Читать книгу Christmas Cowboy Duet - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

Chapter Four

“So this is the little lady you saved from a watery grave, eh?”

The rather unusual greeting came from Miss Joan less than a heartbeat after Liam had walked into the diner with Whitney at his side.

As was her habit, Miss Joan, ever on top of things, seemed to appear out of nowhere and was right next to them.

Amber eyes took measure of the young stranger quickly, sweeping over her from top to toe in record time, even for Miss Joan. She noted that the young woman was struggling very hard to keep from trembling. Small wonder, Miss Joan assessed.

“You look pretty good for someone who’d just cheated death less than a few hours ago. Wet, but good,” she amended for the sake of precision.

Stunned, Whitney held on to the ends of the sheepskin jacket, unconsciously using it as a barrier between herself and the older woman. She slanted an uneasy look at Liam.

“Did you just call and tell her about the flash flood—and everything?” she added vaguely. How else could the woman have known that she almost drowned unless Liam had told her?

“Nobody has to call and tell Miss Joan anything,” Liam assured her. “She’s always just seemed to know things, usually right after they happen.”

“How?” Whitney asked. Did the woman claim to be clairvoyant?

The smile on the redheaded owner’s face was enigmatic and Whitney found it irritatingly unreadable. “I’ve got my ways,” was all Miss Joan said.

“She’s kidding, right?” Whitney asked in a hushed whisper.

Because she had turned her head away from Miss Joan and whispered her question to him, Liam felt Whitney’s warm breath feathering along the side of his neck. It caused various internal parts of him to go temporarily haywire before he was able to summon a greater degree of control. When he finally did, it allowed him to shut down the momentary aberration and function normally again.

But for just a second, it had been touch and go.

“You’ll know when Miss Joan is kidding,” he promised Whitney.

“Let me show you to a table,” Miss Joan offered. The words stopped short of being an order.

Miss Joan brought them over to a table on the side that was relatively out of the way of general foot traffic.

Once they were seated, the owner of the diner looked from Liam to his companion, as if to make a further assessment, and then asked, “So, what can I get for the hero and the rescuee?”

“I’m not a hero, Miss Joan.”

“No point in denying what everybody’s thinking, boy,” Miss Joan said. Then, looking at the young woman at the table, she confided, “He’s always been a little on the shy side, downplaying things he’s done.” Her thin lips stretched out in a smile. “But you’ll get to see that for yourself if you stay around here long enough.”

“I’m sure I would,” Whitney replied, thinking she might as well be polite and play along with what this woman was saying. “If I were staying, but I’m not. I’m just killing a little time here before I get back on the road.”

Miss Joan smiled knowingly. “You go right ahead and do that, dear. You do that.” Her tone of voice made it clear that she knew more about the situation than either the young woman or Liam. Amber eyes shifted to Liam. “Want your usual?”

Liam grinned and nodded. He viewed the meal as comfort food. He was about due for some comfort, he thought. “Yes, please.”

“And you, honey?” Miss Joan asked, turning her gaze to Whitney.

“I’ll have a cheeseburger and fries,” she told the older woman.

“Coming right up,” Miss Joan promised as she withdrew from the table.

Whitney noted that the woman hadn’t written down either order. Lowering her voice, Whitney leaned in closer to the man who had brought her here in the first place.

“Is she always like that?” she asked once Miss Joan had withdrawn.

“Like what?” Liam asked, curious. As far as he was concerned, it was business as usual for the owner of the diner.

“Invasive,” Whitney finally said after spending a moment hunting for the right word to describe what she’d felt.

Liam turned the word over in his head, then shrugged. “I suppose so. That’s just Miss Joan being Miss Joan,” he said, then assured her, “I’ll tell you one thing. There’s nobody better to have on your side when you’ve got a problem or need a friend than Miss Joan.”

Whitney glanced over her shoulder toward the older woman. The latter was behind the counter, engaging one of her customers in conversation as she refilled his coffee cup.

