She was startled out of her relaxed haze when the bell on the front door of the shop rang suddenly. She looked up sharply at the cheerful jingle.
He had on a black shirt this time with a denim jacket over it. He hadn’t shaved today, and dark stubble highlighted the bold line of his jaw. He had the brace on under a pair of jeans this time, but its outline was plain under the faded blue cloth.
She put the last tin of rolls in the proving drawer to rise, wiped her hands on a towel, and headed out to the front room to greet him.
He held a small, folded paper in one hand, and he paused, looking at Grace and then at the four-year-old perched on the stool by the counter. He glanced back and forth between them twice, clearly identifying that the tiny version of Grace, was, in fact, her offspring.
His face displayed a half-second of hesitation and then smoothed out once more. She interpreted that brief look as meaning he hadn’t quite expected what he’d walked into.
“Hey, Reno,” Tessa said warmly. “How’s my future-brother-in-law doing today?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t spoken with Hank today.”
“Ha ha. Very funny,” Tessa retorted. “How are you doing? How’s the knee?”
“It’s coming,” he said evasively. “Dillon told me congratulations are in order for you and Charlotte.”
Tessa beamed, but declined to brag about their big success, saying instead, “Reno, do you know Grace?”
“We’ve met, yes.”
Lily interrupted without warning, asking him, “Are you hurt?”
Grace was mightily startled. Lily didn’t spend much time around men and tended to be quite shy around them. Not to mention, this one was a big, dark, scary-looking stranger. She looked over at her daughter and was surprised to see Lily studying Reno intently. Something about him clearly fascinated her.
He glanced down at the brace under his black jeans. “I hurt my leg a few months ago and had to have a doctor fix it.”
“How did you hurt it?” Lily followed up.
“A bull chased me, and when I ran away, I twisted my knee.”
Lily’s eyes went wide and impressed. “Did it chase you on purpose?”
“Hard to say, but I’m pretty sure it did. Of course, I was waving a big red cloth at it and daring it to chase me.”
If possible, Lily’s eyes went even wider. “Bulls are big,” she said. “And scary.”
“They are. Little girls like you should stay away from them.”
“Does it hurt now?” she asked, circling back to the subject of his leg.
“A little.”
“My friend Malcolm broke his arm and he cried. He had to get a cast.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Reno said seriously.
Grace appreciated him talking to Lily as if she was a real person and not just a toddler to be humored until he could get away from her. Too many adults blew kids off as nuisances that had yet to grow into adults worth being noticed.
“Did you cry?” she asked him.
Reno considered this. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. There were kids watching and I didn’t want to scare them.”
Lily nodded, her curiosity seemingly satisfied, and went back to drawing on a sheet of butcher paper with crayons from the basket of them Grace had pulled out and set her up with at the counter.
Tessa said nothing through the whole exchange. But she did watch Reno and Lily exceedingly closely. Grace wondered, abruptly, did her friend know something about Reno that she didn’t? Or was Tessa just curious to see how he acted around a small child?
Tessa picked up her coffee and said breezily, “Well, I’ll let you get back to doing whatever you were doing before I got here and interrupted.” Grace recognized by her tone of voice that Tessa was one-hundred percent going to interrogate Dillon later about this visit to the bakery by Reno. Sure enough, Tessa winked at Grace behind his back as she turned and walked out.
