A Daughter's Homecoming. Ginny Aiken
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and all that dark hair, ever since she was a little thing.”
Even though he fought it with all his might, the blush reached up to the roots of Zach’s hair. “Ah...well, I...um...paid attention to the dog. I did have a job to do.”
Oscar laughed. “Fess up, now, boss. I know Gabi and I know you. She’s pretty, you noticed, and it’s perfectly fine if you are drawn to a girl like her. No shame in that, son. None at all.”
To avoid Oscar’s too-keen gaze, Zach turned off the spigot and plopped his new charge into the warm water. “Now that you mention it, okay—” The pup’s yelps gave him cover, so he cut off his response. He turned to the dog but continued to glance at Oscar as he worked.
“A man could do worse, Zach,” the older man said. “Much worse. She’s a terrific young woman—smart, hardworking, with a heart as big as our Puget Sound.” He winked. “And pretty.”
Zach sent his friend a crooked grin. “I think you’ve said it about a dozen times, Oscar. I get your drift. But I’m the last man who’s looking for a ‘pretty’ girl. Not right now, that’s for sure. I’ve got a lot on my plate—too much.” He cleared his throat. “Remember, I’m new around here. Lyndon Point’s counting on me to put the shelter on solid footing, and that’s going to take up just about all of my time. Maybe a couple of years from now I’ll look around for one of these ‘pretty’ girls of yours. Right here in town, too, okay?”
“Just watch out, son.” The older man ran a hand through his thinning white hair. “The good ones, they don’t come around all that often, you know. If a man’s not paying attention, some other smarter fellow will snap up the one who’s walking by. Right out from under your nose.”
A squirt of canine shampoo frothed into gunky brown suds on the dog’s dirty coat. It was going to take multiple tries to get him clean. “That’s why I’m not looking these days. Right now, my situation’s not one that lends itself to dating. I can’t afford the time, so I don’t look. That way, the one that gets snapped up won’t cause me any heartburn. I choose to focus on the dogs. And the cats.”
Oscar reached for the industrial steel bucket on wheels where he’d mixed hot water and the shelter’s pungent antibacterial cleaner, and headed toward the rear section of kennels. “Just make sure you don’t pass up the right one just because you’re still letting what’s over and done with hold you back. Look around you, son. Smell the salt air. Trust God.” He drew a deep breath. “Otherwise, you could wind up filling your days with a bucket and a mop just to get out of an empty, lonely house. Like me.”
Zach sucked in a rough breath. He couldn’t deny the wisdom in his friend’s words, but although Oscar waited for a reply, he didn’t answer. He knew the older man was right to a point, but he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Not yet. His wounds were too raw.
And they hadn’t even been inflicted by a woman.
From his perspective, a romance-gone-wrong had to be easier to overcome. His failure had been greater, went more to the core than a rough breakup ever could. He’d failed in his career, his dream. Ever since the first time he’d helped his mother knead a lump of bread at the family kitchen table, he’d dreamed of owning a restaurant, of becoming a great chef. And he’d achieved it.
For too brief a time.
No eatery, no matter how elegant or welcoming or appealing, and no chef, no matter how creative, competent or caring, could succeed if diners fell ill. As they had at his restaurant.
Salmonella had stolen in on the produce he’d bought from an upscale organic operation, borne by unsterile fertilizer. Meals he’d prepared with those beautiful but invisibly tainted vegetables had sent people to the hospital. He’d endangered their health, their lives. Any of them could have died. It was a burden Zach would bear for the rest of his days.
No. He wasn’t ready to indulge in the frivolous pleasure of dating a pretty girl.
And, regardless of how Oscar saw her, Gabi Carlini was no longer a girl. She was a woman, a beautiful woman who loved dogs, in spite of her lease requirements, and pink, a color he’d always associated with sassy, lighthearted fun.
Did the association match Gabi Carlini, as well?
Chapter Three
As Gabi walked back to her parents’ restaurant, she couldn’t help but wonder what Zach thought of her. His steel-gray gaze had strayed toward her numerous times as she’d signed all those forms that turned the stray over to the shelter’s care. While she had no idea what he thought of her, she suspected whatever opinion he held didn’t much flatter her. His expressive eyes had said more than the words he’d spoken.
Of course, he didn’t know her crazy family, either, the whole extended lot of them. Even if he did know her parents from eating at Tony’s, which really didn’t count.
Why it mattered to her so much coming from him, she didn’t know. She just knew it did. Besides, she couldn’t stand the thought of any more taunts about Mafia dons or corny Dean Martin songs about pizzas and moons and people’s eyes. It had happened too often and with too many people. In fact, she’d had more than a bellyful of them to color her life in Lyndon Point a negative shade of embarrassment. Really, it shouldn’t matter, since she wasn’t likely to see him again other than to check on the dog, but the scenario had played itself out too often in her childhood and teen years.
She didn’t want it to happen with Zach Davenport.
Oh, good grief. What was she thinking? She had to get back to Cleveland before she let all the ancient history affect her life again. She had to get away from Lyndon Point before her hard-gained individual identity and self-esteem retreated to high school levels. To do that, she had to get Tony’s back on sure footing.
At the restaurant, Gabi put the dog and the shelter’s attractive new director out of her mind and marshaled her troops. With the help of her parents’ teen employees, she scrubbed, dumped, disinfected and still managed to keep the dining room open for hungry customers.
Hours flew by. Her back began to ache and Cleveland loomed even more appealing than before. She missed her routine back in Ohio, her uncomplicated life, her cute home, and especially her best friend and perennial roommate since college, Allison Stoddard.
A half hour later, on her way to the back door at Tony’s yet one more time, the need to touch base with that faraway life got to her, and Gabi paused to place a call. Allie answered with a squeal, and the two women chattered as they always did, about everything and nothing, with the exuberance of close friends. She didn’t, however, stop what she’d been on the way to do, but instead sandwiched her cell phone between her right ear and shoulder as she continued lugging the trash toward the door. This latest bag of iffy ingredients headed to the Dumpster felt even heavier than the others.
“You’d never believe it,” she told Allie. “I’m up to my eyeballs in spoiled cheese and pizza sauce, and such close contact with a Dumpster makes it awful to breathe deep.”
As she stepped out into the dingy alley, she wrinkled her nose in appreciation for Lyndon Point’s fresh sea air as she prepared her approach to the trash container. “It reeks up to higher than the peak of Mount Rainier. You can’t imagine how much stuff can hide in the back of a commercial cooler.”
“Did anyone come down with food poisoning?” Allie asked. “It sounds like you have the—ahem!—perfect recipe there.”
“Whoa, don’t even go there, woman!” Gabi gave her load another tug. “We dodged a bullet on that account.” She explained what had happened. “Fortunately,” she added, “the kids my parents employ served the stuff in the front of the fridge, so no one got sick. When I opened the cooler and started to move things around, though, I caught a funky whiff, and that sent me digging. That’s when I found the expired ingredients. But food poisoning? That spells death for a restaurant.”
Gabi dropped the weighty sack to grab her phone. “Hang on