Aside from the fact that the woman seemed nosy, Whitney saw nothing overly remarkable about Miss Joan. The woman certainly didn’t strike her as someone people would turn to in an emergency.

“Her? Really?” she asked Liam.

“Her. Really,” he confirmed with a hint of an amused grin.

Whitney shook her head. “I’m afraid I just can’t see it.”

“Well, you’re still an outsider so that’s understandable. You’ll have to experience it for yourself.”

Whitney laughed shortly, waving the idea away.

“I’ll pass on that, thanks. The second my car is back on solid ground, I’m out of here.” She glanced at her watch and frowned. She was really behind schedule. “I should already be on my way.”

“Maybe you should call whoever you’re going to see and let them know that you’re being held up,” Liam suggested.

Her eyes widened as she looked at him warily. “Held up?”

“Delayed,” Liam amended.

“Oh.”

Whitney chewed on her lower lip, thinking. She really didn’t want to call to say she’d be late, but she had to grudgingly admit that the cowboy had a point. With that, she shrugged his jacket off, letting it rest against the back of her chair, and dug into her pocket for her phone.

Pulling it out, she began to tap out the phone number of the band she was on her way to audition. When nothing happened, she tried the number again—with the same result. Frustrated, she took a closer look at her phone and realized that it was completely dormant. The light hadn’t really come on.

Why was it acting as if it was drained? “I just charged the battery,” she complained.

Liam leaned over and placed his hand over hers, turning her phone so that he could get a better look at it. The diagnosis was quick and succinct.

“I think it’s dead.”

“Dead?” Whitney echoed. “How can it be dead?” she challenged.

He had an answer for that, as well. “That’s not a waterproof case, is it?” He’d phrased it in the form of a question, but he already knew the answer.

“No,” Whitney snapped. And then she remembered something. “But you dived in to pull me out of the water and you had your phone in your pocket,” she recalled. “I saw you take it out to call that mechanic and whoever sent over that cherry picker.”

Rather than say anything, Liam took out his phone and held it up to let her see the difference between his and the one she had in her hand.

“Mine’s sealed in a waterproof case,” he told her. She looked as if she was about to protest, so he explained rather matter-of-factly, “Things happen out here. All you can do is try to stay as prepared as possible.”

Of course, he thought, he definitely wasn’t prepared to be as strongly attracted to this woman as he was. But then, he’d never saved anyone from drowning before and maybe that had a lot to do with it.

Whitney was torn between actually liking the fact that he was this prepared and resenting the fact that he was taking charge like this while she couldn’t. What was even worse was that she was having all sorts of feelings about this man that had absolutely nothing to do with any of this—except that he had saved her.

“Like a Boy Scout,” she commented.

“Something like that, I guess. Want to borrow my phone to make that call?” he offered, holding it out to her.

“I guess I’m going to have to,” she muttered, less than thrilled about this turn of events. She glared at her unresponsive phone. “I guess this is just an expensive paperweight now.”

“Not necessarily,” Miss Joan said.

Whitney nearly jumped out of her skin. The woman had seemingly materialized out of nowhere again. Didn’t anyone else find that annoying? she couldn’t help wondering.

Taking a breath to steady nerves that were becoming increasingly jumpier, Whitney turned in her seat and focused on what the older woman had just said rather than the fact that she was beginning to view Miss Joan as some sort of a resident witch.

“Do you think you can fix this?” she asked Miss Joan, allowing a trace of hope to enter her voice for good measure.

Miss Joan looked at the phone in question. “Depends. This just happened, right?” she asked, raising her eyes to look at Liam’s companion.

“Right,” Whitney answered quickly.

Miss Joan put out her hand. “Let me take your phone apart and put it in a container of rice.”

“You’re going to cook it?” Whitney asked warily.

Miss Joan laughed. “Hardly. Rice draws the moisture out. Doesn’t work all the time but it’s the only shot your phone has.”

