“Hey, if you want something, you’d better hurry.” The clerk stood in the mini-mart’s open door a few yards away. He shouted, “Whole place shuts down in twenty minutes!”
“Café already looks closed.” Jax gave a nod and started toward the mini-mart.
“Yeah?” The lanky young clerk frowned, then shrugged it off. “Maybe Miz Shelby has something to do.”
“Miz Shelby?” Jax chuckled softly, instantly picturing a sassy red-haired Southern belle in a pink waitress uniform and white apron, smacking gum and pouring out advice about life as freely as she did rich black coffee while she flirted with her transient clientele. “Maybe Miz Shelby met a handsome stranger and—”
“Hey! Don’t you say stuff like that about Miz Shelby! She taught Sunday school to almost every kid in Sunnyside at some time or another, and for your information, she don’t even know any strangers.”
Jax fought the urge to argue that not knowing someone was what made them a stranger. “Sorry, kid. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sure Miz Shelby is a fine lady.”
In his imagination, the unseen Miz Shelby’s hair was now white, her face lined and her life full but still missing something.
“You bet she is. Even if she wasn’t, ain’t been no one around to run off with, anyways.” The young man with the name tag reading Tyler on his blue-and-white-striped shirt leaned back against the open door and checked his phone again. “You showing up and a jerk who tried to steal some gas are the only action I’ve seen around all night.”
Not that the kid could see much of anything beyond the small screen in his hand, Jax thought. Then his mind went to the speeding SUV. Like any good cop, he wondered if there was a connection, if something more was going on.
Before he could ask the kid about the incident, the sound of a cat mewing caught his attention. Maybe not a mew—definitely the cry of a small animal, though, probably rooting for food out there in the lonely night.
“Anyways,” the kid said, heading back inside, “I don’t know what’s up with Miz Shelby, but I’m locking the doors at eleven.”
Jax nodded. No gas stolen. Not his jurisdiction—or his business. He decided to let it go and followed the kid inside.
The sound demanded his attention again. Close to the café, maybe on the wide, rough-hewn wooden deck? Jax turned to pinpoint it and caught a movement briefly blocking the dim light from inside the café. Someone was moving around inside.
A screech of a wooden table leg on concrete. The clank of metal, followed by a crash of dishes. A shuffling sound. Then a soft whimper of that small animal in the darkness. Was something up in the café, which had closed uncharacteristically early? Was there an injured animal nearby that needed help?
The sound was none of his business, either, but he wouldn’t be able to walk away not knowing if there was something he should have done and didn’t. The boards of the café steps creaked under Jax’s boots. He wished he had a flashlight. A shape filled the glass window in the café door. He started to call out for whoever had closed the café to stay put until he could check things out, but the subtle mewing drew his attention again.
He glanced down to find a square plastic laundry basket covered with small blue-and-white blankets. Something moved slightly without revealing anything beneath the blankets. He thought of the sound and drew a quick conclusion. Someone, probably knowing good ol’ lonely, grandmotherly type Miz Shelby worked the late shift at the Crosspoint, had left a basket of kittens on the doorstep.
The doorknob of the café rattled, and Jax bent down to snag the basket. “Hold it, there’s a—”
The sickening thwock of the door whacking his head rang out in the night. The door had knocked his hat clean off, but thanks to a gentle nudge from him, the basket had been spared.
“Ow.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a split second. When he straightened up and opened them again, he found himself gazing into the biggest, bluest, most startled eyes he’d ever seen. Eyes that were wet with tears.
“What hap... Why...?” The young woman staggered back a step, clutching a folded piece of paper and an overstuffed backpack covered with multicolored embroidered flowers.
She was just a little bit of a thing. The brief glimpse of her outline through the window had told him that much. It hadn’t told him that she was maybe in her late twenties. Or that when he looked into her face, his heart would race, just a little.
“Don’t tell me. You’re Miz—”
“I’m sorry...I was just... We’re closed.” Still standing in the threshold, with the main door open slightly behind her and the screen door open just a sliver in front of her, she set the colorfully decorated backpack down. She glanced around behind her, then set her jaw and reached inside to flip on an outside light. “I know the sign says our hours go later, but tonight we’re closed. Goodbye.”
Her tone had started out steady, had faded and then had ended firmly again.
He bent slowly to snatch up his hat. His banged-up temple began to throb. “I could see that you were closed. That’s why I came over here.”
“You came here because you saw that we were closed?” She stiffened, then leaned out enough to steal a peek outside, her gaze lingering on the lights of the store, where Tyler was texting away, paying them no notice.
That afforded Jax a moment to take in the sight of her. And what a sight. Her hair was neither blond nor brown, with streaks that beauticians might work hours to try to produce but only time in the sun could create.
When she caught him studying her, she blushed from the quivering tip of her chin to the freckled bridge of her nose. Her lips trembled. He thought for a moment she’d burst out crying, as the telltale tears proved she had been doing. She was obviously in a highly emotional state. Scared, maybe. Vulnerable, definitely.
He put one hand out to try to soothe her. He wasn’t sure what he would say, but he would speak in a soft, reassuring tone. He’d help her because...well, that’s what Jax did. He helped. Whenever and wherever he could. “It’s all right. I just—”
“Didn’t you hear me? We’re closed, cowboy.” Her posture relayed a confidence her voice did not. “Go.”
She blinked a few times, fast, but tears did not well up in her eyes. In fact, Jax got the feeling that if she could have made it happen, fire would have shot from them. And that fire would singe his hide considerably.
That thought made him grin. “Actually, I’m not a cowboy so much as I’m here to—”
“I don’t care who you are or what you want. You need to leave here and be whoever you are elsewhere.” She gripped the edge of the door as if it were the railing on a sinking ship.
The sight of her small hand white-knuckled against the rough wood stirred something protective in his gut, even as her insistence that he leave tweaked his suspicions about what was going on here. Was there a message in her behavior? Was his instant attraction to the lady throwing off his finely honed ability to sense danger and motivation?
“I’m Jax.” The name that no one had called him for so long came out quickly and naturally in her presence. “That is, you can call me Jax.”
“Jax?” Her lips formed the name slowly. She shook her head, as if she didn’t understand why he was still standing there, whatever he asked to be called.
“That is, I’m Jackson Stroud.” He steadied the small basket at his feet, then stood tall, settled his hat on his head, lowered his chin slightly and added with what he hoped was a disarming smile, “Kitten rescuer.”
“Kitten...?” She glanced downward at the basket, which she might have knocked over with the door if she hadn’t beaned Jax instead. Yet she didn’t seem the least bit concerned about