Chapter Five
Beck waved off Aunt Sarah’s howl of discontent as the dog made his way deeper into the dining room, and then she gave Aidan a solid shove into the kitchen. Inside the door, she snagged the master key ring and jingled it in the direction of the back stairs up to the apartment.
“Follow me.”
Ruff bounded up the steps ahead of her, pulling Aidan along, and as the leash got between them, Beck nearly faceplanted on the second step.
“Careful,” Aidan said, grabbing her under the arm, saving her from the fall.
“Doesn’t he ever follow directions?”
“Never. Not ever.”
She had to laugh at his continued attempts to talk her out of something she would never be talked out of. But he was cute. Wasting his time, but easy on the eyes.
In a half run, she stayed a step behind Ruff, who led the way like this was all his idea. Behind her, she heard Aidan chuckle, too, before giving another demand for Ruff to settle down, which was totally ignored.
For a second, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed, but couldn’t take time to think of it, because Aunt Sarah’s complaints and calls for assistance in the kitchen reverberated through the narrow wooden stairwell.
“I can lock him up here if you want to get started on the pizza,” she suggested.
“Not until I check it out.” Aidan looked around the small space at the top of the stairs while she flipped through the keys to find the one that opened the apartment.
“Will he be safe up here?” he asked. “Nothing he could ingest or that could hurt him in there?”
She managed to get the door open to the tiny one-bedroom, a power wave of bad memories hitting her as she did. Always the same moment flashed in her mind when she walked into this room. The week before Thanksgiving, when Aunt Sarah and Uncle Mike had climbed the steps with Charlie and Beck, carrying their suitcases, trying to stay chipper, telling them about the pizza parlor down below…
This is your life now.
She shook off the ancient ache and looked around at the apartment they’d moved out of not long after that. Over time, the living area had become a bit of a storage unit, but mostly for furniture, old restaurant equipment, and a pallet of paint cans from when Uncle Mike wanted to paint the pizza parlor dining room seafoam-green, but gave up after seeing how putrid it looked on one wall. So now they covered the lone seafoam-green wall with the Best of Bitter Bark awards and hoped customers looked at those and not the hideous color.
In one corner, a stack of sealed, unused pizza boxes towered nearly to the ceiling, and the rest of the place had a few boxes of files and papers.
“We never keep food up here,” she said. “He should be fine.”
Aidan glanced around, frowning. “Define fine.”
“Unless he eats sofas or paint or…” She looked down. “Hardwood floor. I think he’s safe.”
Ruff started sniffing and exploring, pulling his leash taut, and Aidan still didn’t look satisfied. “It’s dark in here.”
She rushed to a bank of windows along the front room, dragging the heavy drapes all the way open, immediately bathing the room in light. “And he has a view of Bushrod Square,” she said with the flourish of a real estate agent working every trick she had. “It’s really a lovely apartment.”
“Water. He has to have water.”
“Of course! The kitchen functions.” She breezed to the galley kitchen and searched wildly for a dish, pulling cabinets open and snagging a plastic bowl like it was the Holy Grail.
“Here we go!” She flipped on the faucet, filled up the bowl, splashed a little in her haste, but planted it square in the middle of the living room. “Thirsty from all that barking, Ruff? Here you go, baby.”
“And that means he’ll have to pee.”
She resisted the urge to glare at the man who never gave up when it came to this dog. Maybe to anything. “He peed sixty times in the square, and we’ll take him out after we get a few pies served. Can we go now?”
“Let’s see.” He unhooked the leash and backed away from Ruff as if he half expected the dog to bolt, jump, or leap out the window.
He did none of that, but loped toward the water bowl and slurped noisily.
“See? He’s fine.”
Aidan didn’t answer, but watched him, then looked again at Aunt Sarah’s old paisley-print sofa. “Sleep there, Ruff,” he said. “Take a long afternoon snooze.”
At the word snooze, he perked up his head, barked once, and ambled to the sofa with the speed of a hundred-year-old man thinking about his nap. Come on, Ruff.
“Snooze, boy,” Aidan ordered.
Ruff climbed up, stretched out, knocked a throw pillow out of his way with his head, and let out the mother of all belches.
“Did I mention he’s disgusting?” Aidan asked.
“Nope, but you will.” She gave Aidan a good nudge toward the door. “Come on. A rush is rare. Like, unheard of. I don’t want to lose these customers.”
Aidan took one more look at Ruff, but she ushered him out the door. “He has to get used to this place. I’ll clean it out tonight, and we’ll both move in, all comfy and safe. Let’s go.”
Down the stairs, she pushed the door into the kitchen and nearly got mowed down by Aunt Sarah as she bounded in from the dining room.
“What is he—”
Beck cut her off by stepping between them, using one hand to point Aidan toward the pizza counter and the other flat in front of Sarah’s face in the kindest, clearest way she could say stop.
“He’s here to help. Isn’t that awesome?” Beck said, dialing up the brightness with a wide smile. “He can make actual pizza that people will eat.”
“But where’s the—”
“Upstairs, out of your way. How many people, what pies, and do you need any salads?”
Sarah’s jaw unhinged, and she pushed back a lock of hair, the lines even deeper now on her sixty-year-old face. “Four,” she finally said. “All large. Two cheese. One pepperoni. One half mushrooms, half veggie. Six salads.”
Beck gave a quick nod, calculating whether she’d made enough dough for four large pizzas. Well, she’d made it. How it tasted was anyone’s guess. “We can do that. Get them drinks.”
The second Sarah’s gaze slipped over her shoulder toward Aidan, Beck got right in her face, blocking her view. “Drinks at the fountain. Behind the pickup counter. In the dining room.” She tapped Sarah’s shoulder. “Don’t be paralyzed by the big rush of business, Aunt Sarah. It’s an answered prayer.”
