A Forever Christmas(33)
“The house has got three bedrooms, Alma,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but only one bed,” she countered.
“Which I let her have,” Gabe immediately retorted pointedly.
“Ah, always the gentleman,” Alma rhapsodized. “Relax, big brother, I’m just teasing you. Personally, I’m glad you’ve taken such an interest in her.”
“I’ve taken an interest in her case,” he emphasized. “An interest in helping her find her identity. I’m not interested in her personally,” Gabe insisted.
“So, you can separate the two just like that, can you?” Joe asked. He sounded skeptical.
Gabe turned around to look at the man. Wrapped up in bringing his point home with Alma, he’d forgotten that Joe was even there. “I liked you better when you weren’t making a sound.”
A smattering of a smile creased Joe’s lips for a moment. “Just asking the obvious.”
Most of the time, Rick left his office door open. In part as an invitation to his deputies, letting them know that they were free to enter at any time if they needed to ask him or share something with him. As a consequence, he could hear everything that was going on—whether he wanted to or not.
In his opinion, this back-and-forth thing about a young woman with no memory who fate had dropped on their doorstep had to stop. It wasn’t leading anywhere but to a huge headache for him.
Rick stuck his head out of his office. “Isn’t it about time one of you went on patrol so the good citizens of Forever can go on believing that they have an actual sheriff’s department looking out for their well-being?”
Gabe didn’t have to be told twice. He was immediately on his feet. He could use a break from Alma’s inquisition and Joe’s knowing look.
“I’ll go,” he volunteered, grabbing the hat he hardly ever wore. For form’s sake, he always kept the hat close by just in case he ever needed to put it on for some reason. Most of the time, the tan Stetson just rode on the seat next to him.
“Say hi to Angel for us,” Alma called after her brother as he walked out the door.
Gabe made no answer, he just kept walking. He figured it was better that way all around.
Chapter Nine
Eduardo Rubio was polite, but cold and distant when Miss Joan brought the young woman with the light blond hair through the kitchen’s swinging doors and introduced them to each other.
To prove his point that not just anyone had what it took to keep up with the fast-paced orders placed by the lunch crowd—or the dinner crowd for that matter—Eduardo deliberately hung back and gave free rein to the young woman whom his boss had put into his kitchen. He opened the industrial-size refrigerator and allowed her to look around, then pointed out the pantry in what was close to utter silence.
“You will find everything you need there,” he concluded, never really elaborating on which “there” he was referring to.
That said, Eduardo waited for the chaos to begin, convinced that this small woman with the improbable name of “Angel” would go running from the diner as fast as she could within the half hour.
He was wrong.
In less than a half hour, the previous fixture in Miss Joan’s diner discovered that not only could this pretty little interloper keep up, she did it with a style and grace he couldn’t help but admire, turning out meals with a little something “extra.” They even looked inviting and festive on the plate after she finished arranging them.
For his part, Eduardo had never concerned himself about appearances when it came to the meals he prepared in Miss Joan’s diner or in his own home for that matter. The customers who came in at these peak hours were focused on just grabbing something edible and getting back to work. As long as they enjoyed the taste, nobody really seemed to care all that much about what it looked like on a dish.
But this young woman, he had to grudgingly admit to himself, filled the orders and each serving was a poem onto itself, a feast for the stomach and the eyes.
Even Eduardo couldn’t help but notice.
Silently surrendering, he began to work alongside of her.
“Where did you work before you came here?” Gabe asked. Wherever it had been, they had to have had an excellent training program, he couldn’t help thinking.
The feeling of well-being that had been growing within Angel for the past forty-three minutes—the feeling that she’d somehow “returned” to an area that was familiar to her, to someplace that she actually “belonged”—began to break up like so many soap bubbles above a sink full of soaking dishes.