Return to Eagle Cove

Chapter 1-4

Greg retreated. Hell, he didn’t retreat, he ran away. The old Monty Python gag about “That’s one nasty rabbit” came too easily to mind. Jessica Baxter was beautiful and looked all sweet and…fluffy.

Then she shoved a plate of cold food down his pants, ramming it right down inside his underwear in front of everyone. Cal Sr.’s howl of laughter had followed him right back through the service door into the side hall.

The one bathroom was occupied, so he detoured through the service door into the kitchen, his only other option.

Judge Baxter kept tending his omelets, “temperamental things omelets, can’t look away from them for a second.” But Greg also knew from experience that the Judge missed nothing of what happened in his restaurant.

With nowhere else to go, Greg moved over by the clean-up sink and shed the apron and his pants. At least his underwear had caught most of it. He shed those, wiped himself down with a couple of wet paper towels and pulled his pants back on commando. Greg wasn’t really a commando sort of guy.

His shirt had taken the brunt of the attack. He stripped it off over his head and chucked it into the laundry bag along with his underwear and yesterday’s service apron. He crossed to where he kept a spare shirt on one of the dry good storage shelves, but had never thought to keep underwear there as well. Greg yanked on the fresh shirt and buttoned it up.

“Not a word,” he muttered at the Judge as he wound a fresh apron about his waist.

“The court will maintain a respectful silence at this time,” the old man said with a tone as dry as week-old toast.

Restored to some semblance of order, Greg returned to the dining area. Cal Sr. gave him a smile he wished he hadn’t seen. “Don’t know what you did to piss her off, boy, but you did it good.”

Greg considered telling Cal a thing or two, except he and the Judge had been friends since before Greg was born, and Greg knew that was dangerous ground.

Plastering on his best maître d’s smile, he grabbed two menus and returned to the Baxters’ table. Yes. That was a safer way to think of it. Not Jessica’s; the Baxters’.

“Good morning. Welcome back to town, Jessica.”

If she had any remorse for her abrupt action, she wasn’t showing it in the least. “Thanks, Greg,” she took the one-sheet menu and turned to study it without saying anything else. He’d swear there was a laugh lurking somewhere below the surface, but with her face turned down, he couldn’t see it.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” He already knew Mrs. Baxter’s preference for black teas before noon and herbals after lunch and had brought that to the table with the menus.

“Hot chocolate. No whip. With marshmallows if you have them.”

“What? Are you a child?” And Greg could have shot himself. The Judge’s crazy rules about what people should and shouldn’t want had ruined his brain.

Jessica looked up at him with steady eyes the light blue of an ocean wave with the sunlight shining through…just before it crested and broke, smashing the unsuspecting rocks.

“No,” her look was very cool, but her tone had a laugh hidden in it somewhere. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“A child? Still twelve maybe?” The last added with a wry smile.

Greg opened his mouth, saw Mrs. Baxter’s widening eyes—perhaps at the danger zone he’d just flown into. A quick glance to the side revealed that the Judge was watching him intently.

“Um, that would be no. I’m not still twelve. Nor thirteen.”

“Fourteen then?” Jessica’s smile lit her face, as if bantering with him was the best part of her morning. This wasn’t Jessica Baxter of eighteen. He was now facing a formidable woman who absolutely knew that she’d totally unnerved him.

“Not fourteen either,” was the best rejoinder he could come up with. Before he could lose even more ground he said, “I’ll get your cocoa,” and turned for the wait station. Greg did his best to ignore his father’s courtroom stare—the one he used when the defense counsel was making a particularly specious argument fabricated from too many Internet searches.

“Chicken!” Jessica whispered just loud enough for him to hear. “Buck-buck-bu-caw!”

Then she and her mother broke into a flurry of giggles that he did his best to ignore.

Cal Mason, who’d been leaning over to hear the exchange, added another of his loud guffaws.