Moonlight Masquerade (22 page)

By the time
Sophie had parked her car downtown and walked around half of one of the squares of Edilean, she was sure she was making a mistake. What did she know about running a sandwich shop? There was no way she could do it by herself, so what was she to do for help? Ask one of the citizens of Edilean? The people who'd watched her dancing with Reede while knowing she had no idea who he was? Had they later laughed about the coming scene when she found out? Did they make wagers about how angry she was going to be at him? How amused they must have been!

As she walked toward the shop, she had a wicked thought of hiring the women who worked for Reede. “You owe me!” she'd say to them. She thought of how Heather had greeted her that first day. The young woman had been standing on Kim's porch, just waiting for Sophie to come out. And when she did, Heather practically shoved Sophie into the car. It looked like Heather was afraid Sophie would see
someone in town who'd recognize her. Would someone have said “You're the girl who dumped beer over Dr. Reede's head. Good for you! It's what I've wanted to do for years.”

As soon as she got to the office the women had pushed her up the stairs. And oh! how they'd lied to her. Every other word was “dear” or “our beloved.” And all the while they were just trying to . . . to what? Lock her into his apartment to wait for him?

Sophie was glad for the anger that surged through her because she'd reached the shop. It was narrow, with a door on the left, big windows on the right.
DAISY'S SANDWICHES AND SMOOTHIES
was in pink lettering. What should Sophie rename it? Lied To? The Town Joke?

“The name's a bit over the top, isn't it?” said a male voice behind her.

She turned to look up at a big, burly man wearing jeans and a plaid flannel over an old T-shirt. She recognized him from the bar and thought maybe it was his beer she'd poured over Reede.

Roan grimaced. “I haven't been looked at with that much contempt since my wife left me. Are you a relative of hers that I don't know about?”

She didn't think what he'd said was funny. “This is a mistake,” she said and turned away.

Roan put his big body in front of her to block her path. “I apologize. For all of it. But we all enjoyed it so much that we couldn't stop.”

“Enjoyed it?” she said, glaring at him. “Enjoyed humiliating a stranger?”

“Hell no!” Roan said. “It was all about Reede. We all loved seeing you pour that beer over him. Everybody
in town's wanted to do that, or worse, but then, we all worried what he'd do to us at our next flu shot. We're all cowards.”

“He nearly ran over me,” Sophie said, but his sympathy had softened her resolve. Maybe she could just look at the shop.

“That's what I heard.” Roan put his hand behind her back, not touching her, but guiding her back down the sidewalk. “Didn't he crush something of yours?”

“My cell phone.”

“That's expensive!” Roan unlocked the door to the sandwich shop and waited for Sophie to step inside.

“It was a throwaway.” She was looking around the store. It was rather simple, with a tall glass cabinet to the left, a stainless counter behind it, tables and chairs to the right and in the back. It was all small and neat and looked to be in good condition.

“Reede should buy this place for you,” Roan said.

“I don't want anything from him,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

“Yeah?” Roan asked, his eyes alight. He was a good-looking man, with whiskers and thick hair that had a reddish tint. He was looking at her in a way that she'd seen all her adult life—but she wasn't interested. He understood her look. “Okay,” Roan said, “that can wait. What do you think of the place?”

Sophie looked at the chalkboard over the counter. It listed six flavors of smoothies and tuna salad sandwiches. “I don't know anything about the restaurant business, and the only cooking I've done is for my family.”

“So make some family meals,” Roan said as he leaned back against the sides of the glass counter.
“Look, Sophie—if I may call you that—from what I gather, you're kind of at loose ends right now. No job, your friends are in faraway places, and didn't I hear that your sister is in some college somewhere?”

Sophie crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn't about to tell this man more about herself than the gossips already knew.

“All right, so maybe you are the center of interest in this town right now, and I don't blame you at all for being a little miffed.”

“Is that what you call it?” she asked. “How about a flaming inferno of rage?”

