“No,” Morgan said. “There’s no need for that. Besides, we still have rhubarb crumble.”
“Oh.” Jack looked a little morose, hands in his pockets. “Okay.”
He turned to leave. The clonking of his boots upstairs resumed, and before too long, he reappeared with a tray of fried bologna sandwiches and chicken soup. A meal from his East Coast childhood, perhaps, but it smelled good. Greasy and filling. Comfort food.
“Thank you,” Morgan said. “I appreciate it. This shouldn’t take me longer than a couple more hours,” he said, gesturing to the desk. “Later we can eat dinner and watchResident Alienagain. Sound good?”
“Sure,” Jack said, though it didn’t sound like he meant it. Or maybe his mind was occupied with thoughts that didn’t involve Morgan. Which was possible, and perfectly his right. Jack might be working for Morgan, but Morgan didn’t own all of his time.
Morgan worked while he ate, getting grease and mustard on one of the receipts, one of the only clearly written and fully filled-out receipts. Who in the hell still used carbon copy order forms, anyway? His aunt and uncle, that was who.
Well, there wasn’t anything to be done about it now, and complaining, out loud or not, wasn’t going to make the work go any faster. He focused on the next stack of paper, thinking with half his mind that the store had grown awfully quiet. There wasn’t any sound from upstairs, either.
Maybe Jack had taken a nap in front of the cast-iron stove. That was his right as well, though it did make Morgan want to make an excuse so he could stretch out on the couch while Jack was on the futon. Which was foolish. Jack deserved not to have Morgan around all the time.
Morgan’s cell phone rang, and he picked it up absently, using the eraser on his mechanical pencil to move the top paper on his desk around, floating it on top of the other papers.
“Hello?”
“Morgan?” asked an all-too-familiar voice.
“What can I do for you, Mabel?” he asked with as much patience as he could, pretending his irritation didn’t rear up like an untrained horse. Pretending he’d not just talked to her only an hour or two ago and that talking to her again so soon wasn’t a huge strain on his last nerve.
“I sent him along with the peach cobbler,” she said, “but then I called Young Tommy to see if he could find him on the way and give him a lift home to you. Young Tommy wasn’t too pleased about that, but in this weather, what else was I to do? Just because the sun is shining doesn’t mean it’s warm, young man, and I couldn’t let Jack walk all the way home with it growing colder every minute.”
It took him a moment to realize that theyoung manin that pile of words referred to him, though none of the rest of it made sense.
“What peach cobbler?” Morgan looked up and leaned back in his chair a little, taking in the angle of the light and the fact that his office had grown cold while he’d worked. “Oh, that peach cobbler. We were going to pick that up in a day or two. Is that all right?”
“No need for that now,” she said tartly, sounding like she’d bitten into a lemon. “Jack just left with the cobbler in hand—I’ll need that pan back, if you please—and, as I told you thirty seconds ago, he was on foot, so I’ve sent Young Tommy to pick him up and drive him the rest of the way. He’s none too happy about it, like I said.”
“Young Tommy is bringing Jack here?” he asked. It was the only part of what she was rattling on about that made sense. Because Jack was supposed to be safely upstairs, or maybe working in the store somewhere. When had he left?
“It is zero degrees outside, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Mabel said. “And that young man of yours was hardly dressed for the trek.”
“Trek?” he asked, getting up and going to the front door, where, sure enough, he could see the steam coming out of the tailpipe of Young Tommy’s SUV as it plowed through the thick snow in the parking lot, sunlight glinting off the chrome. “He?—”
“Sure, he was wearing your coat, but he had on those ratty old boots of his and no gloves, let alone a hat,” she said, cutting him off. “His blue jeans have no more than grease and holes holding them together.” She paused to take a hard breath. “It’s a crying shame you can’t take better care of such a fine young man. I wouldn’t trust you with a stray dog.”
And then she hung up on him.
Through the glass front doors, the light of the afternoon sun was glinting off the layers and dunes of snow, making it look as though some kind of distant lantern was panning across a goblin’s den of rough-hewn jewels. The sky was edged with dark purple, bleeding toward an early sunset as bundled-up clouds began to spread themselves across the sky.
Robe flying behind him, cane barely used, he was at the door before they reached it and stepped outside, instantly up to his knees in snow.
This time, like last time, Young Tommy led the way. He herded both Morgan and Jack in front of him, pulling off his plastic-clad brown hat and tucking it under his arm as he urged them inside the feed and grain.
Jack was wearing Morgan’s coat, but that was the only accommodation he’d made to the weather.
And while the coat had a faux fur–trimmed hood, a sensible person would have worn a tuque with it. And gloves. As it was, the fur was dusted with frost, along with his eyelashes, and Jack’s hands were red with cold as he gripped the edges of an oblong metal pan covered in aluminum foil.
Morgan could barely breathe for the frustration that rose inside him. Why did things have to be so complicated betweenthem? With Jack about to freeze to death and Morgan about to rip his head off.
Jack blinked, and a flicker of frost fell from his eyelashes onto his lips, where it melted instantly into a slender slice of water. Morgan wanted to wipe the moisture away with his thumb, but he restrained himself. Mixed messages were the last thing he needed to be delivering.
“Thank you,” he said to Young Tommy, as if the local sheriff bringing Jack home was an everyday occurrence. Which it was getting too close to becoming. To Jack, he said, as politely as he could, “I said we’d go in the truck. In a day or two, if the weather held.”
“Needed the fresh air,” Jack said, shivering.
