Sarsaparilla Showdown (River's End Ranch Book 14) Read online

Once she was sitting with him, Shawn struggled for something to say. “So…you run a coffee shop, huh?”

  He managed not to wince. Way to go, Corporal Obvious.

  But she just smiled, and took another sip of her drink. “I own it, actually. The Westons wanted a soda shop here, but I convinced them that coffee would be just as profitable, so we added that to the menu. And ice cream, of course.”

  “Ice cream?” He settled back in the chair and hid a wince when his scars tightened as they pressed against the wood. “I saw that on the menu, but haven’t seen anyone order it.”

  “That’s because it’s winter.”

  She smiled, and his stomach tightened again. She was pretty all the time—her brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, and that cheesy apron just barely covering all of her nicely rounded bits—but when she smiled? She was somewhere between an imp and an angel.

  “In the summer, this place makes as much from my ice cream as it does from coffee.”

  “Your ice cream?” He was trying to focus on her words, and not the way her lips moved when she blew on her drink.

  “My own recipe,” she said proudly. “It’s kind of a passion of mine.” And then she laughed and waved her hand at herself. “I probably shouldn’t sample so much of my wares, I know, but it’s worth it. Ice cream is my favorite food and I’m pretty serious about it. I research recipes, and try new combinations, all the time.”

  His brows rose. “Really? I didn’t realize the world of ice cream was so…”

  “Involved?” She smiled when he nodded. “That’s okay. Not many people do. But it makes me happy, and I figure that’s what matters.”

  “I figure you’re right.” He liked that she knew what she liked, unapologetically. “I’d like to try some of your ice cream someday.” He’d like to try a lot more, frankly, but he wasn’t about to mention that out loud. “If it’s half as good as your coffee, it must be perfect.”

  A pink tinge colored her cheeks, and he saw her fingers tighten around the mug. “Thanks. I’ll have to take your word for it, though. I don’t… um, I don’t actually drink coffee.” Her smile was bashful. “This is hot chocolate.”

  An ice cream connoisseur and a barista who didn’t drink coffee? Sadie Mayfield was just more and more intriguing, wasn’t she? “Well, whoever’s making it is doing a great job.”

  “Thanks. I don’t drink it, but I make it. It’s my dad’s recipe.” She gulped her hot chocolate, and when she pulled the mug away, there was just a bit of chocolate on her upper lip. Shawn watched as her tongue flicked out to lick it up, and suddenly got real tight in the chest.

  “I follow it exactly, and it’s made my shop popular.”

  He forced his attention back to the conversation. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “You’re the only coffee shop in town, aren’t you?”

  “Yep. And we can do all of the fancy brews too, although most people just prefer it plain. Sugar and milk, and sometimes flavorings…but we can do the frothy froufrou stuff too, if they want.”

  Shawn had never liked froufrou coffee, although Tammi had. He didn’t want to think about his ex though, so he hurried to change the subject.

  “And you’ve got a great ambiance here too.” He gestured to the shop’s decorations, which were some of the neatest he’d seen. The whole place had been set up like a real old-west saloon. The counter where the coffee was made—and presumably where the ice cream was stored—looked just like a bar out of an old movie, complete with a large mirror behind it. The tables were mismatched, a combination of artfully scarred wood and green baize-covered “poker” tables, and a large chandelier hung from the center of the room. There was even a fake balcony that circled the upper walls with doors painted on, and a real Estey upright piano along the front wall.

  Over all, the shop reminded him of a set he’d designed in a college class years ago for Crazy For You. “This place looks like it belongs on a movie set.”

  “I’m pretty proud of it.” She grinned. “Although the Westons did most of the design.”

  He asked her a few more questions about her shop and was impressed with the way she answered. Actually, he was more impressed with the way she could keep most of her attention on him, while still keeping an eye on her customers and how Julia was handling everyone. Actually, he was most impressed by the way the afternoon light made the skin at the base of her throat look so darn kissable, but he tried to tamp down that realization.

  It almost worked, too.

  She’d just started to answer his question about the support beams over the bar when his phone alarm went off, and her lips snapped shut.

