CHAPTER FOUR
“Would any of you like a refill?” With the pot of decaf in one hand and the good stuff in the other, Becca smiled at The Gulch regulars, a group that had met there every single morning since she’d started working at the diner.
She had come to find great comfort in their consistency, listening to them bicker and joke around with each other and other restaurant patrons. Though they all apparently came from very different demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, they seemed like a family, dysfunctions and all.
“Top me off, would you?” Mick Malone gestured to his cup and she was rather proud of herself for remembering he drank only decaf. She managed to pour his refill without spilling a drop, another mark of just how far she’d apparently come in the nearly two weeks since she’d started working at the diner.
“Another stack, Sal? I can have Lou throw a few more cakes on the griddle.”
“This ought to hold me until lunch, darlin’.”
She smiled at the older cowboy. He had to be in his seventies and so skinny he probably had trouble keeping his jeans up, but the guy had the metabolism of a hummingbird, apparently, and could eat every other one of the regulars under the table.
“Anyone else need anything?”
“I’ll take one of those pretty smiles if you’ve got another one to spare.” Jesse Redbear, missing his left front tooth, gave her a flirtatious grin that lifted all his wrinkles. She shook her head but couldn’t resist a smile.
“That’s the one.” He winked at her. “I think I’m good now.”
She shook her head again. “I’ll check on you all again in a minute,” she said, then moved to the other side of her section to check on a couple of customers who had just sat down.
She couldn’t say she would be sorry to leave waitressing behind when she finished the requirements to transfer to the Idaho state bar, but she had certainly learned a lot the last few weeks working at The Gulch. She had learned that sometimes the stingiest-looking customers could be the biggest tippers, that keeping beverages topped off could go a long way and that sometimes a friendly, apologetic smile could make all but the most dour customers forgive her frequent mistakes.
“Order up,” Lou called from the grill, and she finished taking the newcomers’ orders then headed back to pick up the breakfast specials for a young family she’d seen around town before. When the bell chimed on the door, heralding a new arrival, she looked up just as everyone else did.
The chief of police walked in looking dark and gorgeous, and her stomach fluttered wildly, until she noticed the pretty ski-bunny type who came in with him, hanging on his arm as if she were a bounty hunter and he was prey about to escape.
They didn’t take a table, just stood for a moment near the entrance. To Becca’s dismay, he gave the woman a playful kiss and it was obvious they’d just spent the night together. Her stomach dived down to her feet and she thought of how stupid she’d been to have cherished that sweet little kiss on the cheek he’d given her nearly a week earlier when he’d come to help them with their Christmas tree.
“Come have a cup of coffee at least,” he said in a low bedroom voice.
“I can’t stay,” the woman protested. “I’m already late for work. I’ll see you later, though, right?”
“Plan on it.” He kissed her again, and the ditzy-looking woman left the diner with a longing sort of backward glance.
Becca somehow wasn’t surprised when he sat down in her section. Annoyed with herself for the completely unreasonable jealousy seething through her, she set the menu down in front of him with a little more brusqueness than normal. “Good morning, Chief. Do you want coffee this morning?”
She heard the coolness in her voice and he must have picked up on it, too, because he finally met her gaze with a surprised sort of look. Becca faltered. This wasn’t Trace Bowman. It must be his twin, she realized with growing mortification.
“I’m so sorry. You’re not Chief Bowman.”
“Actually, I am. Just not the only Chief Bowman.”
Trace’s twin was the fire chief, she remembered belatedly. Now that she had a better look at him, she realized that while they were identical twins, there were definite differences. This Bowman was a little broader in the shoulders, his hair was a little shaggier and he didn’t come across quite as dangerously masculine.
And apparently he was the ladies’ man of the family. He gave her a charmer of a grin. “I’m the better-looking chief.”
“I’m sorry. I forgot you were twins.”
“I’m Taft Bowman, with the Pine Gulch Fire Department.” He held out a hand to shake hers and she had no real choice but to reach out to return the gesture.
“I’m Rebecca Parsons.”
“Right. You’re new in town, Wally Taylor’s granddaughter. You must be the one with the kid our Destry’s age.”
Our Destry. She had to admit, she was touched by his words, as if the entire Bowman clan seemed to take responsibility for the little girl. That sort of family unity was completely beyond anything in her experience.
“That’s right.” She gave him a smile she hoped was slightly warmer. “Do you need time to look at the menu or do you know what you want?”
This was another thing she’d learned in her few weeks working at The Gulch. Townsfolk generally already had their orders picked out before they ever walked through the doors.