Roan couldn't conceal a little smile. Damn! but she was pretty. And he really liked her temper. If there was anything he couldn't stand it was a bland female. “And you're right to feel that way. I wouldn't blame you if you left town and never looked back.”

“That's my thought too,” Sophie said and turned toward the door, but then the old cell phone Kim had lent her vibrated. There was something about a buzzing phone that compelled one to look. So few people had her number that she wanted to know who was contacting her.

She took the phone out of her bag. It was a text message from Reede.

SORRY I RAN OUT. SIX-CAR PILEUP. BE HOME WHEN I CAN. DID YOU GET A HOUSE FOR US? I MISS YOU. REEDE

She knew he was teasing about living together, but for a moment Sophie closed her eyes. If she didn't
know what she did, that text would have made her very happy. Get “us” a house? He missed her? Even the thought that he was detained because he was saving lives appealed to her.

But not now. She turned the phone off.

“Reede?” Roan asked.

Sophie gave a curt nod.

“Poor guy doesn't know he's dead meat.” Roan said it with so much glee that Sophie came close to smiling.

Again she looked around the small restaurant. Sun was coming in through the windows and showing the dust motes in the air. The glass on the display cabinet was dirty and the wooden floor needed a good scrubbing. Reede's text made her realize that she'd be seeing him every day. “I think this was a mistake,” she said and walked to the door.

“Christmas!” Roan said loudly.

She looked back at him. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Everybody around here, all the way to DC, thinks Edilean is the cutest little town they've ever seen. All of us who live here hate being called ‘quaint,' but we've learned to make money from it. Seventy-five percent of our business is from Thanksgiving to Christmas. And all those shoppers get hungry. Make some soup, some fancy sandwiches, charge big city prices, and by the middle of January you'll have enough money to bankroll your trip out of here.”

Sophie still had her hand on the doorknob. “I couldn't do this alone.”

“So we can get you some help.”

“Who is ‘we'?”

“The people of Edilean. Al told me he plans to make them feel so guilty that they'll buy three meals a day from you.”

Sophie's hand tightened on the knob.

“Okay, two meals, and you choose which ones you want to cook. If it were me, I'd make the menu simple and change it every day. That way you won't get bored. Tell people they have to take what they get. For Thanksgiving you could do—”

“Food in cartons,” she said softly. “They could order it all beforehand.” She'd seen a butcher shop that did that, and she'd envied people who could afford it. Having to cook a turkey and a dozen side dishes wasn't easy, so it was nice to be able to supplement.

“Did you see the stove?” Roan asked as he went behind the counter. “It's a Wolf. Red knobs. Nice, huh?”

Sophie took her hand off the door and stepped toward the counter to peer through the glass. “I've never used a commercial stove before.”

“It has eight burners. The last tenant wanted it and I bought it for her. Cost me a fortune.”

“And how did she pay you?” Sophie asked, one eyebrow raised.

Roan gave a laugh. “You got me on that one. Yes, she asked me for an eight-burner Wolf while we were in bed together. I thought she was referring to me, but it turned out she meant a cooking stove.”

The tiniest smile crossed Sophie's lips.

“That's better. Don't you think you could stand to do this for two and a half months? Just until after the New Year?”

Sophie went to the end of the counter and looked behind it. There was the huge stove with its cast iron burners, double ovens beneath, stainless steel shelves above. More stainless covered the countertops. The wall had open shelving.

Could she do it? she wondered and tried to envision the little shop full of people. Mothers with overexcited children, carrying half a dozen shopping bags. Locals rushing in at the last minute. Fellow shopkeepers wanting sandwiches to go.

Turning, she looked back at Roan.

“Want to see the upstairs?”

Silently, Sophie nodded, then followed Roan to the back of the shop. As she walked, Sophie couldn't help looking around the place. There were some booths in the back and there were lighter places on the walls where pictures had hung. If there were a lot of tourists coming through Edilean, especially ones “all the way from DC,” as Roan had said, maybe Sophie could display some of her work. She used to be rather good at reliefs, so why not hang some on the walls?

