The Stranger In Room 205 (Hot Off The Press Book 1) Read online

  By the time she returned after locking up the dog, Sam had fetched some tools and several extra boards that had been stacked in one corner of the garage. She noticed that he wielded the hammer rather awkwardly, reinforcing her suspicions about his lack of experience as a handyman, but he repaired the fence more quickly than she could have done it. The hammer slipped only once, landing squarely on his thumb and causing him to mutter a curse for which he immediately apologized.

  “Is your thumb okay?” she asked, stifling a smile.

  “Yeah. If it’s stupid enough to get under a hammer, it deserves to be flattened,” he quipped with a crooked grin.

  Since she already knew he didn’t respond well to direct questions about his past, she tried to slip one past him disguised as an offhand comment. “I bet you were a business major in college.”

  His hands stilled for only a moment and then he returned to his task. “Why do you say that?”

  “Just a guess. Am I right?”

  “What makes you think I even went to college?”

  “It’s obvious that you’re well educated. Did you go to a university in Texas?”

  “I’ve taken a few classes here and there. Nothing particularly useful—like fence mending. I could use a class in that right now,” he commented ruefully, studying his purpling thumb.

  The guy was a master of answering questions without actually saying anything. Lindsey had been quite indignant when she’d told Serena about Sam’s refusal to even consider an interview for the newspaper. “You really don’t like to talk about yourself, do you?”

  Examining the fence for more problem areas, Sam shrugged without meeting her eyes. “Not much to talk about.”

  She tagged after him as he moved away. “Somehow I find that hard to believe. Someone who’s traveled as much as you have must have some interesting stories to tell.”

  “Not really.” He pulled a weed from between two fence boards and tossed it over to the other side.

  “Have you ever been married?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “No.”

  He tested a loose board, then pulled a nail from the pocket of his jeans. “Why not?”

  “I just haven’t met anyone who—wait a minute, I was asking you questions.”

  “I thought I’d answered them all.”

  “Hardly. Don’t you have any long-term goals? Any plans for your future?”

  “At the moment, my goal is to finish repairing this fence.”

  “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

  He straightened away from the fence. “That’s the last loose board I could find. I don’t think Walter will be getting out again any time soon.”

  “I’m thinking of finding Walter another home. I really don’t have time to give him the attention he needs, and neither does Mother. He was Kara’s dog, but she dumped him on us when she ran off with Pierce.”

  “He’s a nice dog. Doesn’t seem like much trouble, except for his curiosity to explore—for which I’m grateful, by the way. If it hadn’t been for Walter, who knows how long I’d have lain in that ditch?”

  “Okay, he’s a great dog. You want him?”

  Sam chuckled. “I think I’d better pass. I don’t think my life would suit Walter.”

  “Living on the road, you mean.”

  He only shrugged again.

  Serena was right on his heels as he carried the tools to the garage. “You’re already thinking about moving on?”

  “You’re the one who said I should be making plans for the future.”

  That wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind. She tried to convince herself that she was reluctant to picture Sam walking away because she hated to see anyone with so much potential waste his life. It certainly wasn’t for her sake. Like Walter, Sam tended to clutter up her comfortably predictable routines. She didn’t have time for either of them.

  “So, what do you do for fun on a Saturday night in Edstown?” Sam asked, wiping his hands on his jeans.

  “Drive to a bigger town,” she answered dryly. “Little Rock’s only an hour and a half away. Most folks go there for excitement.”

  “There’s nothing at all to do here?”

  She deliberated. “There’s usually a Little League game at the ballpark. A group of guys gather at the pizza parlor to watch wrestling on the big-screen TV there. My mother and some of her friends get together every Saturday evening to play a dominoes game they call chicken scratch. Some teenagers park down by the lake to sneak beers and make out until Dan goes by to break it up and send them home.”

  “Do you have any plans for this evening?”

  “Actually, I have some paperwork to tackle.”

