Читать книгу The Soldier's Sweetheart - Deb Kastner - Страница 11

Chapter Three

“Yes. No. Maybe so.” Genevieve repeated the words Samantha had taught her, a game she and her brother had played as a child. The little girl’s high-pitched laughter pealed through the otherwise silent store, and Samantha’s heartbeat rose in crescendo. She’d really grown to care for the little girl in the days since Will and Genevieve had so suddenly entered her life.

Samantha held Genevieve around the waist as the girl perched on the counter in Sam’s Grocery and swung her feet in rhythm to the chant. Since it was summer, Genevieve was staying with Samantha’s parents while Samantha and Will worked in the store, but the older couple had come into town to pick up some supplies from the hardware store and had dropped the girl off for a quick visit with her papa.

Samantha thought perhaps Will would join in the fun, but he just leaned his shoulder against the back wall, crossed his arms, and silently observed, his expression as unreadable as always. He was either angry about something or bored out of his skull. For all his glowering, Samantha had found Will to be a kind and soft-spoken man, so she guessed it was the latter.

Genevieve was clearly an expert at amusing herself and had quickly picked up on the game. Taking her cue from Samantha, she nodded, then shook her head and then shrugged offhandedly as she repeated the phrase over and over again, laughing all the more as her voice echoed throughout the store.

“Yes. No. Maybe so.”

“Practicing to be a grown woman, Monkey?” Will asked, walking to the counter and ruffling his daughter’s curly black hair affectionately.

Samantha practically did a double take. Had he cracked a joke? That would be a first. Will rarely spoke, and even when he did, he was solemn both in word and expression. Samantha sensed a golden opportunity here to draw him out of his shell a bit.

“Hey, now,” she protested. “Watch it there, mister. You’re in the company of a grown woman. You’re going to get in trouble if you keep talking that way.”

Will’s left eyebrow darted upward. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but the corner of his mouth moved just a little. “Just sayin’.”

Samantha sniffed in feigned offense. “No comment.”

At least it appeared he was trying, which was enormous, not only for his own sake, but for his daughter’s. Genevieve needed a father who could let go and laugh once in a while. Will wouldn’t be qualifying as a stand-up comic any time soon, but his jest was more lighthearted than anything else she’d ever heard from him. It was progress.

“What have we got on our agenda today?” Will asked, his expression fading into the serious demeanor Samantha now associated with him, the creases around his eyes and over his forehead deepening as his brows lowered.

“Not much,” she answered, nodding her head toward the stockroom. “We’ve got a few boxes of canned vegetables to put out on the shelves. If you feel so inclined, you can give everything a good dusting before you place the product.” She reached under the counter and grabbed a large ostrich-feather duster, waving it like a flag on the Fourth of July.

The look on his face was priceless, somewhere between pure surprise and utter mortification.

“You want me to dust with that?” he choked out.

“Is that a problem for you?”

“No.” He answered too fast, clearly backpedaling. “It’s just that...”

She raised a brow.

“I am going to look ridiculous using a feather duster. Do you want me to wear a frilly apron, as well?”

“Like a fifties housewife, you mean?”

He coughed. If it was anyone but Will, Samantha might have mistaken it for a laugh. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”

She laughed, reached under the counter again and tossed a rag at him. “Better?”

“Much,” he agreed, shifting from one foot to another and rustling the tips of his hair with his free hand. His lips pursed as he glanced from Samantha to Genevieve and back. She had the notion that he wanted to say something more, but he turned away without a word.

The man was already getting antsy. How on earth was she going to keep him busy? He was used to an exciting, fast-paced military lifestyle, not front-facing cans of green beans on a grocery shelf.

“I’ll bring out the boxes of vegetables then.” Without another word, he moved into the back room. She could hear him stacking boxes of cans onto a cart, and after a moment, he brought them to the shelves.

Samantha continued to play with Genevieve. She was glad to see the little girl coming out of her shell. School would be starting soon. The small, close-knit Serendipity classroom might be exactly what the girl needed to help her get past the trauma she’d experienced with her mother’s death. Samantha hoped so, for Will’s sake as well as Genevieve’s.

She served the few customers who came and went, greeting each by name and asking about their lives. Often she could guess what they’d come in after without them having to say. That was what it was like living and working in Serendipity, and a big part of what Samantha loved about serving people as the grocery manager.

