Kitabı oku: «Hook, Line and Shotgun Bride», sayfa 2
But she was so warm. He closed his eyes for a moment as he embraced her. Quietly, he said, “I won’t let anybody hurt you.”
He heard the front door open. Still holding her, he drew his gun.
Dr. Neil Revere strode into the kitchen. “What the hell is going on?”
Chapter Three
Shane considered himself to be an honorable man. As such, he’d never seduce a woman who was about to get married to another man. Unfortunately, Neil didn’t know him well enough to understand that finding Angela in his embrace was purely innocent, and there wasn’t a real good way to explain what he thought he saw.
Angela left his arms and went toward her fiancé. She kissed his cheek. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”
“I told you I’d be stopping by after my meeting. You must have forgotten.” He peeled off his wet trenchcoat and tossed it over one of the chairs by the kitchen table. As he tugged at his necktie to loosen the knot, he said, “You’re forgetting a lot of things lately.”
Though Shane didn’t like the way Neil snapped at her, he cut the doctor some slack. Finding his bride-to-be in the arms of another man was damn awkward.
Ignoring her fiancé’s rebuke, Angela forced a smile. “Neil, you remember Shane Gibson.”
“Of course.” He glared at Shane as though he were a virus that needed to be stamped out. “You’ll be giving Angela away at the wedding.”
Shane holstered his gun and shook hands. “I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you. You’re a lucky man to be marrying Angela.”
Warily, the two men sized each other up. Physically, Shane had the edge. At six foot two, he was a couple of inches taller. He was probably five years younger and certainly in better shape, since being a deputy in a mountain community meant he sometimes had to go on rescue missions and sometimes had to break up bar fights.
Neil managed to smile without showing a bit of friendliness, which was okay with Shane. He didn’t have to like this well-dressed doctor with the dark, serious eyes. The only thing that mattered was for Neil to be a good husband to Angela.
“Tell me, Shane. Is there a reason why you had your gun drawn?”
“Angela had an intruder. Somebody creeping around the house.”
“My God.” To his credit, Neil’s hostility shifted to concern. He stroked Angela’s cheek. “Are you all right? And Benjy? Is he okay?”
“Yes and yes,” she said. “I didn’t actually see the intruder, but the window in my bedroom was opened. And in Benjy’s room, too.”
“Are you sure you didn’t just leave the windows open by mistake?” His voice was skeptical. “Absolutely sure?”
“What are you insinuating?” she asked. “I’m not making this up.”
“It’s okay, honey. I know you’ve been upset, having trouble sleeping.” He seemed to be examining her as though she were a patient. What was wrong with this guy? He ought to be comforting her.
Neil continued, “Getting married can be very stressful, and I know change is difficult for you. If you’re having panic attacks, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d like for you to get help with—”
“I’m fine.” Angela’s voice was strong. “If you don’t believe me about the intruder, talk to Shane. He’s in law enforcement, and he believes me. When you came in, we were discussing what to do next.”
“Is that so?” Neil wheeled around to face him. “It didn’t look like you were talking.”
Shane replied in a cool, professional tone. “In my opinion, there was an intruder, possibly preparing to enter. It’s unlikely that the motive was robbery. Burglars don’t break into a house when the owner is awake and walking around.”
“What was he after?”
“Being apprehended wasn’t the intruder’s primary concern. He wanted to frighten Angela. He might be a stalker. Or somebody who has a personal grudge.” He turned to Angela. “Have you received threats?”
She shook her head. “Not that I recall.”
“Maybe from a disgruntled employee,” he suggested. “Or someone associated with the restaurant. A supplier. Even an angry customer. Take your time. Think about it.”
She sank into a chair beside the table. Her shoulders slumped. A moment ago, he’d been critical of Neil for treating her like a patient. Now, he was interrogating her like a victim.
As her friend, he knew what she needed. He’d seen Angela through the worst time in her life—after her husband was killed. She needed his support. Even though her fiancé was standing right there, Shane sat in the chair next to her and gave her a hug. “If you don’t want to deal with this now, it’s okay. We can wait until—”
“I want to get it over with,” she said. “I’m thinking. But I can’t come up with anybody who wants to hurt me. A couple of months ago, I fired a waitress, but she got another job.”
Gently, he said, “Have you noticed anything unusual? Maybe had the feeling you were being watched?”
