a ponytail, but rebel strands curled around her face and down the back of her neck.
A man in jeans and a suede bomber jacket stood at the counter. Ian had overheard enough to know the guy operated a microbrewery nearby, and he’d seen enough to realize Mr. IPA was more interested in Tess Hartsong’s curves than in the pie he’d ordered.
“Let me take you out for barbecue after you get off work.”
“Thanks, but I’m a vegetarian.”
The hell she was. She’d made a BLT for Bianca and eaten one herself.
“How about drinks, then, at The Rooster?”
“It’s nice of you to ask, but I have a boyfriend.”
She was lying about that, too. He’d observed enough by now to know that Tess was a loner.
“If you change your mind, let me know.” The guy took his pie and a mug of coffee over to the community table but continued to watch her out of the corners of his eyes. No surprise that he seemed especially drawn to her hips.
The place was busy with a motley collection of the town’s citizens, too many of whom he’d heard about from Bianca.
“Tess is getting to know everybody. She says a lot of people in town owe their jobs to Brad Winchester. He’s the big shot around here. . . .
“Tess says the townies secretly look down on the retirees who’ve moved in from out of state, but they don’t show it because of the money they bring in. . . .
“Tess says she’s met some of the artists: a guy who works with iron, and she says there’s a woman who makes mandolins. We should have a party.”
Over his dead body. And he was getting more than a little sick of hearing “Tess says.” Apparently Tess hadn’t mentioned any of the homesteaders and survivalists hanging out in the mountains. He’d met a few of them when he’d been hiking, including some with kids. They were an interesting lot—earnest environmentalists who wanted to reduce their carbon footprint, conspiracy theorists hiding from the apocalypse, a couple of religious zealots.
Ian approached the counter. The dusting of powdered sugar on Tess’s apron must have come from the cake doughnuts. He’d never understood why those dense, powdery lug nuts were even considered doughnuts. Except for their shape, they had nothing in common with a light-as-a-feather glazed doughnut.
He knew what he wanted, but he glanced at the menu board anyway. “A cup of house blend, plus a pound of your darkest roast, and a couple of doughnuts. Glazed.”
Without asking whether the doughnuts were for here or to go, she slipped them into a white paper bag, rang up his purchases, and handed him the coffee in a paper cup instead of a mug. “Are you going to let Bianca drink any?”
“I guess that’s up to her.”
Her hands stilled on the register drawer as she looked up at him. “Is it?”
He didn’t like subtlety. “What are you getting at?”
“A cup of coffee won’t do her any harm.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“Where did you get that scar on your neck?”
Most people were too polite to ask, but she didn’t seem to care about everyday courtesies. Neither did he. “Trying to squeeze under a chain-link fence when I was eighteen and the cops were chasing me. Do you want to know about the others?”
One on his arm from a nasty encounter with a New Orleans guard dog. Another on his leg from falling off the roof of an apartment building in Berlin. When you spent so much of your life climbing ladders and sneaking around dark city streets, shit was bound to happen.
The one he prized the most was the jagged mark across the back of his hand. He’d earned that after he’d tagged his father’s Porsche. It served as a reminder of a beating he’d never forget, along with the evidence that he’d fought back.
“No. That’s okay.” She dismissed his question and also dismissed him.
He grabbed the coffee, along with his change. Instead of leaving, as she seemed to expect, he took a seat at the opposite end of the community table from the horny brewer and opened the doughnut sack.
A woman came in. He didn’t know for a fact that she’d once been a homecoming queen, but her diamond-shaped face and faded-blond prettiness bore the hallmarks.