Rugged and Relentless (4 page)

“Where?”

“Thompson’s Café. One block up and to the north.” His hat stopped twirling as he watched the jailer finish his sandwich. A gusty sigh chased Jake out the door. “Wish I could join you.”

“I’m going to have to fire that girl,” Evie admitted to Wilma as they ran around the kitchen. “But I don’t know when I’ll have time to find another to take her place.”

“She only shows up half the time,” Wilma agreed. “With Cora out, we’re already shorthanded!”

Evie plowed through the swinging doors back into the dining room, arms loaded with dishes. Unloading them posed no problem—the moment she stepped up to a table eager hands relieved her of her burdens with smiles all around.

Praise the Lord for a booming business
. Her own smile rarely flagged, bolstered by those of satisfied customers.
If things keep going so well, we might be able to make ends meet despite the disaster of Hope Falls
.

“Hooo!” Caught up in her thoughts, Evie hadn’t paid close enough attention to her surroundings. Even she couldn’t say which knocked the breath out of her more—the chair back lodged into her stomach or the stranger who’d stepped through her doors. Not that it mattered much, since either way left Evelyn Thompson standing certain of one thing:
I knew I should have laced my corset tighter!

But a woman needed to breathe, after all, and her corset couldn’t truly control her overly exuberant curves. She had what she privately referred to as an ongoing case of the “sqwudgies,”
a terrible affliction of squooshy pudginess no man-made device could cure.

So here she stood, squashed between the chairs of two customers who’d simultaneously decided to scoot backward, as the most gorgeous man she’d ever clapped eyes on strode into her café. This sort of thing, she’d noticed, never happened to Cora or the other girls who worked in the dining room.

It was one of the reasons she stayed in the kitchen.
And
, she fumed, tugging herself free and refusing to consider what color her face must be turning,
yet another reason why I have to hire another girl. My dignity can’t survive this on a daily basis
.

Somehow she’d pasted a smile back on her face by the time she reached her new customer. “Good afternoon and welcome to Thompson’s Café. What can I get you?”

He didn’t sit so much as sprawl into ownership of the one vacant table. With a knapsack on the seat beside him and long legs stretched past the table to bracket the chair across from him, he should have looked tired.

He didn’t. Everything about him shouted of coiled intensity, from the rigidity in his shoulders to the strong line of a jaw stubbled with at least five days’ worth of a beard. One hand seemed nonchalantly half tucked into his pocket, but it was the pocket closest to his holster. His eyes scanned the entire room before coming to rest on her with an absolute clarity she couldn’t remember seeing. “Everything.”

“Oh.” Her mouth went so dry she licked her lips without thinking, and still his penetrating gaze didn’t waver. “We aren’t the typical café, with only one option. We have roast chicken and potatoes, onion soup and biscuits, ham or meat loaf sandwiches, sugar cookies, and berry cobbler today.” She finished the recitation with pride. “So what would you like?”

His brows rose, what might have been a sigh from a less robust man passed through his lips, and his eyes narrowed as though measuring her.

Evie caught herself fidgeting with her apron strings at the thought. Measurements—aside from cups and teaspoons—were the last thing she wanted to think about. But he didn’t need to know that, so she put a hand on her hip in what she hoped was a nonchalant fashion. “If you can’t decide, I recommend the chicken.” It cost most.

“I already decided.” A smile broke out across his face. He leaned back and folded his hands across his chest before closing his eyes and practically purring his order. “Everything.”

Evie gaped at him for a moment before gathering her wits—and several empty dishes—on her way back to the kitchen. Luckily, the lunch crowd started thinning out about then, and her only other dining room helper—a girl by the name of Lara—had things fairly well in hand.

“Next pot’s almost ready,” Wilma promised when Evie found the soup tureen dangerously low.

“Perfect. Looks like the rush is slowing down anyway.” She filled one of the crockery bowls full of the thick soup, topping it with crumbles of leftover corn bread from yesterday and some of the sharp cheese that went so well with the sweeter flavor of the onion. Grabbing a basket with four biscuits, she tucked a crock of butter inside. “I’ll be back in a minute for a plate of chicken and potatoes … and I need one each of the ham and meat loaf sandwiches wrapped up.” He must want them to go.

Wilma cast a perplexed look over one shoulder and kept working. “Thought you said we were slowing down?”

“We are.” Evie elbowed her way through the swinging doors and called back, “It’s all one order!” She wished she could see Wilma’s expression but chuckled at the thought.

Skirting tables and the more treacherous chairs, Evie reached the stranger. She set down what she’d consider to be his first course, gratified to see him lean forward and pick up a spoon almost before the food hit the table.

“Hat off while you eat—house rules.” A thrill ran through her
when she set a warning hand on his shoulder. She quickly moved back to gesture at the sign posted on the wall.