  Fumbling for his pocket, Shawn muttered,“Oh, shoot.” Violet! He’d have to hurry to get down to the bus stop in time. He downed the rest of his coffee and scrambled to get his papers together, barely recognizing she’d gathered both mugs and stood.

  As he shrugged into his coat, he met her eyes across the table. She was standing awkwardly, like she wasn’t sure if she should just leave, or what.

  “Do you…do you need any help?” she asked.

  “No.” He smiled sheepishly to cover the dismissal. “I just lost track of time.” He stopped in the process of zipping up the old coat and swallowed. “I was too busy enjoying the conversation.”

  At his words, her face lit up in another smile, and it made him feel…nice. Like maybe he wasn’t as bad at talking to women as he’d always assumed. Like he’d made her feel good somehow. Like he wasn’t a failure.

  “Well, goodbye, Shawn.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded briskly and pulled on his gloves. “I’ll see you. I mean…” He was in here on the days that he didn’t have after-school lessons, and those were also the afternoons he could meet Violet’s bus. “Next Tuesday.”

  “Next Tuesday.” She nodded and offered him a tentative smile. “I’ll see you.”

  And later, when he stood alone at his daughter’s bus stop and waited for the tell-tale squeal of brakes in the distance, he shoved his hands deep in his pockets and bounced a little to stay warm. Although honestly, the memory of Sadie’s smile did more to warm him than anything.

  She made him warm all over, and it had been a long time since he’d felt that way about a woman. Since before Tammi, and his deployment. Since before that stupid mistake that had cost good men their lives. Since before he’d realized what a failure he was.

  When Sadie smiled at him, he didn’t feel like as much of a failure. Which just proved how little she knew him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Ugh. Apples again, Daddy?”

  Shawn couldn’t help but grin at the irritation in Violet’s voice, but he shifted so that she wouldn’t be able to see it. “Sorry, Sprout. They’re still the cheapest fruit at the store. Oranges will be up in a month or so, and you’ll get sick of those soon enough.” He finished chopping her apples and tossed them in a plastic container for her lunchbox.

  “Yeah, but when you cut them up like that they get all brown by lunch.”

  Shawn finished sliding the wrapped PB&J sandwich into her cartoon-covered lunchbox, and zipped it closed. “You told me that you couldn’t eat a regular apple with your front teeth missing, so now I chop them for you. You’re welcome.”

  The six-year-old snorted, and Shawn smiled as he turned to face his daughter, propping his hip against the tiny kitchen’s only counter.

  “But I don’t want to eat the yucky apples, Daddy.” Violet was concentrating on her oatmeal at the dinette, already dressed in her boots and coat, her gloves and hat sitting beside her. “And sometimes the other girls say stuff about them… Like, mean stuff about my lunch and how I eat the same thing every day.”

  Shawn’s heart clenched, hearing that. He forced his muscles to loosen, reminding himself that there was absolutely nothing he could do about the way mean kids treated his baby girl. It was his fault though…just like everything else that was wrong in their lives.

  He and Violet had spent two years traveling around Idaho. When she’d starte
d school last year, he’d made the decision to stay in one place for a full semester, before moving on to someplace else where people wanted to pay for elementary piano lessons for their kids. That sort of income was only reliable for a few months before kids’ interest waned, so he’d learned to move on. Violet had been to three separate schools in three semesters, and it was no wonder that she hadn’t made any real friends.

  She hadn’t made any effort to, because she knew that they’d be leaving soon anyway.

  But all that had changed when Wade Weston had offered Shawn the position at River’s End Ranch. It was temporary and contingent on him being able to build the summer camps into a success by next June, but if Shawn could…well then, maybe he and Violet could stay in one place longer than a few months.

  He had until her Christmas break to make the decision, and if he could somehow win the Chamber of Commerce contest, and leverage that publicity into more enrollments for the camps, then maybe he and Violet could stick around.

  For now though, he had to do what he could to appease a heart-sick little girl. The good Lord knew that he wasn’t very good at much, but he could do his best to make Violet feel better. “I’m sorry, Sprout.” He ran his hand over his face as he sighed. “I didn’t realize they were browning even in the container.”

