Beard Science (Winston Brothers Book 3) (8 page)

Her hand trembled slightly where it held the spoon. She was still uneasy.

“Moral of the story, Jenn: you’re getting a free pass, so try to loosen up.”

“Okay.” She nodded, still didn’t glance my way, and dug the spoon into the cookie dough, moving it around to no purpose.

She’d mellowed, just not enough.

Curious, I asked, “Why do I scare you so much?”

“You don’t scare me,” she responded immediately, sounding defensive.

“Then why are your hands shaking?”

Jennifer let the spoon fall into the batter bowl and leaned against the counter, her eyes lifting for the briefest of seconds. “You don’t scare me, I’m just . . . I’m just nervous.”

“Why’re you nervous?”

“Because . . . because . . . because you’re dangerous. And I have a hard time believing your revenge plan involved anything as benign as a male stripper.”

“Make no mistake, George is not benign. He is an eighty-five-year-old committed professional and brings his gun. Well, he brings both his guns.”

She huffed and fought her smile admirably, her cheeks staining with a hint of pink. Jenn’s eyes finally lifted and held mine. “I see what you’re doing, you’re trying to get me to let my guard down.”

“Yes. Yes, I am. How am I supposed to help you if you don’t trust me?”

“How am I supposed to trust you when you have a long, established record of underhanded dealings and manipulations?”

Astute woman is . . . very astute.
But I was running thin on patience.

“Listen, woman. Do you want my help or not? Because, as far as your well-being is concerned, I’m as gentle as a toothless, blind bunny rabbit.”

“You are no such thing,” she contradicted, chuckling in spite of herself—like she was both amused and frustrated—and I noted her hands were finally steady. “You know things about everybody.
Everybody
. You’ve gathered information and held it over people’s heads, forcing them do what you’ve wanted for years. In fact, I bet you know something about my family that could tear our world apart.”

I was careful to keep my expression even, because Jennifer was completely correct.

Her daddy had been having an affair with Elena Wilkinson, the high school secretary, for years. I’d had suspicions for a time, so I’d audited the advanced placement calculus class as a cover, until I could confirm the sordid truth. Kip Sylvester was a heartless and vapid excuse for a human being who only cared about himself.

Whether his wife realized this or not, I couldn’t say. But I did know that if Diane Donner-Sylvester ever found out about her husband’s cheating, she’d divorce him in a heartbeat. And he’d lose everything, because that woman made more money in a month than he made in a year.

I had no current plans to leverage the information, but I probably would. Eventually.

Jennifer wasn’t finished. “You’ll keep it a secret, so long as it serves your purpose. And that makes you dangerous, like a viper ready to strike. I think my caution is justified.”

“Fine. I’m dangerous. I know things.” I shrugged. “But you need to trust that I’m not dangerous to you. I can’t help you if you’re going to be jumpy Jennifer all the time.”

She hesitated, picked up the spoon again, and then said, “You’re right. I can’t be jumpy Jennifer and I’ll have to find a way to relax around you.”

The way she said “relax” made it sound like a herculean task.

“Jenn—”

“I’ll work on it.” She frowned, tilted her chin up, looking harassed and strangely cute.

Yes, cute. Jennifer looked cute. The woman’s features were aesthetically pleasing, especially without those fuzzy caterpillars on her eyelids. I would rate her as very pretty at present. I could toss her to the likes of officers Dale and Evans. Clearly, both men had been enchanted with her at the jam session. But very pretty wasn’t going to help much or take her very far without a backbone.

“Fine. You work on it, and I’ll work on you.”

Her cheeks colored a deeper shade of pink and she nibbled on her bottom lip. Eventually, she cleared her throat and dipped her chin to her chest.

I leaned forward on the counter, resting my weight on my elbows and forearms so I could see her face. When she dipped her chin, the rim of the hat hid her features. I would need to take it off.

“Did you do your homework?” I asked, noticing that her hat had Japanese characters on it.

“I did.” Abandoning her spoon and wiping her hands on the apron, she crossed to a burlap bag resting on a shelf by the back door. Jenn withdrew a folded piece of paper and turned toward me. She held it outstretched between us.

I glanced from her to the list, then back, endeavoring to ignore the compulsion to examine her odd irises. I wanted her to relax, not feel self-conscious.

But they provoked me. Scientifically speaking, her eye color was an impossibility.

They’re contact lenses
.

Despite my intentions to the contrary, I held her eyes just a hair’s breadth too long, searching for the telltale ridges of her contacts. I saw none. Just violet eyes that shouldn’t have been possible.

She studied me, looking worried; the hand holding the paper dropped. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I frowned, disliking how this woman’s eye color upset the natural order of the universe. “You read the list.”

“Okay.” Her gaze moved between mine before dropping to the paper. She unfolded it, cleared her throat, then read, “Um, number one: gardening in overalls.”

“Gardening in overalls.”

“That’s right.” She nodded jerkily, lifting her chin and crossing her arms over her chest, like she expected me to argue.

“Why in overalls?”

“I like all the pockets.”

“I like pockets, too,” I thought and said in unison. “And gardening, flowers or vegetables?”

“Both. Vegetables for cooking, but flowers too. They bring in the pollinators and keep away the pests. Marigolds and lavender are good for that. I also press for essential oils.”

“You press for essential oils?”

“Yes. Lavender, geranium, and rose mostly.”

“Hmm. Interesting.” I glanced at her hands. I couldn’t examine them while she had them tucked under her arms, so I reached for one.

