Читать книгу Cavanaugh Cowboy - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

Miss Joan knew the minute that Sully Cavanaugh walked into her establishment.

She wasn’t looking toward the diner’s entrance at the time, but she saw the suddenly dazed expressions of utter admiration on her waitresses’ faces. The two young women, Mandy and Beth, appeared to have been suddenly struck speechless.

Mandy recovered first. Sighing deeply, the dark-haired young woman murmured, “That is one tall, cool drink of water.” Sheer appreciation rang in her voice.

“There’ll be no sipping from that glass,” Miss Joan informed both the young women sternly. “He’s the great-nephew of a friend of mine.”

“I’ll say he’s great,” Beth pronounced with enthusiasm.

Miss Joan frowned and waved the two young women toward their work areas. “You two have tables to bus,” Miss Joan reminded the mesmerized duo. “I suggest that you get to them before the piles get too large.”

As a police detective, Sully was used to walking into unfamiliar places, his every footstep carefully observed, with only seconds for him to assess whether or not his life was in jeopardy. This situation wasn’t that serious, but he was still aware of the fact that he was being closely scrutinized.

Probably because he was a stranger, Sully guessed. From what he’d gathered from his great-uncle, Forever was, for the most part, a small, tightly knit community.

The thin older woman at the counter made him think of an eagle, dissecting his every step as he drew closer to her. She was trim, narrow shouldered and a redhead, most likely a natural one once, but given her age, he guessed that she sought out a little artificial help to maintain the deep red color.

She’d been beautiful once, he thought. And he could see that back in the day, she had definitely been the type who had caught his great-uncle’s eye.

“Excuse me,” Sully said, clearing his throat.

The redheaded woman looked at him, and then at his hat.

Belatedly, he remembered to take off the black Stetson that his great-uncle had gifted him with when he’d left Aurora, bound for Forever. He wasn’t accustomed to wearing a hat, but the sun outside made it almost a necessity.

Running the brim along his fingers, he said, “I’m looking for Miss Joan.”

Miss Joan stopped wiping down the small counter space directly in front of her. Leaning slightly forward on the hand that was against the counter, she informed him, “You found her.”

Sully put out his hand. “I’m Sully Cavanaugh. I think that my great-uncle called you to say that I was coming out.”

Miss Joan glanced down at the offered hand but waited a beat before finally shaking it.

“No, he said he was sending you out for your own good,” she corrected. “He said something about you needing a place to regroup.”

Sully was accustomed to being a private person and waiting before offering any information beyond the bare minimum. This woman already seemed to know more about him than he was happy about.

“I don’t know about that—”

“He did,” Miss Joan continued, cutting him off. Hazel-green eyes slowly slid over the length of his torso, making no secret of the fact that she was assessing what she saw. “You look a lot like Seamus,” she told him. “Back when he was young and good-looking,” she added. “I imagine he’s rather old, craggy and fat by now.” Her voice rose slightly at the end of her statement, a silent invitation to be contradicted.

“He’s still pretty trim,” Sully told her. “And I think he sees himself as wise, not craggy.”

“But he is old,” Miss Joan said, noticing that the young man before her hadn’t said anything to contradict that.

“Old?” Sully corrected that impression now. “Not so you’d notice.”

Miss Joan waved a hand at his words. “You’re his family. You have to say that.”

Rather than protest, Sully took out his cell phone. He pressed the app where he kept family photographs and found the one he’d taken of his great-uncle earlier in the year.

He held it up for her to view. “Judge for yourself, Miss Joan.”

Rather than taking the phone from him, she took hold of Sully’s hand to steady it. Miss Joan peered intently at the photograph he had pulled up.

She pursed her lips and asked suspiciously, “When was this taken?”

Sully thought for a moment. “Around the first of the year.”

Her eyes narrowed, looking at him like a seasoned interrogator. “This year?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My, my,” she murmured under her breath, releasing his hand. “If I wasn’t already spoken for, I might think about looking Seamus up again, see if some of that old magic was still there.”

Sully slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Old magic?” he echoed.

Although Sully had always considered himself to be pretty open-minded, it was hard picturing someone his great-uncle’s age having anything that even remotely resembled a love life.

Miss Joan gave him a somewhat impatient look. “Use your imagination, boy. I’m not going to spell it out for you,” she informed him. “I’m a lady.”

Sully chose to avoid the subject altogether by changing it. “You and Uncle Seamus have the same way of addressing me.”

Miss Joan raised her eyes to the handsome, rugged young stranger’s face.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. Saying ‘boy’ is a lot easier than remembering everyone’s names. Although I do,” the woman added authoritatively as a coda, just in case he thought she didn’t.

