Need You for Always (Heroes of St. Helena) (3 page)

“What did he expect me to do? Take the senior shuttle?”

“Be smart enough to know that nothing good will come of you driving that bike with your knee. Or, I don’t know, you could always call someone who owns a car and ask for a ride,” Adam suggested.

“Jonah’s on duty, it’s your day off, and based on your T-shirt being inside out, you were otherwise occupied.” Dax shouldered his way past Adam to order a beer. He might be the baby of the brothers, but he had three inches and thirty pounds on the both of them.

“And yet I’m still here,” Adam said, giving the bartender a nod. “Next time call Shay. She’s all smiles when she gets to help someone in need.”

“Yeah,” Dax said, running a hand down his neck. How did one go about explaining that his brother’s wife was kind of crazy? Pretty as hell, sweet, funny, perfect for Jonah, but crazy as hell when it came to her animals. “Did that. I ended up going to PT with a Shetland pony on my lap. On the return I got stuck with a flock of geese who were left behind in the migration. I got suckered into goose-sitting for two days. Two days of honking and feathers, bro.”

Now it was Adam’s turn to run a hand down his face, only he was hiding a stupid grin. “It’s called a gaggle, and I heard the mama has a thing for pecking at the boys.”

She also had a thing for sneaking up on him when he was in the shower—and his boys weren’t covered. “Which is why I came alone. Mr. Fallon is in town, he wanted to meet me in person, but I didn’t want to show up covered in feathers or holding a bag of frozen peas.”

Mickey Fallon was the former chief of the San Francisco Police Department and an old army buddy of Dax’s commanding officer, who was also at the party. Three years ago, Fallon had been asked to head up a security company in Silicon Valley that provided elite detail teams for private sector businesses, so when he’d e-mailed Dax and asked if he wanted to meet up for a beer, Dax had jumped at the chance. He was more than qualified for the position, but he was the only outsider in the running, and if he wanted his transition into civilian life to go as smoothly as possible, then having Fallon’s blessing would go a long way toward securing this job.

“Well, you can meet him holding this,” Adam said, trading the bartender a bill for a drink. It was tall, fruity looking, prissy as hell, and had one of those umbrellas sticking out of the top. And it was pink—the umbrella and the drink.

“What the hell is this?”

“You in a glass.” Adam took the cold draft off the tray, clinked rims, then took a long swallow. “Now, if you want one of these,” he said, holding up the beer, “you need to man up.” When Dax didn’t make a move for the glass, Adam went serious. “You applied for a job with Jonah’s former boss. And you didn’t say a word. To me or Jonah. We want to hear these things from
you
, not the grapevine. It sucks having to pretend we know what the hell’s going on in our own family.”

This was not the conversation Dax wanted to have tonight. “Because I’m still in the application process.” And because he didn’t want to spend the next five weeks defending his decision to live a good two hours from home and his family.

“We knew that convincing you to stay for the long term was a pipe dream, but to apply with Jonah’s friend for a job that would take you to San Jose and not say a word?” Adam shook his head, which made Dax feel like he was ten all over again.

“This isn’t a for-sure thing,” Dax explained. “And I knew if I told you guys I was applying, Jonah would want to hook me up. Help out. And I didn’t want his name to sway the decision.”

Jonah hadn’t always been a small-town sheriff. Prior to working in the sheriff’s department, Dax’s older brother had been one of the top detectives at SFPD. He was respected, admired by everyone he talked to, and a real honest-to-God hero. If Dax wanted those kinds of expectations hanging over his head, he would have stayed here in St. Helena. “I wanted to get it on my own merit.”

So that there wouldn’t be any misconceptions about exactly who they were hiring. Dax was good at his job—better than good. He had been one of the best snipers in the army and had no doubt he could out-shoot, out-train, and out-strategize any of the competition. It was when he wasn’t combat ready that he fell short.

Both of his brothers had a charisma about them.
Baudouin charm
, as his stepmom called it. A way of making people feel safe, involved. Making people want to be better, do more just from being in their presence, which made them powerful leaders. Dax didn’t have that.

Didn’t want it.

By nature, snipers clung to the shadows, a position that fit Dax’s personality well and had earned him the name Wolf. He liked being a part of a team, liked the rush of a mission, but didn’t want the responsibility again that came with being a squad leader or looking through the scope of the gun and being the one to decide if he pulled the trigger. Nope, this time around, he wanted to do his job, do it well, then be able to clock out and go home without fear of closing his eyes.