  When she shrugged and smiled a little, he had to swallow down his reaction. She was trying to make him feel better. It was gut-wrenching, to know that a six-year-old could pick up on his tension, and was trying to comfort him, when he should be comforting her.

  He couldn’t do a lot about their situation, but he could make her feel better.

  “Next time I go to the store, I’ll pick up some lemon juice, okay?”

  Her cute little nose wrinkled. “Yuck. What’s that going to do?”

  “It’ll keep the slices from browning if I sprinkle it on them. Now finish your oatmeal so we’re not late for the bus.”

  She took a big bite. “How do you know, Daddy?” she asked around the mouthful. “Won’t that make them taste bad?”

  “Nope.” He scooped up her lunch box and crossed to the hook by the door where she hung her book bag each evening, and slipped it inside. “The citrus acid is sort of a preservative.”

  Violet scooped the last of her oatmeal up. “But how do you know?” she asked, before shoving the spoonful into her mouth and scooting over to put the bowl in the tiny sink.

  Shawn rolled his eyes as he pulled on his old coat, but it was just to keep himself from smiling. “Because I’m the dad, Sprout. I’m a lot older than you, and I know stuff about food and science and stuff.”

  “And music too.” She nodded solemnly from her spot by the dinette where she was slipping on her gloves. “And army stuff.”

  He looked up and met her eyes. She had her mother’s brown hair, currently hanging in a long braid over one shoulder, but the green eyes that stared back at him were all his. Sometimes, back in the darkness during rehab when he wasn’t sure if Tammi had lied to him or not about their baby girl, he would cling to the knowledge that he’d passed on his eye color. Violet was his.

  “Yeah, Sprout.” He swallowed. “I guess I know all sorts of things.”

  “You’re very smart.”

  She was doing it again; trying to make him feel better when that was his job as a parent. “Well,” he said, finishing up the last of his buttons and pulling out his gloves. “I must get that from you.”

  As he’d hoped, her face broke into a grin that showed off her missing front teeth and she snorted. “We’re going to be late,” she said, just as the alarm on his phone began to beep.

  “Right on time,” he corrected, and handed her the book bag. “Got everything?”

  “Yep.” They braced themselves against the cold when he opened the RV’s door, but Violet hopped down without any help from him. Shawn remembered when he had to lift her in and out of their home. “Mrs. Shulman told me if I brought back both books today, I could get two more.”

  “Two?” Shawn teased as he took her small hand in his. “You can read two a night now?”

  “Well, these are just baby books, so I can read them fast.”

  Violet called anything without chapters a ‘baby book’, so Shawn kept his expression serious. “What, you’ve read all of the library’s chapter books already?”

  “No, not all of them, but Mrs. Shulman says it’s better not to rush through them, or I’ll have to start re-reading things by the end of the year.”

  Violet knew as well as he did that she might not still be attending Riston Elementary at the end of the school year, but she was brave about it. And Shawn was determined to move Heaven and Earth to make sure she had the chance to read all of the books in the school library.

  Somehow.

  He was saved from having to come up with a response when they stepped out of the RV Park and Violet started waving at the quaint little cottage that sat by itself. The garden was overrun with statues of gnomes, and there was always a rabbit—or three—peering out one of the front windows.

  “Did you see Mrs. Hardy?” he asked.

  Jaclyn Hardy was the quirky old lady who lived there, and had taken a liking to Violet as soon as they’d moved in. Now, Violet visited her three times a week after school, when Shawn was busy with lessons.

  “No,” Violet answered, still waving enthusiastically. “But that doesn’t mean she isn’t there. She told me that sometimes she watches through the curtains.” Sure enough, Shawn saw one of the curtains—not the one in the rabbit window—twitch, and he nodded his greetings, just in case.

  Violet was still waving enthusiastically. “Vivian says that the fairies can tell Mrs. Hardy what I’m doing when I’m in her house, even if she can’t see me.”

  “Vivian?”

  “No, if Mrs. Hardy can’t see me, I mean.”

