that she should be apologizing. No way. She had been, frankly, scared, and that had made her angry. This was her home, and there was no reason in hell why she should have expected a man to be standing there. Not to mention that she was wearing coffee, as well. So no way was she about to apologize.
“Damn!” she said, realizing that half the cookies were a total loss, already attracting sea birds. She stared at him again. “You’ve broken my cookies.”
“I broke your cookies?” he said. She didn’t like his tone at all. Or the way his facial features tightened, more with slough-it-off contempt than with any anger. He was incredulous, as if her cookies couldn’t matter in the least.
Well, they did matter. They were a present. Sharon had left the containers on the counter with a big bow on them, suggesting she have a wonderful weekend.
“My cookies are all over the ground. Good cookies. Home-baked cookies. Cookies that were a present.” She tried to stop herself. She was sounding ridiculous—over cookies. “My keys are somewhere, I’m late, and now I have to change. We don’t open here until eleven—for your future reference. Nick is awake, however. I’ll tell him that you’re here.”
“You forgot something in your assessment of the damage.”
“What?”
“Your coffee just burned my chest. I could sue.”
“I would say your attempt to barge into my home caused me to ruin my own shirt.”
“And your cookies, of course.”
“And my cookies. So go ahead. Sue. You just do that.”
She turned back into the house, intentionally closing the door in his face. “Nick!” she called to her uncle. “Someone to see you.” Beneath her breath, she added, “Major-league, overgrown ass here to see you.”
She didn’t wait to see if Nick responded. In a hurry, she raced through the private quarters that abutted the restaurant to her bedroom, changed quickly and started back out again. Apparently Nick had heard her, because the man was standing in the kitchen now. Nick did seem to know the guy, because they were discussing something over coffee. As she breezed through, they both stopped talking. The dark-haired man watched her, coolly appraising, judging her, she was certain, but as to what his judgment might be, she had no idea, nor did she care. Nick had certainly never required that she—or any of his employees—be nice to people simply because they were customers.
“Ashley…” Nick began.
“Where’s Sharon? Is she up yet? I need to thank her for the cookies,” she said, staring back at the newcomer. She got a better look at him now. Tough guy, strong body, good-looking face, easy, powerful, controlled manner. Probably thought he was God’s gift to the women of the world.
She purposely looked away from him and at her uncle.
“Sharon didn’t stay last night. She was getting ready for some campaign work this morning,” Nick said. “Ashley, if you’ll take a second—”
“Can’t. I’ll hit all the traffic if I wait. Love you.”
Rude, perhaps, but she was in no mood for an introduction and pleasantries.
“Drive carefully,” Nick admonished.
“Absolutely. You know me.” She kissed his cheek. “’Bye. Love you.”
Outside, she retrieved everything that she had dropped, except, of course, the cookies that had spilled and fed a half dozen gulls.
She could hear Nick apologizing to the man on her behalf. “I don’t know what’s with her this morning. Ash is usually the most courteous young woman you’d ever want to meet.”
Sorry, Nick, she thought. She hoped the guy wasn’t a really good friend of his.
She was about fifteen minutes late picking up Karen, which made her about twenty-five minutes late picking up Jan. Yet once they were all in the car, it didn’t seem to matter so much, and the tension and anger she had been feeling ebbed quickly. They were still a good fifteen to twenty minutes ahead of the real start of rush hour. Both Karen and Jan were in terrific moods, delighted that they were heading off on their few days’ vacation together. There had been one container of cookies left, and Jan had happily dived right into them.
“Hey, pass the cookies up here,” Karen said to Jan.
“Excuse me, you got shotgun, I got the cookies,” Jan responded, grinning, then passed the tin of homemade chocolate chip cookies up to Karen in the front seat. Karen offered them first to Ashley, who was driving.
Ashley shook her head. “No, thanks.” Her eyes were on the road. So far they were clipping nicely along I-95. It didn’t seem to matter that they had started out later than intended. Not that much later, she told herself.
“That’s how Ashley stays thin,” Jan noted. “She has the ‘just say no’ thing down pat.”
“It’s because she’s going to be a cop,” Karen said.
Ashley laughed. “It’s because she gorged on them before leaving the house,” she told the two of them. That was true. Before the one container had gone to the birds, she’d eaten a number of them.
“Think they might be dietetic cookies?” Karen asked hopefully.
“No way. Nothing that tastes this good is dietetic,” Jan said with a sigh. “We’ll make it up, though. We’ll check into the hotel, go to the pool, swim like the dickens and walk it all off at the parks.”
“We’ll just eat more junk at the parks,” Jan said woefully. “Boy, Ashley, you just had to bring these cookies, huh?”
“If I hadn’t brought the cookies, we just would have stopped and ordered something really greasy at one of the rest stops,” Ashley assured her. “There should have been more cookies, actually. Enough to last the trip.”
“What happened?”
“I dropped them. Actually, I banged into some guy looking for Nick and they went flying. His fault, not mine.”
“We’re going to have to stop anyway—coffee to go with the cookies,” Karen reminded her. “In fact, I’m stopping here and now. Not one more bite until we get the coffee to go with the cookies.”
“Milk would be good,” Jan said.
“Milk goes with Oreos,” Karen said. “Coffee goes with chocolate chips.”
“I actually had coffee, but then…oh, well,” Ashley murmured.
“You dropped it, too?”
“Yeah, I dropped it.” She grinned at Jan via the mirror. “Actually, I spilled it all over him. And myself. I had to change. That’s why I was so late.”
“Was it a good friend of Nick’s?” Jan asked. “Was he ticked?”
“Hey, was he cute, or one of the old salts?” Karen asked.
“I