“I’ve been kind of spooked. Nervous, you know. Especially at night.”
He considered the possibility of a peeper. Not usually a violent criminal. But this guy had opened windows. He seemed to be planning something more than just watching. “Earlier, we talked about moving you and Benjy to Neil’s house.”
“It’s the obvious solution,” Neil said. “I suggest that we get everything packed up and make that move right now.”
She stood and confronted them both. “I don’t want to frighten Benjy. We’re staying here tonight, and that’s final.”
A muscle in Neil’s jaw twitched, but he conceded. “All right, Angela. We’ll do this your way. Have you at least called the police?”
“I don’t want to,” she said stubbornly. “There’s nothing the police can do.”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
Shane wouldn’t have been so blunt, but he agreed with Neil on this point. “The police can dust for fingerprints, look for trace evidence and talk to your neighbors.”
“I don’t want any more investigating. Not now. Not ever again.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “The police did plenty of investigating when Tom died. To what end? They still didn’t find his killer. All their poking around was a waste of time. If you gentlemen will please excuse me, I’m going to bed.”
She turned on her heel and left the room.
Shane’s natural instinct was to follow her, to soothe her worries and offer comfort. But that wasn’t his job. He looked toward Neil, expecting him to follow his fiancé and make sure she was all right.
Instead, Neil checked his wristwatch. “This is a waste of time. I have a lot going on with work, especially since I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks on honeymoon. Coming here tonight was incredibly inconvenient.” He glared at Shane. “And I didn’t expect to find you.”
Shane offered no excuses for his presence. Though he’d been planning to stay at a motel, he’d responded to the urgency in Angela’s voice when she invited him.
“I suppose,” Neil said, “that you’ll be staying the night.”
“I’m not going to leave her and Benjy unprotected.”
“Fine. I’d stay myself but I’m in the midst of some very important meetings.”
What could be more important than the safety of his bride and her son? Shane kept that opinion to himself.
“Tomorrow, we’ll get them moved,” Neil said. “I have plenty of room at my house. You’re welcome to stay there until the wedding.”
Considering what had happened tonight, it was generous for him to offer. “I appreciate your hospitality.”
“It’s no trouble. My housekeeper hired people to help out until after the wedding, and I have other houseguests. I believe you know one of them—Dr. Edgar Prentice from Aspen.”
“We’ve met.”
“He’s a fertility specialist and an ob-gyn. Your cousin Tom sought my uncle out when he decided that he and Angela should go through the process of creating frozen embryos.”
“I know.”
“In a way, Uncle Edgar was Angela’s midwife, even though he didn’t deliver Benjy. Ironic. Now, I’ll be Benjy’s father.”
“Stepfather,” Shane corrected. Nobody but Tom should be recognized as the father of Angela’s child.
“I’ll see to Angela now.”
As he watched Neil stride toward Angela’s bedroom, Shane wanted to stop him. Neil wasn’t the right man for her. He was cold and arrogant and sure as hell didn’t put Angela first. None of my business. Shane didn’t have the right to tell her who to marry or what to do with her life.
He sat at the kitchen table, took the last macadamia nut cookie from the plate and bit into it.
When Angela lashed out against law enforcement, he hadn’t been surprised. Shane had listened to hours of her complaints about how the Park County Sheriff’s Department had failed to bring her husband’s murderer to justice. She’d gotten to the point where she refused to even talk to them.
That had been his job.
The investigators had compiled quite a bit of evidence. The flat tire was caused by three nails that could have been picked up from any number of construction sites in the mountains. The indentations in Tom’s SUV indicated that he’d been hit by a truck, and the crime scene investigators found bits of black paint. From the tire tracks, they could tell that after Tom was hit, the truck backed up and hit him again.
The police theory was that the driver of the truck was drunk or otherwise incapacitated. After he hit Tom, he backed up to see if he could help and accidentally ran into Tom a second time. The driver had gotten out of his car and had left a fingerprint in Tom’s blood on the Toyota.
The print matched nothing in the database, and the cops had other factors working against them: It had taken over two hours to locate Tom’s body. There were no witnesses. They’d never been able to locate the black truck.
The final conclusion from the Park County Sheriff’s Department was vehicular homicide. The driver of the black truck was never found.