Simple, straightforward, clean-cut.

“Too bad for you, Fallon had dinner with Jonah,” Adam said, and Dax’s stomach knotted. “And it looks like they’re headed this way.”

Dax turned to look at the entrance, disappointed he couldn’t catch a glimpse of Emerson through the door. Just his luck, he
could
see his big brother leading the former chief right toward him. Chest puffed out, superhero complex in full effect, Jonah walked right over and gave Dax a hug. It was a handshake/bro-hug combo that was a little heavy on the back smack part.

“You made it,” Jonah said as though this were his meeting. “Dax, this is Mickey Fallon. Mickey, this is my brother Dax. And like I was saying, you couldn’t ask for a better addition to your team.”

Fallon reached out a hand. “After spending the day with Jonah here, I’m starting to realize that a Baudouin is just what our team needs.”

E
merson wasn’t much for sweating the little things. She’d long ago learned that stressing over variables she couldn’t change was a big energy suck. It also clashed with her tough-girl persona. But with fifty pounds of shaved lamb shank and an entire day’s profit hinging on a faulty heating system, she felt the first bead of perspiration slide between her breasts.

Today she’d set up her cart in front of town hall to attract the tourists who were in town for Crush, wine country’s harvest season. The big clock above the pillars of town hall told her she had fifteen minutes until Twofer Tuesday began, and with her own twist on her mom’s famous lamb gyros, she wasn’t surprised by the line of hungry customers roughing the harsh wind, waiting for her to open.

With one last attempt at relighting the pilot light, which failed the second the wind passed through the duct, Emerson slammed the access panel. Telling herself it would take more than a temperamental starter to take her down, she raced down Main Street toward Cork’d N Dipped.

“Sterno,” Emerson announced as she pushed through the wooden door. “Where did you store the big ones I ordered last month?”

“Used them to keep the hot buttered wine steaming last weekend,” Ida Beamon said from beneath a display of chocolate plantains. “But I think I have some of the fondue size left.”

Ida had frosted hair, violet bifocals, and was wearing enough pink feathers on her shirt to be confused for a flock of flamingoes. She was also the owner of St. Helena’s only wine and chocolate bar—and most likely the artist behind the dipped plantains.

“Those will do.” They’d have to. She was desperate, not a new feeling for her, and with the clock ticking, it was time to get creative.

“They’re in the kitchen pantry, next to the his-and-hers fondue skewers,” Ida said.

“Thanks.” Emerson raced past the glass walls of wine bottles and into the commercial kitchen she subleased from Ida for her business. In order to make her mom’s dream a reality, she’d needed a commercial kitchen to secure her food licenses—and Ida had the only one on Main Street that wasn’t being used regularly. So in exchange for a few hundred bucks a month and catering a couple of events at the wine bar each year, Emerson wound up with the female Willy Wonka as her kitchenmate.

And a resident duck as her neighbor. As Emerson flicked on the light, she found Norton on the center island, beak covered in pistachios, tail lowered to the metal tabletop, looking ready to defend the baklava he’d discovered. The baklava she’d spent two hours making.

“Norton! Down!” Emerson commanded, even snapped her fingers and pointed from the bird to the floor.

Norton puffed out his wings and, tail straight back, parted his beak—duck for
What? What?
—then went back to pecking the baklava. In fact, the plate was practically pecked clean and he was already eyeing the other full tray.

“One more peck at my profits and you will end up a pillow. Got it?” To her frustration, all she got was a good look at the duck’s backside when Norton gave tail before going for the tray. “You want to play dirty?”

Emerson pulled a squirt bottle out from the pantry and fired. Once, twice, all the while making a
psht psht
sound, just like the Dog Whisperer did on the show Ida watched while prepping for happy hour. And because Norton was more concerned with proving himself a dog instead of a water fowl, he hopped off the table and scuttled his tail feathers right out of the kitchen and through the doggie door.

Quark! Quark! Quark!

Emerson slid the remaining tray of baklava onto the top shelf of the pantry for safekeeping, then located the his-and-hers skewers, which had interesting places to secure the fruit and meat. Next to them were the fondue cans. They were small, too small for what she needed, but they would have to do. She grabbed every last one, located a candle lighter, just in case, then made her way back to the front—snatching a stick of chocolate-covered bacon because, yeah, it was going to be one of those days.

