When he saw me, he put them both down on the table and pulled me over, grabbing a chair and placing it next to his. Apparently he didn"t doubt his charm. I waved at JT, and he acknowledged me with his eyes as he took a long pull of beer.
The way his lips looked wrapped around the neck of the bottle was so hot, I stumbled a little while I was in the process of sitting down. Cam gripped my forearm to steady me.
“Whoa there, cowboy.” He let me go and lifted his hand—a signal to one of the guys to bring more beer. “You okay?”
“I fell asleep on the beach for a minute,” I told him. “I guess I"m still a little out of it.”
“The motion of the ocean.” He peered at my face. “You look a little flushed.”
“I got a sunburn.”
“
Aw
.” Even though we were both seated, Cam was nearly a head taller than me, and he loomed over me again. “And here I was hoping you liked me.” I glanced back at JT, who was frowning now. Someone brought me a longneck, and I twisted off the cap.
“So what"s it like being a firefighter in St. Nacho"s?” I asked, if only to get the conversational ball rolling. Cam was the only one who was close enough to hear me.
“I guess it"s like anywhere else. We fight fires. Lots of ocean rescues for the EMTs. Lots of accidents on the highway.” He took a drag and then mashed his cigarette out, politely blowing his smoke in the other direction.
“Do you get called for the wildfires?”
“Only when they need units to defend structures on the edge of a residential area being threatened. We"re not wildlanders. There are some units around here that are. We mostly fight structure fires and respond to traffic emergencies.” 48
Z. A. Maxfield
A ripple of excitement flowed from inside the bar, and I heard a violinist tuning up.
“What"s up?” I asked Cam, who turned to listen.
“They have a guy here who plays the violin. He"s really popular, and right around this time of day the place fills up with people coming to listen. Lots of people stop in here on their way home.”
I nodded. “My brother told me about him.”
“Your brother lives around here?”
“He"s up the coast in Santa Cruz. I"ll be heading up there pretty soon for a visit. I thought I"d stay here for a few days first.” I didn"t mention that I didn"t have much of a choice.
“St. Nacho"s is a good place. The people here can be real friendly.” The look in his eyes told me he was in the mood to prove that. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. As attractive as Cam was, I couldn"t get JT"s warning out of my head.
Contrary to what JT probably believed about me, I wasn"t about to get involved—
and especially not with a guy like Cam. His personality was already forceful enough to negate mine completely. I was done with being the moon to someone else"s sun.
Suddenly I felt tired all over. Not just sleepy, but bone weary. The kind of exhaustion that comes over you when you"ve run your race flat-out, it"s over, and you can"t take another step. Even lifting the beer bottle to my lips seemed like too much.
“Yasha?”
I must have been looking at the floor for quite a while, because I didn"t have a clue when JT had moved to the chair next to mine, opposite Cam.
“Sorry, what?”
“Are you tired?” JT asked.
Cam leaned over to peer at my face again. “You look like you"re about to pass out.”
I shook my head. “No, I just—”
JT put his hand firmly beneath my elbow. It felt solid and sure there, and I realized what I"d known all along. His touch felt right to me. Familiar because of the night his dad had called emergency services to help me, but not at all the impersonal, casual touch of an EMT for a patient. It never had been. That was why I"d reacted so strongly to it. Something strong and gentle inside him flowed into my skin every time he touched me, and I wasn"t about to mess that up by hooking up with Cam.
“I can take you home.” JT"s eyes looked…hopeful maybe. But confused, as if he hadn"t planned for the words to leave his mouth. “You need…” I don"t know what he was going to say right then, because a dark-haired girl came up from behind him and wrapped her hands around his head and over his eyes.
St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder
49
“Guess who,” she commanded as she pressed her mouth to his neck, leaving a stain of peachy lip goo on his skin.
He gave a guilty start and turned to her, lifting one of her hands to his lips.
She shrugged that off and wrapped her arms around him and brought him in for a rather hot kiss. “Hi, baby.”
I sat there in silent shock, wondering who the girl was and what she had to do with JT. His attention was focused on her, so I turned to Cam.
“Surprised?” Cam"s eyes danced with mischief.
“No…” I shook my head. “Yes.”
