Jack was walking so stiffly beside Pepper she got the impression he didn’t want to be seen with her.
“Morning, you two,” Mr. Frye called as they passed his cabin at the end of the row. “How lovely to see you together again. Been a while.”
“I’m just with Pep because we have to chat about a few things,” Jack said quickly.
Yep, she was right. He had an aversion to being with her. Probably in case people started talking about them in the “couple” sense.
Hah!
“It’s still good to see you together,” Mr. Frye said. “And you, young Pepper?” he asked, peering at her. “Anything happened?”
“Not a thing,” she told him with a smile, then remembered she’d forgotten to give Mrs. Kenney her breakfast plate of jellies and fresh bread for toasting. “Mr. Frye—could I trouble you to get Mrs. Kenney’s breakfast from my cabin and pop it into her? It’s on a covered tray, on the counter.”
“I’ll happily do that.”
As he moved off, Pepper gave him a thorough glance. He had something on his mind, she could tell by his expression, but it wasn’t anything to do with his being upset about her not having found the gift.
“Mr. Frye and Mrs. Kenney are good friends, aren’t they?” she said to Jack.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been around the last few years.”
Neither had Pepper, but her womanly intuition was coming to the fore. She’d need to keep her eyes open about this. Mr. Frye and Mrs. Kenney would be good for each other.
“Come on then,” she said to Jack as she walked ahead of him. “Don’t dawdle or we’ll be here all day.”
The first thing to greet them in the Tack & Feed was the sight of Winona and Kelly. Their younger sisters, Rochelle and Sienna, must be busy making plates with their mom.
“Yoo-hoo, Jack!”
He made a low, grumbling noise as he held the door open for Pepper.
The sickly scent of the Shrimps’ combined floral perfumes wafted in the air and up to the rafters.
“You were so sweet to have breakfast with us this morning,” Winona said to Jack as they approached. “How about coming over for dinner one night? Then we can really impress you with our culinary skills.”
Pepper had visions of Jack at the table, stuck between five demanding Shrimps, looking down at his banana-shaped dinner plate.
“I’m busy at home right now,” he said. “Thanks anyway. I’m only here with Pep this morning because Aurora asked us to have a chat about a few things.”
Pepper rolled her eyes. Was that going to be his ongoing and only excuse for being seen with her?
“Oh, come on,” Winona said. “Be nice to us. We hardly ever get male company.” She batted her eyelashes suggestively and pouted in a rather attractive manner.
Jack flushed and darted his gaze around the store.
He seemed nervous around women—although it was Winona. Pepper ought to save him.
“I’m surprised any of you ladies get time to eat, let alone cook,” she said. “You must be working day and night in the plate factory these days.”
“We are,” Kelly responded, in a superior tone. “We’ve got orders to fill. As soon as you start doing what you’re supposed to be doing, we’ll get more. We’re waiting on you making something happen.”
Pepper would like to make something happen, all right.
Don’t even think about putting a spell on her. In case it worked.
“You know,” she said, pulling a thoughtful frown, “you girls and your mom must be run off your feet now that your pottery is being sold in Hopeless and Surrender as well as in Amarillo and Lubbock. I think your mom ought to ask one or two of the geek boys if they’d do some deliveries for her. They have a van!”
It belonged to Dylan, second-in-command of the geeks and best friends with Noah. Normally, the van was used to transport themselves to various parts of the valley or the canyon so they could cycle the rougher, more difficult tracks. But they could easily turn it into a delivery vehicle.
“Why should we speak to them at all? Are they worthy of our attention?” Winona asked, her mind now off the dinner invitation and her focus firmly on Pepper.
“Noah and Dylan often run errands for me. They’re trustworthy—Aurora likes them, and you know how particular she is about people. They charge hardly anything for a few small chores.” They hadn’t charged at all, but from now on, Pepper would make sure they did. They were also worldly, in their own way. They’d teach the Shrimp girls about real life, even if it was only from whatever the internet said. Maybe, together, they’d all find some self-sufficiency. Surely not every Shrimp daughter wanted to make plates.
Winona sniffed. “I’ll give it some consideration.”
Kelly nudged her sister. “We’ll have more to do if we run with your idea.”
“Oh, yes, my idea!” Winona beamed. “We’re branching out into egg cups.”
“Fantastic!” Pepper said, hoping her eyes hadn’t crossed too hard. “What’s an egg cup?”
“It’s a little cup without a handle. You put boiled eggs into it.”
“Boiled?”
