Trust in Me (5 page)

Kevin nodded. "She can be a tough cookie to convince. But don't worry. I'll go by at lunch and talk to her. I'll get things straightened out."

He flashed her a warm smile that had her thinking how
nice
this man was, before it dawned on her what she was doing. What
he
was doing.

"Oh...no. Kevin, I don't want to be a bother." She couldn't let him fight her battles. She had to fix things with Mrs. Proctor herself. "I can—"

A loud knock on the front door interrupted her protest. Kevin stepped away from the counter, his attention turned to the person outside.

"No bother. I'm happy to help." He bounced his keys in his hand as he started toward the front door. "Hang on a sec while I open up. The farmers get cranky if we don't unlock the doors on time. They think we're wasting their day."

"But I—" Claire's shoulders drooped as Kevin disappeared around a display of house paint. Her father had always dismissed her arguments as trivial, thought he knew what was best for her. She'd let her father intimidate her into acquiescence too often, and look where it had gotten her.

While she rued her latest resignation, she listened to Kevin's cheerful whistling, the rattle of his keys, and the jingle of the bell over the front door.

She had to be more forceful, be firm about handling things for herself. Not an easy thing for someone raised to believe aggressiveness in women was synonymous with bitchiness.
A genteel woman was agreeable. A lady never caused a scene or insisted on her own way,
she'd heard her mother say too many times to count. Surely she could find a way to be firm and self-reliant while still polite.

"Good morning, Clyde. How's that knee feeling?" Kevin asked a customer still out of Claire's view.

"Can't complain. And you?"

"Fine. Just fine. Let me know if I can be of help."

The friendly banter sounded much like the pleasantries her father exchanged with business associates. Yet while her father's exchanges left her cold, something in the brief greeting Kevin gave his customer brought a smile to her face. Kevin's tone held a warmth and genuineness that she was coming to recognize as characteristic of her new boss.

When Kevin returned to the check-out counter, he rubbed his hands together and took a deep breath. "Okay, let's get started. First off, the customer is always right...even when they're wrong." He curled up the corner of his mouth, and his gaze lit with humor.

A mellow feeling puddled inside her, spreading a soothing heat through her veins. When he smiled at her like he was now, a spark of mischief in his eyes, Kevin was almost handsome. He had a way of putting her at ease, for which she was immensely grateful. She'd worried about being out of place in the hardware store, but Kevin's sense of humor and easygoing manner helped calm her fears. If he had any doubt about her ability to do the job she'd been hired for, he hid it well.

Claire returned his grin and nodded her understanding, determined not to let Kevin down.

She listened intently as he explained the basic operation of the register, the special way to ring up sale items, and how to handle returns.

"In addition to the register, the cashier is in charge of keeping the store looking neat...sweeping up spills, arranging the front display window and, uh..." He paused and scratched his chin.

"And what?"

He grimaced and cleared his throat. "The bathrooms. The cashier is supposed to clean the bathrooms." He raised a hand. "But I can do that for you if you'd rather."

Claire scowled. "I wouldn't rather. If it is part of my job, I'll do it."

Kevin looked unconvinced. "I just thought—"

"Kevin, I can handle it if you'll just give me a chance. Really!" Claire straightened her back and lifted her chin. "I have cleaned a toilet before, you know."

Once. When she was ten. She'd been so bored over Christmas break that year that she'd offered to help the housekeeper clean for the holiday party her father was giving that night.

"Good," Kevin said quickly. "Well, all right then... You have experience cleaning toilets. That's great." He cocked his mouth in another grin. "Shoulda put that on your application, too. Experience with a cash register
and
scrubbing commodes."

"Next time I will," she returned with a laugh.

An older man wearing overalls and walking with a decided limp hobbled up to the register and placed a package of nails—or were they screws?—on the counter. They had funny flat tops whatever they were.

"Well, hello, pretty lady. Where's Lydia today?" The old gentleman scooted his glasses up his nose and gave Claire a curious glance.