Shane understood Angela’s pain and frustration, but he knew the investigators had done their best to solve the case. A hit-and-run accident was cold-blooded—the kind of case that would haunt the investigative team almost as much as it troubled Shane.
His instincts told him that Tom’s death wasn’t an accident. He was targeted, mowed down on purpose. Shane believed that Tom’s death was premeditated murder.
THE NEXT MORNING, Angela felt like a new woman. Her usual schedule meant jumping out of bed at four in the morning and dashing like mad to have Waffles ready for business at six-thirty. Not this week. While planning the last details of the wedding, she had enough on her plate, so to speak. Though she might stop by the restaurant and help out, they weren’t expecting her.
With no need to rush, she took a long, luxurious shower. When she meandered into kitchen after eight o’clock, Shane had already made coffee and fed Benjy. He greeted her with a grin and a joke about sleeping late. What an amazing friend! He made her laugh, always made her feel comfortable.
And he wasn’t bad to look at in his jeans and cowboy boots. His black hair was in need of a trim before the wedding. Not that any of the women in attendance would notice. They’d be too busy swooning over his sky-blue eyes and rugged masculine features. It was hard to believe Shane was still single. There had been a couple of live-in girl-friends over the years, but he’d never once walked down the aisle.
After they dropped off Benjy at the babysitter, she slipped behind the steering wheel of her van and turned to Shane. “Before I stop by Waffles, I have to pop into the dress shop for a final fitting on the wedding gown. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Bring on the ruffles and lace,” he said. “I told you I’d do anything to help, and I meant it.”
“Oh, good.” The very idea of super-macho Shane in a dress shop amused her. “After the gown, we can go to the florist, then stop by the lingerie store.”
He groaned. “As long as I don’t have to have my toenails painted pink. Isn’t the maid of honor supposed to do this stuff?”
“Yvonne’s busy running Waffles. But don’t worry. I’m sure I can come up with some manly, testosterone-driven tasks for you, too.”
“Like moving you and Benjy to Neil’s house?”
She hadn’t planned on making that move until she and Neil got back from their two-week honeymoon in Baja. Even then, it would be difficult. His house was far from her work, her favorite market and everything she was familiar with. “It’s so inconvenient.”
“But safe,” he said.
It hadn’t escaped her notice that he was wearing his holster under a lightweight summer blazer. Shane definitely took her intruder seriously.
Not like Neil. She didn’t like the way he’d reacted last night. In his opinion, she was having panic attacks, and he wasn’t going to change his mind. Though she admired her fiancé for his decisiveness, she wished that he’d listen to her side of the story.
“After you’re married,” he said, “how are you planning to run Waffles? You’re at the south end of the metro area in Littleton and Neil’s almost in Boulder.”
“Neil wants me to quit.”
“But you don’t want to.”
“I don’t know.” She’d given the issue so much thought that her head ached. “It’s a bridge I’ll cross when I come to it.”
She turned off the main road into the four-block area known as Old South Clarkson Street. With several boutiques and restaurants, it was a pleasant, neighborhood place for specialty shopping. On weekends, traffic closed down in the morning for a farmers’ market.
She drove past Waffles, pleased to see that the tables they set up on the sidewalk for summer were all filled. Around back in the alley, she pulled into her parking space.
“Why are we stopping here?” Shane asked. “I thought we were going to look at a dress.”
“It’s only four stores down.”
She hopped out of the car and started down the alley. Though Shane’s legs were a mile longer than hers, they walked at the same relaxed pace. When they were together, life seemed to take on a more natural tempo, almost as though he carried the easygoing mountain lifestyle with him.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said. “You’re not the only one who’s making changes.”
He was always steady and predictable, someone she could count on. “What are you up to?”
“I’m moving to Denver.”
“Leaving the mountains? You?”
“I’m turning thirty this year, and I looked around and saw that I was doing the same thing every day. Arresting the same drunks on the weekend. Driving the same roads. Living in the same house I was born in.”
“Is this because your parents aren’t in Silver Plume anymore?”
“Maybe so.” He shrugged. “Mom and Dad moved to Phoenix two years ago. And my sister’s in New York City. But this really isn’t about family. It’s about me.”
“And you want to try something different.”
“I’m taking a job with a Denver-based security firm. At first, I’ll be doing bodyguard work, but there’s training available. I want to get into computers. And I’ve been learning to fly a helicopter. Man, there is nothing like being up in the sky.”
