The Keeper

Oh, no. No, no, no …

She didn’t know why oh-no, but she knew it all the same. Could feel some sort of impending doom with every particle of her being.

She’d been right to be alarmed.

It was self-preservation in its purest form. He was disaster with a tight-assed swagger and she knew herself too well to think he’d be anything other than irresistible. Why couldn’t he have been the aging-detective type her too-vivid imagination had conjured up? She peered up at him again and resisted the urge to whimper. No paunch, jowls or receding hairline in sight.

Just six and a half feet of pure masculine temptation.

Livvie looked down at her and smiled. “Look at him, Mariette,” she said in a stage whisper, her small, almond-shaped blue eyes alight with wonder. “There’s a giant in the shop.”

Following Livvie’s gaze Charlie looked down at her, as well, and her lips twitched with knowing humor, as though she knew exactly why Mariette was hiding.

“He’s not a giant, Livvie,” Charlie told her, slinging an arm around the younger girl. “He’s just a very tall man.”

She looked at Mariette, arched a questioning brow and mouthed, “Corn man?”

Very reluctantly, Mariette rose, mentally braced herself and turned to meet Charlie’s brother. She could hear her heart thundering in her ears and her mouth had yet to recover any of its lost moisture. A breathless sort of anticipation gripped her as she looked up.

She’d been right, she discovered—his eyes were blue. And not just any shade of blue. French blue.

Her favorite, naturally.

Though she was utterly certain the earth hadn’t moved, Mariette felt it all the same. The soles of her feet practically vibrated from the imaginary vibration. The entire room, with the exception of the space he occupied, seemed to shimmy and shake. Her lungs went on temporary strike and a hot flush rushed over her skin, as though she’d been hit with an invisible blowtorch from one end of her body to the other. Her toes actually curled in her shoes.

Remarkable.

At twenty-seven, Mariette had met many good-looking men and knew enough about sexual attraction to recognize it. But this was unmistakably different. It wasn’t a dawning awareness of an attractive man.

This was a bare-knuckle sucker punch of lust—purely visceral—and undeniably the most potent reaction she’d ever had to a man. It was the sort of attraction that was rhapsodized in lyric and verse, secured the human race, rendered reason and logic useless, made one stupid.

It was the sort that could ruin a person.

But not her, dammit. Geez Lord, hadn’t she just learned her lesson? What had Nathanial been if not a warning? Aside from a cheating, dishonest little bastard, anyway? To think that she’d been seriously considering marrying him.

Just like all the other men she’d misjudged—and, lamentably, there’d been many—on the surface Nathaniel had seemed like a perfect catch. He was a successful architect working for a local, prestigious firm. He’d stopped by her shop for three solid months, asking her out every single time he came through the door until she said yes. She’d been flattered and she’d liked the fact that he hadn’t been a quitter, that he’d been persistent. She’d thought that, in him, she’d finally found the one. A real, stand-up guy who genuinely loved her the same way that her mother always had—unconditionally.

In reality he just hadn’t been used to anyone telling him no. Come to find out she hadn’t been the only person he’d been pursuing relentlessly—there’d been several others.

And when she’d caught him getting blown by the plant-watering girl—whose dirty feet still haunted her—at his office, she’d been shocked, humiliated, angry and hurt. The pain hadn’t come just from the betrayal, which had been devastating enough—it had come from not being able to trust her own judgment. With previous guys she’d had an inkling of disquiet, an intuitive niggle of doubt that she’d ultimately ignored. Smooth-talking, greasy Nathaniel had slipped completely under her radar. And he’d had a crooked dick, too, Mariette thought. If nothing else, that should have clued her in.

Note to self: Never trust a man with a crooked dick.

To complicate matters, despite her telling him to go play in traffic, he still hadn’t learned to accept no for an answer and continued to drop by in the slower hours and try to convince her to take him back. She mentally snorted.

As if.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. She might not always get things right, but she was a firm believer in education by experience … and that was one she didn’t want to repeat.

Mariette steeled herself against her newest battle of temptation. “Are you in any way related to the Jolly Green Giant, Mr. Martin?” Mariette asked him, determined to get control of herself. He was only a man, after all. A mouthwatering, bone-melting, sigh-inducing, lady-bits-quivering specimen of one, yes.

