Unexpected Reunion. Carolyn Greene
shied away from male attention. But then, Paisley had her reasons.
The minute they were alone again, Ruthie suggested, “Or maybe he didn’t want to lead me on. Not that I’d be interested, of course.”
“Of course.” For some reason, the Brits did sarcasm far better than Americans. It had to be the accent. Paisley deftly changed the subject. “I heard Gray is planning corporate security systems now. What do you say we have him put one in here?”
“What do you say we let him continue to avoid me?”
“He didn’t avoid you yesterday.”
“The same could be said of your police officer friend.”
Paisley set the fry-up in front of her and shot her a blue-eyed dagger. “Don’t try to make something out of nothing.”
Ruthie poked her fork at the delicious looking but heavy breakfast. “What do you put on fried bread?”
“Your teeth.”
The front door chimed, and Paisley turned back to the smoking fry pan. She switched on the vent to draw out some of the smoke. A second later red-and-yellow flames danced along the surface of the overheated oil.
“Oh, my!” Paisley turned in a circle, apparently in search of something to put out the fire.
Ruthie scooted off her stool and ran behind the counter to help. The customer from the end of the counter followed on her heels.
“Get the baking soda!” Paisley cried.
The man snatched a can of something from the prep table.
“No, not that!” Ruthie lunged to grab the can out of his hand, but before she could reach it, he threw the contents on the flames.
Whoof! The pan flared up in a miniature fireball, and baking powder poofed everywhere.
In a panic, Ruthie debated what to do first...tend to Paisley, whose blunt-cut brunette bangs now frizzled like tiny electrified wires, get the customer with the melting handlebar mustache out of the kitchen before he did further damage or try to extinguish the pan before it caught something else on fire. Before she could make a move, someone pushed past her, turned off the gas flames and deftly slid a lid over the hot pan.
Gray, their fast-thinking rescuer, turned on the water, doused clean dish towels with cold water, offered them to the threesome and suggested they hold the cooling cloths to their faces to take away the sting of the heat.
Paisley touched a hand to her cheek. “I don’t think I’m burned. Just a little warm.”
After a quick check of the customer revealed a slight redness near his lip where his mustache wax had melted, Gray turned to Ruthie. He grabbed her by the upper arms and studied her intensely. First her face, then down to her hands, which he turned over to check for burns. She’d been farther away from the fire when it flashed, so she hadn’t felt the effects of the heat. Yet even after he’d finished giving her the once-over, he held on. She wondered if he realized how tightly he gripped her upturned hands.
“Are you all right?” he asked, concern drawing a vertical line on his forehead.
“I’m fine,” she said in a shaky voice, “but Paisley looks weird.”
Along with her bangs, Paisley’s eyebrow hairs had faded from dark brunette to pale brown and corkscrewed in all directions. Her cheeks and nose glowed a faint pink, but it wasn’t clear whether the color came from a burn or stress.
Savannah dashed over from Connecting Threads, her blond hair bouncing on her shoulders.
“I heard a loud whoosh clear across the store,” she said, “and when I looked over here, it seemed as though the whole place had gone up like a dried-out Christmas tree.”
While Savannah bustled from one friend to the other and then the older man, double-checking them for heretofore unnoticed signs of injury, Gray quietly herded the ensemble out of the kitchen.
“It’s a miracle no one was hurt,” Savannah declared. “God must have been watching over y’all.”
Gray fixed his gaze on Ruthie, his expression making it clear he would not be joining in the choruses of “praise God.”
“We need to talk,” he said.
* * *
While her friends cleaned up the kitchen, Ruthie followed Gray back to the Gleanings area. Several new finds awaited price tags, and boxes from the Bristow house still sat near the checkout counter where she had left them yesterday afternoon. There were not yet any customers at this early hour of the morning.
A terrible thought raced through her heart. “Sobo. Did the clot—?”
“She’s the same,” he said, moving his hands as if to erase whatever worry she might have. “It’s not about her.”
Relief flooded through her. But the troubled expression on Gray’s face killed the momentary reprieve. Were they finally going to confront the awkward elephant that had stood between them for the past four years? Worse, was he going to tell her he’d moved on and found someone else?
“It’s about Pop.”
Ruthie touched a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no.”
“No, not Pop, but his stuff. You haven’t already sold the things he brought in yesterday, have you?”
His dark brow furrowed together, and he jammed his hands into his jeans pockets in a sign that Ruthie had come to know meant something was bothering him. Apparently, this was about more than just a few collectible doodads.
“I don’t think so.” She looked inside the half dozen open boxes sitting on and beside the counter. “These haven’t been inventoried yet, but it looks like everything’s still here.”
She paused, remembering what Paisley had said about selling the kissing dolls. Had he come back for them? Did they hold the same meaning for him that they did for her?
“Oh, wait. There was one thing, a pair of knickknacks that used to sit on the piano.”
She watched him, but his intense gaze never flickered. He didn’t remember? Her heart sank a little.
He shook his head. “One of the boxes was full of military stuff from Pop’s service in Korea. Awards and medals, pictures, journals. Some keepsakes. He had set that box aside to put away but brought it to you by mistake.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s here somewhere.”
They started with the stack beside the counter. Few of the contents matched the kinds of things Ruthie sold at Gleanings. She usually focused on antique or unusual one-of-a-kind items bought from estate sales and moving sales, but these would be sold on consignment for the Bristows. The idea had been to spare Pop the trouble of organizing a yard sale when he needed to take care of Sobo. He’d initially pushed aside the stored items in the spare bedroom to make room for Sobo’s rented hospital bed. But his wife’s Japanese decorating taste won out, and soon the room looked as sparse and clean as the rest of the house.
They went through the three stacked boxes of odds and ends first, then moved a fourth from the small pedestal table Pop had brought and set it on the counter. The tabletop’s inlaid design of golden-colored grain beckoned her to trace her fingers around the bent heads of barley.
She clearly remembered sitting at this table on the Bristows’ screened porch, playing Jenga with Gray and his younger sister while a warm summer breeze blew over the trio. Gray had stared intently at the stacked wooden blocks, determined to remove a piece without collapsing the precarious tower. Ruthie had laughed at his seriousness over the silly game, but he’d just refocused his concentration. With a hint of mischief guiding her actions, she’d touched her bare toes to the twisted barley pedestal and given it a nudge so slight the crashing of the tower could have easily been blamed on the breeze.
When his foot came