Serving Up Trouble Read online

  No doubt, she loved what she did. She made that clear with every smile, every laugh, every touch. She remembered orders without writing them down, and always had a kind word. It was amazing.

  She was amazing.

  She was also the sweetest, most giving, warmest woman he’d ever met. And completely guile less. If he’d harbored any doubt of her sincerity and naiveté, it’d vanished while watching her serve her customers those mornings.

  God help him, there was some thing about the fanciful, joyous, wide-eyed and oddly vulnerable beauty that tugged at him, when he didn’t want to be tugged at.

  “You could just ask her out, you know.”

  Sam jerked his gaze off the opening through the kitchen doors, where he’d been staring like an idiot at Angie, and faced Josephine, who calmly filled up his mug with fresh coffee. “What?”

  “I said, you could just ask her out—”

  “Yeah. I mean no.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those.” Josephine plopped her considerable frame next to Sam, with a large bowl of fruit and a paring knife. “One of those uncommittable types.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I am when it comes to Angie.”

  “No?” Calmly Josephine started cutting fruit with the knife that looked sharp enough to cut through glass. “Why not? She not good enough for you?” She hefted the knife in her hand as she looked at him. “Maybe you ought to rethink that.”

  Sam looked at the knife, at the way she was wielding it, and lifted a brow of his own. “You threatening a cop, Josephine?”

  “I’m threatening a man.” Unapologetically, she reached for a cantaloupe. “Consider me a mother lion. Possessive and protective as hell.”

  “Not asking Angie out has nothing to do with her not being good enough. She is. She’s…” Better than good enough, but he lifted his mug to his mouth to keep the thought to himself and burned his tongue for the effort.

  “She’d go.” Josephine continued to slice up the fruit. “If you asked her.”

  Sam sighed and put down the mug. Scalded tongue and all, he said, “I’m not interested in her that way.”

  “Then why are you hanging around here every morning?” Josephine raised a brow. “My coffee isn’t that special.”

  “Actually, it is. And…” He risked one more look at Angie through the kitchen door, who was smiling at a man who had to be ninety years old.

  “That’s Eddie. He’s been coming here for fifty years, through eight different owners, he’s told me. He’s nearly deaf and has arthritis pretty bad, but he’s got all his faculties together. Watch. She’ll keep talking to him and cut up his food at the same time so he doesn’t have to work his fingers, and he’ll never know what hit him.”

  Indeed, Angie shifted forward, set down a pot of coffee and, with a sleight of hand, she cut up the man’s food for him. All while smiling and chattering and keeping her eyes out for her other customers.

  “She’s been hurt,” Josephine said into the silence. “By a man.”

  Damn it. “I don’t want to know this.”

  “He wanted to change her. Make her into something she wasn’t, and in the doing of that, took away most of her confidence. She’d deny it, of course, but it was the truth.”

  “Look, I’m just here to make sure—”

  “That she’s okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t want to know more, because you might realize the truth—”

  “Josephine—”

  “—that you care, too. That you know she’s not quite as strong as she pretends to be. That you could hurt her.”

  “I am not going to hurt her. We’re not together. Not in that way.”

  “Right. I forgot.” Josephine got up and took away both the pot of coffee and his mug.

  Apparently he was done here.

  Chapter 5

  Angie spent her free afternoons at the book store. There, in a lovely corner the owners had set up as a reading and study spot, she absorbed the books for her classes and day dreamed.

  In between reading and fantasizing—which included far too much time spent on one Sam O’Brien—she chitchatted with the owners, George and Ellie Wilson. A couple in their mid-fifties, they’d put everything they had, including their retirement fund, into the store the year before, and were on pins and needles trying to work their way out of the red and into the black.

  Ellie seemed to have a soft spot for Angie, and always wanted to hear about her life. They’d talked about the holdup, the dramatic rescue, her life after ward, and seemed very supportive that she’d decided to take control of her destiny.

  “So…has your cop asked you out yet?” Ellie asked during a lull in between customers. “He’s not my cop, but no, he hasn’t asked me out. He’s not going to.” Angie wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed.

  Okay, she was disappointed.

  “He sure stops by to see you a lot,” Ellie noted casually.

  “That’s because of his work, that’s all.” She’d explained Sam’s current case, and how she’d recognized his prime suspect, how she was determined to help him put the guy in jail.

  “Oh, dear.” Ellie came around the counter and took Angie’s hand. “It’s all about his work? That’s it?”

  Unfortunately. “Yes.”

  “So he’s being difficult.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Isn’t that just like a man. You know, you’d be better off to walk away. Police work can be dangerous.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’m not in any danger.”

  “Just be safe, dear.”

  “I will, but—” She stopped when her cell phone rang. For a moment, her heart kicked in gear, thinking it might be Sam.

  How ridiculous that would be.

  Ellie patted Angie’s hand and went off to see to another customer.

  Angie looked down but didn’t recognize the incoming call, and figured it for a sales pitch or a wrong number. “Hello?”

  “Stop calling the cops.”

  The hair on the back of her neck rose at the gruff, unrecognizable voice. “Excuse me?”

  “Back off, Angie, and stay there.”

  “What?” But she heard the telltale click and pulled the phone away from her ear to stare at it.

  “Angie? You okay?” This from Ellie again, who was rushing through the aisle, looking busy, harassed and yet sweetly concerned. “You seem a little peaked.”

  “Oh, no. I’m fine.” Angie managed a smile and a little wave. “Everything’s just…fine.”

  With a nod, Ellie continued on, and Angie stood there for a moment, a strange and odd sense of unreality washing over her.

  Back off, Angie, and stay there.

  Definitely the message was for her. Oh boy. She sat back down, feeling a little shaky.

  That her first instinct was to call Sam and let out all her fears really disturbed her.

  Sam was not her friend. Not her sounding board. And if she needed a cop, she would call one. A different one.

  Stop calling the cops.

  She wouldn’t do that. But Sam didn’t want to be involved in her life, any more than she wanted him there. No. That was a lie. She did want him—as a friend, a lover.

  But she had her pride.

  And yet…this involved his case. It had to, because what else could it involve? With regret and a loud sigh, she broke down and dialed.

  “O’Brien.”

  “Sam.” She drew a deep breath. “Look, I—”

  “I’m not avail able,” came his recorded message. “Leave your name and number.”

  His machine. She waited for the beep. “Hi. It’s me. Angie.” Why did she sound like such a loser? “I received a prank phone call today and I’m pretty sure it’s related to your case. So…call me. Bye.”

  Yep, loser. A loser who missed him. Grabbing her things, she let herself out of the store, thinking if she couldn’t have Sam, an ice-cream sundae might just do.

  Several hours later, as Angie sat in class learning fas