The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club by Lexi Eddings

Author:Lexi Eddings [Eddings, Lexi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Take all the showers you want. It won’t clean up a person on the inside. Nothing made by human hands can do that.

—Jake Tyler, who’s kicking himself for aiding and abetting an old drunk’s shoplifting spree at Walmart.

Lacy followed Jake into the alley behind the buildings on the Green Apple side of the Square.

“We can’t carry a dirty dog through the grill,” Jake said as he led her to the back stoop, through the door, and up the stairs to his living quarters. “Don’t want the health department after me.”

There was little danger of that, even if he’d trooped a whole pack of dirty dogs through his restaurant. The Coldwater Cove health department consisted of the same overworked clerk who also served the paper-pushing needs of the county assessor and the treasurer. No one at the courthouse had time to make health inspections unless someone lodged a complaint.

Often and loudly.

Lacy believed she could tell a lot about a person by the way they organized their personal space. Or didn’t. Of course, messy and disorganized didn’t always mean something negative. Some of the most creative people she knew couldn’t pick up a sock if their life depended on it. So as she climbed the stairs, she was both anxious and curious about seeing Jake’s place.

Unlike her apartment, which was chopped up into small Victorian-style rooms, Jake’s was a loft with a high vaulted ceiling that stretched from the back staircase to the long bank of windows above the Green Apple Grill’s striped awning in front. An efficient kitchen was positioned in one rear corner with an island big enough to seat four as it separated the kitchen from the rest of the space. No stainless-steel appliances, no granite. The kitchen was functional and spotless, but not trendy.

Jake’s neatly made bed was in the opposite corner positioned under a skylight. There was a partial wall behind the headboard that probably hid a walk-in closet, which was accessed from one side. The only interior door in the place was located opposite the entrance.

Probably the bathroom. Based on her estimate of the square footage behind that door, it was smaller than her bathroom. But then, guys didn’t need much vanity space and tended not to go into raptures over claw-foot tubs.

In front of a leather sectional, a large-screen TV was the focal point of a wall filled with shelving. Along with books and a small set of hand weights, there were a number of trophies from Jacob’s days as an athlete. Pictures of his parents and siblings and their families, of him and his marine buddies in desert gear, were propped on the shelves. In a corner niche, there was a small safe.

“You don’t trust banks?” she asked, eyeing the safe.

“With my money, yes. With my Beretta, no.”

Lacy’s Bostonian friend Shannon had a horror of handguns, but Lacy wasn’t shocked to learn that Jake had one. Not only was he a marine, he was from Coldwater Cove. And in this town, gun control meant when you take aim at something, you hit it.

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