The Talk of the Town (7 page)

“And Miss Mitchell,” he said, halting her.

She looked over her shoulder. Her heart nearly stopped. His eyes were flashing like quicksilver.

“I won’t let you down,” he promised.

She left the lunchroom feeling as if she were walking on air.

Chapter 4

The irate clothing store owner called a week later. As was usual in the case of missing shipments, Roxie referred the caller to Gary. As was not usual, she followed it up the next morning with a personal visit to his office. When she didn’t find him there, she went in search of him through the labyrinth of the warehouse.

Though her view was partially blocked by stacks of new boxed merchandise waiting to be sorted into the various bins, she had no trouble locating the foreman. His silvery hair stood out like a beacon in the dim light, and she strode forward, passing two pickers who were packing up boxes of work boots for shipment. As she’d known it would, the chilly reserve was melting, and she received several friendly greetings along the way.

“Good morning, Gary,” she called as she neared.

He nodded absently, continuing to study an inventory sheet he held. Knowing better than to interrupt him, she waited quietly, letting her eyes wander in the interim. She wasn’t consciously searching through the warehouse canyons, yet there was a definite sense of accomplishment when her gaze came to rest on Luke.

His back was to her as, unaware of her presence, he removed a strapped box from a heavy-duty scale, marked the weight on the top and shoved it aside. In deference to the heat he’d rolled up the sleeves of his blue cambric shirt, but there were damp circles underneath his armpits and the back of it was soggy with sweat. When he reached for another box, the wet material stretched tightly across his back, delineating each vertebra and emphasizing the musculature. The sight of it caused her heart to knock against her ribs.

He paused between boxes to swipe his arm across his brow. The same sweat that beaded in his dark hair now glistened on his forearm. Even in repose there was no mistaking the strength of those arms. What would it be like to be held in them? Her mouth went dry, and her breath clogged in her throat at the thought of being wrapped within the powerful circle—

“Roxie,” Gary prompted.

She returned to reality with a jolt and swung her startled gaze to the foreman. As she focused on him, she had the sinking feeling it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken her name. A bristling irritation quickly chased away her embarrassment. What was the matter with her? She was acting like a complete fool!

“What brings you back to the warehouse?” Gary asked a shade impatiently.

She could see he would consider talking with her a waste of time, but now that she was here, she had to say something. She plunged in. “I just wondered if you’d solved yesterday’s problem—the lost order for Lasater’s Clothing Store in El Dorado, Kansas. Did you ever find out what happened?”

If Gary thought her inquiry odd, he didn’t show it. “The order never got out of the warehouse,” he told her. “We didn’t have a shipping slip on it, and I was about to chew Willie’s—tell Willie to find out what had happened when Luke found the slip stuck behind one of the bins.”

Involuntarily her gaze veered to Luke. He moved with an economy of motion, a supple strength that mesmerized her. How long she stared at him she didn’t know, but it was long enough for the silence to strike her, long enough for her to realize Gary had followed the direction of her stare. He was eyeing Luke with speculation, and she winced mentally.

“Luke found the slip, you said?” she asked, striving for an offhand tone.

Gary shot her a sharp look. “Yeah. It must’ve fallen off a pile of cartons or gotten misplaced or something. Just one of those things that happens. Mr. Stewart had us ship out a couple of extra shirts, gratis, to make up for it. The whole load went out this morning.”

“Well, I’m glad it all got straightened out.” She knew she should leave. She’d used up her meager excuse, but still she lingered. Gary, too, waited, seeming to expect something more. Feeling awkward, unsure in a way she’d not felt since adolescence, she finally brought herself to ask, “How’s he doing, by the way?”

Gary didn’t pretend not to understand. “Does his job and keeps to himself.”

She could have shaken him until his teeth rattled. She wanted details, descriptions, something to point to the next time she talked to Fesol so she could say,
See? I told you he’d make it
. Instead, Gary gave her a laconic pat on the head.

“Still, in a week, you must’ve seen whether or not he does a good job,” she persisted.

“Good enough.”