With a flash of her green eyes, Sarah pivoted and got to work. On a sigh of relief, Beck turned and took that breath right back in again.
Aidan already had a Slice of Heaven apron on, his head down as he kneaded a doughball like the stuff was whipped cream made to conform to his hands. He pushed, rolled, folded, scooped some flour into his hand, and slapped that unresponsive ball of hell onto the countertop and started pushing it out to a perfect twelve-inch circle.
Wow. “How did you do that?”
He stole a glance at her, a lock of his hair brushing his eyebrow, crystal-blue eyes glinting with a whisper of arrogance. “Told you. It’s all in the hands.” Then he sniffed. “Something in the oven, Beck?”
Was there? “No, it’s been on too long. The smell goes away when we put something in it.”
“Something like this?” He lifted his hands off the dough, spread his fingers wide, and flipped the pie back and forth for full examination.
Forget the dough. Look at those hands. They were…good. Damn near as big as that pie, tanned and strong with clean, clipped nails, and enough nicks and scars to make her want to know the story behind each one. “Oh yes.”
He glanced up and gave a half smile that was almost as jolting as his hands. “Like it, do you?”
Yes. No. Damn, she wasn’t going there.
Because if he got one whiff that she had so much as a single cell firing up over the sight of his big hands and blue eyes and shoulders that looked like they were made for a woman to claw with her nails, his next approach would be a charm offensive. And if a man as insistent and relentless as Aidan Kilcannon turned that charm on her, she might actually weaken for his claims that Ruff belonged to him.
And that wasn’t happening, come hell, high water, or sexy hands.
Instantly, she spun on her heel, rounded the counter, and headed for the fridge to gather the ingredients for salads. She slipped into work mode, lining up bowls, adding cherry tomatoes, sending the uninspired concoctions to the pass. Uncle Mike would have cut the cucumbers with cool edges, sliced the olives, and made sure every salad was topped with a jaunty sprig of something fresh. But she wasn’t Uncle Mike and couldn’t have made edged cucumbers if her life depended on it.
Who’d care?
“That was a sorry-looking salad,” Aidan mused as he passed.
She closed her eyes and grunted. “They don’t come for the salad.”
“From the way you’re acting over a lunch rush, I’m starting to think they don’t come at all.”
She gave a careless shrug. “Well, this group did, for whatever reason. All the pizzas in the oven?”
“Yep. Where’s the rest of the dough?”
“I have some proofing in the refrigerator, but I honestly thought it would be for dinner, not lunch.”
He bent down to peer through the glass into the dining area. “I saw three more people come in.”
She blinked in shock. “What is going on?”
“Um, lunch?”
“Haven’t had a lunch like this in a long time.”
He grinned. “I must be your lucky charm.”
Just then, the kitchen door flew open, and Aunt Sarah came in with her face flushed. “They’re travel agents!” she announced. “Apparently, a busload of them are on a tour through North Carolina small towns.”
“That’s great,” Aidan said. “They’ll tell their clients to come if the pizza’s good.”
“Big if,” Aunt Sarah muttered, but Beck wasn’t going to stand here and discuss it when there were actual paying customers pouring into Slice of Heaven.
“Did you get the order for those three new customers?” she asked her aunt.
“I sent them away,” she said.
“What?” Aidan and Beck asked the question in perfect, shocked unison.
“They had a dog.” She held out her hands as if that was all that needed to be said. And, of course, it was.
“Didn’t read the sign, huh?” Beck said as she wiped down the salad-making counter.
“Oh, they saw the sign, but they were in line outside of Ricardo’s and saw you come in here with…” She pointed toward the ceiling and, Beck assumed, the apartment above them.
“My new dog, Ruff?”
Sarah actually smiled, either at the name or the idea.
“He is,” Beck insisted. “Aidan kindly brought him all the way from Afghanistan. He was Charlie’s dog.”
Sarah blinked as if Beck had spoken in Greek and not a word made sense.
“And he’ll live upstairs, with me, as long as I’m here, then I’ll take him back to Chicago,” Beck finished. “You don’t have to have anything to do with him.”
Her aunt opened her mouth to argue, but the front bell rang, indicating even more guests had walked in. Sarah and Beck shared a shocked look, too slammed to argue over the dog.
“You better make more salads and start the next pie,” Sarah said, turning toward the dining room. “I’ll get their order.”
“Unless they have a dog,” Aidan muttered, opening the oven door.
Beck sighed. “Yeah. She’s really got her heels dug in on that topic.”
“Maybe you could tell her what’s what.” He opened the oven and slid a rickety old metal peel under a pie. “You’re awfully good at it.” He turned and caught her gaze, a glimmer in his blue eyes.
“Was I mean?”
“You were…strong,” he said, shimmying the peel to get the pie in the middle. “Reminded me of Charlie.”
That made her smile as she walked to the shelves to get more salad bowls.
“And it’s pretty hot,” he added.
She closed her eyes. Yep, he went there. Already. “You mean the pizza? It’s supposed to be hot.”
He just laughed, and Beck could feel the ground shift under her feet. Oh no you don’t, Aidan Kilcannon.
But then she saw a pie coming out of the oven, as golden and perfect and bubbling as if Uncle Mike himself had made it.
“Oh…wow.” She didn’t even eat pizza, and she could tell he’d nailed it.
He lifted his brows, and his lips curled in a smile. “I could teach you for—”
She glared at him. “The answer is no. Ruff is mine.”
But something in his smile scared her. Like he didn’t plan on taking no for an answer where Ruff was concerned.
Well, too bad. She had the letter. He had…a story. And the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.