JT pulled her arms off him. “Linda? Meet Yasha. Yasha, Linda.” Cam motioned like he was showing the prize on
The Price Is Right
. I sensed that he knew exactly what I was feeling when he said, “JT"s got a hot date.” My gaze found JT"s. He closed his eyes immediately, his lashes lowering so I couldn"t see what he was thinking at all. Linda held her hand out, and I took it.
“You must be the man staying at Carl"s motel. JT told me all about you. I was so glad when I heard you"re going to be all right.” I inclined my head. “Thanks to JT.”
“He"s my hero.” She pulled him to his feet, and he went with her, aiming a shrug in my direction. Like,
what can you do
? “You owe me a quiet dinner with no firefighters, Mister.”
JT"s eyes met mine again, and I smiled and shrugged back, letting another fish off the hook. When he started to protest that he"d promised me a ride home, I waved it away. “No worries. It"s not far to walk.”
Cam offered to take me home, but I declined, worried that he"d had a bit too much to drink. In the end JT took me to the SeaView in his truck, and Linda followed us in a little silver Prius.
I thought it might be awkward to say good night, but JT made it easy, slipping an arm around Linda"s waist after she got out of her car, even as we waved good-bye. He left his truck in the parking lot and took off in her car. I felt a strange kinship to Mithril the Truck, left behind like that. Abandoned.
I didn"t have a reason in the world to have assumed he had any interest in me besides the usual concern a caring professional has for his patient. I had been an idiot to read more into it than that, but I felt sucker punched all the same.
All I could think of was the way I"d kissed his palm when I thought he was my grandfather, and how he had allowed it. How he had understood it. How it had connected me to him from that moment on. A connection I thought went both ways.
I didn"t have a hard time sleeping, especially after I took my pain meds. When I woke up, I lay in bed for a long time, both tempted to go to the window to see if JT"s truck was still there and disgusted by the impulse.
50
Z. A. Maxfield
Surely it didn"t matter to me one way or the other if JT spent the night with a girl. He was securely out of my reach whether he"d stayed over at her place or gone home early to bed, alone.
Eventually, when I had to leave the safety of my motel room to go to Miss Independence Pies, I couldn"t put it off any longer.
I told myself if the truck was there, that was a good thing, because that meant JT was getting a little action and of course I could wish that for a friend.
I told myself that if his truck wasn"t there, that didn"t mean he didn"t get lucky, only that he hadn"t spent the night.
I told myself it was none of my damned business, but that didn"t make it any easier to open that door.
When I emerged from my room into the still, dark parking lot, JT"s cool, cherrylicious truck was gone. I walked to Miss Independence Pies as if nothing had happened. My step was a little slower, though, than it had been the day before.
Muse was the first person I saw when I entered the bakery. She shot me a perky smile that lit things up for me a little. Candace worked quietly, rolling dough alongside the woman who had been there the day before but never said a word to me. Every time I had even approached her, she drifted into the background like smoke. I was determined to meet her that day and to let her know she didn"t have to be afraid of me.
“Muse.” I nudged her. “Who"s the woman with the gray hair?”
“Her?” Muse leaned closer to me.
“Yeah. Every time she saw me coming her way yesterday, she drifted away. Is she scared of me?”
“She"s scared of everybody.” Muse spoke quietly, pushing me off to the side where we could talk privately. “That"s Analise. The guy she was married to stabbed her, like, sixteen times. He went to jail for it. It"s a miracle she lived. She doesn"t talk to people anymore except Mary Catherine and my mom.”
“Oh
shit
.” I wondered if Analise was JT"s patient from the run that upset him so badly when he was a rookie.
“It"s been especially bad because everyone"s getting ready for his parole hearing, which is coming up in three weeks, and my mom, Mary Catherine, and Analise will be traveling to Soledad to speak. She"s extremely jumpy right now because he threatened to kill her so many times when he first went to prison.”
“Damn. Surely they wouldn"t let him out if he"s still a danger to her?”
“The prisons are overcrowded, and he"s supposedly been a model prisoner. He says he"s Buddhist now or something.”
I sympathized with her. “Jeez. Having to see him again, even to tell her story so he stays put, must truly suck.”