When she looked up at him, she saw a spark of excitement in his blue eyes. “I’m happy for you, Shane.”
“Time goes fast. I didn’t want to turn around and find myself turning into a sixty-year-old man who never left Silver Plume.”
She opened the rear door to Linda’s Dress Shoppe and went inside. There was nobody in the storeroom, which was typical. She called out, “Anybody home?”
Linda, the proprietor, stuck her head into the back room. “Hi, Angela. I’m busy out here. You go ahead and put on the gown. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
There was an informal sewing area in the corner with tables for cutting fabric, a couple of armless dress forms and a rack of clothes zipped into black garment bags with Linda’s logo emblazoned on the front. A hot pink label stuck to one of the bags had Angela’s name.
Since she hadn’t wanted a fancy gown for her second marriage, she’d picked out a strapless dress with a bit of lace and a matching jacket to cover her shoulders when it got colder at night.
Shane stood beside a sewing table. “This is strange.”
“What?”
“Right here, next to the scissors and spools, there’s a kitchen knife.”
When she took a closer look, anxiety shot through her. “It’s a boning knife. And it’s mine.”
“How do you know?”
“The red dot on the handle.” No one was allowed to touch her chef knives. When she wasn’t using them, she kept them tucked away in a locker in the restaurant office.
She unzipped the garment bag, pushed the plastic aside and stared in shock. Her wedding gown had been slashed to ribbons.
Chapter Four
Unable to believe what she was seeing, Angela tugged the ragged edge of the ripped white fabric. The skirt had been sliced multiple times. Bits of lace hung like entrails around the bodice. The gown was ruined beyond repair.
Scared and confused, she turned away. On the table was the boning knife—her knife! Was it possible that she had done this? She couldn’t remember. Had she suffered a blackout?
The thought terrified her. True, she hadn’t been in her right mind lately. The lack of sleep and stress had taken their toll. Last night, she’d imagined headlights crashing through her kitchen window. But she hadn’t gone completely insane. Not yet, anyway.
Shane touched her shoulder. In a low voice, he asked, “What do you want to do?”
For one thing, she didn’t want Linda to see this disaster. The owner of the dress shop would have too many questions, and Angela didn’t have answers. “Get me out of here.”
“Done.”
He tossed the knife into the garment bag with the dress and zipped it up just as Linda bustled into the back room with her long, silk scarf flowing behind her.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “I had a mixup with the register. Thought I’d lost a hundred and fifty bucks. Then I remembered that I went to the bank last night.”
Linda was a lovable scatterbrain. But not crazy. Not like me. She thought of Neil’s diagnosis that she needed to see a psychologist. He might be right.
While Shane introduced himself, she gathered her wits, hoping to appear normal. Not that she needed to worry. When she was with Shane, other women hardly noticed her existence. Even without his hat, he was one hundred percent sexy cowboy.
He beamed a slow smile at Linda and said, “Angela is having second thoughts about the dress. She wants to take it home and decide if this is actually what she wants to wear.”
“Brides are all the same.” Linda grinned up at him. “Always fussing about the details. When I got married, I was as nervous as a squirrel on a highway, jumping from one median to another.”
When Angela forced herself to speak, her voice seemed to be detached from her body. “Remember that white suit I tried on before?”
“Indeed, I do. To tell the truth, I liked you better in that outfit than in the gown. The suit seemed more.” Linda flipped the end of her scarf and chuckled. “More suitable.”
“We’ll take both of them with us,” Shane said. “Then, Angela can make her decision later.”
“Fine with me,” Linda said. “But you still need alterations on the gown, Angela. You’ve been losing weight, and a strapless bodice needs to fit like a second skin.”
While Shane went to the front of the store with Linda to make arrangements, Angela let down her guard. She sank onto a stool beside the cutting table and stared, unfocused. What was wrong with her? The inside of her head whirled like a blender. The shelves and boxes in the storeroom seemed to be closing in on her. She was suffocating.
She didn’t remember taking the knife from the restaurant, and she sure as hell didn’t recall attacking her dress. Was she sleepwalking? Had she done this in a blackout? It didn’t happen. Dammit, I’m not crazy.
But if she hadn’t done this, that meant someone else had. Everybody who worked in this area knew that Linda often neglected to lock the back door, and Angela’s dress had been sitting here for several days, unguarded.