“You got any duct tape?” she asked.

“Yup.” Ida set down the fresh fig she was dipping in a vat of bitter-smelling dark chocolate and walked to the register to pull out some tape. “Add some of those nautical ropes I bought for last week’s coastal wine tasting and I’d say you were looking to get lucky.”

Emerson laughed while bagging her stuff. She wouldn’t mind getting lucky right about then. With her cart, that was. “The Pita Peddler’s pilot won’t light. I think there’s something wrong with the starter.”

“Uh-huh.” Ida studied Emerson’s outfit and frowned. “Seems to me like you’re looking to be noticed. Even before you picked up that dating starter kit.”

Emerson was wearing her uniform—
KISS MY BAKLAVA
tee and leggings—but she’d swapped out her usual black skirt for a short denim one with a million zippers and pockets, and, because attitude leads to altitude, her American flag Converse high-tops. And okay, so she’d seen Dax jogging around the community park yesterday, all hot, sweaty, and breathtakingly shirtless. That didn’t mean she’d applied mascara for his sake.

Emerson dropped the lighter inside when Ida grabbed the bag and held it hostage behind the counter. “Lunch starts in ten minutes, Ida.”

“Promise me you’ll wear the cork costume on Saturday night, and I’ll give you the bag.”

A subtle throbbing started behind Emerson’s forehead. “What’s Saturday night? And why am I wearing a cork costume?”

“Saturday night the girls and I are throwing a party. It will be our first weekly Blow Your Cork Singles Night,” Ida said as though the words
party
and
the girls
didn’t inspire terror in townspeople everywhere.

The girls
referred to Ida, Peggy, and Clovis—a blue-haired trifecta of trouble. All three were kissing seventy, stubborn as hell, and loved to stir up serious trouble. And when men and alcohol were involved, it usually wound up in someone pulling out the cuffs—sometimes even the cops.

“The dance at the VFW was a bust,” Ida said with force. “Can’t make friendly with the Johns with all of those younger Janes from the active living community sniffing around, looking for a sugar daddy.”

“You mean the active living community that requires you to be fifty-five or older?” Emerson asked, because she could either give Ida two of her rapidly disappearing minutes to hear her out or the older woman would hold her Sterno cans hostage. Worse, Ida would follow Emerson out to the cart and talk her ear off while every patron in line listened.

“At fifty-five I could dance without wheezing, laugh without wetting my unmentionables, and my nipples still pointed up instead of looking like they were beacons for finding water.” Ida cupped her ample water beacons and lifted them heavenward a good twelve inches. “Anyway, liquoring the men up only to have you pop right out of that top. Pastor Sam nearly had an aneurysm seeing you in those shells.” Ida shook her head. “We want you on the ticket to bring the guys in, but unless you’re in a cardboard box, you’d steal the ones with real teeth.”

“As tempting as
that
sounds,” Emerson said, dying a little inside at the glimpse into her future, “I can’t cater your event Saturday. I have the farmers’ market all day, and with so many tourists in town for the harvest, I’ve been doing a second serving out by DeLuca Vineyards.”

Crush only lasted a few months, and with the weather turning colder and it getting darker earlier, Emerson was working every angle she could get before winter made her job a whole lot harder.

“Now can I have the bag?” Emerson held out her hand.

“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars more than you’d make at the winery, plus twenty percent of tips if you look like a cork every Saturday and serve tapas,” Ida said as though she were back in the old country, negotiating fava beans for ten cents a pound.

Emerson couldn’t believe she was even considering spending the evening with the geriatric mafia, especially after what was going to be one exhausting week, but an extra hundred bucks was a hundred bucks closer to her goal. Not to mention the tips from the night would be huge.

She estimated how much she’d make at the vineyard, added a hundred, then said, “Six hundred bucks, you hire someone to do cleanup, I get
half
of the tips, and no costume. Now give me the bag.”

Ida held out the bag, but when Emerson went to take it, the older woman’s bony hands gripped tighter. “Six hundred, I handle cleanup,
forty
percent of tips, and the costume is nonnegotiable.”

