looked back at him, her shoulders taut with reluctance. “Yes.”
“I’d like the meat loaf, then.”
Resignation settled in her face. “Mashed or baked?”
His choice. The ridiculously small freedom of it swamped him. “Mashed. Extra gravy.”
He didn’t know what she heard in his voice, but she turned toward him and he saw something he never would have expected—sympathy and compassion. He deserved neither, but that didn’t stop him from wanting them.
“Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll bring it out.”
She continued on to the kitchen. He took a seat at the nearest booth, picked up the flatware bundled in a paper napkin. As he unwrapped the knife, fork and spoon, a sharp memory intruded—of prison meals, of the noise, the smell of bodies crowding in on him.
Before he could stop it, a familiar panic hit and along with it an overpowering urgency to escape. But he hadn’t been able to escape, not with prison walls surrounding him, armed guards watching his every move. His heart thundered, the pounding in his ears a deafening cadence.
“Are you okay?”
The soft voice jolted him. He looked up to see Nina at the table, her worried gaze roaming over his face. Her kindness washed over him like a balm.
He fussed with the flatware, arranging it precisely on the table. “I’m fine.”
She hesitated a moment more, her gaze searching, then hurried back into the kitchen. He couldn’t resist a quick glance down at her hips, provocative temptation as they swayed side to side. He wrenched his gaze away.
The Sacramento Bee sat in a messy stack on the end of the counter, interspersed with sections of the Reno Gazette. He rose and ambled over to the counter and looked through the folded newsprint. He separated the two newspapers into neat piles, ordered by section. Then he picked up the front page of the Bee and turned to take it back to his table.
Suddenly, there was Nina, with a steaming plate in her hands. Letting go of the newspaper, he reached out to steady her when she nearly stumbled with surprise. His hands lingered on her shoulders, the contact impossible to sever, inconceivably sweet.
Her face tipped up, she locked her gaze with his, her lips parting. He clearly remembered their taste, the exact degree of warmth when he’d pressed his mouth to hers. The curl of her breath against his cheek, the sound of her sighs as pleasure mounted. His body had stored every touch, every sensation, the images burning under his skin in erotic detail.
He had to pull away. He tried to lift his foot, to take a step back, but he felt as immobile and unyielding as the cold gray stone of Folsom Prison. Yet if he didn’t get his hands off her, he’d be pulling her close in another moment, pushing his way into her life just as he had five years ago.
She took the step back, thank God. Took a breath, which lifted her breasts and drew his gaze again. But at least that step took his hands from her shoulders, forced him to drop them back at his sides.
Hands shaking, he bent to pick up the paper he’d dropped. By the time he straightened, she’d set down the plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes and retreated behind the counter.
Resolutely, he returned to the booth, setting the front page of the Bee next to his plate. He risked a glance over at her, but that was enough to chase Nina back into the kitchen. He could see her framed by the pass-through window, her dark brown eyes huge in her face.
“Let me know if you need anything else,” she called out from the kitchen.
There was something he needed, with a heat so intense it would incinerate them both. But that wasn’t what she meant.
So instead, he tried to think of something he could ask her for, a way to bring her back out of the kitchen. There was ketchup on the table and plenty of gravy on the potatoes. The vegetable was peas; not one of his favorites, but he’d learned to eat everything offered to him at Folsom. He would like some bread to sop up the gravy, but out of reflex, he squelched the request.
“I forgot your roll,” she said, startling Jameson, making him wonder if she’d read his mind. As he’d hoped, she left the kitchen, pulled out the steamer drawer behind the counter and dropped a roll on a bread plate.
She brought it to him, setting it on the table. Her gaze was wary.
He breathed in the yeasty fragrance of the whole wheat roll. “Does your mother still do the baking?”
“I do,” Nina said, then she added grudgingly, “I own the place now.”
“Your folks—”
“They’re retired.” She gestured to his plate. “Eat. Before it gets cold.”
She backed away, looking a bit edgy now. She glanced back over her shoulder at the clock above the kitchen, then at him, then at the door to the café. His instincts made preternaturally sharp by four years of confinement, unease roiled within Jameson.
He pushed aside his discomfort and took a bite of meat loaf, then the potatoes and gravy. He thought he’d never tasted anything so delicious. He sighed and leaned back with his eyes shut for a moment, savoring the flavor.
“I have work to do,” she said again, but she didn’t step away from his table.
“Go ahead,” he told her. “I’m fine.”
Behind him, he heard the bell jangle as the door opened. Nina’s edginess gave way to fear as she glanced from the door to his face. What the hell?
“Mommy!” The childish shout cut through the quiet of the empty café.
Now Nina moved away from Jameson, quickly intercepting a young boy wending his way through the tables toward her. She picked up the boy and held him close, then hurried past Jameson toward the kitchen.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out why Nina was so determined to keep her son away from Jameson. What mother in her right mind would want her child exposed to a loser ex-con like him?
Chapter Two
Her heart hammering in her ears, Nina stood in the kitchen just out of sight of Jameson, clutching her son Nate close to her chest. She trembled all over, her knees so weak she had to lean against the prep counter. Her arms tightened reflexively, the drive to keep her son safe pounding through her.
Angling herself a bit, she peeked through the kitchen pass-through. As if he sensed her focus on him, Jameson lifted his gaze to hers. Trapped by his scrutiny, she couldn’t move.
Had his eyes always been so impossibly blue? Had his arms always rippled with taut muscle or had prison laid down those striations of tension? It had only been one night, yet she could still remember the feel of his hair-roughened flesh against her palms.
“Mommy, let go,” Nate said, his mouth mashed against her collarbone. “I want down.”
Finally she tore her gaze from Jameson’s and stepped out of view. As she dragged in a shaky breath, she had to quell the urge to run, to make a dash for the café’s rear door. She could carry
