Sweet and Salty (Marshall My Heart #1)

24. Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

J esse

I fall into a rhythm over that week, staying in Laura’s garage apartment.

I wake up, feed the animals, shower, eat, open the hardware store, work until close, and then go home to eat something from the well-stocked freezer. Laura said to help myself, since this is the freezer where her leftovers and experiments go to die. If these are the failed recipes, I can’t imagine how good the food is that she actually serves in her cafe. The tomato soup tastes of down-home Southern sunshine and sweet herbs. The shepherd’s pie is as rich as a good Cabernet. The slutty brownies are some sort of magical combination of brownie and cookie with coffee and crispy rice treats. I eat an entire pan of them one night while pretending to watch reruns of early 2000s TV shows on my laptop.

Friday night, I bypass the last frozen bag of slutty brownies and pull out an aluminum tray of chicken pot pie. My grandma always used biscuits to top hers, but Laura’s has a thick piece of what looks like herbed puff pastry.

No shade to my grandma, but I think Laura’s chicken pot pie might win.

My phone rings as the oven preheats. Time for my monthly check-in. “Hello, Marshal Stryke. How are you this fine Friday?”

“You sound unusually chipper.” I almost hear Harbor narrow his eyes in suspicion. “What’s wrong? What did you do?”

“Nothing. I’m keeping my head down, going to work, and then coming home.” The timer on the oven dings, and I slide the casserole in. I hate to admit it, but it’s nice, having an oven that works. In the past week, I’ve only had time to run by the shack and throw out more moldy furniture. Nothing is getting fixed there any time soon, and so far the Drydens haven’t sent anyone out to inspect or repair anything.

I’m shockingly unbothered by it.

“St. Olaf working her spell on you yet?”

“Of course not.” I think of Laura, who goes for runs every morning in these tight pink yoga pants that make me wish those rumors about us that I’ve heard around town are true. I glance outside at the setting sun, the rays bright over the horizon, illuminating the tree line and the barn. “This is a temporary solution.”

“Is it? I heard through the grapevine you moved in with Laura Marshall. You don’t want to mess with the Marshalls, Jesse. They’re a beloved clan, and they’re tight.”

“I did not move in with Laura.” I’m just sleeping above her garage, in the bed she picked out, eating her food. That isn’t the point. The point is that I’m determined not to hurt her. “The cabin you rented for me fell apart in a monster hailstorm, and she offered me a place to stay while it’s being rebuilt. That’s all.”

Harbor makes an unintelligible and disapproving sound. “Look. Esme and the Macks hired a private investigator. They’re trying to find you. We’ve hidden your tracks damn well, if I do say so myself, but don’t go causing a ruckus up there.”

“I’m not much of a rabble-rouser, Harbor.” True. I’ve always been the good student, the diligent grandson. I worked too much after school to have any time to get into trouble.

“Yeah, until you got involved with Esme and Johnny Mack.” I can practically hear Harbor’s eye roll from three states away. “Talk about a bad crowd, Jesse.”

“You don’t need to remind me.” One mistake. One mistake, putting my faith in the wrong person, and my entire life changed. It isn’t supposed to be like this. I’m not supposed to be living in a studio apartment in Nowheresville, Wisconsin. I’m not supposed to be forty-two and lost. Alone.

The scent of the chicken pot pie rises through the apartment, smelling like cream and herbs and succulent meat. It smells so much like Grandma’s kitchen on a wintry night, it almost brings tears to my eyes.

“I’m serious, Jesse. The Mack family is taking this whole thing very seriously. I talked to the DA, but they’re still waiting on a trial date. Keep your head down and keep being plain, boring Jesse Vanek. You’ve never heard of Lacrimas del Corazon, Orange Valley Racetrack, or acepromazine.”

“I remember. I’ll behave.” Thoughts of Laura drift through my brain on tendrils of casserole-scented steam.

“Do that. I’ll be in touch.” He signs off, and I set the cell phone by the oven.

