he didn’t sound sure at all.
“Like a school principal?” Maddie asked, unwilling, for some reason, to let it go.
Kettle snorted. “Does he look like a school principal to you?”
Maddie looked at him one more time, that subtle aura of power and confidence. “No,” she admitted.
“Exactly. Someone who travels with a close protection specialist. Interesting.”
Interesting enough to make Kettle stop from tossing them out before regular opening hours. He had definitely recognized something that had automatically given them his respect—generally hard earned—but that had also made him cautious about exposing his man-crazy niece to them.
“A close protection specialist?”
“A bodyguard in civilian terms. Never mind. I’m being silly.” Kettle shook his head and went back to the kitchen muttering, “Ah, once a warrior.”
The ancient coffeemaker let out a loud hiss, announcing the coffee was ready, and Maddie went and grabbed the pot.
She popped her head in the kitchen door. “Sophie, can you hand me some mugs from the dishwasher?”
Sophie brought over the mugs. “I know what their car looks like,” she said in a hushed tone as she handed Maddie two thick crockery-style coffee mugs. “I’ll bet they’re staying at the Cottages. I’m going to go look as soon as I’m done with work.”
She already was planning to thwart Kettle’s plan to protect her!
“You will not,” Maddie said.
Feeling uncomfortably in the middle of something, Maddie started to take the mugs and the pot over to the window table. Then she paused and picked up two scones from the display and set them on a plate.
“Coffee?” she asked. She set down the scones. “Complimentary. The grill isn’t quite heated yet. Breakfast will be a few minutes.”
While Lancaster eyed the scones with deep suspicion, and even prodded one with his finger, it was Ward who answered, and again she had a sense of him being in a leadership position.
Did he do something that warranted a bodyguard? It seemed a little far-fetched for Mountain Bend. Poor Kettle just hadn’t been himself since he fell off that roof.
“Thank you. I’m Ward and this is Lancaster. And you are?”
She actually blushed, but kept her tone deliberately cool. “It’s Sophie’s first day. I hope she didn’t give you the impression it’s some kind of American tradition for staff at restaurants to introduce themselves to customers.”
“It isn’t? Lancaster, didn’t we have that happen before? In Los Angeles? That fellow. Franklin! He definitely introduced himself. Hi, I’m Franklin, and I’ll be your server tonight.”
“You’re right,” she conceded. “It is protocol at some of the big chains. But here in Mountain Bend, not so much.”
“Thank you for clarifying that,” Ward said. “I find learning another country’s customs a bit like learning a new language. There’s lots of room for innocent error. But now you have us at a disadvantage. You know our names, but we are none the wiser.”
She frowned. She was aware of needing to keep distance between her and this powerfully attractive sample of manliness. Still, she could not see a way out of it. Asking him to call her Miss Nelson would be way too stilted.
“Madeline,” she said, and it sounded stilted anyway and somehow unfriendly. “Maddie,” she amended in an attempt to soften it a bit.
“Maddie.”
Just as she had feared, her name coming off his lips in that sensual accent was as if he had touched the nape of her neck with his fingertips.
“I can’t help but notice your pendant. It’s extraordinary.” He reached up, and for a moment they both froze, anticipation in the air between them.
Then he touched it, ever so lightly. The pendant suddenly felt hot, almost as though there would be a scorch mark on her neck where it rested.
Maddie shivered, from the bottom of her toes to the top of her head.
“BEAUTIFUL,” WARD SAID SOFTLY. He withdrew his hand, his amazing sapphire eyes intent on her face.
The pronouncement could mean the pendant. But it could also mean—
“A gold nugget?” he asked her.
Obviously, he meant the pendant! Maddie had to pull herself together! Good grief. She felt as though she was trembling.
“Y-y-yes, my father found it and had it made into this piece.”
“Lovely,” he said, and again, it felt as if he might be commenting on more than the pendant. “My name’s a diminutive, too. Short for Edward.”
Did Lancaster shake his head, ever so slightly?
Ward changed tack so effortlessly that Maddie wondered if she had imagined that slight shake of head.
“Do you live up to it?” Ward asked in that sexy brogue. He took a sip of the freshly poured coffee and his laughing eyes met hers over the rim of the cup.
“Excuse me?”
“Your name? Are you mad?”
She wondered if, in her attempts to remain professional, she had ended up looking cranky! That was the thing to remember about men like this. Even simple things were complicated around them. She tried to relax her features as she realized he was deliberately trying to tease some of the stiffness from her.
She remembered Kettle’s confidence that she would be sensible. But not stiff and uninviting, even if it was self-protective. And suddenly she didn’t feel like living up to Kettle’s stodgy expectation of her.
“Mad, angry or mad, crazy?” Maddie asked him, returning his smile tentatively. It was an indicator of how serious everything in her life had become that she considered engaging in this banter and returning his smile living dangerously.
“Obviously, neither,” he said, saluting her with his coffee cup.
Was he flirting? With her? That certainly upped the chances of the mad, crazy. Especially if she engaged with him. Of course, she wouldn’t engage!
Or any other romantic nonsense. Though she suddenly felt a need not just to defy Kettle’s impressions of her, but to have a moment of lightness.
“And do you live up to your name?” she asked him.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Do you ward?”
“Ward, protect?” he asked her. “Or ward, admit to the hospital?”
They shared a small ripple of laughter, that appreciation that comes when you come across someone who thinks somewhat the same way you do. Their eyes met, and a spark, like an ember escaped from a bonfire, leaped between them.
Maddie reminded herself that one spark, even that small, could burn down a whole forest. She’d had her moment, Maddie told herself, clinging to the sensibility Kettle was relying on her for.
“Ward off pesky waitresses, I hope,” Lancaster said darkly, and then before she could take it personally, “Where’s your friend?”
“Her uncle needed her in the kitchen.”
“Locked her up,” Lancaster muttered with approval. He took a scone off the plate and scowled at it. “Is this a flavor?”
“Yes, it has a hint of orange in it.”
“There’s