A Loving Man. Cait London
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butter would go into his omelettes, a dash of chopped chives, a sprinkle of—
Stefan inhaled the fresh morning air, studied the small neat town with its shops opening for customers. His mother and daughter weren’t the only ones looking forward to life in Waterville; he planned to enjoy puttering on the farm. He smiled, enjoying the sunshine. His women were happy, nestling into the farmhouse, decorating it, and in his pocket were the paint samples his mother had chosen on her two-mile bicycle ride to town. Busy with the plumbing, Stefan had enjoyed exploring the tools the Smiths had left behind. A man who had never had a vacation, he intended to relax in this interlude while Estelle came to her senses. Life was good…without Louie.
He entered the busy paint store, prepared to wait his turn as other customers milled around the cash register. A tall woman, wearing a baseball cap with her auburn ponytail thrust through the hole at the back, glanced at him. She hefted a gallon of paint onto the counter, slapped two wooden paint stirrers on it, rang up the bill and chatted with the customer. When the burly farmer, dressed in bib overalls, rambled out of the store, the woman scowled at Stefan. Clearly in charge of the store, the woman behind the counter wore a T-shirt that said Waterville Tigers. She was possibly in her early thirties, with soaring eyebrows, clear blue eyes, a bit of a nose and a generous mouth. Freckles covered every centimeter of her fair skin. She tapped costs into the cash register for more paint and nodded at Stefan, indicating the gallons of paint on the counter. He shook his head, not understanding her needs. With a doomed look up at the ceiling, the woman grabbed one gallon and tucked it under her arm. She eased the other into her free arm and tromped out of the store, following the elderly woman.
Stefan noted and appreciated the length of the younger woman’s legs, the cutoff shorts cupping a trim, swaying bottom. The wooden paint stirrer sticks in her back pocket enhanced the movement. He was surprised that he had tilted his head to better appreciate that little feminine jiggle of flesh at her backside. She walked back into the store, strode to him and shook her head as Stefan noted the slant of her eyes, those strong cheekbones gleaming in the overhead light. The drop of cobalt-blue paint on her cheeks matched the color of her eyes as they burned up at him. The shadows beneath her eyes said she had missed sleep and the area around her mouth was pale, demonstrating her strain.
She reached to tug away the two bits of toilet paper on his jaw. He had been unwise to shave after the furious argument with his daughter; the small cuts marked his broken promise to remain calm. A man who spared little time on women of moods, except his daughter and his mother, Stefan firmed his lips. He was determined not to let this woman ruin his day. Then she said, “I know you can’t talk—you’re the cousin that Ned Whitehouse told me needed work. I told him to have you turn up and work, helping me. Well, that’s what you should be doing—helping. You could have carried out that paint for Mrs. Mariah. Come on. Follow me.”
She moved through the displays of paint and carpeting toward the back room, behind the checkout counter. Unused to taking orders, Stefan stood still and crossed his arms.
The woman continued talking—“I want you to clean up the storeroom and then fix that back door—it’s almost coming off the hinges. One good yank and hell-o—free paint for everyone. Not that anyone in Waterville steals, but a good business should have a good back door, don’t you agree?”
Stefan thought of the alarm systems and locks he’d required on all Donatien restaurant back doors, ones made of sturdy metal, and nodded.
When she noted that he had not followed her, she turned and those arching fine eyebrows drew into a stern frown. She walked back to him, her hands on her hips. Stefan tried not to notice the T-shirt that had tightened across her breasts. They were just the size of medium cooking apples, not too big or too small, but just perfect.
Stefan frowned, unprepared for the turn of his thoughts. He did not usually compare women to his favorite pastimes—choosing fine foods, preparing and enjoying them.
In his mind, he compared her height to his, how she would fit against him. The top of her head would just come to his chin. Those breasts would press against his chest and those long legs would—
She crossed her arms and tapped her running shoe on the floor. “I know you can hear. Ned told me so. He also said that sometimes you can be stubborn as his mules. Well, today isn’t one of them, got that? I haven’t got time for this, so get your butt in gear and start helping me. Saturdays are usually busy, but nothing like spring and fall. I’ve been running shorthanded during the busiest season of the year and everyone wants to paint every room in the kingdom. Not that I’m objecting to the sales, which aren’t good except for spring and fall, but I could use some help,” she stated meaningfully.
Then shaking her head, she said very carefully as if to make him understand better, “Okay. I’ll up the hourly wage and pay overtime. If you don’t help me, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
She placed her hands on her ball cap as if holding her head together. Her hands were feminine, yet strong, with short nails spotted with paint. Stefan tried not to smile; if he were in a business argument with power titans, he would have known that he had the upper hand at her concession. On the other hand, he was enjoying the masquerade—no one had ever mistaken him for a laborer. The scenario into which he had dropped amused him. Clearly this woman was under pressure and it appealed to him to rescue her. He decided not to speak, because his slight accent would surely mark him as the newcomer in Waterville. He wondered what it would be like, not to be Stefan Donatien, powerful restaurateur, rather to be an ordinary workman for a day. He had found his “cave” away from the brooding women he loved.
She looked up at him. “My name is Rose and yours is Bruce, and we’ll get along fine, if you just do what I tell you to do. It’s Saturday and the whole town is set to buy paint, wallpaper and carpet and I need you. Not that I don’t appreciate the business. I’ll even buy lunch—hot dogs and potato salad with lemonade from Danny’s Café, and all the coffee you can drink…Just don’t use my cup. Lyle and Joe are out laying carpet, but you can meet them later. Everyone here works part-time, but me. Did you come to work or not?”
Stefan nodded slowly, though her choice of food turned his stomach, and in seconds they were in the back room where she was pointing and ordering like a general. “Sturdy up those shelves, separate the paints—oil and latex based…interior and exterior—fix the back door, and if I call you, come up front. Ned said you had your own pickup and could deliver and you may have to. I’ll draw a map for you, but just don’t go anywhere. Don’t leave me. I’ve got enough problems with Dad.”
He wondered about “Dad” as she turned and hurried into a small cluttered office. The bell over the store’s front door jingled and she hurried to help the customer who had just entered.
Rose plopped into her desk chair, slipped her foot out of her worn running shoe and rubbed it. She was too tired from processing the store invoices until midnight, then going home to heaps of laundry. She’d missed her early-morning run, tossing her pillow over her alarm. But at seven o’clock she was making her father the bacon and egg breakfast he liked and by eight, she had opened the store. Rose frowned slightly; Maury rarely came to work, even on the busiest days. Her father hadn’t stopped mourning his runaway wife and now a whiskey bottle came too readily to his hand. He’d taught Rose the business and lately he almost never asked about it. He was slipping away from her and life, spending long hours staring out from the house porch at the rose garden his wife had loved.
Maxine Granger had not loved her family enough to stay and raise her daughter, or to deny the passing trucker. He offered her excitement and in time, the world, and Maxine hadn’t hesitated.
When she was ten, Rose had come home from school to find her father crying, Maxine’s goodbye note in his hand. For a few years, there were hurried postcards from all over the world and then nothing. It had taken Rose years to understand that she wasn’t the reason why her mother left in that big diesel truck and why her father’s heart remained broken. As a child, she’d sat for hours at her mother’s vanity table, littered with polishes, creams and an expensive brush for her blond hair. Rose had tried to forget the pain, but she couldn’t. Instead she pasted that heartbreak into a locked chest marked