To her surprise, Will enjoyed speaking to the folks who’d stopped by. Though she’d expected him to be ruffled by the intimacy, the small-town dynamic didn’t appear to be affecting him at all. He greeted everyone who came through the store with a friendly smile, taking the time to introduce himself and relay the brief story of how he came to be in Serendipity. Oddly, he didn’t seem to mind repeating the tale over and over again.

Folks were curious, and Samantha knew that by the end of this week, if they didn’t know already, most of the town would be aware she had a new employee. She was certain Mary and Alexis had already spread the word, igniting interest in the handsome, quiet, widowed soldier. Once the news reached Jo Spencer—the woman who ran the local café, and the town’s biggest gossip—the blaze would turn into a wildfire. She’d have to fight off the horde of single women who’d be lining up at the door to the shop, making up reasons to visit the grocery while waiting for Will to notice them. There had already been more than a few who’d come in with nothing more than a pack of chewing gum on their lists.

Well, maybe Will would be good for business. Samantha snorted and gave her head a quick shake. That kind of business she really didn’t need, but she supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers.

At the moment, any business was good business, however it came about.

Thoughts of Stay-n-Shop loomed in her mind, but Samantha pushed them back. She was still praying about what course of action to take on that matter. She didn’t have a lot of time, but she knew better than to act rashly without first seeking God’s wisdom in the Word and in prayer.

What do I do, Lord? Please make Your will clear to me.

Those were the same words she’d silently repeated dozens of times over the past week, and she knew she was running out of time. Make Your will known.

It wasn’t long before Samantha’s parents stopped by and picked up Genevieve, and the store seemed too quiet without the little girl around. Odd, since before Will and Genevieve, she’d often been the only one in the grocery. She’d never noticed the silence before.

Samantha hunkered over the dry-goods inventory—the one she hadn’t finished on Saturday due to Will’s arrival—looking up only when one of her neighbors, Delia Bowden, appeared outside the door. Delia’s right arm was laden with her newborn daughter, Faith, in an infant car seat while she managed her active toddler, James, with the other.

Delia usually brought her teenage son, Riley, to help out with the groceries, but today he was nowhere to be seen. No big surprise, Samantha supposed. The boy was getting to that age where he didn’t want to be seen shopping with his mother.

Will opened the door for Delia, welcoming her into the store with a smile and procuring a cart for her so she could set Faith’s car seat in the front. Samantha was still marveling at the way he turned into a different person when he was around the customers. It was odd—and unsettling—that he could turn the charm on and off like a light switch. Especially since it was usually off around her.

“Hey, Will?” she called, waving him forward.

He strode toward her, his smile disappearing. She was beginning to wonder if he just didn’t like her. It wasn’t that she thought he was purposefully trying to hurt her feelings, but she wasn’t sure how she would be able to keep working with him every day if he didn’t lighten up a bit. Her heart wasn’t made of stone. And it did hurt.

“As you can see, Delia has her hands full with her kiddos,” she said, gesturing to the woman and her children.

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“It would be a great kindness to her if you could help her with her shopping.”

“Help her?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. I already got her a cart.”

“I noticed. It was very thoughtful of you. I was thinking you could, you know, push the cart for her, retrieve groceries from the shelves, especially the high ones. Just give her a hand in general—whatever she needs.”

“Wow,” he said, whistling under his breath. He almost smiled at her. “Talk about customer service.”

Samantha laughed. “That’s how we do it in the country. Up close and personal.”

“I’ll say.” Now he was teasing her. Honestly! The man was jerking her strings. “As I’m sure you’re becoming increasingly aware, everything is more difficult with children in tow.”

“Tell me about it. I can’t seem to get anything done when Genevieve is with me. It’s all I can do just to keep up with her.”

There it was. Finally. A real half smile. He shrugged one shoulder and strode toward Delia and her children, and offered his assistance with a grin.

Samantha’s breath caught in her throat. Will was quite attractive when he relaxed—which he never seemed to do around her.

“You’re staring,” said a high-pitched voice from beside her. Samantha started, audibly gasping and laying a hand to her racing heart as she turned.

“Where did you come from?” she asked Alexis, who was grinning like the cat who ate the canary. Mary stood beside her, a smirk on her face that said she shared Alexis’s good humor—at Samantha’s expense.

“Back door,” Alexis replied with an offhanded wave. “Same as always.”

That was the problem with back doors, Samantha decided. They could allow best friends to sneak up on her. There was no bell to announce them, although with the twitter they usually made, she was surprised she hadn’t heard them coming.

