Chapter 10

“So what do you think of Carefree so far?” Jasper nodded at the waitress as she delivered his beer a few minutes later, then turned his attention to Emma.

“Well, this is my first time actually seeing anything but Shady Acres or my hotel, but I like it. It’s really nice.”

“It’s paradise, right?”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to go that far yet, but this downtown area could be in a Norman Rockwell print, and the mountains? Good Lord! Every time I look, I feel like I want to reach out and see if this time, I can touch them. They’re so beautiful, but at the same time, they look—I don’t know—sort of mysterious and dangerous.”

“They are both. So don’t get any ideas about driving west and climbing them next weekend or anything.”

“No worries. I’d get lost and be a juicy little snack for something within an hour.”

“Possibly. But you’re from the land of gators. A rogue wolf pack shouldn’t scare you all that much, right?”

“An alligator’s only going to eat me if I bother it. I’m not sure it works that way with wolves.”

“Depends how hungry they are.”

“Thank you. That’s reassuring. If you need to find me in the next eleven weeks, I’ll be in my hotel room.”

He paused, studying her like he wasn’t sure whether to say what was clearly on the tip of his tongue. Then he took a sip and set down his glass.

“So no one’s told you about that hotel parking lot after dark?”

“What?” She paused her drink halfway to her mouth. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind. It’s probably just a rumor.”

“Jasper?” Her stomach started doing gymnastics. “What are you talking about? And if you’re trying to spook me, you can stop right now. I’m not the typical scaredy-cat female, okay?”

Yeah, that. She sounded brave, right?

Meanwhile, ten possible gruesome-death scenarios went to war in her head, vying for top billing.

“Good to know. So coyotes with paws the size of your head? They don’t make you nervous at all?”

“Coyotes aren’t that big. Nice try.”

“Coy dogs are. And they run with the coyotes.”

“Through my hotel parking lot?”

“Yep.” He nodded. “You’ll hear them at night, if you listen. Especially Big Blue. He has a very distinct howl.”

“Fearless leader, I’m guessing?”

“All six feet long and four feet high of him, yes.” Jasper nodded seriously. “So I’d highly recommend getting back to your room before dark.”

Just then, the waitress delivered their salads, and Emma welcomed the pause as they unwrapped silverware and tucked napkins into their laps.

She picked up her fork and stabbed a cherry tomato. “You actually had me until the measurements. Not bad.”

“Thank you.” He smiled. “I should have stopped while I was ahead. I could see the fear in your eyes.”

“Could not.”

“Right. Sorry. Never mess with a woman from gator-ville.” He dug into his salad. “Have you ever seen a real one?”

She tipped her head, wondering if he was kidding. You didn’t grow up in Florida—you didn’t live in Florida—without seeing them. They were just part of the landscape.

“Yes, I’ve seen them.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, there are kind of a lot of them down there.”

“I always thought they stayed clear of people.”

She nodded. “They try, but developers keep building into their habitats. And the water table’s so high in Florida that there are all of these underground streams they can travel through to get to alternate spots, so they pop up in weird places sometimes.”

“Like?”

“Golf courses. All the time, on golf courses. Condo ponds. Theme parks, even. Anywhere there’s water nearby, there could be gators. It’s just a thing.”

“You know, I might be all big, strong alpha-male, but I don’t think I’d want to live somewhere where I might trip over an alligator when I turn a corner.”

She laughed. He shivered, and in that slight motion, she could see the little boy he’d been long, long ago.

“Well, they’re not lurking around every corner. They have standards. And really, it’s the poisonous snakes you have to watch out for. They hide a lot better.”

He cocked his head, a half-smile on his face. “Remind yourself never to apply for a job with the Florida tourism board.”

She laughed. “But, sun! We have so much sun! And heat! And RVs! We have more campers per capita than any state in the union, I think. How could that not be a selling point?”

“Depends who’s driving them.”

“Generally, nobody under sixty-five. The highways from November till April are an awe-inspiring circus of RVs and eighteen-wheelers.”

“I repeat—don’t apply. You are a miserable salesperson.”

“Thank you.” She laughed. “So how would you sell this place?”

“Carefree? I wouldn’t have to. It sells itself.”

“What’s your favorite thing about living here?”

He tipped his head, thoughtful. “The coffee, of course.”

“Jasper.”

He smiled. “Has anyone told you that your imperious face is almost as effective as your Florida sales pitch?”

“No. And I happen to have a very effective imperious face, thank you.”

“It wouldn’t scare a goat. Just saying.” Then he jumped and cursed silently.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” He pulled out his phone. “I just got this new phone, and I set an alarm but haven’t figured out how to shut the vibrate thing off yet. Keeps scaring the bejeezus out of me.”