“It’s all the rage in Europe!” Winona informed Jack. “They have them for breakfast. It’s why we’ll be here for the meeting,” she said, gazing at him. “We expect her to cater to our production needs.”
“Her?” Jack said, his expression turning momentarily sour.
“Can’t wait to get started on everybody’s issues,” Pepper said with a conciliatory smile. “This is, after all, a community.” Not a two-sister band.
“We have to go,” Kelly said, tugging on Winona’s skirt. “We’ve got a telephone call set up with our new marketing man. We don’t want to miss it.”
“We’ll be back for the meeting in half an hour,” Winona said. “Half an hour, if you change your mind,” she said to Jack with another fluttering of her eyelashes.
How did she do that so beguilingly?
“He’s busy,” Pepper said. “But I’ll see you then.” If she didn’t conjure up a spell to make them disappear.
“Thank you,” Jack said quietly after they trounced off.
“You’re welcome. I thought you looked a bit out of your depth. Being around women is difficult for some men. Especially if they’ve been hurt in some way.”
He stared at her for an age. “What now?” he asked, taking his focus off her and looking like he’d prefer to be a million miles away.
Wow. He didn’t even want to talk about women. She’d need to fish out more information about this. Although she still couldn’t believe he had woman issues. Apart from having to put up with Winona and look after Pepper in order to repay some debt to Aurora.
People had so many secrets when there was no need of all the fuss they created. What they needed to do was sit down and talk about their issues and get them all out in the open. She’d have to get Jack to do this, then she could fix his life and he could push off and do whatever it was he was supposed to do.
In the meantime, she had to be nice.
She pulled two mini bags of popcorn from her tote bag and offered him one.
“Thanks.” He ripped the packet open, tipped a handful into the palm of his hand and straight into his mouth.
Pepper opened her own bag. “Well, here we are,” she said cheerily. “We’ve got some time before the meeting, so we might as well start looking for this man I’m not going to marry.”
He gave a slight groan.
“If you have an opinion, don’t hold back. I can take criticism.”
“You don’t want to know my concerns.”
But she did! There was a secret lurking in them somewhere.
“I appreciate you looking out for me. But I can manage this myself. I’m going to put this prospective husband off before he can make a move on me.”
“I’m sure you can manage that, but here I am. At Aurora’s command.”
Pepper munched on her popcorn, looking out at the street through the doors Mr. Wyatt had opened fully. Maybe to let the sun in. Or perhaps to let the dust out.
“Lots of strangers in town today,” she said in an affable tone. “Lots of men. To think one of them might be mine.”
Jack didn’t respond. She’d have to go much further and let him think she was opening up to him, so he’d feel safe enough to do the same.
“I like men, but I don’t think we always understand each other or each other’s needs,” she said. “Do you feel the same when you’re with women?”
“Nope.”
Maybe he was in denial.
He checked his watch again. “Okay. You said this guy is already in town.” He turned to the room and looked around the store. “So, what have we got?”
Since the Tack & Feed was the only store offering machine coffee, most people found their way here at some point during their tour of Reckless. It was the hub of the town.
“That one looks shady,” Jack said, nodding at a guy in a shiny black suit who was browsing through the rainbow and flower gift cards. “Don’t go near the one who’s in the leather gear, either.”
“What about him?” Pepper asked, indicating a man chatting to Noah and Dylan. He was blond, a little younger than Pepper, and had a boyish, mile-wide smile.
“Nah,” Jack said. “He’s a baby. You’d scare the pants off him.”
“That’s my intent.”
Just then a good-looking man in jeans and a dark gray tee smiled at her from across the store. He looked very into himself, showing off his bulging arm muscles with the sleeves of his tee rolled up. Pepper smiled back.
He must have thought it an invitation, because he sauntered over, his focus firmly on her.
“Watch this,” she said to Jack as she thrust her popcorn bag into his hand. There was no way this guy would be her “one,” so she wasn’t about to break any hearts here.
“Morning, sweetheart,” the man said to Pepper, ignoring Jack.
Jack inhaled deeply.
“Morning!” she said.
“I’ve seen you around town before,” Mr. Bulging Arm Muscles said, running an appreciative eye down her body. This was the kind of man who’d expect a woman to bat her eyelids at him while doing his washing. “You’re the granddaughter of the witch, Mad Aurora.”
Pepper ignored the bubbling fury gathering in her chest.
