A Groom For Red Riding Hood

She was still flustered when she glanced up and spotted him. As soon as she escaped that table, she headed over and flipped open her order pad. “I’m sorry you had to wait. What would you like?”

“Coffee. And a couple of steaks if Samson’s still got any in back. Rare.”

She scribbled the order with her head tucked down, paying no attention to him until she suddenly glanced up. “A couple of steaks?” she echoed.

“A couple. As in two,” he affirmed.

She looked at him then. With him sitting down, she had no way of knowing he was six-three, but her gaze flickered over his rangy frame and broad shoulders. She wasn’t the first woman to check him over. It wasn’t Steve’s fault he was a hard man to ignore—he had no vote in his genetic inheritance—but his height and linebacker build made it tricky to hide in a crowd. His jet black hair, blue eyes and ruddy, clear skin added up to striking looks that had an embarrassing habit of attracting female attention. Most women took a second look.

Not her. After that quick shot at his face and shoulder span, her eyes dropped. Fast. She promptly wrote down “two” and underlined it. “I can see it’ll be an uphill job filling you up. I’ll nuke a couple of potatoes. And I think there’s still a piece of apple pie in back—”

“That’d be great.”

“You want your coffee black or with cream?”

“Black’ll do.”

“Okay. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

She spun around, not once looking at him again—but he’d had more than enough time to do a prowling close-up of her. Once the flush climbed down from her cheeks, her skin was as pale as ivory. Her voice was a velvet Southern drawl, soft, feminine and as vulnerable as everything else about her. The tag on her shirt read “Mary Ellen.” If Mary Ellen was looking for men, she’d positively picked the right place. Winters were long and lonesome in this neck of the woods, and she couldn’t find a higher male-to-female ratio outside of Alaska. Still, the image of man hungry didn’t work at all. Her posture was as stiff as a poker, her expression a mirror of nerves and wariness, and those incredible eyes of hers were as skittish as a newborn colt’s.

He watched her take another order—standing as she had at his booth, careful to keep from pinching and patting distance, not looking any of the boys in the eye—and then she disappeared into the back. A masculine bellow echoed through the room when the Lions fumbled the ball. Samson shot out from the kitchen, his white hair standing in spikes, waving a spatula, to armchair coach with the rest of them.

Steve rolled his shoulders, mentally blocking out the football game and the noise and his curiosity about the waitress, too. She wasn’t his problem. Heaven knew, he had problems of his own. The smoky warmth of the bar was slowly unthawing his frozen bones, and weariness was starting to hit him in waves. If his stomach hadn’t been pit-empty, he’d have driven straight to his trailer and six straight hours in bed. His body was used to being pushed, and this snow squall was no worse than a hundred he’d seen growing up on a Wyoming ranch, but the cold and exhaustion combined had been killers today. Weariness was dogging him as relentlessly as a shadow.

He didn’t know his eyes had closed, yet they must have, because the aroma of fresh coffee suddenly startled him. The steaming mug was sitting in front of him, hotter than the devil’s breath. Mary Ellen had come and gone without his hearing her, but he could see her now, dodging around the room, serving fresh pitchers of foaming beer, ducking under the TV so she didn’t block the view. Someone called out, “Sweetheart? Darlin’, we desperately need you over here.” He saw her jaw clench and that cherry color shoot to her cheeks again.

If there was a woman less suited to working in a bar, he couldn’t imagine one.

Over the next hour, she came to his table three times. She never said a word, never looked at him, but she kept his coffee filled; she served his steaks blood-rare with potatoes and trimmings he’d never asked for, noticed when he’d leveled that, and came back with a fat slice of apple pie heaped with ice cream. She didn’t hover—hell, she didn’t even ask what he wanted—but she took better care of him than a mother hen.

Steve couldn’t help but notice that her quiet competence around him was a direct contrast to her behavior around the other men. He’d always had a gift with wild critters—animals instinctively trusted him. But women were a distinctly different species. The lady didn’t need any great perceptive skills to realize that the other men treated him like a pariah. For most women, that would be a steer-clear clue that he was a man to be avoided, and with his height and size, the last instinct he usually aroused in females was security. Yet she treated him as if she’d instantly labeled him “safe,” no one who was going to cause her trouble. Although that was certainly true, it made her behavior around the other guys downright bewildering.

He wolfed down a bite of pie, watching Fred Claire try to cop another feel. A bowl of peanuts skittered when Mary Ellen jerked back.