“I’m in the mood for a ham-and-cheese omelet this morning. Think you can talk Lou into making one for me?”
Apparently Taft Bowman had enough experience with Lou that he knew he could sometimes be in a mood. “I’ll certainly ask him. He’s done a few other omelets this morning, so keep your fingers crossed. I think you should be safe.”
His green eyes that seemed just like Trace’s gleamed appreciatively as he smiled at her. He was every bit as good-looking as his brother and she wondered why his smile didn’t stir her hormones in the slightest. She was as unmoved by his flirting as she had been to Jesse Redbear’s.
Maybe it was because the fire chief was an obvious player, judging by the woman who had just left. But she had a feeling if Trace had looked at her that way, she would have dissolved into a puddle all over the peeled plank floor of The Gulch.
“The fire chief would like a ham-and-cheese omelet.”
Lou frowned as he turned some sizzling bacon on the grill. “That can probably be arranged.”
She realized after she gave the order that she’d forgotten to ask Trace’s brother if he wanted coffee. By the time she turned back to remedy her mistake, he had swiveled around in his booth and was talking to a couple of middle-aged women at the next table, who simpered and blushed at his teasing.
She fought an amused smile as she headed back toward his booth. “Coffee, Chief?”
He aimed that flirtatious grin at her. “Thanks. Give me the high-octane stuff.”
She had only started to pour when the door opened again and the other Chief Bowman walked inside. How could she ever have mistaken Taft for his brother? They weren’t anything alike, she saw now. Her stomach gave a silly little swoop and she remembered again the soft brush of his mouth on her skin.
“Um. Ow.”
She jerked her gaze away at the calm words and was horror-stricken to realize she had splashed hot coffee on the fire chief’s leg.
“Oh. Oh! I’m so sorry. Let me just…” She pulled off the towel tucked into her apron and began dabbing at the spot. He eased back in the booth and gave her an amused look, and she was painfully aware of Trace walking toward their table. When he reached it, he stood there for a moment watching her dab at his brother’s thigh before he cleared his throat.
“What have we here?”
“Just a little coffee mishap,” his twin said. “No worries. It’s probably not even a third-degree burn.”
“I’ve been doing so well all morning,” she wailed, then glared at Trace. “Why did you have to come in and ruin everything?”
Oh, she hadn’t meant to say that. She was suddenly aware that both men were suddenly watching her with interest. Heat rushed to her face and she wanted to sink through the floor with mortification. Trace Bowman made her nervous and off balance and now everyone in the diner within earshot knew it.
She took a deep breath and pulled the towel away from the fire chief, praying for composure.
“I really am sorry,” she said to him.
“I’m fine,” he said again. “My Levi’s took the brunt of it.”
To her vast relief, Lou rang the bell in the window. “Order up,” he called.
“That would be your omelet, Chief.”
Trace, just sliding into the booth across from his brother, gave her a teasing smile. “How’d you know I was in the mood for an omelet?”
“Get your own. That one’s mine.” Taft gave him a mock scowl.
Trace raised an eyebrow with a meaningful look she didn’t understand. “Funny. I was just going to say the same thing to you.”
She didn’t have time to figure out the subtext between them as she headed back toward the grill to pick up the order. Nor did she understand why, when faced with two equally gorgeous men, did only one of them seemed to possess the power to turn her into a babbling idiot?
“Here’s the chief’s omelet,” Lou said. “Comes with a short stack.”
“Thanks.”
“What about the other chief?”
She let out a breath. She did not want to have to deal with the man this morning. “He said something about an omelet as well but I’ll have to go check to make sure.”
Lou refrained from rolling his eyes but he still looked faintly exasperated, probably wondering why she hadn’t asked when she was just at the booth, but he didn’t push her. Becca grabbed the eggs and pancakes and returned to the Bowman brothers’ booth.
She slid the plates down in front of the fire chief, along with a small syrup container. At least she didn’t spill that all over him, too.
“Anything else I can do for you?”
The fire chief opened his mouth, a teasing gleam in his green eyes, but then she heard a dull thud from under the table and his flirtatious expression shifted to one of almost pain. “I’m good. Really, really great. Thanks.”
She looked suspiciously at Trace but he only smiled blandly.
“Are you ready to order?” she asked.
“I think I know what I want.”
She reached into her apron pocket for her order pad and was happy her fingers trembled only a little when she gripped her pencil. “I’m ready. Go ahead.”
“I changed my mind about the omelet. Think I’m in the mood for something sweet. I’ll have the French toast. Oh, and a side of scrambled eggs. Thank you.”
