“I take AP English and history classes at the community college in San Luis Obispo on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I can’t get them at my high school.”
Damn. Impressive. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe we can meet up later?”
“I’ll be studying late. I guess I could wake up early if you want to do breakfast.”
Quinn hadn’t planned to stay another day. Her mother would threaten to send out the Coast Guard when she called to tell her. Brock . . . well, Brock was Brock. He’d get over it. But she wasn’t so sure Chef Wade would, or that she’d even have a job to go home to. All of which weighed heavily on her mind, and yet her mouth, clearly not catching onto the reality raining down on her shoulders, said, “That’d be great,” without permission or hesitation.
And then Tilly was gone and Quinn was back to work as a short-order cook. The demands were insane. She was trying to do four orders of eggs and two orders of French toast while simultaneously making up a new batch of pancakes when the toaster caught fire.
She unplugged it and put out the small flames before tipping her face up to the ceiling, speaking to whatever deity was listening. “Are you kidding me with today?”
That’s when the smoke set off the fire alarm.
“Uh-oh,” Not-Big-Hank said, poking his head into the kitchen, helpfully pointing to the fire alarm high on the wall.
“Shit!” Quinn climbed up on the counter and waved at the smoke alarm with her apron, trying to clear the smoke from it so it would shut up.
“That won’t work,” Greta said, hands on hips below her. “The firefighters will already be on their way.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Trinee said. “They’re all really cute. What,” she said to Greta’s eye roll. “I’m a lesbian, I’m not dead.”
The firefighters did indeed come.
So did the entire town, it seemed.
“It’s all good,” Trinee told a fretting Quinn. “Now everyone knows we’re open for business. A lot cheaper than an ad.”
Chapter 12
I’m just a girl, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a doughnut.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
It was early evening when Quinn drove herself back to the B & B. Between yesterday’s ER trip, failing to impress Tilly into wanting to be sisters, missing Beth, nearly setting the café on fire while cooking, no less, not hearing from Chef Wade about her extra days off—which meant she had no idea on the status of her employment—she was done in.
“Beth?” she whispered to the empty room.
Nothing.
She sighed. “Look, I need to see you.”
More nothing.
Par for the course. She decided what she needed was a bath. She checked the tub carefully. No bugs. She started the water before realizing she had no bubble bath, so she dumped in some shampoo and called it good. She stripped and started to get into the tub and . . .
There was a big fat bug doing the doggie paddle in her fresh, bubbly water.
She shoved her clothes back on, missing a few key items like bra, undies, and socks, and ran out of her room, intending to go straight to the front desk to yell at someone. Halfway down the hallway she ran into a brick wall that turned out to have really great arms that surrounded her.
Mick.
“I like the blue,” he said.
She’d forgotten all about the blue streaks in her hair and let out a watery laugh with her face pressed against his chest.
“Hey,” he said and tipped her face up to his, his warm smile fading. “Tough day?”
“Yes. But that’s another story.” She pointed at her room. “It’s in the tub.”
He took her key and vanished inside.
Ever loyal, Coop went with him.
Quinn moved into the small courtyard, sat on a weathered Adirondack chair that gave her butt splinters, and stared up at the sky, looking for the answers to her universe.
None were forthcoming.
A few minutes later she felt Mick at her side. He was good, she hadn’t even heard him coming. All she heard was Coop dropping to the ground with an “oomph.”
“If you say the bug was small,” she said, “I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“I’m smarter than that.”
She nodded and kept studying the sky because looking at him standing there, tall, strong, ready for anything, made her want things she tried really hard not to want anymore.
He dragged a chair close and sat. Face to the sky like herself, he leaned back, relaxed. “What’s eating at you?”
“Oh. Well . . .” She closed her eyes. “Nothing.” Or you know, everything . . .
“If you don’t want to tell me, I get that, but you don’t have to pretend to be fine when you’re not.”
She opened her eyes and found his right on hers, warm and accepting. No one in her world had ever been able to tell when she was upset or unsettled, or even completely off her rocker.
But this man, whom she’d known all of what, three days, could tell. “I’m not sure where to start.”
“Does it have anything to do with setting the café on fire?”
“Hey, it was the toaster, not the café!” she exclaimed. “If you’re going to listen to the gossip, at least get it straight.”
His mouth quirked and he took her hand, his thumb stroking over her fingers. It was work roughened, with calluses, and gave her a full body shiver of the very best kind.
“It’s about more than the toaster fire,” he said.
She blew out a sigh. “I think Carolyn was hoping I’d stay and help Chuck take care of Tilly, a teenager who thinks I’m somehow responsible for every bad thing that’s ever happened to her.”
“I can sympathize,” he said. “My sister’s twenty-five going on fifteen. She and my mom have butted heads all their lives, so it’s been mostly up to me to keep her on the straight and narrow. It’s been hit or miss at best, which is not something I’m proud of.”
He said this like it really got to him, and she tried to imagine how it would feel to have been responsible for Beth. The truth was, she and Beth had been equals, cohorts, partners in crime, and confidantes. “Did you give it your best shot?” she asked.
“Always.”
“Then that’s all you can ask of yourself, right?”
“Right.” His mouth quirked again. “Are you listening to your own advice?”
She rolled her eyes, and because his nearness—not to mention the testosterone and pheromones coming off him in waves—was distracting her, she pulled her hand free. “I’m willing to do whatever needs to be done for Tilly. It’s . . .” She could still see Beth’s face as she’d looked sitting on the TV the other night. Carefree. Happy. At peace . . .
The opposite of how Quinn felt.
“I don’t know if staying would even help her,” she said. “I’m not sure I’m . . . enough.”
“Quinn, her father walked off into the sunset and her mom’s dead,” he said. “She’s got nothing. No ties, no blood looking out for her at all. Anything you do for her is far more than she has right now.”
She stood up and walked to the end of the courtyard, taking in the inky black lines of the rolling hills in the distance. She felt Mick come up behind her.