“She is mad. Some say I might go the same way—but I’m sure I won’t.” She added her sweetest, most innocent smile, and at the same time, made her eyes cross. “How about dinner tonight? My treat.”
The guy pushed out an uncertain laugh. “My mistake. Just remembered I have an important meeting.” He left the Tack & Feed so fast Pepper pushed out a laugh.
She licked her finger and struck a line through the air. One down. How many more to go?
“How did I do?” she asked Jack, taking back her bag of popcorn.
He was frowning so intensely she could hardly see the white surrounding his dark brown eyes. “You might want to be a lot more careful. These men are total strangers.”
“What’s with that, huh?” she asked, pulling up her top that had fallen off her shoulder again.
Jack looked out the doorway. “It’s not the town I remember.”
There used to be only two ways into the valley—the practically hidden track off the highway, south of Amarillo, or from the Palo Duro Canyon, which edged the backcountry wilderness of Calamity Valley. That was how tourists had found their way here. They’d been lost.
These days, that wasn’t the case.
“Most strangers out there on the street are just being nosey,” she said. “They’re looking at us because the town’s cursed.”
“They’re looking at you.”
“That’s because they think I’m cursed too.”
“Pep, they’re looking at you. The woman.”
She gave him a glance. There was strength in his expression of stoic politeness and his demeanor of stillness. It made a person think he’d be rock solid and reliable should a person need him to be.
He wasn’t so bad, these days. Just a bit emotionally repressed.
She held out her popcorn, since he’d finished his.
He took a handful, his focus still on the street. “What are your plans for Reckless?”
She didn’t have any—and the meeting was about to start. Something would come to her, but there was one thing she was resolved on. “I want to create a better town, without ruining it.”
“I’d prefer it to go back to what it was.”
“We can’t. We’ve got to grow.”
“Don’t rope me in.”
She’d hoped to rope in Ralph, but it might not be possible now.
“I wonder if all this was planned in our destinies,” she said.
“What? The town’s rejuvenation?”
That, and she and Jack, standing together like this, talking. Well, she was doing most of the talking, but it was still not something she’d expected to happen.
“I don’t think the ruination of a town could have been planned,” Jack said. “It’s more like natural progression. Lack of employment, a downward turn in the economy. It’s hard work that’ll fix it.”
That was exactly what she’d thought when she realized the townspeople were expecting something miraculous to happen without putting in any effort.
“People need to understand our diversity,” she told him. “They want something glittery and exciting, and I don’t think that’s us.”
“What diversity have we got?”
She counted off on her fingers, “The geeks, artists like the Shrimps and Mr. Frye with his quilts. An empty diner, a struggling Tack & Feed store—and me,” she finished. “I’m a big attraction.”
Not that she wanted to be known for anything except her good taste, her excellent cooking skills, her business acumen, and individual style, but the Mackillops would always have people talking about them. Even the non-soothsaying ones.
“Not only me, the person,” she said. “But me, the business woman. I’m starting up an online gourmet food company.”
“Don’t forget, Miss Attraction, you’ll be married soon. Your husband might not want you to work so hard. He might want to keep you all to himself.”
He thought he was so droll.
“That’s not the type of man I’d marry even if I were considering marriage.”
He took another fistful of her popcorn. “I’m not interested in how you’re going to run your marriage. I’m just saying.”
“I’m not going to run it. I’m not even getting married, so all I’ll have to run is my own life. Like you run your own life,” she added, taking another opportunity to pry.
He grunted as he munched on the popcorn, still gazing out the door, as though wishing he were somewhere else.
He wasn’t very good at talking to women at all. Not even to her, and they’d been getting along well this morning, thanks to her efforts.
He was a loner though. Not the kind to be forthcoming in the romance department—that was becoming obvious. All those poor women who might fall for him had no chance.
He was more likely the type of man who would fall for one woman and one woman alone, forsaking everything else in his life because of love.
She wasn’t sure why she knew this, but it was something to run with.
“What I’m doing isn’t as easy as you think,” she told him. “Apparently, I’m going to fall for this man. The real deal. Obviously, I can’t let it happen, but neither do I want to hurt him.”
He stopped chewing, then swallowed. “You just said you were going to fall for him. You can’t hurt him if you fall for him at the same time he falls for you.”
“It was Aurora who said I’d fall for the jerk, but I don’t trust her. I think she’s winding me up.”
“She hasn’t done that before.”
“No, but it’s me, not some person off the street. She likes to think she can control me.”
“What about Molly and Lauren?”
