Larkspur Road (20 page)

Mia wouldn’t exactly describe the way she looked as warm and fuzzy, but whatever sarcastic comment she’d been about to spew was swallowed back. Her long fingers stilled on the tabby’s fur.

“Your gram was always the good one,” she said at last. “She was sweet, obedient. Everyone loved her from the moment they met her. I was more trouble than a peck of rabid monkeys. And that’s most likely all you need to know.”

As her aunt wobbled to her feet, indicating the visit was over, Mia realized she now knew more about Gram and Winny than she’d known all the rest of her life.

“So about that doctor’s appointment,” she said, standing as well, and Britt popped up, too.

Winny eyed Mia skeptically. “A week from Friday. Eleven thirty in the morning.” She shrugged. “I was going to reschedule, seeing as Abner was going to take me and I found out he and his brother are going fishing that week. Won’t be back until later that night, matter of fact.”

Mia smiled. “Not a problem. I’ll be here at eleven. We can go to lunch at A Bun in the Oven after your appointment. Their sandwiches are as delicious as the desserts. Have you ever tasted their chicken Caesar wrap? Or the spicy turkey?”

Winny appeared floored by the offer.

“The ride will be much appreciated,” she said after a moment. “But I don’t want lunch. That bakery’s too damned crowded. And I’m not much of a people person, as they say,” she muttered.

Now, there’s the understatement of the year.
Mia suppressed the laugh that bubbled in her throat.

“Well, people person or not,” she continued, heading toward the door, “if you’d like to come to supper one night,
we’d love to have you. Anytime. Four forty-two Larkspur Road. Samantha always invites me to Butte for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and most years I go there for one or both. You’re welcome to drive along with me anytime you want. I know Sam would love for you to join us, so I hope you’ll keep that in mind.”

“Don’t be holding your breath. I’m not one for family get-togethers either.” Winny looked like she’d rather shack up with a skunk than come to a holiday dinner.

“Think it over and if you—” Mia broke off as for the first time she noticed the wicker basket sitting atop an old brass trunk beneath the window. It overflowed with a pile of fabric scraps and some red and green calico quilt squares.

Stopping short, she whirled to stare at her aunt, who was limping along behind them toward the door.

“I never knew you quilted, Aunt Winny.”

As the old woman’s eyes locked on hers, Mia had the sensation that another wall was shooting up. Winny seemed to withdraw even more deeply into herself, as if gathering her secrets close, hiding them behind a stone facade.

Then she remembered.
Quilt.
Winny had burned Gram’s wedding quilt.

I’m an idiot,
she thought, wishing she could stuff the words back in her mouth, but it was too late for that.

“You can go on all you want about us being family, girl, but there’s a lot more about me you don’t know. Things you don’t ever want to know. And you never will,” her aunt snapped, immediately reverting back to her former prickly self.

Don’t be so sure.
But curiosity vied with sympathy as Mia cast one last glance at her aunt’s unyielding face. She felt unexpectedly sorry for the old woman even as Winny slammed the door shut the moment she and Britt stepped outside, leaving them on the porch without so much as a good-bye.

“That didn’t go so well,” Britt whispered as they hurried toward the Jeep.

“Well…sometimes progress comes in baby steps. We’ll see,” Mia added as they left the windswept clearing and pulled out onto Sweetwater Road. “I think we may have inched a tiny bit forward today.”

“Really? How can you tell?” Britt switched on the radio and Faith Hill’s rich voice filled the Jeep. “Aunt Winny is so…so…”

“Recalcitrant? Secretive? Skittish?” Mia suggested.

Britt broke into her first real grin of the day. “
D
. All of the above.”

Leaning back in his desk chair on Monday, Travis held his cell phone to his ear and listened to his old friend Marcus Belmont bullshitting about how he deserved a half-million-dollar finder’s fee for referring five guys who would be ideal recruits for Tanner Security. Outside the window of Travis’s Oak Street office, it was a busy afternoon in Lonesome Way.