  “Well, I meant who’s Vivian?”

  They were almost past Jaclyn’s house now, so Violet gave one last wave and dropped her hand with a relieved sigh. “My new friend…kinda. I met her at Mrs. Hardy’s yesterday.”

  “Oh yeah?” She hadn’t mentioned anything to him about a new friend, but the idea lightened Shawn’s heart a little.

  “Yeah. Her mom is…um.” Violet bit her lip while she thought. “Oh, Ms. Maddie! She works at the spa, and she had a last-minute appointment yesterday, so she—Vivian, I mean—came over to stay with Mrs. Hardy for a little while.”

  “Hmm.” Shawn thought about their conversation that morning, about how some of the kids teased Violet. “And she’s nice?”

  “She said I could sit next to her on the bus today if I wanted. She’s a second-grader. And she has lots and lots of friends, and said she’d introduce me to some of them.”

  “She sounds awesome.” He sent a little prayer of thanks heavenward for a sweet older kid who‘d shown his baby girl some kindness.

  “Yep. And Vivian said that she knows all about Mrs. Hardy’s fairies, since her mom’s worked here longer than us, and that they—the fairies, I mean—will know if I’m polite and wave when I pass by her house—Mrs. Hardy’s house, I mean—and will tell her. Mrs. Hardy, I mean.” Violet paused to take in a deep breath. “So I figure that I’d better wave each time, if I want to keep eating her snickerdoodles.”

  Fairies indeed. Shawn hid his smile and nodded solemnly. “Smart thinking, Sprout. Better not tick any fairies off.”

  “Daddy.” He could practically hear her rolling her eyes. Sometimes he thought that she was six-going-on-fourteen. “There’s no such thing as fairies, really. Mrs. Hardy’s just saying that to make sure I’m polite all the time.”

  As they reached the main road and turned towards the ranch entrance where the bus would stop to pick her up, Shawn ruffled his daughter’s knit cap, causing it to move to one side. She squealed, and snatched at her hat, and he laughed. “You’re pretty smart, Violet, you know that?”

  “I know, Daddy.” She skipped ahead then turned back to stick her tongue out at him. “I read a lot, you
know.”

  He caught up to her, and swung his arm around her shoulders, and they walked the last several hundred yards in silence. There’d be a time, maybe soon, when she’d understand that her father couldn’t hold down a steady job, and could barely keep their RV heated. But for now, his precious baby almost-seven-year-old still thought of him as her hero, and he was selfish enough to take what he could get.

  When they got to the bus stop, Violet snuggled up beside him, and Shawn wrapped both arms around her to keep her warm. His first lesson wasn’t until after lunch today, so he was planning on heading back home to do the breakfast dishes before the oatmeal congealed. Then, he’d get changed and go for a run. After that he’d clean up in the park showers—definitely worth it to save hot water in the RV—and then he’d take his notes and head back to the Old West Town to mail his application for the Chamber of Commerce contest.

  His throat went dry at the thought of walking past Sadie’s shop. He didn’t have any excuse to go inside and see her, not if he wasn’t planning on spending the afternoon there working on his plans for the summer camp. And he couldn’t afford to waste even the two bucks a cup of coffee would cost, just to see her.

  But he had to admit that seeing her would be nice. Maybe she’d smile at him again, and he’d feel like a hero again.

  When the bus came barreling down the county road and braked in front of the ranch, Shawn squeezed his daughter extra-tight and was glad to feel her little arms hugging him in return. She might not always want to hug him in front of her new friends like Vivian, but for now, it was just the two of them against the world.

  And that’s how he liked it.

  The morning was particularly busy, but Sadie was always thrilled to have that problem. Dottie was busy with the tables, which, in theory, gave Sadie the freedom to work in the back room or tinker with recipes. But she’d let Julia take a break and was serving customers in between cleaning the display freezer. At this rate, the freezer was never going to get cleaned.

  “Have a good day!” She waved after Alicia from the General Store, who’d come in to buy sodas for herself and her boss. “Tell Heidi not to make you wear that get-up every day!”