  “That’s no fun. Why don’t you and I find something to do together? What’ll it be, wrestling at the pizza parlor or parking at the lake?”

  His cheerfully irreverent question made her eyebrows rise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “If it’s up to me, I’d choose the latter, of course,” he added. “Except for the part about Dan Meadows sending us home. He already considers me trouble waiting to happen.”

  The image of her and Sam making out in a car like a couple of hormone-flooded teenagers should have been ridiculous. Instead, it ignited a heat inside her that was reflected in the warmth on her cheeks. “Don’t be silly.”

  “Surely we can come up with something more interesting than you doing paperwork and me watching TV.”

  Even though she knew he was teasing her—at least she thought he was—Serena suddenly gave in to a rare, mischievous impulse. “As a matter of fact, we can. Meet me at my car at seven. And bring an appetite.”

  His smile turned quizzical. “That sounds interesting.”

  “Don’t be late,” she added lightly, even as a part of her wondered what on earth she was doing.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sam was chuckling when they separated. Serena was wondering if she had finally lost her mind.

  As they’d agreed, Sam was waiting by Serena’s car at seven o’clock. His limited wardrobe didn’t provide many options, but he wore freshly washed jeans with his denim shirt. He assumed they weren’t going anywhere fancy, since Serena knew exactly what was in his closet.

  He had his answer when she joined him wearing jeans and a thin red peasant-style blouse. Obviously a casual evening was in store for them. Though he was mildly curious, he didn’t really care what she had planned. The prospect of spending the evening with her was intriguing enough in itself.

  Not that he was expecting anything other than a couple of hours of companionship and diversion, he assured himself. No matter how attractive he found this woman—and she did look fine in her jeans—she was still off-limits to him. At least until he knew for sure there was no significant barrier between them.

  “So where are we going?” he asked, more to distract himself than because he really cared.

  “I’ve decided to surprise you,” she said as she opened the driver’s door of her car.

  He couldn’t resist the impulse to flash her a wolfish grin when he slid into the passenger’s seat. “Sounds promising.”

  Fastening her seat belt, she sighed. “Are you going to spend the entire evening talking in innuendos?”

  He chuckled. “That would be tiresome of me, wouldn’t it?”

  “It certainly would.”

  “Then I’ll try to confine myself to only an occasional innuendo.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” she said and started the car.

  Amused by her wry tone, he snapped his safety belt into place and sprawled back in the seat, content to let her take him where she wanted.

  She drove through the now familiar downtown section and beneath an overpass into a part of town Sam hadn’t seen before. The houses here weren’t as nice as the ones in Serena’s neighborhood, and the yards were small and haphazardly landscaped. She drove past a used-car lot filled with vehicles only one step above the junkyard, and then a boarded-up former convenience store. A
fter bumping over tracks that hadn’t seen a train in years, she turned into a parking lot almost filled with pickups, sport utility vehicles and aging sedans. A neon sign above the door of the rough-sided building said Gaylord’s.

  Tilting his head, Sam studied the place. “A honky-tonk?”

  Serena shrugged. “Honky-tonk. Dive. Dump. Call it whatever you want, the food’s good.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought this was your sort of place.”

  “I’ve grown rather fond of it because I have to keep coming here to find Marvin—the managing editor of the paper. If my lecture to him paid off the other day, I guess I’ll have to find another excuse to pop in every so often.”

  “Looks like I’m your excuse tonight.”

  “You’ll do. Let’s go.”

  Amused again by her brusque tone, he reached for the door handle. “Most flattering offer I’ve had in days.”

  The inside of Gaylord’s looked very much the way Sam had expected, judging from the outside. Dim lights, crowded-together tables, a long bar at one end where solitary drinkers hunched over mugs and shot glasses. Zydeco music played from high-mounted speakers, and the decorations, such as they were, seemed meant to resemble Mardi Gras.

  He’d been in places like this before, he realized abruptly—many of them. He felt oddly at home here in a way he hadn’t in the tidy diner or on the sidewalks of downtown Edstown.

