Kisses in the Rain (4 page)

"The bolts are already in place; a smart, resourceful girl—uh, woman—like you should have absolutely no trouble," Sidney had said when he'd showed her how to do it. Never mind that showing her how had taken place in his garage in Berkeley with his two oldest children helping. He had assured her that the Bagel Barns were designed for a woman to put together all by herself.

Clearly Sidney—or, for that matter, Martha herself—hadn't anticipated that in Ketchikan Martha's fingers would be numb with cold, that her hair would keep escaping from the hood of her rain poncho, or that more than one bolt would be missing from the standard Bagel Barn assembly kit. What should have taken her two hours had now taken more than four, and there was no end in sight. She didn't know what she would do when it came time to bolt on the roof.

She would have quit midway through the task except that she wanted the Bagel Barn to be open tomorrow when the
Trondheim,
the biggest cruise ship to call at the Ketchikan port, would anchor in the harbor.

"Looks like you need some help," remarked a boy who had been watching her from a dry spot beneath the overhang at the nearby Chamber of Commerce information booth.

"Either that or I'd better wait until it stops raining to finish this job," huffed Martha, peering at him from behind a sodden lock of hair. He was a short teenager with dark, slanted eyes, an olive complexion, and a wide smile.

The boy laughed. "If you wait for it to stop raining, you may never finish the job," he said. "Let me see what I can do." With that he stepped into the rain, bent over, made an expert adjustment to the bolt with which Martha had been struggling for the last ten minutes and thus closed the gap between the side and front walls of the Bagel Barn.

"How would you like a job helping me put up the rest of the booth?" Martha asked in desperation.

His smile widened even more. "That would be great."

"I'll pay you," she said.

"You wouldn't have to." The boy shifted back and forth on his feet.

"Fifty dollars if you'll help me put the roof on," she offered.

"It's a deal, lady."

"My name's Martha. And yours is—?"

"Randy. Randy Gallahorn."

"Okay, Randy. I'll stand on the ladder and you can hand the roof pieces up to me. Then, when I have it balanced, you can bolt the roof to the sides."

The teenager's efficiency almost halved the time needed to bolt the lightweight barn-shaped roof in place. Martha paid Randy his fifty dollars, and as she plugged the small refrigerator and toaster oven into the electrical outlet provided by the city, Randy lingered. He looked reluctant to leave, standing quietly with his shoulders hunched against the light drizzle and watching her as she worked.

"There," she said with satisfaction. "All finished and ready to lock up. I'll open the Bagel Barn tomorrow."

"Are you going to need any more help? I mean I've been looking for a job, and if you could use me—" His eyes petitioned hopefully.

"Why," Martha said, "I
will
need help once I get things going. I'll need someone to work here when there are a lot of customers and to take over when I can't be here. Have you ever worked in a restaurant?"

"I'm afraid not," Randy said.

That shouldn't be a strike against him. Neither had she.
 

"This isn't exactly like a restaurant," she told him. "I suppose you know how to toast a bagel."

"Nope. They look like doughnuts, that's all I know."

Martha blinked. "You've never eaten a bagel?" She, who had grown up eating bagels at home, bagels with cream cheese, bagels layered with lox and capers and onions, bagels with peanut butter, bagels slathered with butter and honey, could not imagine this.

The boy looked like an Alaskan Native, probably Tlingit Indian. A large community of Tlingits lived here, Sidney had told her. Martha had no idea what kind of diet was prevalent among Tlingits, but it was high time this boy discovered bagels.

"I'll fix you one." Martha popped a bagel into the toaster oven and tore open a package of cream cheese. "Would you like lox on it?"

"Lox?" He looked confused.

"It's fish. Salmon."

"Oh, I've had salmon before. I've had lots of salmon," he said. "This town started out as a fishing village. We call Ketchikan the Salmon Capital of the World. Sure, I'll try it."

Martha expertly assembled the bagel.

"You mean you brought your own salmon?" he asked skeptically, looking over her shoulder as Martha layered on the lox.

"Sure," she said. "My boss orders it."

Randy looked doubtful, but he took the bagel anyway. Martha waited for Randy's assessment.

"Well, what do you think?" she said after he'd tucked away a few bites.

"I think bagels are going to be a big hit," he said with either enthusiasm or gratitude. She wasn't sure which.

It occurred to Martha that the boy might be really hungry. He'd said he needed a job. She required a helper, and he'd already proved himself to be efficient as well as helpful. His small size meant that he'd fit into the limited working space. She could do a lot worse than to hire Randy Gallahorn.

She fixed him another bagel. "Come back tomorrow at nine in the morning if you really want a job," she told him as he wolfed it down. "You and I can learn how to run a Bagel Barn together."

"Yes,
ma'am,"
Randy said enthusiastically. He grinned at her for a moment before loping away, and she noticed a spring in his step that hadn't been there before.

It wasn't until later that she thought about Sidney's requirements that people buy bagels from pretty women at his Bagel Barns.

"Rubbish," she mumbled to herself as she stood back to admire the way the Bagel Barn looked on the dock of Ketchikan. It was a bit incongruous, a little red barn standing against the background of the boats in the harbor and the cloud-covered mountains beyond, but she was proud of it. She was looking forward to working there. Sidney and his silly ideas were the farthest thing from her mind.

* * *

The man was watching her the next day when the tourists came charging off the tender from the cruise ship
Trondheim,
newly anchored in the harbor. He was a tall man, with cheekbones like ridges and a jaw like a rock. With his weathered face and bronze-brown hair hanging slightly over his shirt collar, he was attractive in a rugged way. In fact, he was downright handsome. He radiated an aura of raw sexuality that made Martha do a quick double take.