She stared at the garment bag. Who could have done this? Why did they want to sabotage her wedding?
SHANE ESCORTED HER through the alley. Though his hands were occupied with holding both dress bags, he was prepared to toss them aside if he saw an approaching threat. Last night, Angela had an intruder. This morning, her gown was attacked. Clearly, someone wanted to hurt her—or at the very least, terrorize her.
Adrenaline pumped through his veins, making him hypervigilant. Ironically, he realized that he was acting as her bodyguard. In a few weeks, that would be his regular job at PRESS—Premier Executive Security Systems. No longer a small-town deputy sheriff, he was already stepping into the world of big-city dangers.
When she clicked the lock to open her van, he placed the garment bags in the back and turned to her. “We can’t ignore what happened.”
“We can try.” Avoiding eye contact, she opened the driver’s-side door. “I still need to check with the florist and make sure the bouquets are—”
“The daisies will wait.” He caught hold of her arm, stopping her before she shot off in a different direction. “We need to figure out who did this.”
“How did you know about the daisies?”
“They’re your favorite flower. White daisies.” When she married Tom, it was winter and she settled for white roses. Now daisies were in season.
“I got my daisies,” she said, “even though Neil wanted orchids.”
That made sense. Orchids were hothouse flowers, expensive and delicate. Angela was a daisy person—cheerful and bright.
“You got me off the subject,” he said. “We need to investigate, starting here at Waffles.”
“Are you kidding? I’m not going to go marching into the restaurant and accuse my friends. These are people I work with, people I trust and care about.”
“They’re also the most likely suspects. They have access to your knives. They know—as you do—that it’s easy to slip in and out of the dress shop through the back entrance.”
She shook her head. “Nobody I know would be so mean.”
“Let’s think this through.” He gently took the car keys from her hand. “When was the last time you used your knives?”
When she shook her head, her high ponytail bounced. Sunlight picked out strands of gold in her soft brown hair. “I don’t remember.”
“Think about it. Were you at Waffles yesterday?”
“I came in early to help with the breakfast rush, but I didn’t unpack my knives. One of the waitresses was sick, and I filled in for her.”
“And the day before?”
He could see her calming down as she considered the facts. “I put in almost a full day, and I was in the kitchen. So I must have used my knives. Believe me, I would have noticed if one was missing. I’ve had that set for seven years.”
Seven years ago was before they met, before she’d married his cousin. He’d never really thought about that time in her life. Her youth. Her childhood. “How old were you?”
“Eighteen. I’d just graduated from the Cordon Bleu culinary school in London, and the knives were a present to myself—symbolic of my new career as a chef.”
Shane wasn’t a gourmet, but he’d heard of Cordon Bleu. “How come I didn’t know you had such a fancy background? And how did you wind up in London?”
“When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time overseas. My dad was stationed in Germany.”
He’d known that. “And your father passed away when you were just a kid.”
“Not much older than Benjy,” she said. “I barely remember him. My mom struggled for a couple of years before she remarried, and she worked in restaurants. That’s where I got my love of flavor and texture.” A tiny, nostalgic smile touched her mouth, and he was glad to see her calming down. “She died when I was a senior in high school. I had the choice of college or Cordon Bleu, and I wanted to cook.”
“You were looking for something,” he said.
“A taste.” Her finger traced her lower lip. “You know what it’s like when you bite into something really good? It’s pure joy. I love seeing other people experience that sensation when they’re eating something I created. Their eyes close. And they hum. Mmm.”
He liked seeing her with a smile on her face, but he couldn’t ignore the threats. “We’re way off track.”
“I know. And I’d rather not think about any of this. All I want is to get through the next couple of days.”
“Whoever slashed your wedding gown is sending you a message, and it’s not a love note. I hate to say this, Angela, but you’re in danger.”
She turned away from him, stared across the alley at a six-foot-tall redwood fence. Her slender arms wrapped protectively around her midsection as though she were physically holding herself together. “What if it was me?”
He didn’t understand what she was saying. “Explain.”
“I might have imagined the intruder last night. There’s really no proof that anyone was outside the house.”
Earlier this morning, he’d inspected the ground outside the windows and found no footprints. The only possible bit of evidence was that the screen on Benjy’s window was missing a couple of screws.