A few boys about Grady’s age played catch in the park. An elderly couple shuffled from the Toss and Tumble Laundromat with a basket of folded laundry clutched between them. Chatty young mothers pushed their babies on swings near the rock garden in the park.

Three blocks down, on Main, he could see people flowing in and out of Benson’s Drugstore. He heard ranch hands calling to each other in greeting as they paused outside the hardware store or parked their trucks down the street from Tobe’s Mercantile.

Through the open window he saw Sheriff Hodge amble out of Pepper Rony’s Pizza with a carry-out box, and a bunch
of teenage boys jostling and shoving and goofing off outside the Lickety Split Ice Cream Parlor.

He was sure that, a few blocks over, A Bun in the Oven was bustling with people munching on cinnamon buns, sour cream coffee cake, and fresh baked cookies as they sipped specialty teas and cappuccinos.

He’d be headed there himself soon to pick up Grady. He’d left him sitting at one of the smaller booths in the rear of the bakery with his backpack, a comic book, a handheld video game, a roast beef sandwich on sourdough, and a peanut butter cookie.

Sophie and her grandmother, who helped her run the bakery, and Brittany, who’d been working the cash register and mentioned something about Mia spending the morning preparing for the tutoring session, had all promised to look after him.

Glancing at his watch, Travis realized it was almost two. He needed to get Grady over to Mia’s house pronto.

“Yeah, yeah, in your next life,” he interrupted Marcus, unable to keep from grinning. Marcus Belmont, a forty-one-year-old, six-foot, four-inch former Navy SEAL who’d retired from the Secret Service the previous February, was a master at the art of bullshitting. “Tell them to call me and I’ll set up a video meeting. If I hire even two of them, I’ll buy you dinner at the Golden Fox the next time I make it back to Georgetown. Maybe five, six years from now. At the earliest.”

He laughed at Marcus’s reply. The guy should get a medal for being able to string that many four-letter words together in a single sentence.

“Yeah, more than a dozen clients lined up already. Some real heavy hitters,” he told Marcus, one eye on his watch. “So I need guys who can get off to a running start by the end of the month. One client is headed to Greece for that economic summit and needs round-the-clock protection for six weeks minimum. I’ll let you know the details tomorrow.
Sure thing, get back to me in the morning. Anyone you think is up to it, have them fax me their resumes.”

Ending the call, Travis glanced around the office space he’d rented. He only had two desks and office chairs so far—one here in his own office, with a view that included Oak Street and a section of the park, the second set in the reception area. The rest of the furniture and all the computer and video-monitoring equipment would be delivered by the end of the week.

In the meantime, he had his fax, his laptop, and his cell phone—and it was enough for now. Things were coming together very quickly in a short space of time. Word had gotten out that he was hiring and wanted only the best. His contacts in the military and the Justice Department had been referring clients to him right and left. He was interviewing for an office manager tomorrow, but for the rest of today, it was all about Mia and Grady.

He was praying his son would take the tutoring as seriously as he needed to.

Locking the office door behind him, Travis sprinted down the stairs and stepped out onto Oak Street, crossing quickly toward Main.

When he entered the bakery, the delicious scent of fresh-baked bread and pastries filled his nostrils. Sophie’s grandmother, Ava Louise Todd, peered at him from the cash register with a welcoming smile.

“Hello again, Travis. Your young man’s right back there where you left him—hasn’t made so much as a peep.” She chuckled. “He’s all caught up in that comic book of his. Just let me know if either one of you needs anything else.”

“I’d love a dozen or so of every cake, pie, and cookie in the place, Mrs. Todd, but then you’d be out of business before closing time.”

“Goodness, no, I can whip up more before you blink.” She chuckled, then slanted him a sparkling glance. “I heard you and Mia Quinn were dancing it up at the Double Cross
the other night.” The keen glance she sent him was full of equal parts kindness and avid curiosity. “Folks are saying you two might be getting back together. Is that true?”