But still just a man. And those were supposed to be off-limits, at least until she figured out just what it was exactly she wanted in one and how to recognize it.

He chewed the inside of his cheek as if to hide a smile. “Not that I’m aware of, no.”

“Sorry, Livvie,” Mariette told her with a wince. “He’s not a giant.”

Livvie looked unconvinced, but beamed up at him regardless. “It’s all right,” she said, smiling shyly. “I like him anyway.”

Seemingly charmed, he extended his hand to her. “I’m Jack,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Livvie giggled delightedly and fingered the Hello Kitty necklace around her throat. “You’re nice.” She leaned over to Mariette and whispered loudly in her ear—loud was Livvie’s only volume—”He’s a gold.”

Jack’s expression became puzzled, but he didn’t question it. Livvie said she saw people in colors and was forever telling Mariette which color various people were. She even kept a small color wheel in her apron pocket so that she could easily locate the right shade. Mariette, she’d said, was a lavender. Charlie, a fuchsia. If memory served, Jack was her first gold. Interesting …

Mariette wasn’t surprised that Livvie could so clearly see auras. She was as pure of heart as it was possible to be and Mariette liked to think that the gift had been given to her as a means of protection, a way to recognize the good from the bad, and had even seen the girl retreat away from those whose “color” wasn’t right.

Would that her mother had had the same sort of gift.

At any rate, Jack Martin had passed her “Livvie test” and that said something about him. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they reacted to someone different from themselves and Livvie was about as different from Jack Martin as it was possible to be. She was small and round-faced with the short fingers and lower IQ that marked her as a person with Down syndrome.

The majority of Mariette’s customers treated Livvie with the sort of care and respect someone with the purest heart deserved—children, in particular, were drawn to her—and anyone who didn’t treat her well wasn’t anyone who was welcome in her shop.

Born to a mother with Down’s who’d been taken advantage of by a male caregiver, Mariette had a unique connection to the condition and had been employing workers with Down’s since she first opened her doors four years ago.

If she’d learned anything from her mother it had been that everyone—no matter how different—wanted to be needed, to be useful, to have a bit of independence. There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t miss her and not a day that went by that she didn’t want to hurt the father who’d abused her trusting spirit.

Bastard.

He’d served eighteen months for what he’d done to her mother and then promptly fled the state. Mariette kept tabs on him, though, and directed every new employer to his sex-offender status. She inwardly grinned. He never kept a job for very long. He struggled and, though it might be small of her, she thought it was fitting. He deserved that and a lot worse if you asked her.

The idea that his evil blood actually ran in her veins was something she’d struggled with for years, at times even making her physically ill. But her mother’s was there, too, and Mariette liked to think that her mom’s especially good blood had somehow canceled out that of her father’s. Weird? Yes. But she’d never been destined for normal.

Normal was boring.

Her gaze drifted fondly over her dear helper and she smiled. Livvie had been with her for several months now and was doing remarkably well. She loved manning the case and adored sweeping. She helped with the birthday parties and refilled drinks and every tip that went into the jar was hers to keep. Which was just as well since the bulk of her check went to fund her Hello Kitty obsession. Her most recent purchase was the watch that encircled her wrist.

“Can I get you something?” Mariette asked Jack, gesturing to the display case.

He hesitated.

“He has a fondness for carrot cake,” Charlie interjected slyly.

Mariette shot him a droll look and selected the cupcake in question. It had been her aunt’s recipe—and was one of her favorites, as well. Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? Everything in this shop was her favorite, otherwise she didn’t take the time to make or stock it. Food was a passionate business and if she couldn’t get excited about it—if it didn’t make her palate sing—then she didn’t bother. Better to have fewer phenomenal items on her menu than dozens of mediocre ones.

Also something she’d learned from her Aunt Marianne, who’d not only helped raise her, but had taught her to bake, as well. Some of her fondest memories were in the kitchen with her aunt and her mom, cracking eggs, stirring batter, the scent of vanilla in the air.

She popped the dessert onto a little antique plate along with a linen napkin and handed it to him. Seconds later Livvie had put a glass of tea in his hand. She’d added two lemons and a cherry, which told Mariette just how much Livvie thought of him. She only put cherries in the drinks of her favorite people. He nodded approvingly at her and shot her a wink, making her giggle with pleasure once more.