“Did you ever think about knocking?” she groused.

Alexis hoisted one dark blond brow. “And why would we do that?”

She was right, of course, though Samantha was loath to admit it. There was no good reason for her friends to all of a sudden start knocking when they stopped by. They’d been visiting the shop unannounced since they were all in kindergarten together. This had to be the one and only time they hadn’t made enough noise to be a circus parade—and of course it was when she’d really needed them to broadcast themselves.

This time, they’d come in on the sly and caught her staring at Will—which, of course, Alexis had announced in a none-too-quiet voice. It was unlikely that he hadn’t heard her outburst.

“We’ve been here for a while now,” Mary added. “We were eavesdropping on you and Will from the back room. That little girl Genevieve sure is a cutie. And Will is—” She broke off her statement with a sigh. “If you ask me, there’s potential.”

Samantha did not want to ask what kind of potential her dear friends had in mind.

“How is Sergeant Sweetheart working out for you?” Alexis asked with a loud chuckle. “Have you set a date yet?”

Will glanced in their direction, his brown eyes flickering with surprise. Samantha knew the best part of valor in this instance would be retreat.

Quickly.

“Sidebar,” Samantha hissed, shaking her head. She grabbed each of her friends by an elbow and propelled them into the back room. “He was a corporal. And would you mind not bringing attention to him?”

“He’s handsome,” Mary disputed. “And single. You’re single. I don’t see the problem with it.”

“Okay, there are a lot of problems,” Samantha said, “but let me just start with three. One, he isn’t single—he’s a widower. Quite recently, I might add. Two, he is shy. And three, he is here to build a relationship with his daughter, not to have a romantic tryst with me, or any other woman in Serendipity, for that matter.”

“Strong and silent,” Alexis said, stroking her chin thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Not shy. Strong and silent. That’s more poetic.”

“More romantic, you mean,” Samantha corrected. “And I don’t like the insinuation in your tone, thank you very much.”

“Will lost his wife, but that doesn’t mean he has to be alone forever,” Mary protested. “He deserves someone special in his life. I’m not saying you’re going to marry him tomorrow or anything, but you could at least give him a chance when he’s ready to move on.”

“What I’m giving him,” Samantha explained, thoroughly exasperated with both of them, “is space. And that’s what you two ought to be doing, too. He’s still grieving. Leave the poor man alone.” She knew as she said it that that wasn’t likely to happen.

Her friends would keep pushing and she’d balk, just like always. Whenever she’d start dating, her friends would be quick to call for further commitment, but it never happened that way. She’d find some reason or other to break things off.

She didn’t know why. As cliché as it might be, it wasn’t the men, it was her. She believed marriage was God uniting two hearts in an inexplicable way. And until she found that, she saw no point in pursuing anything with anybody. Especially not with Will, who wasn’t even a Christian.

“Samantha?” Will called from the front room. “Can you give me a hand? I’m having a bit of trouble with the register.”

It didn’t surprise her that Will couldn’t pick up on the rusty machine. The cash register was older than she was, the ancient iron punch-the-dollar-sign kind that had faded out with the advent of the first computer. It fit the country feel of the grocery, though, so Samantha had kept it. She’d been using it for so many years she didn’t think twice about it, but she could definitely see where Will might get confused.

“I’m going back in there to serve my customers,” Samantha whispered. “And you two are going to get out of here and leave us in peace. Please, please promise me that you won’t put Will on the spot.”

“Yes. No. Maybe so,” Alexis responded with a matchmaking gleam in her eye.

* * *

“So what do you do for fun around here?” Will asked as he swept dust out the front door and across the clapboard sidewalk. Samantha had just turned the sign from Open to Closed and they were cleaning up before leaving for the night. “Ride horses?”

He thought it seemed like a reasonable question. So far he’d seen a lot of trucks on the road, and at least an equal number of horses on the ranchland he passed as he walked every morning from the Howells’ bed-and-breakfast to the store, and then back again each evening.

Samantha stopped wiping the front window she’d just sprayed with glass cleaner and narrowed her eyes, one hand drifting to perch on her hip. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know. I guess because I noticed the old hitching post in front of Cup o’ Jo’s Café when I passed it this morning. Watering trough, too, I think. The thing looks like it’s been there for a hundred years.”

