Man With A Message

“I had my back to you,” she pointed out, though her brain seemed focused on the touch of his fingertips at her wrist. “How could I have seen you?”

He turned her hand over under the water, his glance at her friendly but unsettlingly sharp. “I sensed you before I saw you,” he said. “I thought it might have been the same for you.”

She ignored that, determined just to get out of there. Her pulse was fluttering.

He shut off the water, dried her hand with the tail of his shirt, then inspected it. The pad of her thumb was red where the hot coffee had burned her.

“Come on. I can take care of that.” Still holding her hand, he drew her with him out the kitchen’s back door.

She pulled against him. “But my coffee…”

He wasn’t listening. In another moment they were in a parking area filled with tradesmen’s trucks. He led her to a green pickup that had seen better days.

He opened the passenger-side door and was immediately assailed by Fred, who kissed Cam’s face and whopped him with a dexterous paw.

“Hey, Fred.” Cam patted the dog’s flank, then reached around him and into the glove compartment. He extracted a first aid kit.

Fred licked Cam’s ear while Cam delved inside. He finally held up a small tube of something. “Hydrocortisone cream,” he said as he placed the kit on the roof of the cab. Holding her injured hand palm up, he squirted a small amount of white cream into it.

He rubbed it in gently.

She tried to think of something else. She’d felt flustered and befuddled this morning, and had put it down to oversleeping and then hurrying to prepare for school. His gentle, circling touch didn’t help. That is, it soothed the burn but did nothing for her flustered feelings.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she replied. She looked at her thumb and not at him. Then she focused on the dog, who was overwhelmed by her attention. He kissed her cheek, her forehead, her hair.

“Fred, show some manners!” Cam commanded, pushing him back onto the seat he was about to fall off of.

“That’s all right.” Mariah patted the dog and nuzzled him. “My husband got our retriever in the divorce and I miss her a lot.”

CAM, STANDING SLIGHTLY behind Mariah, put the tube back into the first aid kit, studying her, thinking there was something different about her this morning. She seemed a little less controlled. Then he realized that her hair wasn’t scraped back and tied in a knot. It fell to the middle of her back, thick and glossy and the color of walnut. It softened the line of her face, darkened her eyes to midnight. Light rippled in it as she nuzzled Fred. Her hair made Cam feel lustful. He hated being such a cliché, but he couldn’t deny his reaction.

“Have you had breakfast?” he asked.

She stepped aside, giving him more room than he needed.

“No, I overslept. But I don’t really have time. I have to go shopping and then there’s—” A wild rumbling in her stomach interrupted her.

“Sounds like you’d better make time,” he said, pushing Fred to the middle of the bench seat. “Besides, I have something of yours.”

She looked puzzled. “What?”

“I’ll tell you over breakfast,” he said, bargaining, “then I’ll take you wherever you want to go shopping. I have to pick up a few things, too.”

She eyed him doubtfully. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“I came in to see if they were ready for me, but they’re ironing out some kind of problem with the plan, and I can’t start until tomorrow. Climb in.” He held the door, waiting for her to comply.

She finally did, giving him a brief but stimulating glimpse of a jeans-clad derriere as she swung into the seat. He pretended detachment, locked her in and closed the door.

He was not only a cliché, he decided as he walked around to his side, but a pubescent cliché.

The Breakfast Barn was everyone’s favorite place to begin the day. When things were starting slowly everywhere else, it was alive with activity—businessmen and -women, morning walkers, gossip groups who’d been getting together for years and solved their own and the world’s problems over scrambled eggs and coffee.

The Barn was a huge room lined with booths and filled with tables in the middle. The walls were covered with photos of the city teams the restaurant had sponsored, of parties held there, of patrons celebrating one success or another. It was home away from home for much of the population of Maple Hill.

Cam spotted an empty booth near a window and pointed Mariah to it. He followed her across the room, weaving in and out of tables, noting the speculating glances of friends and neighbors.

Rita Robidoux, a fixture at the Barn, was upon them immediately with menus and glasses of water. “Coffee?” she asked.

“Please,” Mariah said.

“Regular?”

“Yes, please.”

“Coming right up.” As she turned away from Mariah, she waggled her eyebrows at Cam, a silent comment on the worthiness of his breakfast companion.

He gave her a teasing frown of disapproval. “Do you know Mariah Mercer?” he asked politely for Mariah’s benefit.