“What about the dress?” he said. “I’d call that proof.”
“Not if I did it myself.” Though the morning was warm, she shivered. “I’ve been an emotional basket case lately, and don’t ask me why because I don’t know.”
“Something to do with getting married,” he said.
When she looked at him, he saw a painful vulnerability in her eyes. Her mouth quivered. “I’m scared, Shane.”
“It’s okay.” He pulled her close, offering his shoulder to cry on. “Talk to me.”
“Being married to Tom was the best thing that ever happened to me, but it was a bumpy road. Right from the start.”
Shane knew his cousin’s flaws better than anyone. After his first tour of duty, Tom had a pretty serious case of posttraumatic stress disorder. And he was a recovering alcoholic. Before he and Angela got married, he quit drinking. She’d been good for him, helped him straighten out. “Tom wasn’t perfect. Nobody is.”
“This isn’t about Tom. It’s about me.” Her body tensed. “Maybe I’m not cut out to be married.”
“I don’t believe that. You’re a warm, loving woman. Look at what a great job you’ve done with Benjy.”
Without thinking, he dipped his head and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. Her hair smelled of lilacs. When she smiled up at him, the gray-green of her eyes seemed as deep as a mountain glen. Holding her felt so damn good; he didn’t want to let her go. But Angela wasn’t his woman. She was about to be married to another man.
“Thanks, Shane. You always know what to say.”
He stepped away from her. “Let me do my job as an almost former deputy and investigate. I want to figure out who messed up your dress, and I’m starting here. At Waffles. Take me inside, and show me where you keep your knives.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you promise not to interrogate anybody?”
“Not unless they come at me with a loaded gun.”
He strode to the rear door of the restaurant and pulled it open. Inside, the warmth of the kitchen flowed around him in a wave of breakfast aromas—bacon, coffee and freshly baked muffins. The back door opened into a hallway between the walk-in refrigeration unit and the office, which was their first stop. The office space had two small desks— one for Angela and one for Yvonne Brighton, her partner. Two tall, metal file cabinets stood beside two lockers.
Angela opened the locker nearest the door.
“You don’t keep anything locked,” he said.
“Sometimes I do. At the end of the day.”
She removed a black cutlery bag from the lower shelf. When she opened it on the desk, he could see the empty slot where the boning knife should have fit with the rest of the set. Angela touched the space and looked up at him. “Now we know for sure. It’s my knife.”
It would have been simple for someone to slip inside the office and steal her knife. The friendly atmosphere of Old South Clarkson Street made for lousy investigating. “I might be able to get fingerprints off the handle.”
“Most people aren’t that dumb,” she said. “We keep a stock of throwaway gloves in the kitchen.”
Though he nodded in agreement, he figured he could stop by the PRESS offices later if he wanted to check for fingerprints. They had a forensics department and computer access that rivaled that of the Denver PD.
Angela’s partner popped into the office. Yvonne Brighton was a tall, big-boned woman who did a killer Julia Child impersonation. A lopsided navy-blue chef hat covered most of her curly brown hair. She gave them a toothy grin. “I thought I heard someone back here.”
She charged at Shane and enveloped him in a giant bear hug which he happily reciprocated. He liked Yvonne. She was funny and smart—too smart to put anything over on. Before she stepped away from him, she patted his shoulder holster and said, “Expecting trouble?”
“Shane has a new job.” Angela rushed to explain. “He’s working for a bodyguard company.”
His new employer was far more complex, but he didn’t correct her. “I’m moving to Denver.”
“Terrific!” Yvonne wiggled her eyebrows. “Or should I say très magnifique! Angela and I have somebody you really need to meet.”
“The French woman.” He gritted his teeth. What was it about a single man that turned women into matchmakers?
“Marie Devereaux. Very pretty. And an excellent baker. She’s doing the wedding cake, which means it’ll be beautiful and taste good, too. You’ll like her.”
“If you say so.”
“I most certainly do.”
Yvonne wasn’t shy about giving orders. When it came to managing the restaurant, she and Angela complemented each other perfectly. Angela provided the empathetic voice of reason, and Yvonne made sure things got done.
She sat in the swivel chair behind her desk. To Angela, she said, “I’m glad you’re here. I need a break. Could you take care of the kitchen for a couple of minutes while I chat with the mountain man?”
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