Steve forced his attention on the pie. Samson’s specialty was apple pie; the apples were heavy on the nutmeg and cinnamon, not too much sugar, the crust as flaky as his own mother’s. Delicious. No reason at all for a lump to lodge in his throat. There was nothing going on at that far corner table by the door that he needed to think or worry about.

He wasn’t bosom buddies with Fred—or anyone else in Eagle Falls—but those particular people were regulars at the bar. He’d seen them often enough to have their measure. Fred’s brush cut was clipped shorter than a marine’s; he favored dressing in army fatigues, playing weekend war games, flashing a lot of weapons and coaxing anyone who’d listen into talking about his conspiracy theories. Maybe he wasn’t the average Joe, but basically he was harmless, a lot of big talk but no action.

A raucous snicker of masculine laughter echoed across the room.

Steve didn’t lift his head. She wasn’t really in trouble. There wasn’t anything tricky or difficult about handling Fred. Either a smile or a scolding would have put him—or any of the boys—in their place. By taking their teasing so seriously, it was the same as begging for more. Any woman who had an older brother or chose to work around men would surely know that. The boys had had too much beer. They were feeling their hormones. Nobody was going to ignore her if she kept rising to the bait.

He was on the last bite of pie when she whisked over and slipped the bill under his plate. She’d bitten her bottom lip a bruised red. The look around her eyes was pinched and drawn. Still, her magnolia drawl had a winsome shyness. “I’ll be back if y’all need change,” she said.

She’d already moved on before Steve had the chance to dig into his back pocket for his wallet. Change was no problem. He smacked the bills on the table, more than enough to include a walloping tip—which she’d earned. That easily, he told himself, she was completely off his mind. All his attention was focused on getting home. Already he could picture the double bed in his trailer, slipping between the sheets buck naked, burrowing into the warmth of a down comforter. Nothing was quieter than a night in the north woods, and the hot meal had pushed him over an edge. He was dizzy-tired, gut-tired, darn near mean-tired.

He could have sworn he wasn’t still watching her. Yet when he reached back for his parka, his eyes seemed to be peeled across the room, because he saw the exact moment when Fred hooked an arm around her waist.

She wasn’t carrying a tray that time, but she wasn’t expecting the pass, either. She landed with an awkward plop in Fred Claire’s lap. Fred said something—undoubtedly some kind of vulgar compliment, because it made the other men guffaw. She was trying to scramble off him. Fred was trying to keep her pinned.

Steve muttered an exasperated “Hell” under his breath and lurched to his feet. He didn’t need this. He had troubles of his own, and getting along with the good old boys in town was integral to resolving those troubles. But dammit, her face wasn’t flushed this time. It was stark white. Even from yards away, he could see her expression wasn’t just flustered or embarrassed, but downright, outright scared.

He stalked over, his step so quiet that no one even realized he was there—until he reached over and plucked the lady off Fred’s lap.

“Hey,” Fred objected.

It took a second to steady her. For that instant his hands were on her waist, he felt the supple warmth of her body and caught the vague drift of a subtle, feminine scent. His libido stirred, with a punch of sexual awareness that he’d never expected—but it didn’t last long.

“Hey!” Fred snarled again, nearly tipping the table when he jerked out of his chair.

Steve had no time to release an aggrieved masculine sigh. No question, when a man asked for trouble, he got it. Fred had been drinking for how many hours? His leathery face had a beer flush and the adrenaline of rage was flashing in his eyes. Steve grasped him by the shirt collar, quick. “I’m going to worry about you driving home after all that drinking,” he said calmly. “Wouldn’t you say that a good friend would help you sober up?”

Chairs scraped across the plank floor. As if a bomb had dropped, there was suddenly no sound in the room except for the blare of the Lion’s announcer on the boob tube. No one attempted to get in the way as Steve propelled Fred toward the door. There was no reason for anyone to object. It was the best entertainment anyone had enjoyed that night—short of watching one small woman get picked on.

The wind had finally died, but the air was colder than a witch’s heart when Steve yanked open the door. The icy air slammed straight into his lungs. It was dark out, but the fresh foot of snow had the sharp, bright gleam of sequins. He released Fred’s collar, bent down, scooped up a handful of snow and washed Fred’s face with it. His intuition was correct. The method helped Fred sober up right quick. The other man threw a punch. He got his face washed a second time for that asinine move.

“Where I come from, a man doesn’t pick on someone smaller than him. Only bullies do that, and I never met a bully yet who wasn’t a coward. Now, you got that message, or you want to discuss it a little while longer?”

