“How about I make a short pot of coffee for us to share before you head out?” Her amber eyes simmered with emotion and Jimmy realized she was still slightly freaked out and not quite ready to be left alone.
“Sure, some coffee sounds great.”
He followed her back down the hallway and into a kitchen that was pristine clean, cheerful and bright in sunshine-yellow and yet had the appearance that it was rarely used.
The only thing that sat on the countertop was a coffeemaker. The table was a small two-top that would make it difficult for her to be the entertaining type.
“Cook much?” he asked once the coffee had begun to drip into the glass carafe.
“Almost never.” She reached up into the cabinet to grab two mugs. “Cream and sugar?”
“Black is fine.”
“Marlene and Roxy got the cooking genes in the family. At any given time there’s usually more animal food in this house than people food.”
“So, what do you do for food?” Jimmy realized he was enjoying this time with her, learning a little bit more about her as a woman and not as the worried relative of a victim.
“There’s a lot of produce at the store. Sometimes I bring things home for a salad or occasionally Roxy will show up with a doggie bag of whatever the special of the day is at the Dollhouse. To be honest, food just isn’t that important to me. I eat to stay strong, but I don’t eat because I love any specific food.”
“Food is definitely high on my priority list,” Jimmy replied as she poured the coffee and joined him at the table. He didn’t mention that for much of his life he never knew if he’d get a meal or not. There had been far too many nights he’d gone to bed hungry.
“I suppose you’re a steak and potato man.”
“And pizza and burritos and pancakes... Just a food man, that’s me.”
She leaned back in the chair, looking relaxed for the first time since he’d arrived. “They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I’m hoping when my prince arrives he’s also a professional chef and can cook the meals.”
He grinned at her. “You have lots of ideas about this prince of yours.”
“I’ve spent most of my life forming his image in my head.” She took a sip of her coffee and then set the cup back down. “At first I thought I was fantasizing about my father, but as I grew older I realized it was the man I wanted to love me as a woman, not as a child.”
“You don’t know your father?”
“None of us does, although I’d say it’s obvious by how different Marlene and Roxy and I look from each other that our fathers were three different men. I doubt that our mother knows who our fathers are.”
“And we still haven’t found a trace of your mother.” Jimmy knew that the three Marcoli sisters had been dropped off at different times at their aunt’s house by their mother who was strung out on drugs and apparently incapable of raising her children.
He took a sip of his coffee. “At least you know who your mother is. When I was two weeks old I was found in a cardboard box in front of a Philly police station and I immediately went into the foster care system.”
Sheri’s eyes widened and he noticed for the first time the sinfully long length of her brown eyelashes. “And nobody ever found out who your parents were?” He shook his head and she continued, “Then how did you get the last name of Carmani?”
“The police station was located in a heavily populated Italian neighborhood and the cop who found me said I looked like an Italian. His name was Jim Carmani, so he named me Jimmy Carmani and that’s been my name since.”
She stared at him thoughtfully. “I’ve heard the foster care system can be brutal.”
He took another sip of coffee before answering. “I had some great experiences and I had some bad ones, but that was then and this is now. So how is business at the store?”
The last thing he wanted to do was journey back into his past where pain resided and faint memories of love lost stirred. He’d survived and ultimately made the right decisions that had led him to a job he loved in a town that finally felt like home.
As Sheri talked about the store, he enjoyed the emotions that played across her face. It was obvious she loved interacting with the people who visited there and shared a close relationship with the Amish from the settlement.
He liked looking at her and he’d discovered that the lilac scent came from her, not from the open window in the bedroom. When was the last time he’d enjoyed the scent of a woman? The pleasure of sitting and listening to a woman talk about what she liked?
Certainly the last time had been long before he’d come to Wolf Creek three years ago. Since coming to the small town he’d focused solely on work, knowing that as a twenty-eight-year-old detective he had a lot to prove to everyone, not just his co-workers, but the people of the small town, as well.
Now he felt solid in his position as the youngest detective of three and suddenly realized his desire to be more sociable, but he knew this was not the time and Sheri was not the woman.
As she poured him a second cup of coffee he told himself he was just doing her a favor. It was obvious she wasn’t yet ready for him to leave and if he looked deep within himself, prince or not, he definitely wasn’t ready to call it a night.
* * *
“So, you spent your whole childhood in Philly?” Sheri asked. She’d never noticed before that Jimmy’s eyes weren’t just a plain chocolate-brown but rather like caramel swirled chocolates that might have pulled her into places she’d never been if she allowed them.
“What brought you to Wolf Creek?” She sat back in her chair as if unconsciously needing some distance from him. He smelled like clean male and a woodsy cologne that appealed to her senses.
“The job. I saw an advertisement for a deputy for Wolf Creek and decided to apply. I was tired of the city and ready for a different experience.” He grinned at her and the warmth of his smile filled her stomach.
“I never dreamed that my different experiences would include checking out reports of wolves eating small children, hunting down a woman throwing knives at your sister and disarming an unarmed woman holding a shotgun on a clueless man chasing a pig.”
She felt the warmth that swept into her cheeks. “You aren’t going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Probably not,” he replied easily.
“So, you like it here?”
“I feel like I’ve finally found home. Eventually I’d like to build a house in the woods, maybe get a dog for company and spend my days crime-fighting and my nights relaxing in a big recliner.” He nodded, his black hair shining in the overhead light. “Yeah, I definitely like it here.”
She cupped her hands around her half-empty mug, knowing that the two cups of coffee would probably have her awake half the night. “It’s funny, I’ve never been anywhere else but here and Hershey, but I’ve never had any desire to go anywhere else. The minute I saw this cottage and the surrounding forest, I knew I was home.”
“And from the looks of your backyard you have a lot of creatures depending on you.”
“The store is my job, but this place and those creatures are my passion.” Her eyes sparkled brightly with that passion. “There’s nothing more peaceful than seeing a deer walk without fear across the backyard. The raccoons and squirrels can be as entertaining as any movie playing on television and the birds add the music to my life.”
“It sounds nice, but a little bit lonely.”
“It