“It was obvious they’d find men to fall in love with. Molly’s got that bubbly, giving nature. Lauren’s the most beautiful woman on earth.”
“And what have you got?”
“A charm of my own.”
He nodded, thoughtfully, as she munched on more popcorn. It’s possible you’re going to fall in love so hard that you lose your appetite.
She wasn’t sure why Lauren’s words came to mind right this instant, but suddenly, the popcorn she was eating made her stomach feel full. Was it any wonder, with what she’d put up with so far this morning?
She thrust her half-empty bag at Jack, who obviously didn’t have this problem. He hadn’t lost his appetite, which was good because it meant Winona’s eyelash batting hadn’t affected him. But it was disastrous too, because he’d built some blockade around his feelings. He was shutting out the inevitable, because he was going to fall in love. He was the sort who would. But how to convey this to him?
“I’ve had troubles in the romance and flirting department in the past,” she told him. “Have you?” She hadn’t, not really. A person didn’t get romantic troubles when they didn’t have anxiety attacks about love and romance in the first place. She liked being with a man, and it was good to hold hands or kiss romantically at midnight. But there were never any expectations on Pepper’s part for a relationship to blossom.
Jack shot her a look but didn’t answer.
She chanced her luck and put a hand onto his arm. “If you want to talk about things, I’m here.”
“What things?”
“How to be at ease with a woman. How to flirt.” Honestly, this was gruesomely hard. Did he have no idea?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
See? Soothsayer or not, she’d just had a major prediction. He had no idea.
She was working like a sled dog here, and he wasn’t budging.
Her cell phone rang.
She pulled it out of her jeans pocket and glanced at the caller ID. Uh-oh. Marie.
She pocketed the phone unanswered.
“Something wrong?” Jack asked.
“Just someone I don’t want to talk to.”
She turned to the store.
Walter Wyatt was moving the rope that had been strung around the musty diner for years. Dust fell in little sparks that caught the light, as though dancing in delight at their freedom. The Shrimps were back, and Winona started coughing.
“Your meeting’s about to start,” Jack said. “I ought to get back to the ranch. Ralph’s got two new horses.”
“I thought he was retiring.”
“I’m not sure what he’s up to, to be honest.”
Ralph was up to something? He’d always been the same man, steady and wise, working his land, doing his thing. But there was something not right about him at the moment.
Perhaps she could assist both Jack and Ralph. In some ways, it would be rewarding to know she’d helped Jack. She planned on helping as many people in town as possible. If she flung a little feminine wisdom among all the business dealings, what harm would there be? It might be fun.
“Would you like me to have a word with Ralph?” she asked. “I might be able to figure out what’s going on.”
He studied her. “Has something happened, Pep?”
“You mean the gift? No way. I’m just using some old skills.”
“Like what?”
“Common sense. I’m full of it.”
He took a breath. “You’re being way too flippant about all this. Before I go, I need you to promise me you’ll be careful when you talk to strange men. And what about Donaldson’s? Have they contacted you? They could be around town now, snooping. Have you thought about that, or are you still stuck on your opinion that only your opinion counts?”
Of all the nerve! And she’d worked so hard to be nice. “After what happened in Surrender, I doubt Donaldson’s will turn up here.”
“You don’t know that. What are you doing the rest of day? Where will you be after the meeting? And don’t worry about Ralph. I can figure out what’s going on with him myself.”
This was what the would-be husband would be like if she married him. Exuding masculinity. Ordering her around with demands about his laundry and what to cook for his dinner while telling her how to behave. No wonder she didn’t want to get married.
“I’m going to Daybreak Lodge. I’ve got vegetables to plant and my greenhouse to tend.”
“Have you got your cell phone with you?”
“Like everybody these days, I don’t go anywhere without it.”
“Call me if something strange happens. Anything odd.”
“The only oddity in this town is you, Jack Shepperd! And if I want to talk to Ralph, I will. I don’t need your approval. Ralph is my friend.” So there, cowboy. I get along with people. You just scowl at them.
“I know,” Jack said, but he’d taken his gaze off her and was staring out the door. “He’s always been fond of you. And that’s another problem for me.”
“Why?”
“Nothing,” he said, sounding like a man with a saddlebag of miseries strung over his shoulder. “Forget I said it.”
But she couldn’t. Did this have something to do with his secret problem?
She watched him walk out of the Tack & Feed, his gait slow, like he was moseying along the fence line of one of his corrals. But there was a stiffness about his shoulders, as though he’d just gotten up after being bucked off a bronco.