"Lydia is enjoying some well-deserved time off today." Kevin nodded toward Claire. "This is our new cashier, Claire Albritton."

"Hello." She sent the gentleman an affable smile, then scanned the bar code on his purchase as she'd been shown. A price lit the screen on the register, followed by a satisfying
beep
. A giddy sense of success blossomed in her chest.

Kevin grabbed a small brown sack from under the counter and bagged the pack of screws/nails. "Can we get you anything besides the roofing tacks, Clyde?"

Roofing tacks. So that's what they were.

"Naw, that's all for today. Cora says if I don't fix the leak over the kitchen before the next storm blows through, that I get to stand outside in it! Seein' as I don't like getting rained on, I figured I'd better see to patchin' up the broken shingles today. Almanac says we're in for a stormy summer."

"You mind this heat now, Clyde, and don't work in the middle of the day." Kevin sent the man a serious look and lifted a chestnut eyebrow. "We don't need you suffering heat stroke up on your roof because of a few cracked shingles."

Clyde scoffed. "Are you kidding? I'm too old to be climbing on roofs anymore. I'm paying the Johnson kid twenty bucks to do the work for me. Heh, let him worry about the heat!"

Claire giggled when the old man winked at her and turned to leave. With a wave, Clyde shuffled out the door.

"Well, if you think you can manage for a while on your own, I have a backlog of paperwork in the office to get done."

Could she manage on her own? Claire leveled her shoulders and seized the challenge Kevin had unwittingly given her.

"I'll be fine." Or, by God, she'd die trying.

He gifted her with another of his captivating smiles as he left, a smile that said he had faith in her. A smile that gave her ego a much-needed boost.

The front door bell heralded someone's entrance.

Energized and glowing with renewed confidence, Claire hurried to greet the next customer. The middle-aged woman toting a toddler on her hip sized Claire up with a questioning glance much the way Clyde had.

"Good morning, can I help you find anything?" Heavens, what was she saying? She probably knew less about the merchandise in the hardware than this lady did. Claire held her breath.

You can do this
.

"I need some flowers for my front yard. Something that will grow well in full sun."

Claire released the air from her lungs in a whoosh.
Thank you, Lord
! Flowers she knew. She hadn't attended the Garden Club with her mother for ten years in vain after all.

Following the direction of the woman's gaze, she spotted flats of seedlings out a side door of the hardware. She headed that way with the woman and toddler trailing behind her.

"How about begonias? Or vincas do well in the sun."

Several minutes later, after she'd helped the woman choose a variety of seedlings for her garden, Claire approached a man wandering the aisles of the store with a glower on his face.

"Sir, may I help you?"

"Where the hell did Kevin move the drill bits?"

Her stomach crashed from the high of her previous success. "Drill bits?"

The man pinned her with a weighty stare, and Claire swallowed hard. She now knew how Gulliver must have felt in Lilliput. Completely alien.

It was going to be a long day.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

It was going to be a long day.

Kevin rubbed the crick in his neck and opened his textbook to sneak in some studying before his once-a-week, three-hour class which would meet that night. He might as well try to study, since he hadn't accomplished much else that morning.

Other than a few phone calls to distributors, he'd wasted most of the morning daydreaming. Every time he gathered his thoughts and hunched over an inventory report, Claire's voice would drift in from the sales floor and wash through him like a cool drink, refreshing his imagination. Time and again his mind conjured scenarios that brought Claire into his arms, his hands in her thick blonde hair and his lips on hers.
Kissable Pink
.
Cripes
, even the name of her lipstick was driving him nuts.

But the odds that his mouth would ever come anywhere close to Claire's or might test her lipstick's claim of kissability were so remote as to be laughable. And if by some freak of nature he got the chance to kiss the princess, honor required he pass it up. He had nothing to offer a woman like Claire. Why stick your toe in a pond where you have no right swimming? The sample of something so sweet and forbidden would only feed his craving and prove torture in the long run. He had to find a way to put her out of his mind, and the simplest way to do that was to remind himself who and what she was. Claire came from wealth and privilege. She had nothing in common with him. Like a castle moat, the differences in their backgrounds served well to keep the princess out of his reach.

