“You’d be surprised. On an island, everybody knows everything.”
“And what they don’t know, they make up,” Jane said, her tone bitter.
He took another look at her. Her smoke gray eyes were shadowed, her soft face strained.
Well, hell. Maybe there was something to the talk after all.
“Heard your ex-husband’s back,” he said.
She blinked and then sighed. “How did you know? Who told you?”
He wasn’t ratting out Hank. “Word gets around. He giving you any trouble?”
Her lashes swept down, veiling her eyes. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
Lauren threw her a quick, uncertain glance.
Interesting.
Jack gave them both a minute in case they had anything to add, but Jane remained stubbornly silent. And Lauren, who until this moment had shown no hesitation in butting into things, kept her mouth shut.
Jack wasn’t here to stir up trouble. “If anything changes, if he bothers you, you let me know,” he said.
A blush suffused Jane’s face like heat inside a cup. “Why? So you and my dad can discuss my lousy judgment in men? I don’t need that kind of help.”
“This isn’t about your father, Jane.”
Jane crossed her arms at her waist over her apron. “Can you honestly tell me Hank didn’t ask you to check up on me?”
No, he couldn’t tell her that. And he couldn’t explain, even to himself, why, if Hank was worried about his daughter, he hadn’t come by to see her himself.
“He cares about you,” Jack said instead.
“I know.” Her head dipped, in acknowledgment or defeat. “You tell him I’m fine. I’m making ham and collards for dinner. Aidan has T-ball practice tonight, but you tell him I’ll leave him a plate. He’ll know what that means.”
Girl code. Dinner in the oven meant Jane cared about Hank, too. Jack frowned. And that they wouldn’t be discussing anything when her father got home that night.
She escaped into the kitchen, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the old wooden floor.
Lauren handed him something wrapped in a napkin.
Jack narrowed his eyes in surprise. “What’s this?”
“A cookie.”
He could see it was a cookie. “I meant, why are you giving it to me?”
“I told you. You looked like you needed one. And...” Her eyes met his. “That was nice, what you said to Jane. Nice of you to look out for her.”
He wasn’t nice.
He was closed and uncommunicative and angry most of the time. If she imagined he was nice, she was only going to be disappointed.
“I’m just doing my job,” he said, more harshly than he intended.
But she didn’t back down. Damned if he didn’t like that about her. “Take it anyway. You should never leave a bakery empty-handed.”
He shook his head. “Thanks. But I already got what I came for.”