“Coffee?”
“Decaf.”
She poured for him, focusing all her concentration on not spilling a single drop. After she finished giving his order to Lou, the large group at the corner booth next to the Bowman brothers left and she hurried over to bus their table. Though she didn’t intend to eavesdrop on the conversation of Trace and his brother, she couldn’t help overhearing a little of it as she cleared away plates.
“Any guesses what might be going on with her?” Taft asked the police chief.
“No. Something’s up, though. I stopped by the ranch last night to drop off a book I’d borrowed from Caidy, and Destry stayed in her room the whole time.”
“That’s not like her.” The easy charm of the fire chief faded into concern. “Wonder if she’s sick.”
Becca frowned as she wiped down the table with a clean cloth. She hoped not. Gabrielle seemed to be spending a lot of time with Trace’s niece. If Destry got sick, chances were Gabi would get it, too. Becca couldn’t afford to miss work to stay home with her sister if Gabi caught some nasty bug.
“Caidy said she seemed to be feeling fine. No fever or complaining about any symptoms of sore throat or stomachache or anything. She’s just been really quiet and sad for a few days. Caidy said she’s not eating much and she didn’t want to go on a ride with her yesterday after school.”
“That’s really not like her.”
“I talked to Caidy this morning and she said Destry refused to stay home, said she was fine. Caidy’s worried about her, too.”
She didn’t hear the rest as she had finished clearing off the corner booth and had no excuse to linger here, especially when she had other customers with needs. For the next ten minutes, she did her best to ignore the Bowman brothers, though she was aware of them—okay, aware of Trace—as she took orders, seated new customers, poured coffee refills.
When Lou announced his order was ready, Becca ordered herself to be calm and collected. He was just another customer, she told herself as she set the fluffy eggs and cinnamon French toast on a tray.
She might have even believed it if her nerves didn’t jump like crazy, simply from being this close to him.
“Thank you.” His warm smile of appreciation didn’t help matters whatsoever. She wanted to bask in that smile like a kitten in a sunbeam.
Becca quickly did her best to clamp down on the inappropriate response. She didn’t need a man to further snarl up her life, especially when she seemed to be doing a fine job of that all on her own.
“More coffee?” she asked them.
Trace nodded and she refilled his cup first then used the other pot of regular to top off his brother’s.
“Anyway, you know how Ridge can be,” Taft said, obviously continuing the conversation between them. “If something doesn’t moo or neigh, he doesn’t pay it much attention.”
“Hey, Becca. You live with a nine-year-old girl,” Trace said suddenly.
“Yes,” she said carefully.
“We’re both a little concerned for our niece, Destry. She’s been acting weird this week. Secretive, you know.”
“It is almost Christmas. Maybe she’s working on a special present.”
“That’s a possibility, but it’s not reading that way to me,” Trace said.
“She’s usually the only one in the family who’s excited about Christmas,” Taft said. “Not this year, though. I offered to take her Christmas shopping over the weekend so we could get something for her dad and Caidy, and she shut me down right away.”
“Why?”
“No idea,” Trace answered. “That’s what we were hoping you could shed some insight about. You being a girl and also being the mother to a girl the same age.”
Her stomach twisted a little at the reminder of her lie and she could feel herself flush. “I meant, why doesn’t more of your family enjoy Christmas?”
The two men exchanged a look, both suddenly solemn. “Memories,” Trace finally said. “Our parents died around Christmastime. This year is the ten-year anniversary of their deaths.”
She had known, somehow, that he carried a deep pain around the holiday. When he had been at their house the other night helping with the tree, he had laughed and joked with them, but she had seen a shadow in his eyes a few times.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have pried. No wonder you want to avoid the holiday altogether.”
“We might want to, but we understand that Destry’s just a kid. Since she was little, we’ve all tried to put on a good show for her.”
Again she was struck at the Bowman siblings’ love and concern for the little girl. For a crazy moment, she was consumed with envy. She would have loved this sort of extended family when she was a child. Instead, all she’d had was Monica.
Gabrielle had more than that, she suddenly realized. Gabi had her. She could guess that her younger sister probably didn’t have that many warm, cherished Christmas memories. Not with Monica raising her in the same haphazard way she had raised Becca. But Gabi had an older sister who could give her everything she had missed for the past nine years. Christmas carols and sleigh rides, home-baked cookies and stockings on the mantel.
She had been trying to merely survive the holidays until she found a little better footing, but Gabi deserved more than that. Like it or not, she needed to step up for her little sister’s sake, just as the Bowmans tried to do for their niece.