It’s too quiet in the apartment. In general, Door County has a lot less noise pollution than Ft. Lauderdale, but I’ve gotten used to the rhythm of chatter in the hardware store, or of Laura singing as she works around the barnyard, or of Einstein and the pigs snuffling around in the dirt. It’s taken some getting used to, but I like those sounds now. They sound more like home than car alarms and ambulance sirens.

I turn on some music to fill the void, an old playlist I used to listen to while studying in vet school. It’s a soothing juxtaposition, the old familiar music in this cozy new space.

Which is probably why I don’t hear the footsteps on the stairs outside until there is a knock at the door.

I jump. Thoughts of Johnny Mack showing up with an assault rifle or one of his goons in a hooded mask, ready to execute me, flash through my brain.

I’m being ridiculous. I force my breathing to relax, remembering what Harbor said. They hired a private investigator, but there’s nothing to be found. All of my accounts are frozen. I disappeared, as much to Wisconsin as to Wyoming or even Venezuela. They won’t find me.

I check to see who it was knocking at my door by looking through the window. I’m nothing if not practical.

Laura Marshall stands on my doorstep wearing jeans and a soft, short-sleeved, bright pink sweater. My heart trips over my feet before I answer the door.

“Hi.” Way to go, Jesse. Super cool. I lean against the door jamb, willing my gaze to remain at face level and not travel over every single sensuous curve.

“Hi, Jesse.” She smiles, a small dimple appearing by the right side of her mouth. Her nose crinkles. “Yum. Chicken pot pie?”

“Yeah.” I gesture uselessly at the inside of the apartment. I’m such a dumbass. “I do hope it’s okay. I’m cleaning out your freezer slowly but surely. I can stop, if there’s anything in there you want to keep.”

“No! I think it’s great. It was definitely the Freezer of Forgotten Leftovers.” She laughs, but it sounds like an unsure, nervous chuckle, not at all her deep, full-throated one that makes me want to tickle her endlessly so I will never stop hearing it. If she’s into tickling, that is. “It’s better to have them be eaten than thrown away with freezer burn.”

“Honestly, even with freezer burn it’s the best food I’ve ever had.” True. I measure my life lately in truths and lies, hoping the balance will work out in my favor.

The apples of her cheeks turn pink. “Thank you. That’s really nice of you to say.”

“I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.” Words escape me as she stares at the bakery container in her arms, flushing. She’s just so pretty. Not like an orchid, tempestuous and picky like Esme, but a richly colored, fully bloomed rose. A rose that’s pure red when a closed bud, but opens into a beautiful tapestry of hues. “Would you like to come in?”

“Thank you.” She steps inside, a little tentatively. I have the sudden urge to give her whatever she asks for her to be comfortable here. “Wow, that does smell good.”

I settle for complimenting her food. “Seriously, your food is like competition-winning good. It’s making me sad I never go to your café. I would have eaten a hell of a lot better over the last few months.”

Laura glances around the room, as though seeing the few things I changed. Not making it mine. Frankly, I prefer Laura’s style to whatever passes for mine. Besides, I don’t have much. A suitcase and backpack and laptop. My phone on the kitchen counter, playing Goldfarb, Paul Simon, and Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness.

“When I was younger, I wanted to enter one of those televised cooking competitions.” She says it softly, like it’s buried so deep within her, she hasn’t even mentioned it to herself in years. I know that kind of dream well. The ones I lock behind years of work and subpar relationships and exercise to outrun my demons. She’s braver than I am, letting hers out into the world. Sharing it with me.

The apartment feels about ten degrees warmer. “You should. You’d win, hands down.”

“I don’t know.” She rolls her eyes and sets the bakery box on the counter. Only a massive amount of self-control prevents me from rushing to the box and inhaling whatever is inside of it. If I can’t taste her, I could eat her food. “I’m not pretty enough, and the people on those shows are so charming.”

“You out-pretty and out-charm every single one of them.”

I didn’t mean to say it, but her gaze snaps to mine, and despite all of my reservations, I hold it. I want one moment like this, with her. I am a horrible, selfish bastard. “You’re a strange man, Jesse Vanek.”