“You big, brave alpha-male, you.”

He looked up from under his eyebrows. “Don’t let it get out.”

“Should we get the check? Do you have somewhere you need to go?”

“I do.” He tucked his phone back in his pocket. “And unfortunately, it can’t wait. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Okay. No, it’s fine.”

Emma folded her napkin, surreptitiously looking for a wingman who’d been told to watch for a signal and call with a fake emergency. But how did she think she was going to find said wingman, when she knew nobody here in Carefree? And what would it help to do so, anyway?

He pulled out his wallet. “My treat.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Thank you, though. I have an expense account. I’ll get mine.”

His eyebrows came together, and he looked like he was trying to read between her lines. Or her tone, which she realized had gone suddenly chilly. Like, arctic.

Well, what did he expect?

Then she shook her head internally. Seriously, Em? What was she expecting? Some sort of first-date gentlemanly behavior? For gracious sake, the guy had been nice enough to sit down and keep her company while she ate, even though he clearly had other things going on. She should be grateful, not feel like she was being dropped like a hot potato so he could go find a better Friday-night date.

“You thinking I have a date I need to get to?” His smile was slight, but it was there. “Or that I convinced some buddy of mine to sit three tables away and wait for my signal so he could call me with a manufactured emergency, because I was afraid you’d be heinously boring or hard to get along with? And of course, I did this all in the split second between the time I saw you sitting here alone and the time I sat down with you?”

“No. Of course not.”

He raised his eyebrows but didn’t speak.

Dammit.

“It crosses a woman’s mind, okay?” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “And don’t even ask me how embarrassing that is, given all that you just said, because I am a person of self-confidence and self-worth and self-everything-else-that’s-important, and I was perfectly fine sitting here on my own.”

“Noted.”

“But…thank you for keeping me company. It was nice not to sit here alone for the past hour, even though—”

“You would have been fine?” He smiled, and she loved that one side of his mouth crooked a tiny bit higher than the other side when he did so. Otherwise he might have been a little too perfect, and she didn’t want to start associating words like perfect with him. With anyone.

Especially with him.

“I know you were fine. And I know you’ll be just fine when I take off, but it was nice having dinner with you, Emma.” He took enough money out of his wallet to cover both of their dinners, and when she started to protest, he put up a hand. “Consider it a welcome-to-town gift. And a thank-you for taking care of my father. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, somehow knowing it was useless to protest with him. “I hope you have a good weekend.”

“You, too.” He stood up, then pointed at the huge manual waiting for her in the chair. “Promise me you won’t sit inside reading that thing all weekend?”

She looked over at its bright red cover, which was mocking her with hundreds of pages filled with information she desperately needed in order to run Shady Acres for the next couple of months.

“I think it’d be a good idea for everyone involved if I sat inside and read this thing all weekend, to tell you the truth.”

He shook his head. “I’m a big proponent of procedures and policies, but I have to admit, I think your gut’s probably a better driver than any manual.”

“Well, I think that’s a great strategy if your gut’s not terrified that you’re going to do something horribly wrong, get fired, and end up collecting an unemployment check while your pet alligator starves to death.”

“You have a—wait—no, you don’t.” He smiled, then tapped the table in farewell. “Just don’t forget to live while you’re out here, Emma. You’ve got a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the most beautiful place on Earth. Can’t do that from an office, right?”

One week later, Emma closed her office door behind her and set out for the kitchen, determined to check off item number 49 from her to-do list. She’d had Horace’s cooking three times this week for lunch, and it was clear that the man needed either an assistant…or a new cookbook. She’d printed out some heart-healthy recipes, and was armed with her best smile and most understanding voice as she walked toward the stainless-steel palace at the end of the West Wing.

It was three o’clock; she’d timed her visit to fall between lunchtime cleanup and dinner preparation. The man was busy, and according to Katrina, he was a guy you approached carefully, preferably with gifts in hand.

Emma had no gifts except for the recipes, and she well knew that those were not the kind of gift he might appreciate, so she’d steeled herself for an encounter that could be awkward at best, and thoroughly unpleasant at worst. If she ticked off the head cook, she’d be banging pots herself, so this had to be handled delicately.

She pushed through the swinging doors, expecting a low level of chaos on the other side, but it was oddly silent, except for some muted voices coming from the break room in back. Emma looked around at the pristine kitchen, wondering when, exactly, dinner got started. The only evidence that anyone was planning to feed anyone tonight was a neat double row of loaf pans with dishcloths over them.

“Horace?”

She turned the knob on the break room door and walked in, only to freeze in her tracks when she saw who was inside.