Samantha shrugged. “It probably has been. Folks do occasionally use it when they stop at Cup o’ Jo’s, if they’re out riding that way. It doesn’t happen very often, though. We’re not quite as backward here as you might imagine.”

He held up his hands. “Innocent observation. No offense meant.”

“None taken.” Samantha laughed. The sound was unmistakably feminine and it mixed Will’s insides all up. He cast around for something to say.

“Your friend Alexis reeked of horse when I met her.” As soon as he said the words he realized how awful they sounded. He was used to saying what he thought without sifting it through the filter of what was appropriate in mixed company. Being around Samantha really messed with his head.

She lifted her chin, regarding him closely, the hint of a smile playing on her lips. He turned his gaze back to the cracked wooden clapboard and swept harder. It made him uncomfortable when she looked at him that way. Tingly all over, like last year when he’d caught a bad case of the flu and had suffered a raging fever of over a hundred and two degrees.

He remembered the incident well. It had already been inconceivably hot in Afghanistan, even without his fever. Every inch of his skin had felt like it was on fire, just as it did now. His breath came shallow and ragged, and his chest hurt with every lungful of air.

Not that being with Samantha was anything like catching the flu. It was a poor analogy, but it was the best he was able to do at the moment.

He couldn’t pull the wool over his own eyes. He recognized the symptoms. The honest symptoms.

The bottom line was, Samantha was attractive in all the right ways.

“Sorry,” he apologized gruffly. “My bad.”

Again, Samantha chuckled. “No need. You’re just saying it like it is. I don’t think Alexis would be offended by your observation. She’s a rancher and spends most of her time in the saddle.”

“You’re not easily affronted, are you?”

Her blue eyes locked onto him, and every nerve ending in his body sparked to life. The emotions rushing through him engaged him in a way he couldn’t even label. “Why would I be? If you can refrain from any more insults about women and erratic behavior, we’re all good. Yes, No, Maybe So is more than a kid’s game—it’s a lady’s prerogative. And don’t you forget it.”

Will chuckled. The woman was really something. She kept him on his toes. To his surprise, he found that he enjoyed working with her far more than he’d ever believed he would when Seth had first approached him with the idea.

But then again, he hadn’t yet met Samantha.

“Why don’t you see if you can find something to do in the back room while I tally the register?” she said, moving back to the counter and tucking the window spray and her rag underneath.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, surprising himself with how upbeat he sounded. His heart felt lighter, too. Was he actually relaxing a little bit? Taking the edge off that gut-slicing sensation of guilt which usually burdened him?

As he entered the back room, his eyes scanned over the bins and boxes, looking for something to keep his hands and mind occupied.

There really wasn’t much to do. Samantha kept her store in tip-top condition. Even her desk was spotless. Neither a paper nor a pen was misplaced.

He’d seen how hard she worked, even when she didn’t have to. She was motivated by something beyond his comprehension, and everything she did, she did with a joyful heart. He’d never seen anything like it.

Will moved some of the boxes from the higher shelves onto the lower ones, making room for new product. Samantha was a tiny little pixie of a woman, five feet four at max. How had she possibly done all the heavy lifting all these years? Some of these boxes were heavier than she was, not to mention that the topmost shelves were completely out of her reach. The notion of her toting heavy boxes using only a footstool or ladder made his stomach twist in knots.

Whether she knew it or not, she would no longer be slinging heavy boxes around the back room. Not on his watch. He had just appointed himself Samantha’s own personal muscle.

He scoffed at himself and shook his head.

He was here to do a job, which was the important thing. This was what he and Seth had talked about—how Will could fix Samantha’s problems for her. That’s all this was.

Will sorted through the inventory, organizing the boxes by category, rotating them according to date and lining them squarely over each other. He placed the older inventory within easy reach and shelved the newer products up top. It was only when he was nearly finished that he noticed that a small box of chewing-gum packages had been wedged in the far back corner against the wall. He’d missed it on his first go-round, and since the candy aisle was looking a little thin, he reached for it, thinking he’d stock the shelf with the extra bundles of gum.

He wasn’t paying that much attention to what he was doing until he realized that moving the box forward revealed a file of papers wedged between the box and the wall. He couldn’t conceive of how they’d gotten there. It was almost as if they’d been placed there on purpose.

Samantha must have been doing paperwork and had set the file down on the shelving unit, where it had been accidentally lodged behind the box and subsequently forgotten. It was probably nothing she couldn’t live without, since obviously she wasn’t tearing up the store looking for it, but he thought he should probably place it on her desk for her to deal with at her convenience.

