The woman’s gaze moved over me with disinterest. I honestly had no idea how old she was. Though her face had no visible wrinkles, her features were mature and her eyes exuded an awareness I’d only ever witnessed in those of advanced age.
“Shelly.” Beau’s sharp tone pulled me from my gawking. “This is Jennifer Sylvester. You’ve probably heard of her banana cake. Jennifer . . .” his earlier levity had entirely disappeared, replaced with a stern and shuttered glare, “this is Shelly Sullivan. She’s new to town and works here.”
I extended my hand toward Shelly. “Nice to meet you.”
She looked at my offered fingers, then at me. Shelly set her teeth and crossed her arms. “Nice to meet you, too.”
Her tone was flat and frustrated and it quickly became obvious she wasn’t going to shake my hand. I let mine drop, feeling disoriented and embarrassed. I wondered what she’d heard about me, if someone had said something disparaging. Or maybe she didn’t like me because of the whole Banana Cake Queen persona.
“Don’t take it personally.” Beau gave me a small, reassuring smile. The warmth left his face once again as he turned his eyes to Shelly. “She doesn’t shake anyone’s hand.”
Shelly’s eyes dropped to the cement for a brief moment and I got the sense she was just as—if not more so—embarrassed as I was. But then she lifted her gaze to Beau and it was bursting with defiance.
He met her glare with one of his own.
Meanwhile, I stood there, stuck between their glares.
When I couldn’t tolerate the tension any longer I sought to fill it. “How are you settling in, Ms. Sullivan?”
Her cobalt eyes moved to mine and some of the rigidness eased. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, uh, how are things? How’s your place? Do you need anything? Are your neighbors nice?”
She studied me for a long moment, like I was something interesting. She reminded me so much of a regal bird of prey, and I couldn’t help but compare her to a hawk or a falcon: proud, beautiful, clearly intelligent, and yet distant and removed somehow.
Untouchable.
Finally, just before the silence grew untenable, she answered, “My house is adequate. I need potholders, I keep using towels and I’ve burned my hand three times. I haven’t met my neighbors, so I don’t know if they’re nice.”
I grinned, because I liked how she’d answered my questions, straightforward and without any artifice or fuss.
“Maybe you should make more of an effort,” Beau snapped.
I gaped at him and his rudeness. I’d never seen or heard Beau Winston be rude to anyone. He didn’t seem to notice my stare because, though his next words were addressed to me, Beau kept his gaze on Shelly. “I’ll go start that coffee.”
He walked away.
Shelly followed him with her eyes until he left the garage and was lost to the sunlight. She brought her gaze back to mine, again looking at me like I was something interesting.
“He doesn’t like me,” she said simply, sounding thoughtful rather than upset about her observation.
My ingrained instinct was to reassure her, respond with something like, Oh, I’m sure you’re wrong. I’m sure he likes you. But I got the sense Shelly Sullivan didn’t suffer false pleasantries.
Plus, I was curious . . .
“Why do you think he doesn’t like you?”
“Because he said to me, ‘I don’t like you.’” A small smile hovered behind her hawkish eyes and I was surprised by their twinkle, especially given the subject matter.
“Does that bother you?” I asked, before I could stop myself, then attempted to explain my curiosity. “I have plenty of people who call me all sorts of names on social media, and folks around town call me uppity sometimes. Or they say I’m simple when they think I can’t hear them.”
“You’re not simple.” Her thoughtful frown returned. “The people who call you simple are the simple ones. You should put castor oil in their banana cake frosting and weld their toilet shut.”
I giggled, because castor oil frosting would certainly call for several trips to the bathroom. “Maybe you could help me weld the toilets shut. I wouldn’t know how to go about that.”
Her face suddenly blossomed with a grin and it took me by surprise, the expression looked so foreign on her, I got the sense I was seeing a once-in-a-lifetime event, like a total solar eclipse or Halley’s comet.
“I’ve welded toilets shut before.”
The humor behind her words and tone also took me by surprise and had me smiling. “What else have you welded?”
“Anything I can get my hands on. I once welded the driver’s side door shut on my brother’s . . .” Her grin waned by degrees until she looked a little lost and overwhelmed, and a flicker of intense sorrow flashed behind her eyes before she effectively concealed it with swift stoicism. She swallowed and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “I don’t want to talk about that.”