Apparently Fred was in the mood for an in-depth discussion, although the subject of bullies never came up again. He let loose a string of four-letter words, including extensive commentary about Steve’s mother, her preference for combat boots and the shaky sexual preferences of his father. He didn’t throw another punch, though.

“Look, you’re drunk,” Steve said quietly. “Damn stupid to fight when you’re drunk. When you sober up, if you’re still looking for a fight, you come pick on me. I’ll take you on, if that’s what you really want. Just leave the lady alone, you hear me?”

Fred seemed to feel that comment required another wordy dissertation on his character, values and manhood—or lack thereof. It took an enormous amount of wind and hot air before he ran out of insults. Steve listened patiently the whole time. The Japanese had always understood that once a man lost face, he became an enemy. No man forgot being humiliated. Steve let him get the last word in for the same reason he hadn’t leveled the little hothead in front of his cronies inside. He wasn’t looking to make an enemy out of Fred Claire—or anyone else in Eagle Falls. He just wanted Ms. Blue Eyes left alone.

Once Fred’s windup insults ran down, Steve waited, studying his face. The begging-to-fight fire was dying in his eyes, the adrenaline settling back down. Fred was just plain cold, shivering violently in his shirtsleeves, snow dripping from his face and down his neck. A few minutes in subzero temperatures had a way of equalizing everything, even challenged male egos and bad tempers. Fred was no longer having fun.

Steve took one last look at his face. And walked away.

* * *

Men. Since the only thing Mary Ellen wanted to avoid was that particular half of the human species, it seemed the height of irony that she’d landed in a nest of the vipers. Of course, her specialty was screwing up. She never made small mistakes. Her forte had always been the big, classic, mortifyingly embarrassing-type boners.

She stuffed her hair under a stocking cap and grabbed her ski poles. Inhaling a lungful of crisp clean air, she reassured herself that moving here had been the best thing that ever happened to her. True, she’d misjudged the population of men. Equally true, she’d failed to consider the teensy problem of money. In her wildest nightmare she’d never anticipated having to work in a bar, but there’d simply been no other job around.

Still, her shift at Samson’s didn’t start until four in the afternoon. Her day was free until then. All her day hours were free.

She pushed off, her cross-country skis forging a fresh track in the new snow. Wonders surrounded her. Raised in the South, she’d never dreamed of snow like this. The rolling pine woods were deep, peaceful, quiet. Where sunlight shot down, the new snow laid on the emerald branches like a white satin glaze. A scarlet cardinal caught her eye. A soft-furred bunny scampered across her path.

She didn’t know where she was going. Didn’t care. She hadn’t misjudged how soul renewing this isolated area would be. There were endless acres of woods and wilderness to explore. Her rented cabin was an idyllic retreat for a woman planning to live as a hermit-monkess. There was no family around for her to disappoint. No town looking over her shoulder, waiting for her next I-told-you-so screwup. And although the Freds and the Georges and the Ben McCreries were giving her fits at the bar, during the day she didn’t have to even see a human being with a Y chromosome unless she wanted to. And there was positively no man appealing enough to tempt her aggravatingly impulsive heart.

An image of a giant with searing blue eyes drifted through her mind.

She let the image linger, simply because there was no harm, no possible temptation involved. She remembered the stranger’s overwhelming height, the impact of his startling eyes. She remembered thinking that he was an incredible hunk, and for the same reason feeling a rare sensation of being safe. Hunks never preyed on her. Her looks were too ordinary.

And for once, her first judgment of a man had been accurate. The whole time she waited on him, he’d been kind and quiet, but there’d been no teasing or come-ons. He just wasn’t the kind of man who would ever be interested in her. Looking at him was like indulging in window-shopping at a candy store when the door was locked. There was no threat of her suckering into those dangerous calories. His face was square cut, strong boned, ruggedly handsome; there was character in the etched lines around his eyes and mouth. She wasn’t likely to forget it.

Nor had she forgotten the way he’d suddenly gotten up and hustled Fred Claire outside. At the time, it barely registered that he was rescuing her. He’d moved like a hunter, swift and sure, hauling Fred outside faster than anyone knew what was happening. He’d never said anything, never came back in. Mary Ellen still didn’t know what he’d done, but when Mr. Jerk returned to his table, he’d been as polite as a Catholic schoolboy and he’d pointedly ignored her for the last three nights now.