“Hey, Emma.” Jasper waved casually from a chair at the wooden table, where he was parked with a laptop open. “How’s it going?”

“Um, fine? Thank you?” She tipped her head. “What—why are you—where’s Horace?”

“He doesn’t work Friday afternoons.”

“So…who does work Friday afternoons?” She shook her head. “Never mind. I should know this. I’m sure I know this. I just—forgot.”

“Gotcha.” He smiled quickly, then went back to his laptop, like it was no weird thing that a resident’s son would be hanging out in the break room of the kitchen, working. Or whatever he was doing.

“Okay, never mind. The office is about two miles back that way, and I still get lost sometimes. Just tell me who works on Friday afternoons. Please.”

“I do.”

“Huh?”

He looked up. “No need to look so appalled. I can cook.”

“Not appall—wait—what? You cook? Here?”

“Only Friday dinners.”

This did not compute. How had she not known that? For goodness sake, for all the time Jasper spent here, she was going to have to get him his own room one of these days. Every morning he was here, having breakfast with his dad. Lots of times, she saw him again at lunchtime, and last weekend, he’d signed his father out for half the day Saturday, then had spent Sunday afternoon trading sections of the newspaper with him in the solarium.

But working in the kitchen?

She paused before she asked more questions, realizing maybe there was some sort of financial relationship at play here. Had Bette made an arrangement whereby Jasper did certain tasks here throughout the week in exchange for a break on his father’s room charges?

Maybe the little coffee shop wasn’t as successful as it looked?

“So, um, what are you making?”

“Soup and homemade bread. Real homemade bread.”

“Sounds good. Of course, any bread that isn’t Horace’s rolls sounds good.”

Jasper laughed. “I have been after him about that recipe for months. He just doesn’t get it.”

“Does the man have teeth? How can he not get it?”

“No idea. But they make great hockey pucks for the floor hockey games on Thursdays, so they’re not totally going to waste.”

She leveled him with a look. “You are not playing floor hockey with the cafeteria food.”

“No. Definitely not. We have an OSHA-sanctioned microbe-free official nursing-home-issue hockey puck set. That’s what I meant to say.”

“Exactly how long is the activities director scheduled to be out? Just asking?”

“Awhile.”

“And until then, I have ad-hoc-director you?”

He shrugged, then smiled in a way that had probably melted the hearts of all of his teachers. This man hadn’t done a stitch of homework he hadn’t wanted to—she just knew it.

“I wouldn’t call myself the ad hoc anything. Or director anything. I just like to help out.”

“Well, as the acting director, I definitely appreciate it. I think. Jury’s still out on that, based on the stories I’m hearing.”

“All lies.”

“Maybe, but I’m reviewing the whipped cream budget when I get back to my desk. Just saying.”

He laughed. “I run a coffee shop. I have cases of whipped cream at my disposal.”

She rolled her eyes, then looked at the clock on the wall. “Any chance you’re thinking about starting that soup?”

He waved a careless hand. “Everything’s all prepped. Just have to heat it up.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Not long. I’ve got teenagers working for me in the café. They get bored. I make them chop stuff. In exchange for the chopping, I sign their community service papers so they get credit for helping the esteemed residents of Shady Acres.”

“Nice arrangement. They get paid and get service credit?”

“Nope. I don’t sign the papers unless they come in off-hours. They learned that the first week they pushed those forms under my nose.” He smiled. “But they always come. They go out in the back kitchen, crank up their obnoxious music, and a couple of hours later, soup!”

He made motions like a movie-version Italian grandmother describing her culinary creation, and Emma laughed.

“Well, it keeps them off the tough streets of Carefree, Montana, so I guess it’s a win-win.”

“It is.” His face grew serious. “And please don’t insult me by asking about freshness and refrigeration and health department regulations around food preparation and all the other things going through your director-brain right now.”

Emma felt her face go warm as he put the stream of thoughts running through her brain into words.

“I’m not—I wasn’t going to.”

“Ha. Your face says otherwise.” He shut the laptop and looked straight at her. “My father’s one of the people who has to eat whatever I bring in. You can be sure I’d never risk the health or safety of anyone here. I may prepare the food off-site, but it’s done to the strictest of standards. Promise.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? That’s it?”

“Did you want me to argue?”

“No.” He studied her for a long moment, like he was mystified that she hadn’t argued further. “Maybe. No. Definitely no.”

“Listen, I’ve had Horace’s cooking. Survived it, might be a better word. If you’re willing to give up a Friday afternoon to come cook something edible for everyone, then I’m all for it.”

“Good.” He motioned her out the door. “Now get outta my kitchen. I’ve got dinner to make.”