All of Me - Leeanna Morgan (the snowy day read aloud .TXT) 📗

Logan sat outside Tess’ café for over half an hour. He knew she lived in the apartment above her café. He’d overheard her telling one of her friends about the color she’d painted her living room. He also knew she liked hot chocolate, raspberry muffins and going to the movies. What she didn’t like were reporters. Or more specifically, reporters with runaway mouths and limited amounts of common sense.

His sister and niece had gone back to Seattle. He felt like an idiot, making Tess out to be something she wasn’t. It had started out as fun, but soon fell into bad joke status.

He should have known better.

Sitting in his truck wasn’t going to change what he needed to do. It was getting late and he didn’t even know if she was home. He opened his door and walked across the sidewalk. He looked at the wall beside the front door and frowned. No bell.

He stepped off the sidewalk and walked toward his truck; staring at the windows above the café. He might have to find a stone, throw it at one of the glass panes and hope like crazy he didn’t break it. But before he did that, he’d try to find another entrance.

Angel Wings Café shared its Main Street location with a craft store, a florist, a bookstore and a women’s fashion boutique. Each of the buildings were old, maybe over a hundred years old. They were connected by a pale blue porch and matching hanging baskets full of flowers.

He walked past the fashion boutique and turned right down a narrow driveway. He guessed the owners of the stores used the area behind their businesses for parking, but right now no one was coming and going. There was enough room for about ten vehicles, a delivery truck if they were lucky. But parking space wasn’t why he was here.

Along the back wall of each building was a fire escape. Tess’ building had a permanent metal staircase going all the way from ground level to the second floor.

He took a deep breath and headed up the stairs.

Tess answered the door on his second knock. She had her cell phone against her ear, talking to someone on the phone. When she saw him, her cheeks turned red and she frowned.

Yeah, he thought. She wanted him standing at her back door about as much as he wanted to be there.

“I’ll call you back soon.” She disconnected the call and stared at him.

“I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have given my sister the impression you were my girlfriend.”

The frown on Tess’ face didn’t disappear and he couldn’t blame her. She probably had men dropping at her feet every day. At six-foot tall, she wasn’t the type of person you easily overlooked. And with a pretty face, shoulder length blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes, she was a knockout.

She started to say something, then thought better of it. “Apology accepted. I hope you told your sister the truth when you got to the airport.”

“I told her we’re friends.”

Tess’ frown deepened. “You know what she’s going to think, don’t you?”

“That we’re friends?” he said hopefully.

“Only if she doesn’t care one way or the other, and I didn’t get the feeling she was that type of person.”

Tess didn’t know how right she was. Jacqui cared about everyone in their family. Deeply. Sometimes his sister and mom were the only two people who kept him sane.

“If you get a call from your mom, I refuse to wear a tulle wedding dress. It makes my hips look as wide as a bus.”

He looked down at Tess’ hips. He could imagine a lot of things her hips could look like, but a bus didn’t come close. Then his brain caught up with his hormones. “Wedding?”

Tess crossed her arms in front of her chest. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Have you had a serious girlfriend in the last three years?”

He shook his head and tried to figure out where she was going. “I’ve been busy working. But if you think mom’s desperate for me to get married, you’re wrong.”

“You could be right. But don’t be surprised if you get a call from her tonight.”

His mom would call tonight, anyway. But she wouldn’t leap on what his sister might or might not say. He wasn’t ready to share his life with anyone and his mom knew that better than most.

He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a newspaper clipping. “This was sitting with the muffins you dropped off. Has it got anything to do with why you came to see me?”

Tess looked at the clipping and nodded. “I wanted to ask you some questions about the couple in the article. Do you want to come inside?”

He followed Tess into her apartment. It was bigger than he’d imagined it would be. With a high ceiling and peach colored walls, it made the most of the natural light coming in the windows. He sat on a sofa and looked at the kitchen. It was a throwback to the nineteen fifties.

If the red Formica counter and old-fashioned fridge didn’t make him think he’d stepped back in time, the posters would have done it. A framed collection of vintage ice cream posters hung on the wall behind the kitchen.

Tess must have noticed his interest.

“My grandparents owned this building. They had an ice cream parlor here for twenty years.” She sat down opposite him. “Do you want a drink? I could make you a cup of coffee.”

He shook his head. “I’m okay.”

Tess wiped her hands down the legs of her jeans. “Annie read the Bozeman Chronicle today. She saw the article you wrote about the young couple who had all of their belongings stolen.”

Logan had interviewed them last week. It was the kind of story his editor called a human interest story. But there was nothing interesting about the empty house they’d come home to. They hadn’t had much to start with and this had been another blow they didn’t need.

“The police still haven’t caught the thieves,” he said.

“They’re getting married in two weeks’ time. We thought we could help.”

“We?”

“Annie, Molly, Sally, and me. We’ve got lots of bridesmaids’ dresses between us. We could give the bride four dresses for her wedding.”

He didn’t know what to