“You have no idea.” I lean back against the kitchen counter, grounding myself with the feeling of Formica through my T-shirt. “So why didn’t you apply to those cooking shows when you were younger? More misplaced feelings of inferiority? I don’t know you that well, but there’s nothing inferior about you.”

At this, she blushes bright red and fiddles with the still-unopened bakery box. “It wasn’t a good time.”

“Why not?”

Around us, curling wisps of cooking hot dish perfume the air, wrapping us in a cozy sort of intimacy.

She sighs with one long exhale. “I was going to. It was after college, and I had a job at this restaurant, apprenticing with a pastry chef. Mostly washing dishes, honestly, but I liked it. It was challenging, and creative, and I was learning so much. Then Ma got really sick. And I needed to come home. I needed to help while she was dying.”

She says it so simply, but I hear all sorts of story behind that sentence. She needed to come home to help her family. She gave up her dreams for theirs, buried herself in caring for others to push the grief further and further away until it’s a depthless pit at the edge of memory. A pit with fourteen warning signs taped over it. Here be dragons.

It’s relatable. Lately, my mental Pit of Dangerous Memories grows about six inches every week.

She shakes her head and forces a smile. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about that. I came to ask a favor. That’s why I brought pie.”

“You are letting me stay in your apartment and eat your food, and have refused every single offer to pay you. So, I’m pretty sure whatever you ask, I’ll still be in your debt.”

“Careful, there. It’s a big ask.”

“Yes.” And I mean it. Whatever she asks. Take her to Thailand. Fuck her senseless. Buy her a minivan and fill it with rescue puppies. Lasso the moon.

Laura Marshall deserves every single yes I have to give.

Again, she catches my gaze, startled. I probably should have toned it down, but I’m hungry, and Laura Marshall is simultaneously everything I shouldn’t crave and everything I can’t live without.

“Okay.” She takes a small step back. “There’s this wedding tomorrow. I have to go, because I made the cake and the bride wants to be sure all the animals get packed up properly afterward. Anyway, my ex, Chris, is going to be there because life is unfair. I could go with Frannie, but I really don’t want to show up with my sister.”

I process several things at once, although I still can’t quite figure out what she means about packing up animals after a wedding. Not the point. “So you’d like me to go.”

“Yes.” Her cheeks pink, accentuating her freckles.

“As…” I’m fishing, and I know it, but I can’t help myself. I’ve heard all the innuendo at the hardware store over the last two weeks, about me and her. She hasn’t brought it up, so neither have I.

“Friends.” The pink deepens into a pale red. “Or like a fake date?”

“A friendly fake date.” It sounds even more absurd aloud, but what else do I have the right to expect?

A line appears between her eyebrows, a second before her face lifts into a smile. “Right. Exactly. I mean, half the town already thinks we’re sleeping together, so it’s not a big deal. You don’t have to dance with me or anything. Just, if you come, then it might be more fun.”

Half the town thinks we’re sleeping together? I’ve assumed it’s more like eighty percent. “And you can stick it to your ex?” He is an asshole, whoever he is.

She blushes again. “Yes. Not that you care, but he deserves it.”

Of course he does. He never should have let Laura go. I already hate him, and the thought of torturing her ex sounds like a much better use of my time than binging home renovation videos while I devour whatever pie she’s brought.

“I’d love to go. I’ll be your fake date.” The fake part sounds less exciting, but if it means a night with her, I’ll take it. “I mean it. I owe you and your family everything. This is a small repayment.”

“Not to me.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I’d better get going. Your hot dish is about to burn.”

“Stay.” The word is out of my mouth before I can stop it. Time to backtrack like a champ. “Sorry. I just mean, there’s plenty of food. If you are hungry. Or haven’t eaten, or anything.”

“Oh.” The line appears between her eyebrows again. “If I’m not imposing—”

“It’s your food. You should taste it.”

“Okay.” Her posture softens, as though a barrier has fallen between us. “I am hungry. Thank you. And hey, there’s pie for dessert.”

“Great. I love pie.”

Understatement.