Sully smiled at this woman who apparently had once known his great-uncle extremely well. “I never doubted it, ma’am.”

Miss Joan surprised him by frowning. “Don’t keep calling me ma’am,” she chided. “Makes me feel like I’m a thousand years old.”

“No way, ma’—Miss Joan.” Denying her assumption, Sully quickly corrected himself before he wound up slipping again.

She nodded. “Keep practicing, boy. Meanwhile, sit down and take a load off,” she instructed, nodding at the stool that was directly to his right. When he did as he was told, she pulled out a menu from beneath the counter and slid it directly in front of him. “What’ll you have? We’re serving lunch, but I can have Angel whip up breakfast for you if you’d rather have that.”

Sully didn’t bother looking at the menu. He left it right where it was. “No need to go to any trouble,” he told Miss Joan. “I just wanted to stop by to say thank you and to pay my respects—”

“If you want to pay your respects,” Miss Joan informed him, cutting Sully off, “you’ll eat something like I said. Can’t have you wandering off with an empty belly.” She stopped and peered at him. “What are you grinning about?”

Sully did a little self-editing before answering the woman. “Uncle Seamus said you had a way about you.”

Miss Joan laughed and took a guess at the exchange between Seamus and his great-nephew.

“Probably said I was like a stubborn mule,” she corrected. Seeing that Sully was about to deny her assumption, she said, “And he’s right. I am. So stop sitting there, giving me lip, and order something. The sooner you eat, the sooner we can get you out to the ranch.”

“Then I can stay there?” Sully asked.

He knew that his great-uncle had said that the woman had extended the invitation, but Sully still had his doubts that the invitation had actually been tendered. He really didn’t want to impose if she didn’t want him staying at the ranch. After all, from start to finish, this had all been Seamus’s idea, not his.

“That’s what Seamus and I agreed on,” Miss Joan replied with an air of finality. And then her eyes bored into the young man before her. “Why, you change your mind about staying?”

“No, ma’—Miss Joan.” Sully caught himself at the last moment again. “It’s just that I am surprised,” he admitted.

“How so?” Miss Joan asked.

She was aware that not just her two waitresses, but almost everyone within the diner at this point was paying attention to this handsome, dark-haired young man with the liquid green eyes. That he was oblivious to the attention he was garnering spoke well of him.

“You don’t know me from Adam,” Sully replied. He was used to friendly people, but they all knew him. This situation was different.

“Maybe I don’t,” Miss Joan admitted. “But I know Seamus, and he wouldn’t send me someone who wasn’t trustworthy, even if that someone turned out to be a relative of his.” And that was that in her book. “You got any other doubts that you’re wrestling with that I can put to rest?”

A small hint of a smile curved the corners of Sully’s mouth. He shook his head. “None.”

“Okay, then,” Miss Joan declared. “Let’s get your order out of the way and then, while Angel makes it for you, you can tell me all about what that sly devil of a man is up to these days.”

Sully had a feeling that once he got back to Aurora, Seamus would ask him the same questions about Miss Joan. “Well, Uncle Seamus said to be sure to thank you for putting me up.”

Miss Joan waved a thin, slightly blue-veined hand dismissively.

“He already said that on the phone when he called. I’m interested in what he’d been doing for the last forty years before that phone call.” Then, because he didn’t begin to immediately answer, Miss Joan switched subjects like a rerouted runaway train and nodded at the menu she had placed in front of him. “Made up your mind yet?”

The woman jumped around from topic to topic like a frog landing on hot lily pads, Sully thought. But even though he’d been in her company for less than ten minutes, he knew better than to make that observation to her. So instead, he made his selection.

“I’ll have today’s special,” he told Miss Joan, pushing the menu to the side.

Miss Joan didn’t bother turning the menu around. Though it changed every day, she knew the selections by heart.

“Mandy,” she called over her shoulder, “tell Angel we need her special.” She fixed Sully with a look. “Rare, medium or well-done?”

He preferred rare, but he knew that to some cooks, that meant almost raw, so he went the safe route. “Medium.”

Miss Joan nodded, obviously approving his selection. “Good choice,” she pronounced. Glancing at the waitress she’d summoned, she saw that the young woman seemed rooted to the floor. Mandy was staring at Sully as if he was the most tempting ice cream sundae she had ever encountered. “Well, you heard the man, Mandy. Get a move on.”

Coming to, Mandy mumbled, “Yes, Miss Joan.” The brunette spun on her heel and made her way through the kitchen’s double doors.

Miss Joan didn’t bother suppressing the sigh that escaped her lips. There were times when the young women she took under her wing and into her employ could be a trial.

Turning back to Sully, she said, “All right, that gives us a little time to kill. Tell me what that old man’s been up to.”