  “Hey, Serena. Marvin’s not here tonight.”

  Serena nodded to the portly man who’d greeted her from behind the bar. “I’m not looking for Marvin tonight, Chuck. I’ve brought a friend to taste your gumbo.”

  Chuck’s florid face creased with a broad grin. “He’s in for a treat, yeah? Find yourselves a seat and I’ll send someone over to you.”

  “We’ll be in the nonsmoking section.”

  Chuck laughed. “We’ll find you there for sure.”

  Motioning for Sam to follow, Serena led the way across the large, smoke-filled room to a somewhat secluded table in the back corner.

  “This is the nonsmoking section?” Sam asked as he held her seat for her.

  “This and the table on either side. I’ve been trying to convince Chuck to section off a bigger area that actually is smoke free, but he’s strongly resistant to any sort of change.”

  The scents of smoke and beer swirled around them, tugging again at Sam’s memories. One of the articles he’d read at the library had mentioned that the sense of smell was a powerful cue to memory. So was the sense of taste, he discovered when he took a sip of the beer a waitress set in front of him a few minutes later.

  He’d ordered beer because Serena had told him that was what the regulars usually drank here, though she had declined anything but water. The taste didn’t stir specific memories in him, but rather a jumble of confused emotions. He couldn’t say they were good feelings—something about the taste of the beer on his tongue was rather too familiar and somewhat depressing. He had a vague image of himself sitting alone in a darkened room, drinking beer from a can, a TV flickering in front of him.

  Setting the mug down so abruptly the beverage sloshed perilously close to the brim, he strained to fill in the details of the cheerless recollection. Any details. He felt as if he was getting a little closer—and then Serena spoke, bringing him suddenly back to the present.

  “Sam? Is something wrong with your beer?”

  He focused on her face. She looked concerned, making him wonder how long he’d been sitting there staring into his mug. “It’s fine. I’m not much of a beer drinker, I guess,” he said, pushing the mug aside.

  “Neither am I. But I thought most men liked it.”

  “That’s what you get for thinking,” he drawled as he pushed the now-distant semi-memory to the back of his mind. Maybe it would come back to him later if he didn’t push it. “You said you recommend the gumbo?”

  “Definitely. The crawfish étouffée and po’boy sandwiches are good, too. Chuck moved here from Baton Rouge, and his Cajun recipes are authentic.”

  He couldn’t remember if he’d ever had Cajun food, but it sounded good. “Why don’t you order for us, since you know the menu so well?”

  While Serena gave their order to a teenager who bore a strong resemblance to the man behind the bar, Sam glanced at the other customers. It was a casual gathering, with jeans, T-shirts and shorts the attire of choice. Many of the men, and a few of the women, wore ball caps they hadn’t bothered to remove upon entering. He spotted several tattooed arms and a few other ink-injected body parts, but the crowd was generally well-behaved. Maybe because it was still early and the serious partying hadn’t begun yet, he thought as a noisy group of three women and two men entered and claimed a central table.

  A man Sam recognized as a regular breakfast customer from the diner approached the table and slapped him on the shoulder. “Yo, Sam. Is Serena giving you a taste of the Edstown hot spots?”

  “Hi, Bill. Sam asked me what there was to do here on a Saturday night,” Serena answered with a smile. “So I’m showing him.”

  “This is pretty much it,” Bill said to Sam with a grin. “Unless you want to join the kids over at the pizza parlor watching wrestling.”

  “I’ve heard there’s some action down at the lake on Saturday evenings.”

  Bill laughed and thumped Sam’s shoulder again. “There’s that, too. I used to go down there with my girlfriends in high school. Can’t tell you how many times old Chief Ferrell tapped on steamy windows and made us move on.”

  “That’s an Edstown tradition Sam’s just going to have to miss—at least tonight,” Serena said primly.

  Her statement elicited a belly laugh from Bill, along with another punch on Sam’s shoulder. “Can’t blame a guy for trying, right, buddy? Especially when you’re out with a girl as pretty as Serena.”