He leaned casually against a flower-bedecked lamppost as he sipped from a Styrofoam cup and studied his phone in his other hand. Martha thought to herself,
He's just the kind of man I expected to find in Alaska.
According to Lindsay's information, there were ten men for every woman in this state. Did that mean that she could look forward to meeting nine more guys just like him? A shiver of anticipation ran through her at the thought.

But then Martha became busy heating water for tea for the tourists, fretting over cream cheese that was a bit too hard to spread well and worrying that she might not have enough change. She sent Randy to the bank for rolls of dimes and quarters and started toasting bagels.

The next time she looked, the lamppost was managing to hold itself up without the support of the man who had been there, and he was nowhere in sight. Martha sighed but brightened quickly when she remembered that there would be nine more men just like him.

After that Martha stayed busy. Many of the cruise passengers had slept too late for breakfast, and evidently there'd been a long wait in the ship's salon as they'd queued up for tickets to get on the tender. They were hungry and they were thirsty.

There wasn't a lull until eleven o'clock, when the passengers thinned out, but by that time a smattering of shop owners from nearby businesses wandered over for a coffee break. The sky was overcast, but it wasn't raining, and benches scattered here and there among tubs of bright petunias provided a pleasant place to sit and watch the boats moving in and out of the harbor.

Then the lunch business started, and many of the customers were curious townspeople who had watched the Bagel Barn go up the day before as they walked or drove past.

"I said to myself, there's a lady who must be an Alaskan. You didn't even let the rain stop you," said an elderly bearded man who stopped to buy a cup of tea.

"I had to open today," said Martha with a laugh. "I promised my boss. Anyway, they tell me it doesn't often stop raining."

"It only rains twice a year in Ketchikan. January through June, and July through December." He laughed uproariously at what Martha suspected was one of the more hackneyed local jokes.

Martha sent Randy home at three when business tapered off. She would have closed up, but she wanted to clean off the counter and rearrange her supplies. As she worked, the man she'd noticed leaning against the lamppost earlier strolled up.

"Are you closed?" he asked.

Martha wheeled around in the enclosed place and, unused to it, knocked her head on a wooden support at the top.

"Oh, I'm sorry if I startled you," he said as a whole galaxy of stars and planets whirled and clashed inside Martha's head. When the star wars quieted, she opened her eyes to look into a pair of the brownest eyes she'd ever seen. Even if the Bagel Barn had been closed, she wouldn't have told this man so. Looking at him up close was definitely a thrill at first sight, and then and there she dismissed from her mind the other nine Alaskan men who should rightfully be hers.

"N-no," she stammered. "I haven't closed yet. What would you like?"

"What have you got?" he asked, looking over as much of her as he could see. The counter at the front of the booth came to above her waist, and she wore the perky red checkered apron that Sidney had insisted upon and in which she felt less than radiantly chic.

She reeled off the different kind of bagels. She also told him what kind of drinks they had, and he ordered a bagel with cream cheese and lox and a Coca-Cola. This was a good sign. Martha had long ago decided that her lips would never touch those of any man who drank Pepsi. Or who smoked. A quick glance told her that there was no telltale rectangle of a cigarette package in his chest pocket. Two points in his favor. But did he like chocolate-chip cookies?

While she was preparing his bagel, she felt as though she had six thumbs on each hand. Furthermore, the man didn't go and sit on one of the nearby benches but leaned on the counter, his flannel-clad elbow blocking her access to the toaster oven. She had to ask him to remove it, which made him raise his eyebrows and step backward to give her more room, but he still didn't sit on the bench.

She handed him his bagel and his drink, and he
still
didn't go sit on a bench. He didn't say anything, either, and Martha felt awkward. He was so close she felt as though she ought to talk with him, and yet he didn't look as though he cared if she talked to him or not. So Martha merely pretended to go on cleaning the ledge where the toaster oven rested, even though she'd cleaned it once before.

She watched from under her lashes as he ate the last of the bagel and wiped his hands with a napkin.

"Pretty good," he allowed.

"I'm glad you like it," she said uncertainly. She was ready to pull in the top half of the simulated barn door that comprised the front wall of the booth, but he was in the way, his elbow resting on the counter again.

"Only one way it could be better," he told her. "You should be using Alaskan fish instead of what you're selling."

"It's the very best lox," she said, a bit too defensively. "My boss orders it from Los Angeles."

"Yeah, I know, I know. But it's not really salmon. It comes from the Atlantic Ocean near Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, and biologically it's trout, like all its Atlantic relatives known as salmon. Real salmon comes from the Pacific."

"Oh," Martha said, surprised. She had never been big on biology. She didn't see what difference it made whether she served salmon or trout as long as it tasted good.

"You're catering to tourists here, right?"

She nodded, captivated by the gleam in his brown eyes. They weren't only brown; closer inspection revealed them to be swimming with little golden flecks.

"And do you know what tourists order in Alaska? Salmon. They take it home in cans. They order smoked salmon to be sent back to them in the Lower Forty-eight. They even pay hundreds of dollars to charter planes and boats and guides so they can fish Alaskan streams to catch Alaskan salmon. And you're selling lox from Los Angeles. That's a shame."

Martha considered this. The man had a good point.

"Our smoked salmon would taste great on your bagels. It's smoked with alder wood. You can't beat the flavor."

"I'm sure it's very good. It's just that I have my orders as to what I should sell here, and I can't take matters into my own hands yet. Maybe later. Where would I buy this salmon?"

"Oh, there's a little shop down the street. Just go in and they'll show you what they have."

She flashed him a smile. "I'll do that—someday."

"Someday," he agreed, and with one last grin he hurried off along the boardwalk toward the docks.