Sadly, a cork didn’t even come close to her most embarrassing costume request, and passing on a regular six-hundred-plus-tips gig for one that would end in a few weeks’ time wasn’t smart business.

Emerson took a deep, calming breath, resigning herself to suiting up, and said, “Deal.” Grabbing the bag, she hurried back to her cart, mentally adding the mechanic’s time and estimated parts it would cost to fix the cart’s heating system, and sighed. It seemed as though every time she got a step closer to her target, there was always some kind of setback.

After taping the Sterno cans together to make two superburners, she placed them under the chafing trays. One flick of the lighter and she was back in business. Feeling very MacGyvery and a bit smug that she had five minutes to spare, she opened the blue-and-white umbrella, which was the national flag of Greece, and turned to the first customer, who was offering up a toothy grin and a twenty.

Seeing the customer, Emerson immediately went into crisis-management mode. A mode she had become familiar with over the past two years.

So much for her five-minute lead.

“What are you doing here, Violet?”

Her six-year-old sister, Violet Blake, stood on the other side of the cart in a pink fuzzy jacket, two curly pigtails, and glittery fairy wings strapped to her back, swishing happily back and forth. Their twenty-three-year age difference raised eyebrows, but surprises happened. And Violet had turned out to be the best surprise. “It’s Pixie Girl. And Dad said I could have some baklava.”

“Sorry, baklava is for humans only.” She ignored Violet’s pout and zeroed her gaze in on her dad, who forced an innocent grin from behind his youngest. “It’s the middle of the school day,” she pointed out.

Roger Blake shrugged as though not seeing the problem with this. His peppered hair was windblown, his Hawaiian shirt slept in, and his feet were in flip-flops. The frayed cargo shorts and sleepy eyes only added to the beach bum image he had going on. “We’re taking a field trip.”

“The principal gave me two days off on account of fairy dust landing in Brooklyn’s eye,” Violet informed the line as though she hadn’t just confessed to being suspended. “Only it’s Taco Tuesday at school, and I like tacos, so I didn’t want to leave.”

Roger rested his hand on Violet’s slim shoulder. “Who wants a taco when we can have dessert for lunch?”

“So Dad brought you here, after getting suspended, to celebrate with dessert?” Emerson asked and both dad and daughter nodded. Emerson dropped her head and took a calming breath. It didn’t help.

This wasn’t the first fairy-inspired incident, and because she was afraid it wouldn’t be the last, she resisted the urge to high-five her sister for giving Brooklyn a dose of her own medicine—an act that would be as irresponsible as buying her a dessert to celebrate her first elementary assault charge. Emerson knelt down and looked her sister in the eye. Long and hard.

“Want to explain how glitter wound up in Brooklyn’s eyes when you were banned from bringing glitter to school?”

“Fairy dust,” Violet corrected while toeing at the ground with her pink Converse. “And Lillianna Starlight gave me some this morning.”

“Imagine that.” Emerson looked Lillianna Starlight right in the eyes—and he had the decency to look ashamed. “I didn’t know you still talked to Lillianna.”

Chocolate-colored pigtails bobbed. “I sent her a message through fairy mail yesterday and told her how Brooklyn told the whole class that fairies weren’t real. Then this morning a letter was under my pillow that said all nonbelievers needed was a little love and a lot of fairy dust.”

Eyes never leaving Lillianna’s, Emerson piled some lamb into a pita and rolled it up. “Take this and go wait over there while I talk to Dad.”

Violet looked from the gyro to Dad and back to Emerson. “What about my baklava?”

“You’re lucky it isn’t tabbouleh. Now go, before I change my mind.”

Horrified at the thought of being forced to eat something green, she hustled her little fairy butt over to the bench and sat down, wings flapping in the breeze.

“Not you.” Emerson caught Lillianna by the cuff of his shirt. “I thought you had an interview today at Bella Vineyards.”

Roger shifted back on his feet. “It was for a delivery manager, which means I’d miss breakfast and seeing her off to school.”

“The last job offer was a nine-to-five, and you passed because you’d miss picking her up from school. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up passing on your whole future, Dad.” The once sought-after vineyard manager had found a logical, rational, mature-sounding reason to pass on every opportunity that came his way. When in truth Emerson knew that going back to work meant finally letting go, admitting they’d lost the battle, the fight, and the most important person in all of their lives.