  Before Sam could answer, Serena said gruffly, “I think your wife is getting bored, Bill. Maybe you’d better get back to her—before you wedge your foot any deeper in your mouth.”

  Cheerful as always, Bill nodded. “I get you, Serena. You want me to disappear and leave you two to your dinner. I’ll see you at the diner, Sam. Keep the coffee hot for me.”

  “I’ll do that,” Sam replied, surreptitiously rubbing his shoulder. The older man ambled off, stopping to gossip at another table, leaving his wife alone for a while longer. “Nice guy, but he really packs a wallop.”

  Serena gave him a sympathetic smile. “A few new bruises?”

  “Very likely. But at least these were given in a spirit of friendship.”

  Her smile faded. “Do you think the men who beat you up will ever be found?”

  A twinge of familiar guilt made him avoid her eyes. “It doesn’t look likely.”

  “You said you were traveling with them? Surely you know their names—something that might lead the authorities to them.”

  “I wasn’t traveling with them. I’d simply accepted a ride from them. I don’t know anything useful about them.” He was really tired of the lie, especially with Serena, but this was neither the time nor the place to level with her.

  He was relieved when the waiter set steaming bowls of gumbo in front of them, interrupting the conversation. The spicy soup was thick with seafood and vegetables, served over a bed of fluffy rice. He scooped up a spoonful of shrimp, okra and tomatoes. “Man, that’s good,” he murmured, savoring the taste.

  Serena had watched him take the bite as if curious about his reaction. “You don’t think it’s too hot? Some people think Chuck’s gumbo is too spicy the first time they taste it.”

  Swallowing a second spoonful, Sam grinned. “Hot? Lady, I’ve had chili that makes this stuff taste like…ice cream.” He stumbled over the last words, suddenly aware of how easily they had come to him. He could almost smell that mouth-scalding chili he’d alluded to—but he couldn’t for the life of him remember where he’d eaten it, or with whom.

  Serena didn’t seem to notice his momentary hesitation. “You Texans are always bragging ab
out your chili.”

  Texan. Serena seemed convinced that was his background. Maybe she was right. He certainly wasn’t going to argue with her. He spent the next few minutes concentrating on his gumbo, listening to the music and mentally chasing after that elusive glimmer of memory.

  He couldn’t capture it.

  The efficient young waiter cleared away their empty gumbo bowls and replaced them with their next course—crawfish étouffée for Sam and a shrimp po’boy for Serena. Again, the food was spicy, but enjoyably so. They took time to savor it. As the evening advanced, the place became crowded with customers shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar where they waited for tables. Drinks flowed freely, and both the music and the crowd seemed to grow louder. Eruptions of loud laughter became common, from deep guffaws to shrill giggles. As comfortable as he felt there, Sam still thought Serena was out of place; she seemed more the tearoom or French restaurant type than a Cajun honky-tonk regular.

  It was almost impossible to keep a conversation going in a normal tone. Sam and Serena made a couple of attempts, but for the most part focused on their dinners. They were almost finished when Chuck wandered over from the bar. His booming voice carried easily over the noise. “How’s that food, eh?”

  Sam set his fork on his empty plate. “It was excellent. I enjoyed every bite.”

  “Not too spicy?”

  “Just spicy enough,” Sam assured him.

  Chuck grinned in approval and thumped Sam’s shoulder. “I like your friend, Serena. You bring him back any time, you hear?”

  “Next time, I’m wearing body armor,” Sam muttered, rubbing his shoulder as Chuck moved on to the next table.

  “I’m sorry.” Serena leaned closer. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “Never mind. Do you want dessert?”

  “No, I’m too full.”

  “So am I.” He motioned for the waiter to bring the check.

  “You’re my guest tonight,” Serena said. “I’m buying.”

  “No, you’re not.” He hoped his firm tone made it clear he didn’t want any argument about this.