In Over Her Head: An Anchor Island Novel by Terri Osburn (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗

arrived on his threshold, six-pack in hand, at exactly ten o’clock. She wore leggings, an oversized hoodie, and Vans—all black. Her platinum hair was in a short ponytail at the base of her skull and her nose was badly sunburned.

“Tough day?” he asked, taking the beer and stepping aside for her to enter.

“I didn’t like you very much this morning,” she said in reply. “That place is way scarier than I imagined.”

“You’re here so I guess you aren’t holding a grudge.” He walked past her, adding, “The food will be ready in a few minutes. Go ahead and have a seat at the table.” She did so, settling gently into the chair. “Are you okay?” he asked, fearing she’d really hurt herself.

“My body aches in places I didn’t know I had.” She slowly relaxed. “I thought I was in good shape, but I was wrong.”

“Have you taken anything for the pain?”

“I don’t have anything on hand and didn’t make it to the store before it closed.”

Nick opened a cabinet next to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of pain pills. Popping the cap on his way to the table, he said, “Here.” She held her palm up, revealing nasty blisters. “Did you wear gloves?”

“Obviously not, but Jackson’s hands look worse than mine.”

Real worry set in. “Let me dish up this chicken, and then I want to hear the whole story.”

Two minutes later, the plates were on the table, along with silverware, napkins, and two beers.

“I know I brought the beer, but if I have that, you’re going to have to scrape me off the floor. Can I have a soda?”

“Sure.” Nick retrieved the drink and returned to his seat.

Lauren examined the food with her fork. “Is this stuffed chicken Valentino?”

“Yes, ma’am. So what happened today?”

She struggled to cut her chicken with the sore fingers and Nick took pity on her. Reaching across the table, he cut the food for her.

In a moment of obvious weakness, she said, “That might be the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.” Sliding the first bite between her lips, she chewed twice and stopped. “Holy crap. Dis is awesome,” she said around the food.

“I’m glad you like it. Now back to today.” The suspense was killing him. “Did you leave there a cohesive team or are you about to be running that kitchen by yourself?”

She loaded up her fork with another bite. “This is where you get to say I told you so. It absolutely worked. I mean, we were barely tolerating each other for the first hour, but they made us do this hill thing. Mona and I were at the top and everyone else was blindfolded. We had to talk them up the hill past all of these buried obstacles.”

“The tether test,” he replied.

“You’ve done it?” Lauren asked, stopping with the fork halfway to her mouth. “Dude. That shit was scary. Jackson went last and he almost took both of us over the side, but Mona grabbed me and everyone else jumped on to create some human lifeline. I still can’t believe we didn’t end up in the water.”

He’d never seen her so animated. “I’ve only ever watched others do it, but it sounds like you guys figured it out.” Pointing out the obvious, he said, “So you learned to trust them.”

Blue eyes went wide. “I didn’t say that.”

The woman had entirely missed the point. “You just said the team formed a lifeline. What happened after they did that?”

“I scooted down the hill until Jackson could reach my hand, and then we pulled him up.”

“So you trusted them to keep you safe while you gave someone else a reason to trust you.”

The old cliché of a light bulb going off over someone’s head came to life in that moment. Every thought rolled across her face, from denial to acceptance and about three steps in between.

“I trusted them,” she mumbled, speaking more to herself than to him.

Nick held his tongue while she processed the revelation. He’d had one of his own earlier in the day and understood how off-balance she must have felt. Though he also wondered why she’d been so distrusting in the first place. He knew his own reasons for his faulty thinking, but in Lauren’s case, the causes were likely more traumatic. No one was born refusing to trust people.

“Are you glad you went then?”

“I am.”

“You’re from Boston, right?” He knew the answer but wanted to get her talking again.

“Worcester, technically, but the Boston area.”

Reaching for his beer, he asked, “What made you want to be a chef?”

Lauren moved a piece of chicken around on her plate. “Mom had to work a lot, so I had to take care of Knox. That’s my younger brother,” she added. “He’s in the Army now. At some point I got tired of chicken nuggets and mac and cheese so when a neighbor tossed some cookbooks out by the dumpster, I swiped them.”

“How old were you?”

“Nine, maybe. That’s when I made my first full meal, which came out of a box, but considering I’d had to stand on a stool just to reach the faucet, I felt pretty accomplished.”

Nick tried to imagine what it would have been like to be responsible for Mia at such a young age and couldn’t even picture how that would have gone. Though Dad had put him in the kitchen pretty early, he’d not been cooking anything solo before fourteen or fifteen years old, and even then not without adult supervision.

“Where was your dad?”

She put her fork down. “I never knew my dad. Neither did Knox. They weren’t the same guy.” Messing with the string on her hoodie, she said, “How did you end up on Anchor Island?”

Accepting the change of subject, he said, “Mia and I moved here to take care of Nota. She visited for a vacation years ago and fell in love with the place. Within six months she’d made it her home, but then a couple years ago she fell and broke her hip.