She gave up. You couldn’t pry anything out of Gary Koch he didn’t want you to have. Saying she was glad the snafu with Lasater’s had been straightened out, she left him. Threading her way along the aisles of towering shelves, she decided her short visit hadn’t been totally wasted. At least she could be buoyed by the fact that Luke was doing okay. “Good enough” was about as much praise as anyone could expect from Gary.

“Keeps to himself,” he’d also said. Roxie didn’t have to wonder what that meant. Given what had happened in the lunchroom the day she ate with Luke, she could be fairly certain that the others were still ignoring him. She could only guess at this because she hadn’t had the courage to return after that day, choosing instead to bring her lunch from home and eat at her desk or, on particularly nice days, to take her sandwich outside to the wooden picnic table that sat on the east side of the warehouse. It was too risky to go back. He’d disturbed her too much and in ways she didn’t want to examine too closely.

Her lips began to tighten. She was being absurd. All they’d done was talk a little bit. And really, if she wanted to know how Luke was doing, she should simply ask him. She was behaving foolishly, avoiding him. He might even misinterpret it. After all, there was no doubt about why everyone else avoided him.

Roxie halted in her tracks. No, she wasn’t going to treat him the way everyone else did. People made mistakes, she knew that only too well, and she wasn’t going to condemn his future along with his past, not unless she had reason to do so.

She smoothed the skirt of her pink shirtwaist dress and combed her fingers through her hair. She would simply ask him how he was, chat a bit, and then get back to work. Breathing in deeply, she retraced her steps.

“Good morning, Luke,” she said, and congratulated herself on her level tone of voice.

He spun around, wary surprise crossing his face. It passed swiftly, leaving a guarded pleasure. “Good morning, Miss Mitchell.”

“Please, call me Roxie,” she insisted. “We’re all on a first-name basis around here.”

He nodded, but he didn’t say it. A few seconds thudded by, seconds in which she learned just how much she would have liked to have heard her name on his lips. He leaned against the scale, his pose deceptively casual. She knew the pose was misleading. Nothing about him was ever casual. Not daring to ask herself why, she wished she could erase his tension.

“Gary says your work’s good enough,” she finally said. “Coming from Gary, that’s high praise indeed.”

He nodded again but didn’t smile or show any other kind of emotion. “I’m glad to hear it. I think a lot of Gary’s opinion.”

“We all do.” She waited, hoping he would say something more. When he didn’t, she shuffled the toe of her white shoe over the bare concrete and gathered her courage together. “Maybe we could have lunch again sometime,” she suggested in a voice that sounded disgustingly squeaky to her own ears. To cover her embarrassment, she added in a teasing tone, “You owe me one.”

“Sounds good,” he said, but there was an unconvincing quality about his agreement.

Roxie wanted to press him, to name a day, and have him commit to it, but she sensed his discomfort and let it drop. Saying good-bye, she was about to move on when she caught sight of two pickers watching her with intent interest. They exchanged a comment, and the blatant derision in their expressions nettled her.

She wanted to lash out at them, to tell them to get back to work, but that would probably make things worse for her and for Luke. Instead, she impulsively exclaimed, “I’m sorry for the way they’re all behaving.”

Luke gaped at her with open incredulity. He couldn’t imagine anyone feeling that much concern on his behalf, especially not someone like Roxie. She was so obviously everything he wasn’t, so good, so upright, so pure.

“You don’t have to apologize for anything—” he started.

“Yes, I do!” she interrupted fiercely. “They haven’t the manners to do it, so I will. It’s shameful the way they ignore you.”

Her outburst stirred too many emotions in him. He’d worked at being insensate for so long, he didn’t know how to handle such feelings. Normally he’d resist them with a detached indifference, but he couldn’t even pretend indifference to her.

Mustering a reasonably light tone, he contradicted her. “But I haven’t been ignored.”

She cast him a look of disbelief that changed instantly to one of sheer fury. “If anyone’s been haranguing you—”

“No, I didn’t mean anything like that,” he broke in quickly. “All I meant was that they’ve been watching me, not ignoring me. Most days, I’ve practically had my own shadow.”

“Shadow,” she echoed.

“I think his name is Fesol.” Crinkling his gray eyes in a smile, he beguiled her into forgetting her fuming indignation. When he looked at her like that, it was a wonder she could remember her own name.