Gritting his teeth, Kevin stared at the blur of numbers in the equation for calculating the depreciation of capital parading across the page before him, and he struggled to concentrate. Until he earned his degree, found a better job, made something of his life, he'd never do anything but dream of the Claires of the world.

When a shadow fell across the textbook, he glanced up. Claire stood at the door, her face pale and panicked.

The pull of her golden eyes sent him tumbling into their bottomless color so fast his stomach rose to his throat. Protective instincts roared to life and brought him to his feet before she could say, "Kevin, I need your help."

He strode toward her, his body tense, convinced Ray had crossed some boundary of propriety, and he narrowed his gaze on her wan complexion. Something had certainly upset her.

"What happened?"

"I need you to unlock the cash drawer. I gave a woman the wrong change, and I have to catch her before she leaves."

The knot of worry loosened in his chest, and he released the breath he'd held as he dug his keys from his pocket. "Hey, don't sweat it. These things happen."

She shook her head vigorously. "I should have been paying closer attention to my job instead of playing with her daughter. She was showing me her skinned elbow, and...and I thought the mother gave me a twenty. When I rang up the next lady, I saw that the bill on top of the twenties stack was a fifty instead." Claire's voice and hands trembled as she explained her problem in a flurry of words and gestures. "Kevin, I shortchanged the woman thirty dollars!"

He hesitated as he flipped through his keys for the right one. Thirty dollars was a significant amount to the working class population of Grayson. Still, her level of distress seemed out of proportion to the goof.

With a flick of the key, he popped the register drawer open, and fished out the money. "Here. She can—"

"Thank you." She snatched the money from his hand and darted for the front door. Her blonde hair flew behind her, stirring the aroma of her rose perfume in her wake. For a moment he simply breathed the perfumed air while vivid images of burying his face against the petal-soft satin of her skin taunted him. When she returned, a downcast expression and the pink flush of heat colored her face. Kevin's chest pulsed, wishing he had the power to erase the disappointment etched on her angelic face.

"She was already gone." She walked back to the checkout counter, breathing deeply from her dash outside and held the money out to him. "I'm sorry. I should've paid closer attention. God, I feel awful. What do I do now?" She covered her face with her one hand and sighed.

Whether rooted in conscientiousness toward her job, basic honesty or appreciation of the woman's hard earned dollars, her concern for her slip-up both surprised and impressed him.

He slid the bills from her hand and stuck them in an envelope. "Why don't you take your lunch break? Catch your breath, get something cold to drink. I'll cover the register for you."

She dropped her hand to her side and frowned at him. "But what about the money?"

"Did the lady tell you her name?"

"No." She pulled her lower lip between her teeth and nibbled its Kissable Pinkness.

Like a kick in the gut, Kevin absorbed the urge to do his own nipping on her lush mouth. With an effort, he drew his thoughts back to the matter at hand. "What about the girl? Tell me about her."

"Red hair. I think she called her Amber."

Kevin nodded. "Brenda Renfro. They're peach farmers with a little roadside stand at the edge of town. I’ll give her a call and let her know we have her change." He tapped the envelope. "When she comes back, just give her this. I'll put it in the office for safekeeping."

She still frowned. "It was a stupid mistake."

He appraised the slump of her shoulders and fisted hands. "Yeah, real stupid. And if medieval torture were legal, I'd have you drawn and quartered for it."

She lifted a startled gaze.

"Well, we can't let such heinous behavior go unpunished."

When she continued to stare at him with a puzzled knit in her brow, he stepped closer and nudged the corner of her mouth up with his thumb. Despite his warnings to himself to keep his distance, something in Claire's troubled frown called out to him, begged for his reassurance. "Smile, Claire. That was a joke. And as mistakes go, yours was tiny and easily corrected. Don't sweat it."

Why was she being so hard on herself about this?