She flinched away. “What are you doing?”

“I’d like to see your hand.”

“Why?”

“I’m curious. Do you have farmer hands?”

Her expression relaxed, like she hoped she did have farmer hands, and she held one palm up between us. “What do you mean? Like Nancy Danvish?”

I peered at her fingers and what I found was surprising. She had callouses, and her fingers weren’t fine and ladylike, but strong and long. Yes, her nails were painted perfect pink, but she had the hands of someone who engaged in manual labor often.

“Do you play any instruments?” I asked, apropos of nothing. Or maybe I asked because her fingers were so long, especially for a short person, that it would be a shame if she didn’t play something.

“I did. I played the piano growing up. All girls had to have a talent, during the pageants, so I sang and played the piano.”

I nodded thoughtfully, recalling a conversation I’d overheard years ago between my mother and Naomi Winters. The two women lamented how Diane Donner-Sylvester forced her only daughter—whom they both considered exceptionally sweet and shy—to participate in the pageant circuit. They’d also lamented that Diane had started dyeing her daughter’s pretty dark hair yellow at such a young age.

I eyeballed her blonde hair, or what I could see of it, then refocused my attention back to the list; I grabbed her hand and turned the paper toward me so I could read it. “Let’s see . . .”

Gardening in overalls

Writing letters at a well-lit desk

Reading a book while it rains

Teaching the troops how to bake

“What’s this one? ‘Teaching the troops how to bake.’ What’s that?”

“The Cub Scouts and Brownies—”

“Brownies being the little-kid Girl Scouts?”

“That’s right. I teach the merit badge for baking.”

“Once a year?”

“Oh no, whenever they need it. Sometimes I have a big group of kids, sometimes it’s just one-on-one.”

“Does your boss allow this?” I wasn’t ready to invoke the name of her mother, but the question needed asking.

She fidgeted, twisting her fingers and placing the list on the counter. “Eventually, she let me do it. Once I pointed out how nice the pictures would look on social media and had the parents sign photo waivers.”

“You like teaching the kids? How to bake?”

She grinned and nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Baking is fundamentally chemistry, and I try to bring it back to that. I do a demonstration with emulsifiers first, because baking is all about turning something water soluble into something that’s oil soluble.”

“What kind of demonstration?”

“I use milk, food dye, and dish detergent.”

“And the dish detergent breaks down the fats.”

“Yes, and the dye saturates what’s left.”

I nodded somberly. In truth, I nodded somberly to disguise that fact that Jennifer Sylvester had once again surprised me.

“Any other chemistry experiments? With the kids?”

“I do lots, but it depends on their age.” Her purple eyes brightened, becoming almost lavender. “The one that’s the biggest hit is when I have them write their recipe down using a toothpick and petroleum jelly.”

I stared at her upturned face, trying to figure out why in tarnation she would have them do that. “Okay, I give up. Why would you have them write their recipe down using a toothpick and petroleum jelly?”

Her grin was huge and showcased a quantity of pearly white teeth. “Because then it’s a secret recipe, one that can only be viewed under a black light. It teaches them about—”

“Fluorescence,” I supplied, squinting at this closet chemist by the name of Jennifer Sylvester.

No wonder she was so good at baking. Baking is a precise science and was—as she said—fundamentally the application of chemistry. She should’ve been going to school for chemistry, not chained to an electric mixer in this state-of-the art industrial kitchen dungeon.

She was, as ever, surprising. I studied her: the warm smile, the bright violet eyes, the pointed chin, and the baseball hat. Making up my mind a split second before I did it, I snatched her hat and hid it behind my back.

Jennifer’s hands went to her head and her mouth fell open. Clearly, I’d caught her off guard.

“Why’d you take my hat?”

“You have very dark eyebrows.” I studied her eyebrows, but my attention instinctively moved lower. The woman’s eyes were unreasonably pretty, truly remarkable, and I needed to stop staring at them.

She crossed her arms again, lifting her chin and looking unhappy. “How long are you going to keep my hat?”

“When did your momma start dyeing your hair? How old were you?”

Her preposterously pretty eyes—pretty in both color and shape—lost focus for a split second. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you like your hair color?”

She didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.

“Would you ever consider going back to your natural color? Or something else of your choosing? Red, maybe?”

She gawked, a perplexed line between her eyebrows. “Do you think that would help?”

I understood her question perfectly and why she’d asked it. Would it help her get a husband if her hair were a different color? Yes. But not for the reason she thought.

Taking control of her appearance, well, that was the first step toward taking control of her life.

So I answered a version of her question. “Yes. I think it will make a big difference if you decide what hair color you like, and then make your hair that color.”

Her frown intensified and her eyes lowered to my chest where she stared without seeing. She appeared to be torn.

“I don’t think my momma would like that.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but then stopped myself, because the question I was about to ask was a critical one. I needed to use just the right tone. I needed to employ exactly the right expression.

I shuffled a step closer, placing a hand on the counter to my left, and softened my voice. “Are you always going to do everything your mother likes?”

Her gaze lifted to mine, and it was sharp, sharper than I’d thought possible coming from Jennifer Sylvester. Gorgeous eyes, hot with anger; stern, pointed chin; silent accusations cutting me with unsaid words. All this added up to a potent mixture. The combination made the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

It was a scathing look.

And I was impressed.

But before I could compliment the impressiveness of her scathing look, she turned and said softly, “I think the lesson is over. You should leave out the back,” and exited the kitchen through the entrance to the main bakery.