“I’d call him something a whole lot less polite than a shadow,” she returned with an answering smile and had the pleasure of hearing him chuckle.

“But you’re a lady, so you’ll courteously refrain from doing so,” he joked.

Her smile slowly faded. She wasn’t such a lady, but she couldn’t bear the thought of him knowing it. She could scarcely stand to admit it to herself. He might be able to openly bear the stigma of his past—it was one of the things she most admired about him—but she couldn’t. Not yet, at least. As quickly as she could politely do so, Roxie told him she’d hold him to that lunch one day and strode off through the warehouse maze.

The raucous noise surrounding her seemed to mimic the clamor of her confused emotions. Once again, without even trying, he’d managed to thoroughly unsettle her. Even Arthur hadn’t run her through such a gamut of emotions. She’d felt sorry for Luke, angry on his behalf, saddened by her own secretive past. But most of all she had felt attracted to him. She couldn’t deny it. It would be useless to try. She still tingled from seeing him smile. But before she’d even spoken to him today, she’d felt it. She’d been carried away by the mere sight of him.

Slow down, Roxie,
she warned herself.
This isn’t the sort of man for you to tangle with without a lot of thought.
Being concerned about the employee was one thing. Being concerned about the man was something else again. She hadn’t come home from St. Louis simply to jump from the frying pan into the fire. Resolving to put Luke Bauer out of her mind, she headed for her office.

Barbara McCanse, Mr. Stewart’s secretary, intercepted her in the corridor, holding one palm up and one palm out. “Wait a minute, Roxie. Do you have a nickel I can borrow? I’d like to get a piece of pie, but I’m too lazy to go all the way back to my desk to get my purse.”

“Sorry, but my purse is in my desk, too.”

Barbara’s pretty face wrinkled in a comical mixture of disappointment and acceptance. “Some panhandler I’d make. Oh well, I guess the exercise will do me good,” she drawled, patting her hips and grinning as she fell into step beside Roxie.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

“That’s okay,” Barbara said with a shrug. “I should have figured your purse would be locked up too. Isn’t it a bother?”

Roxie threw her a puzzled glance. “Isn’t what a bother?”

“You know, locking our purses in our desk drawers.” Barbara frowned. “Don’t you keep yours locked up?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Oh.”

“Since when have you started doing that?” Roxie asked, feeling that angry prickle crawl under her skin.

“Well, you know,” Barbara wriggled uncomfortably under Roxie’s steady glare. “I mean, you’ve got to admit, it doesn’t hurt to take precautions.”

“Whose idea was this?”

Barbara gawked at the furious flush on Roxie’s face. “Well, um, you know—”

“No, I don’t know,” she refuted. “That’s why I’m asking. Who told you to lock up your purse?”

“Fesol,” Barbara said with a downward twitch of her mouth. “He said he wouldn’t leave them out anymore if he were us and really, it just made sense . . .”

Roxie didn’t hear Barbara’s words wither into nothingness. She had already wheeled and marched in the direction of the main office. All her earlier indignation returned, centralized on one person. Fesol was the one who hadn’t wanted to give Luke a chance. Fesol was the one hounding him now. Fesol was the one instilling nasty, vicious ideas in everyone else’s head. Roxie felt like strangling Fesol, but she contented herself with slamming into Layton Stewart’s office and insisting that something be done.

Sitting behind his desk, he looked up from the circular he’d been studying with a flicker of concern for the frosted glass rattling in his just-slammed door. “Done about what, Roxie?”

“Fesol!”

“Fesol?”

“Fesol Vernal,” Roxie clarified through clenched teeth. “Fesol Vernal and his snake-in-the-grass tactics!”

Layton Stewart was a friendly-looking man with pomaded silver hair, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a ready smile. Now a slow version of that smile started at the edges of his mouth and worked its way up to his hazel eyes. Roxie stood shaking in front of his desk, unable to speak for fear of shocking him with language no one would ever suspect she knew.

“I don’t think,” he remarked at last, “that I’ve seen anything quite like this since that tornado flattened Hector McKenzie’s barn back in twenty-eight.”

“This isn’t funny, Mr. Stewart.”

He nodded understandingly. “Well, then, suppose you sit down and tell me what ‘this’ is so I can appreciate the seriousness of it all.”