him with eyes as wide as saucers. “You’re playing pretend? Can I play, too?”
Jared laughed, absorbing the noise, the warmth and the good-natured teasing. Hoping it would somehow last inside of him until the next time he could see them.
“Maybe some other time, sport.” The disappointment he saw registering on the boy’s small face had him adding, “Tell you what, when I get back, we’ll play anything you like.”
“When will you get back?” Alex pressed, echoing a question that occurred to several of the others at the table.
“I’m not sure, but the second I do, you’ll be the first one I look up.”
Alex looked thoughtful for a moment, then stuck out his hand. “Deal?”
“Deal,” Jared declared, shaking the small hand. He looked over the boy’s head toward Clay. “He’s just like you were at his age. Except he’s a lot more likable.” He winked at the boy, who beamed broadly. “Digs right in and wants to pin you down.”
“Everybody wants to pin you down,” Dax interjected.
Like Troy and Janelle, Dax had made a special effort to be here this morning for their brother. No one knew how long Jared would be gone or when they would see him again. There was no set timetable for the kind of assignments Jared took on. A week, two, a year; he would have to keep at it until either the job was done or his cover was blown. Jared’s father was the only one who was kept fully apprised of everything that went on at the station house.
At that moment Andrew made the short trip from the stove back to the table. In his oven-mittened hand he was holding another helping of his special French toast, something that was always welcomed at breakfast. “You need anything, you call,” he instructed Jared.
“Careful, Dad,” Teri warned. “Otherwise you’re going to get calls in the middle of the night for an emergency food run.”
Andrew laughed, obviously enjoying the idea. “Wouldn’t mind that, either.”
He was only half kidding, Jared thought. Again he was struck by the thought that he was one of the lucky ones who walked this earth. If he wanted a best friend, someone to confide in, or even a child to borrow for the afternoon in order to enjoy the fruits of a familial relationship without having to be tied down by the same, it was all right here, waiting for him.
He felt sorry for anyone who was deprived of these things. Nothing beat having a family as a support group.
It was something that Maren Minnesota could only fantasize about.
She’d never known a large family, never known what it was like to feel a mother’s touch. But rather than deprived, she thought of herself much in the same terms that Jared did. She felt lucky. Lucky to have someone like Joe Collins, “Papa Joe”, in her life for as long as she could remember. He cared for her. It was because of him that she was here, working at Rainbow’s End.
It was because of him that she was anywhere, she thought, not for the first time. The tall, broad-shouldered man had taught her how to look on the bright side of life, to see the good in everything and to never be afraid of going after what she wanted.
She owed him so much and she meant to pay on that debt every day of both their lives.
As was her custom, she came into work early and opened the place up. This morning it was the produce man and the butcher whose deliveries she anticipated. She had them all on rotating schedules. Some came every day, others every two days, making their deliveries in the early morning hours so that by the time the doors opened at eleven-thirty, everything was running like proverbial clockwork.
Maren liked being in control, liked being on top of things and prided herself on being able to meet every emergency with some sort of a contingency plan. She’d come here two days after graduation, her business degree still warm, and gone right to work. That was a little more than five years ago, and she hadn’t stopped since.
After signing for two deliveries, she entered her office and paused to flip the page on her calendar. She’d just passed the new guy, Jared, as he was coming in to work. He’d surprised her and the word “hello” had all but backed up in her mouth.
Maren realized that she was working her bottom lip and stopped. Usually she forged ahead with confidence and rarely second-guessed herself. But she wasn’t altogether certain she’d done the right thing by hiring this new man. She’d hired him on impulse after seeing him in action. Not hiring him would have been on impulse, too, she silently pointed out. Not hiring someone because they were too good-looking wasn’t exactly a credible reason.
Just a gut instinct geared strictly toward self-preservation.
She shook her head, laughing at herself. What self-preservation? It wasn’t as if they were going to spontaneously combust within five feet of one another. And it wasn’t as if she was going to have anything to do with the man outside of the confines of work, she silently insisted. Maren sat down at her desk and picked up the coffee that Max had brought her.
There was nothing to be uneasy about.
Unless, of course, the new man couldn’t cook.
Jared couldn’t make up his mind whether or not his so-called boss was a genuine ice princess, or if Maren Minnesota just believed that there was a strict dividing line between management and staff.
Or if it was something about him that made her act icy.
The thought nagged at him. Granted he’d only been here a couple of hours, but he’d found that women usually warmed up to him immediately. It didn’t matter whether they were young, old, married, single, he had the ability to make them light up like Christmas trees whenever he put his mind to it. Women were also an excellent source of information and he made the most of that, becoming their confidant at lightning speed.
But Maren had ignored every opening he’d left for her so far. Other than the chance encounter this morning, he’d stopped by her office twice, each time on some pretext or other. Each time she’d answered his questions about work crisply, without any embellishments or going off on any tangents. He was dropping bread-crumbs right in front of her and she was oblivious to it all, crushing them beneath her size six shoes.
She didn’t take up any of his leads.
Unlike April, the salad girl with the excellent lungs, he mused. He caught her struggling with a large basket of freshly washed celery. Gallantly he took the basket from her and carried it over to the butcher block. Beaming, she thanked him and he lingered at her workstation, handing her stalk after stalk as she prepared them for the salad bar.
Ever flexible, he decided to cultivate April first. There were a number of hostesses and waitresses he could work on before having to turn to Maren. No point in having her linger on his mind.
But she did.
“How long have you been working here?” He watched April work the large knife like a machete and found himself thinking she needed to go slower.
“Six months.” She slid the coarsely chopped pieces into an aluminum bowl, then took another stalk and began the process all over again. “My uncle got me the job. He knows Joe.”
That would be Joe Collins, the bookkeeper, Jared thought. But there was no way he was technically