If she served breakfast and lunch, no dinner, she'd have the evenings to herself. With no man in her life—and she vowed that there wouldn't be—she'd have time to create things. What a wonderful word, she thought as she went up the stairs, and couldn't help saying it aloud. “Create.”

“Did you say something?” Roan asked.

“No, nothing.” She opened the door at the top of the stairs and saw the apartment. It was small, as long and as skinny as the store below, but there were windows all along the front, and it had tall ceilings. Facing
the street was a living room, the middle held a kitchen, and in the back was a bedroom and bath. There were a lot of boxes that seemed to be full of the last tenant's personal goods and she'd have to remove them, but the apartment could be liveable.

She looked at Roan. “I don't own any furniture, I'd need help in the store, and I don't have any money to pay for anything. I can't even afford to buy a bag of onions.”

“What if I—?”

“No.” For the first time since seeing Reede's face, she was sure about something.

“But I—”

“No,” she said again and stared up at him.

Roan gave a sigh. “Reede's ruined everything for all of us, hasn't he?”

“If by that you mean men in general, yes. I . . . ” She broke off, not sure of what she wanted or needed. It was all too soon, and there were too many confusing thoughts in her head.

All she knew for sure was that it had all been too fast. She'd gone from Carter to Reede in a matter of days. Back in her small Texas hometown she'd seen Carter as her savior. For years, people there had made snide remarks about how Sophie had gone away to a fancy college in the east to learn how to paint pictures. “I learned that in the first grade,” some redneck she'd grown up with said, and everyone had laughed. But Sophie had returned to town because her little sister needed help and she'd stayed there. To her, what she'd done was noble. She'd felt that she was protecting her sister, but the townspeople liked to point out
that her uppity college degree didn't help her in her waitressing, or in answering the phone at the insurance agency.

And then along came Carter. That summer had been wonderful. It was great to be picked up in Carter's sexy little Jag. While it was true that they didn't go out to public places often, everyone knew she and Carter Treeborne were a couple.

After about their third date, Sophie began to see changes in the people around her. The teasings were less; the men stopped flirting with her. There were no more comments about how well her uniform fit. Instead, people made a point of saying “good morning” to her.

Was this what she really liked about Carter? Not him as a man but that he was part of the Treeborne family? When Carter had told her it was over, was she angry at losing him or of no longer getting the respect the Treeborne name gave her?

As for that matter, had she latched on to Reede for him or because she'd envisioned throwing a doctor in Carter's face? “See?” she'd say to him. “I
am
equal to you. I
am
marriage material.”

“You okay?” Roan asked when they were again downstairs.

“Just thinking is all. Do you really believe I can make some money with this place? The rent alone—”

“Is free for four months, and I'll take care of the employee salaries for three months.”

“You can't—”

Roan's face went from calm to almost angry in seconds. “You know something? You need to get the
chip off your shoulder. Everybody needs help at some point in his or her life, and I'm offering it. If it will make that pride of yours feel better, you can pay me back next year, but for right now you need to learn the word ‘yes.' ”

Sophie's first thought was to storm out and drive away, leave Edilean forever, but then she realized that he was right. “I know,” she said. “I'm—” She took a breath and put her shoulders back. It wasn't easy to ask for anything. “I'm broke and I don't have a job and I do need help. Do you have any idea where I should begin?”

Roan gave a little smile out of the corner of his mouth. “So who lied to you the most? Lied flat out to your face?”

“Other than you?”

Roan's smile broadened. “Free rent and paying salaries are my penance. So who else in this town owes you?”

Sophie's lips tightened. “Those three women who work for Reede. When I think of how I spent an entire day scrubbing his apartment and all along they were concealing his identity . . . I'd like to give them a piece of my mind.”