The diner had slowly been filling up since he’d first walked in. Sully was aware of the way each and every one of the patrons who came in stared at him before they went to either a booth or one of the stools at the counter. But more than that, he was aware of their growing number.

“Don’t you have to see to your patrons?” he asked Miss Joan, hoping to redirect her attention toward something else.

The expression on Miss Joan’s face told him she knew exactly what he was up to. And she had an answer for that.

“I own this place, Sully. That means that I get to do what I want whenever I want—within reason. Since I’ve got two girls taking orders and bringing them back, plus a third girl coming in about fifteen minutes from now, that means that right now, I get to ask questions and find out what that old Romeo is doing these days.”

“Romeo?” Sully repeated incredulously.

He had been just about to take a sip of the coffee Miss Joan had poured for him, and now he was glad that he hadn’t. Otherwise he was certain that he would have wound up choking on it. Or, at the very least, spitting that coffee out in a spray and making unplanned, unwanted contact with the man he’d just glanced at sitting on his left.

“Your great-uncle,” Miss Joan clarified. “He might look like a harmless old man to you, but unless I miss my guess, there’s nothing harmless about him.” She fixed Sully with a deep, probing look. “Am I right?”

She had that right, Sully thought, recalling Seamus’s recent history. His great-uncle was more active than men half his age.

“Well, he gave retirement a try,” he told Miss Joan. “But then a few years back he showed up on Uncle Andrew’s doorstep one evening, saying that he just really wasn’t the retiring type and what he really wanted was to get back in the game.”

Miss Joan didn’t seem surprised by the revelation. Despite her earlier question, she had never envisioned Seamus Cavanaugh quietly sitting in a rocking chair, watching life passing him by.

“And did he?” she asked.

“Well, since he couldn’t get back into the police department because of his age, he decided to start up his own firm,” Sully told the older woman. “At first, it was going to be a detective agency, but he realized that that might require a lot of stealth, undercover work and although he really hated to admit it, he wasn’t as quick or as spry on his feet as he once was. Running a security firm suited his needs far better.”

Miss Joan’s deep, rich laugh echoed through the diner. “That sounds just like Seamus,” she said with something that sounded like affection. And then her tone shifted just a little as she asked Sully, “So what does his wife have to say about this newest undertaking of his?”

“Nothing,” Sully answered. He saw Miss Joan’s expertly drawn-in eyebrows rise in a silent query, so he answered her question before she asked it. “His wife died more than ten years ago. That’s what prompted him to pack up and go live in a retirement community to start with. But a few years into that, Uncle Seamus decided that kind of life was just too stagnant for him.”

“Humph,” Miss Joan reflected. “A retirement community would be too inert and soul killing for a man like Seamus,” she declared. She leaned in a little closer again. “So, how’s his firm doing? Really.”

His great-uncle had just taken on another operative and he was still turning away business. Sully had to admit that the man was happier than he’d seen him in a long while. But that was something for Seamus to share with Miss Joan on his own.

So Sully just replied, “Keeps him busy.”

Miss Joan nodded, thinking. “Maybe once you’ve sorted out whatever it is that brought you down here, Harry and I will invite Seamus to come on out for a visit.”

“Harry?” For a moment, Sully drew a blank. Was this someone in Forever, or from Seamus’s past?

“My husband,” Miss Joan clarified, adding, “the man who finally wore me down and pushed a ring on my finger. Technically, the ranch you’ll be staying on is Harry’s. But the man’s got no more use for it than I do. So now we’ve got a foreman running things, and every once in a while,” she added like a recently remembered footnote, “we sell one of the horses bred there.”

Mandy appeared at her elbow with a tray. “Angel sent out the lunch you asked for.”

“I didn’t ask for it. He did,” Miss Joan corrected. Taking the tray from the waitress, the diner owner quickly distributed what was on there and placed it in front of Sully. “Here’s your lunch, boy. Hope it meets with your expectations.”

The statement was politely worded, but there was no mistaking the confidence that was behind it. Miss Joan was expecting nothing short of a euphoric response from the first forkful to the last.

Well, Sully thought, half amused, half bemused, he could always fake it if need be.

He cut into the steak and eased the first piece into his mouth while Miss Joan watched him, waiting for his response.

When flavor exploded in his mouth, he was slightly surprised and deeply relieved.

“It’s good,” he told his great-uncle’s friend.

“Of course it’s good,” Miss Joan answered. “I told you it would be. Were you expecting that it wouldn’t be?”

“No, Miss Joan,” Sully answered politely, “I wasn’t expecting anything else except what you said.”

Miss Joan merely smiled, knowing that he was humoring her. But given who he was and who his great-uncle was, she didn’t mind. She nodded her head. “You’ll do, boy. You’ll do.”