She'd been loyal to him and worked hard every day since.
A burst of animated argument from the pinochle tables pulled her attention.Ruth Sanger's voice rose above the others: “—thewrong kindof calves ...too big to be born ...those poor cows ...”
Walter Meeks sucked the inside of his cheek and chimed in, “Gonna a lose a bunch of them come calving time.I’ll bet half the herd doesn’t make it.”
Bonnie frowned.Jenna's cows?Her friend had mentioned being concerned about them just last week at the monthly potluck dinner of the Worn-out Widows Sisterhood, commonly referred to by its members as the WoWS.
She glanced around the diner and spotted Grayson Lawton in the booth by the far wall.She'd talked to him on the phone a few times.He'd called her office asking about getting a copy of the building permit for the Shoemacher property.But she'd only met him in person once at the WoWS’s Thanksgiving dinner last fall.
She studied him surreptitiously.He was younger than she remembered.No more than thirty, if she had to guess.Brown hair that needed a trim, a quiet, angular face, and gray eyes that seemed to be somewhere far away.
Those eyes were currently fixed on a textbook thick enough to stop a door.The table around him was chaos: a jumble of textbooks, notebooks, a laptop, and the remains of a BLT.He was reading with the total absorption of a person who’d forgotten that other humans existed.
She picked up her coffee and walked over.“Excuse me.Grayson?”
He looked up.His eyes refocused with the slight delay of someone surfacing from deep water.“Bonnie, right?”
She nodded.
“Most folks call me Gray.”He added awkwardly, “Like my eyes.Easy to remember.”
She bit back a smile at how geeky that sounded and said smoothly, “We met at Jenna's Thanksgiving dinner.”She glanced around furtively and added under her breath for his ears alone, “And we've never spoken on the phone.”
His eyes lit with understanding.The main engine of the Cobbler Cove gossip network was seated only a few feet away.He nodded slightly and flashed her a smile.
She inhaled a little more sharply than necessary.He went from good-looking in a nerdy-cute way to drop dead gorgeous in a totally hot way when he smiled.His eyes were extraordinary, the color of old silver with tiny flecks of black sprinkled among the silver highlights.
She said, “I overheard Ruth saying something about something being wrong with some cows.Those wouldn't be Jenna's cows, would they?”She kept her voice light, but Jenna was one of her closest friends, a WoWS sister.
“Have a seat,” he said politely, gesturing toward the other side of the booth.
She slid onto the red vinyl bench seat.
His gaze focused on her with attention that made her feel like the only person in the room as he explained the situation with Jenna’s cows and what he was doing about it.
“I appreciate you looking out for her,” Bonnie said sincerely.
“She doesn't deserve a curve ball like this.”He added under his breath, “And thank you for pulling the building permit.It was useful.”
His eyes were steady on hers, conveying what he dared not say out loud.Not with all the shamelessly wagging ears nearby.Don't ask why.Not here.
Which was fine with her.She wasn't ready for that conversation.He'd had her pull the building permit for the barn her husband had died in when it burned to the ground with eight firefighters and forty horses trapped inside.
“If you need anything else from the municipal files, let me know.”
“Actually—” He hesitated.“The building permit application only had rough sketches attached to it.Do you know if the actual blueprints that should have been submitted with the application are on file somewhere?”
“Those get stored separately because of their size.But yes, the city keeps blueprints of every building in town.”She took a sip of coffee.“I can pull that particular set for you if you'd like.”
“I'd appreciate that.”
She looked out the window for the school bus.Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Walter looking away from her and down at his cards hastily.
Nosy old coot.
Mentally, she winced.Walter was no dummy.He would put two and two together and figure out the guy sitting with piles of fire science books was poking into the Shoemacher fire.
Shoot.She needed to throw Walter off the scent of a good gossip scoop and fast.“So, Grayson,” she said cheerfully and loudly, “how's your class project on permitting for houses going?”