“Any ideas what we can do for Des?” Taft asked.
They were asking the wrong person. She was just about the last one on earth with many insights into the mind of a nine-year-old girl. “You’re going to have to figure out what’s wrong first. What does she say when you ask?”
“Nothing,” Trace said. “She says she’s fine.”
“I can ask my…Gabi if you’d like. They seem to be friends. If anyone can wiggle out the truth about what might be bothering Destry, it’s Gabrielle.”
“That would be great.” Taft smiled at her and she wondered again at the capriciousness of fate. She had absolutely no reaction to his smile other than a pleasant warmth.
When she met Trace’s glittery green gaze, that warmth exploded into a churning, seething firestorm, and she wanted to stand there and bask in the heat of it.
“Excuse me, miss? Can I get more water?”
At the voice from a neighboring table, Becca jerked her attention back to her job and the ten other tables full of customers who needed her. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”
She grabbed up the water pitcher and refilled the water glasses at the neighboring table, reminding herself as she attended to her other customers of all the reasons why fraternizing with local law enforcement was a bad idea.
She might not be running a con but she was definitely living a lie. If he found out the truth—that Gabi was her younger sister, not her daughter, and that Becca didn’t have any kind of official custody arrangement with their mother—authorities could conceivably take the girl from her and put her into foster care. She couldn’t let that happen to her sister.
The Bowman brothers seemed to be taking their time over their food and she tried not to pay any more attention to them than strictly necessary to make sure they had adequate service. The other customers kept her busy, especially the large group of college-age snowmobilers, in town for the weekend, that ended up taking the corner booth near Trace and his brother.
They were demanding and petulant and becoming louder by the minute, to the point where she almost expected Lou to come out from behind the grill and start swinging his frying pan around.
They were also not nearly as respectful as the local customers. Their flirting with her had a hard edge to it and when she reached to refill one coffee cup, the young man on the end of the booth tried to cop a quick feel.
She instinctively squeaked and backed away. Before she’d even caught her breath, Trace was looming behind her. For a large man, he moved with deadly stealth, turning from amiable to dangerous in the space of a heartbeat.
He’d been a military policeman, she remembered him saying. She could quite clearly picture him knocking a couple of shaved marine heads together for disturbing the peace. He had the harsh, indestructible look of a leatherneck. Definitely not someone to mess around with.
“Thank you for breakfast, Becca.” He barely looked at her when he spoke, his attention on the rough group of snowmobilers.
“You’re welcome,” she said. She could probably handle a group of kids on her own but she couldn’t deny she was grateful to Trace for stepping in.
“You think you could top off my coffee one more time before I go?”
“Sure. Right away, Chief Bowman.”
She quickly escaped the tension and returned to the neighboring booth, where she quickly refilled his coffee. Taft said something to her about the weather and she answered distractedly, her attention still focused on Trace, who had now bent down and murmured something to the college kids. She couldn’t hear what he said but she saw the boy who had tried to grope her blanch as if he’d just driven his snowmobile into an icy lake.
He nodded vigorously and then all of the kids dug into their food while Trace moved leisurely back to his own booth.
She felt compelled to say something. “Thank you. I could have handled the situation, but…thank you.”
“No problem. They shouldn’t bother you again.”
“Just out of curiosity, what did you use on the little punks?” the fire chief asked. “The line about how you keep the band castrator we use on the cattle in the back of your squad car and aren’t afraid to use it?”
He gave a slow smile that ramped her heartbeat up a notch. “No, but that’s always a good one. I just told them we have old-fashioned ideas around here about the way men ought to treat women. And that I have a special jail cell at the station house for little punks who come to town looking for trouble. They shouldn’t bother you again. You let me know if they do.”
“I will,” she mumbled and moved quickly away before she did something completely ridiculous like burst into tears.
She was more shaken by the incident than she wanted to admit—more by her reaction to what Trace had done than by a stupid little punk trying for a cheap thrill.
Becca had been taking care of herself virtually since birth, since Monica had all the maternal instincts of a blowfly. Despite that, she had worked hard to become a competent, self-assured adult. She had been on her own since she became an emancipated minor at sixteen and had convinced herself she didn’t need anyone.
So why did she literally go weak in the knees when a sexy police chief stepped up to watch over her?
She had no answer for that. She only knew she couldn’t make up for the inadequacies of her childhood by seeking someone to watch over her as an adult. Right now her focus needed to be Gabi and nurturing her baby sister the way their mother never had.