“Hats off to the chef,” he read aloud, amusement quirking the left corner of his mouth. He slanted a glance toward her. “What if I don’t like the food?”

“Then you can take it up with her.” Evie fought a smile of her own. “Or the owner.”

“Fair enough.” He thumbed his hat back until it slipped off an unruly crown of brown hair in sore need of a barber, then placed the article on the chair beside him.

As much as she wanted to wait, wanted to watch him eat his doubts to find them as delicious as anything else she’d mastered in the kitchen, Evie went back to fetch his chicken. And his sandwiches.

Mere minutes later she set them before him with a flourish, smug to see a now-empty bowl and basket strewn across the table.

As Evie reached to collect them, his callus-roughened hand closed around her wrist. “I’ll have a talk with that cook now.”

It’d been a mistake to touch her. Jake knew it the moment his fingers slid across skin so soft he suddenly resented the fashionably proper, tight cuffs concealing her wrists. The startled widening of her remarkable eyes—gold like the sweetest honey—warned him he’d gone too far.

He could have released her quickly, but that would be akin to admitting his faux pas. Instead, he reached over her arm with his free hand and picked up the now-empty biscuit basket before giving up the warmth of her hand nestled beneath his. “I’m not satisfied.” Jake plunked the basket back down as though to punctuate his comment, biting back a grin at the astonishment flitting across her features.

“What!” With the lush grace of a serene Madonna and the
rosy flush of a woman tamping down indignation, his waitress held more appeal than the food she’d brought him.
And that’s saying something
.

“You heard me.” Jake manfully ignored the smells of herbed roast chicken and potatoes in favor of watching her. He could eat any day—he’d only be in Charleston tonight.

“Dissatisfied, my left foot!” She snatched up the basket, turned it upside down, and shook it as though making a point. “Nary a crumb left to pity a pigeon.”

“Yep. I’ll discuss it with the chef.” He put his hat back on, to really get her goat. “Or the owner.”

“You’re speaking with her.” Her fingers twitched as she eyed his hat, obviously itching to swipe it from his head.

“Chef or owner?” As if he didn’t already know.
Owner. No ring. If she’s the cook, she’d be married. No way a pretty thing like that with a way around a stove would be unwed
.

“Both.” Never had such a sweet smile carried so much grit.

“In that case”—Jake removed his hat in a heartbeat—“you can fix the problem right away.”

“The only problem I see is a man who’s bitten off more than he can chew.” She gestured to the bounty of food before him. “And is trying to talk his way out of paying for it.”

“Um … Miss Thompson?” the other girl piped up in a thin voice. “He paid while you were in the kitchen.”

“Oh.” The waitress/cook/owner visibly deflated, curiosity replacing her ire as she focused on him once more. “Then what was wrong with your biscuits, sir?”

“Lots.” Now that he knew the identity of the cook, his original plan to compliment her flew out the window.

“Such as?”

“For one thing”—he leaned back, drawing out the time he’d spend sparring with her—“the texture needs fixing.”

“Hogwash!” The denial burst out of her with enough force to send the wisps of hair framing her face dancing. “People love my
biscuits—they aren’t hard, burnt, lumpy, nor doughy. That batch came out the same as they always do—the way my customers like them—light and fluffy.”

“Exactly.” As intended, his agreement snapped the wind from her sails.
Bewilderment doesn’t suit her half so well as exasperation. She’s not the sort of woman who’s often confused
. Strange how much that pleased him. “Your light-and-fluffy biscuits all but melt in the mouth and leave a man wanting more.”

“It’s why we serve four per customer!”

“Which brings me to the second problem. In all fairness, it’s related to the first. More biscuits in the basket would take care of both.” He lifted the basket to emphasize its sorry state—which was, as she’d pointed out, absolutely empty.

“Hear, hear!” A man from a nearby table added his support.

“More biscuits!” another seconded.

Miss Thompson closed her eyes as though gathering strength, and Jake abruptly realized how much his teasing would cost her.
I should have known others were listening—Ma had reason to worry about what others thought
.

“I say you offer a ‘bounty of biscuits’ option—for an added fee, of course.” He raised his voice to make sure this proposition carried. “I’ll be the first to take you up on it, Miss Thompson.”

“It’s not every day I’m served patrons telling me how to run my café.”

Jake respected any man who stood his ground, and he’d just found that went double for a woman. They both knew she’d be foolish not to take him up on the offer, but she claimed her territory with aplomb.

“Me, too!”

“Same here!” Three other men took up the chorus of rattling baskets.

It wasn’t until she pursed her lips—he suspected to trap a smile—that he noticed their fullness.

Which I have no business noticing
. Everything about Miss
Thompson, from the polished toes of her boots, to those tightly buttoned sleeves he’d deplored earlier, to the proud fire in her eyes declared her a lady.

And Jake had left behind his life as a gentleman.

     THREE