St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder
51
“That"s why Mom and Mary Catherine are going. Mom"s armed with a boatload of statistics, and Mary Catherine…well, she just floats along on a tide of „feel good,"
doesn"t she?”
“That she does.”
“Analise comes here to work in the early mornings but has another job in the afternoons. She"s got PTSD. Sometimes she"s messed up.” Muse pressed her lips together like she wanted to say more but couldn"t. “Seeing her husband again is going to be terrible for her.”
I watched Analise for a minute. She must have had an instinct, though, that told her there were eyes on her, because she backed away from us into the room where Mary Catherine kept supplies.
“It"s hard to let something like that go. You feel it, you know? Like it"s happening again, and it"s not a memory, it"s more like…”
“A hallucination?”
“No. Even more real than that,” I told her. “Sometimes you feel it in your body.
Adrenaline surges. Fight or flight kicks in. You hear the noise of glass breaking, and you smell the burning buildings. It"s real but not real. You lose your ability to trust your senses.”
Muse looked at me thoughtfully.
“Jacob,” Mary Catherine called to me from the big commercial range. “I"ve been making the empanada fillings like you said—the one with beef and the one with chicken and green chilies. Can you come and try them?” I took one last look at the supply room where Analise had gone, and headed for the kitchen.
Soon Mary Catherine and I were experimenting with several different empanada doughs, trying several types of flour and fat until we found one that had a texture we liked. Filling recipes were plentiful, from the Cuban spicy beef picadillo with green olives to the Chilean beef with raisins to chicken and cheese to sweet fillings starring fresh and dried fruit.
Mary Catherine started with four: two beef, sweet and savory; one chicken with green chilies and soft cheese; and one I invented on the fly using chunks of roasted sweet potato and brown sugar with spices and just a hint of chili for a little zing. That one turned out to be an instant favorite among the ladies, and we made up batches of each to shop around to her restaurant clients.
Once we had enough, we put three of each type, twelve all told, onto foil-covered baking sheets uncooked, and froze them. Candace planned to deliver a tray of the new offerings to each of her current customers, to be baked on-site. We did some experimentation with times and temperatures. The day fairly flew by. Soon it was noon, and we loaded up the van to make deliveries.
A man I"d never seen before came into the bakery and cornered Mary Catherine for a big hug. He was tall and handsome, built like an athlete, but he carried a cane and walked with a pronounced limp.
52
Z. A. Maxfield
“Hi, Ken!” Mary Catherine gave him a squeeze and kissed his cheek. “I didn"t expect you today.” I watched as he soaked up her attention. He awkwardly moved out of the way of the girls who were loading the pies into boxes and taking them out to the truck. “Ken, I want you to meet the newest Miss Independence employee, Jacob. We all call him Yasha.”
I held out my hand, then noticed it was covered with flour, and pulled it back to wipe it on my apron.
“Nice to meet you,” I told him.
“Likewise,” Ken answered, barely glancing my way. He looked like a man on a mission. “I have a huge surprise for you. Can you come with me?”
“Yasha and I are in the middle of—”
“I found it,” Ken interrupted her excitedly. “It"s
perfect
, and don"t say you"re not ready, because you are.”
I didn"t have a clue what he was talking about, but as I stood there and watched Mary Catherine, I could swear all the blood drained from her face, and she wilted enough that I was convinced I needed to be ready to catch her.
“Where?” she asked him.
“Roger"s Appliance is going out of business. My real-estate agent told me the owner is retiring. The building stands alone, and there"s an alley with a loading dock. It"s right there on Iglesias Road, in a great location two blocks in from the pier. If you sold ice cream, you"d have lines in the summer.”
“That"s a huge commitment, Ken. I"m not—”
“You"re ready,” he said implacably.
For some reason that I couldn"t understand, my blood was racing a little at the prospect of expanding Mary Catherine"s pie empire. Maybe Ken"s enthusiasm was just that contagious. Maybe it was the way Mary Catherine held herself—as though she was excited and elated but didn"t dare show it—that made me say something.
“You could just go take a look. Where"s the harm in that?” Ken glanced at me again, and this time he appraised me differently. “He"s right. You can"t turn it down without looking.