As he set the box of gum aside, he bumped the folder and several papers fell to the ground. They were letters written on upscale paper, the fancy masthead declaring some prestigious law firm based out of New York: Bastion and Bunyan and Turner, Esquire.

The name sounded pretentious to Will, but then, he didn’t care for lawyers. His only brush with them was after Haley had legally separated from him, and that had been bad news all around. In his opinion, lawyers tended to be seedy types more interested in making money than representing their clients with integrity and honesty.

But what did Samantha need with a bunch of New York lawyers?

Even with his curiosity piqued, Will had no intention of snooping, but his gaze unintentionally drifted over the first paragraph of the missive in his hands.

His breath hitched sharply as he realized what he was reading.

A threat against Sam’s Grocery, written in particularly nasty legalese, on behalf of the giant corporation Stay-n-Shop. Apparently they wanted to buy out her store and replace it with one of theirs, as they had with other small groceries in the area. But they weren’t asking—they were demanding. This was their third and final offer. And if she refused...

It was now a great deal more than curiosity that led him to flip through the rest of the correspondence. This was personal, engaging his warrior’s heart.

These letters were menacing coercions from an adversary. And they’d been intentionally hidden. Will was sure of it. Anger stiffened his joints.

Maybe it was none of his business, but he was working for the Howells, for Samantha, and he couldn’t imagine what they must be going through right now. Samantha must be frightened half out of her wits with this big corporation coming down on her the way it was.

What he did know for certain was that there was no way Samantha would allow herself to be coerced into selling. Not for any price. He hadn’t been around the Howells for very long, but it was long enough for him to know they were a close-knit family in a close-knit community—and he’d heard dozens of stories about what life was like growing up in Serendipity from Seth.

Sam’s Grocery was Samantha’s legacy. She’d even been named after the store—or rather, for it. No way was Stay-n-Shop going to take it away from her. Inconceivable.

He didn’t hear Samantha until she was right behind him.

“Hey, what kind of music do you like? We can change the radio station if you want. I know country music isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.”

Will instinctively drew the letters against his stomach, as if he could hide them from her. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter to me. I don’t much care for music.”

“How can a person not like music?” She sounded as astonished as if he’d just declared that he was originally from Pluto.

He shrugged. “I don’t dislike it. It just doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. Country, hip-hop, pop. Whatever. It’s all the same to me.”

“Okay,” she responded, drawing out the word in a way that indicated she either didn’t believe him or else thought he was off his rocker.

Or maybe both.

Will slowly turned around. “I rearranged your shelves,” he said. Her eyes landed on the folder in his hands, and she blanched.

“You did what?”

“I pulled all of the older stock off the top shelves to make room to store the new product that will be coming in on Monday. I also rotated everything according to date.” He held up the letters.

“And I found those letters Stay-n-Shop sent you.”

For a moment, she just stared at them, wide-eyed and openmouthed. Her face went from white to green around the gills to a burning-torch red in a matter of seconds.

“Give me those,” she snapped, snatching them from his fist and hiding them behind her back as if her action would somehow erase them from his memory.

“Don’t you think we ought to talk about it?” he prodded gently. He wanted to know what her strategy was so they could plan their next move. It didn’t even occur to him that it wasn’t his place to help her put this problem to rights. This was war—the more troops, the better.

“This is my private business,” she hissed. “Butt out.”

Well, that was straightforward and to the point.

It was also wrong.

“I can help, if you’ll let me,” he offered, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her. The woman looked like she needed consoling and every instinct in him was screaming to do just that—and more. He suddenly pictured holding her close, wrapping his arms protectively around her, brushing his palm across the softness of her cheek.

His breath left his lungs in a rush, as if he’d been punched in the gut. He took a mental step backward. What was he thinking? He had no right to even consider acting out emotions he didn’t understand himself. He couldn’t—and wouldn’t—hurt her as he’d done to others.

“I’m just sayin’. I work for you now—for Sam’s Grocery. It’s my livelihood, too, and I’ve got a daughter to look after. Clearly I have a vested interest in keeping this store alive and kicking.”

Samantha gasped and then turned and fled the room. Will stared after her, astonished. He’d thought his explanation regarding his investment in her battle was unambiguous. Logical. Rational. So why had she run out that way? Hadn’t she understood that he was saying he had her back in this fight?

Apparently not.