With a sigh, Whitney handed her phone over to the woman, although she was far from confident about what was about to transpire.

“Okay.”

Taking the phone, Miss Joan pocketed it for a moment. “By the way, these are for you,” she said, offering the younger woman what had caused her to return to the table before Angel had finished preparing their orders.

Whitney then noticed that the older woman had brought over a couple of items of clothing with her—a light blue sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans.

Instead of taking the items, Whitney stared at them. “What am I supposed to do with these?”

Miss Joan pursed her lips, a sign that she was banking down a wave of impatience. “Well, this is just a wild guess on my part, but if it were me, I’d put them on. In case you didn’t know, the clothes you have on will dry a lot faster without you in them—especially if I put them in a dryer. Unless, of course, you like looking like something the cat dragged in,” Miss Joan added whimsically.

“Ladies’ room is right through there,” she told Whitney, pointing toward the far side of the diner. And then she held the defunct phone aloft. “I’ll go get your orders after I put this baby into the rice container.”

Whitney felt as if she’d just been doused by the flash flood a second time, except that this time around, it had come in human form.

After a beat, she gazed at Liam. “I think I’m beginning to see what you mean about Miss Joan.”

“Miss Joan likes to look out for everybody,” he explained. “Like a roving den mother. Takes some getting used to for some people. Now, I’m not telling you what to do, but it might not be such a bad idea putting those on.” He nodded at the clothes she was holding in her arms.

She’d felt rather uncomfortable in the wet clothes, despite the jacket Liam had given her. But she hadn’t felt it was worth drawing attention to the fact. After all, it wasn’t as if anyone could do anything about it. Except that obviously Miss Joan could—and had.

Whitney rose without saying a word and walked to the rear of the diner, holding the clothes Miss Joan had brought her.

She had definitely fallen down the rabbit’s hole, Whitney thought as she changed quickly, discarding her wet outer garments and pulling on the sweatshirt and the jeans Miss Joan had given her.

Dressed, Whitney didn’t know what surprised her more, that the strange woman with the flaming red hair had brought her a change of clothing—or that the clothes that Miss Joan had brought her actually fit.

“You look a lot drier,” Liam commented with a smile when she finally returned and quietly slipped back into her chair.

Whitney’s eyes met his. He couldn’t quite read her expression. It seemed to be a cross between bewildered and uneasy.

“How did she know?” Whitney asked.

“That you were wet?” It was the first thing that came to his mind. “It might have to do with the fact that there was a small trail of water drops marking your path to the table.”

He tactfully refrained from mentioning that both her hair and the clothes beneath his jacket were plastered against her body.

She shook her head. “No, I mean how did Miss Joan know what size I took? The jeans fit me as if they were mine.” And she found that almost eerie.

Liam laughed again. These were things that he had come to accept as par for the course, but he could see how they might rattle someone who wasn’t used to Miss Joan and her uncanny knack of hitting the nail right on the head time and again.

“Like I said before, that’s all part of her being Miss Joan. The rest of us don’t ask. We just accept it as a given.”

The next minute, Miss Joan was at their table again. This time Whitney didn’t jump and her nerves didn’t spike.

“You look better, honey,” Miss Joan said with approval. She’d brought their orders over on a tray and now leaned the edge of it against their table. She proceeded to divvy the plates between them. And there was more.

“Figured you might like a hot cup of coffee with that.” Although she had brought two coffees, she directed her comment to Liam. “It’ll take the rest of the chill out of your bones,” she promised with a wink that instantly took thirty years off her face.

The tray now emptied, Miss Joan deftly picked up the discarded blouse and tailored slacks from the floor next to Whitney’s chair. “I’ll just take care of these for you,” the woman said.

“I usually have those dry-cleaned,” Whitney protested as the other woman was beginning to walk away with her clothes.

Miss Joan paused, glancing down at the wet clothing she was holding. “I think we both agree that there’s really nothing ‘usual’ about this now, is there?” she said knowingly.