“Mrs. Todd, you know a gentleman never tells.” Travis’s eyes gleamed at her. “Guess you’d have to ask the lady.”

A smile spread across her gently lined face. “I might just do that,” she told him with a nod. As Travis turned toward the booths in the back of the bakery he swore he could feel her vibrant green eyes piercing into his back.

The town matchmakers must be having a field day, he thought. Mia was
not
going to be amused. Somehow the idea only made him grin.

Most of the tables and booths were full, but he had no trouble spotting Grady in the last booth, his nose still in the comic book. The boy hadn’t even looked up when Travis entered.

As he moved toward the back, Brittany breezed out of the kitchen carrying a fresh-baked cherry pie in an open white bakery box.

“Hi, Mr. Tanner—I mean, Travis,” she said as she passed him. “Your son is so cute. He hasn’t budged once from that booth.” She rushed past him toward the front counter.

But as he reached Grady’s table he heard a shriek and a loud thump from the front of the bakery, and a gasp went up among the customers even as Travis wheeled around.

It was Brittany who’d shrieked. She’d dropped the pie on the floor and it had spilled out of the box. Bright cherry filling and juice and pastry oozed in a red gooey puddle across the previously spotless floor.

She stood beside the disaster but she wasn’t looking down at it. She was staring instead at the smiling young man coming through the doorway of the bakery.

“Geez, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, his voice full of contrition as he approached the counter.

Travis had never seen him before but he looked to be about nineteen. Twenty at most. He was clean-cut, with a
husky build, fair hair, long jaw. He wore flashy cowboy boots. Expensive looking, Travis thought. In contrast, the kid had on a plain gray T-shirt and a well-worn pair of jeans.

He looked pleasant enough, but for some reason Mia’s niece stood frozen and, oddly, she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze from him.

“I’m sorry,” the guy said again, his smile turning more concerned. “Can I help you clean that up?”

But Mrs. Todd bustled forward.

“Never mind, young man, I’ll take care of it. Brittany, dear, don’t you worry. I’ve dropped a few pies in my day, too—and so has Sophie. That goes for Karla McDonald, too—and for that matter, Seth, and everyone else who’s ever worked here. It happens now and then. You just go ahead and wait on this young man.”

“I’m s-so sorry, Mrs. T-Todd,” Brittany stammered.

“Not a problem. Now, if you start getting the dropsies twice a day, that’s a different story.” The white-haired woman laughed and patted the girl’s arm before heading in back for a mop.

“Dad, can I have another cookie?” Grady asked as Ava Todd disappeared into the kitchen. Travis dragged his gaze away from Brittany and the guy at the counter to glance down at his son.

“What did you say?” He was still distracted. Something about what had just happened struck a strange chord somewhere in his gut. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I really want another cookie. Please?”

“Oh. Sure.” He ruffled Grady’s hair. “Peanut butter again? How about we get you one for the road?”

Brittany was talking to the kid at the counter. He was pointing at something in the display case, a smile still on his face. Their interaction seemed perfectly normal, but…

I’ve been on the FBI payroll too long,
Travis told himself. Mia’s niece was obviously just the jumpy sort. She’d been on edge the night Travis first met her, too.

Stuffing his gear in his backpack, Grady slid out of the booth. “I just hope it won’t be too hard,” he said in a low tone, looking worried.

“Hope what won’t be too hard?”

“English and earth science. The tutoring.” Grady sighed. “All the homework and stuff.”

Travis studied the uneasy expression in his son’s eyes. “It might be hard,” he told the boy steadily, “but I know you can handle it. You want this, don’t you?”

“I want to pass into sixth grade more than anything.”

“Then you’ll make it happen.” Travis hated the self-doubt he saw in Grady’s face. “Just take your best shot. Don’t waste it. Grab it and make the most of it.”

The same could be said, Travis realized, about his relationship with Mia.