Why can’t she hire extra help?”
“Have you heard of Saddle Ridge Ranch?”
“Nothing lately. Jack Warner owned the place when I was younger. He raised cutting horses, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but his son Alex—” Gwen abruptly stopped. “I shouldn’t say anything else.”
So Gwen wasn’t a gossip and she was loyal to her friends. Most of the women he’d known had been very competitive and a little thing like friendship wouldn’t have made a difference or gotten in the way of catching a man or achieving a higher level in a career.
The waitress came over to them and they quickly glanced at the menus and ordered. As they ate the special of the day—roast beef, mashed potatoes and a vegetable medley—Garrett noticed Gwen finished almost all of it.
“Do you work out?”
Laying down her fork, she wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I work out at the Wagon Wheel Fitness Center. Why?”
He couldn’t help but grin. “Because it’s been a long time since I saw a woman down mashed potatoes.”
Spots of color came to her milky white cheeks that were dotted with a few freckles. “That’s an advantage to working out, I guess. I eat pretty much what I want.”
As his gaze passed over her pale lilac sweater and the way the material clung to her breasts, his jeans got tight and not from the food he was eating.
Retreating to safer territory, he remarked, “Now that Malloy’s married, I wonder what will happen to his career.” Garrett knew all about careers ruining marriages—first his dad’s, then his own. The thing was he’d become an FBI agent for a good reason and the idea of giving up his mission had been unthinkable. If his friend hadn’t been kidnapped when they were both nine, if he hadn’t felt a moral calling to right the world’s wrongs, maybe he could have given up his vocation and put all of his passion into his marriage. Maybe.
“He’s changing how he works,” Gwen admitted. “He’s contracted for a book about the wild mustangs and another one on whales in Alaska. He’s determined not to let his work get in the way of his marriage.”
“Work can do that,” Garrett muttered softly.
“Yours got in the way of a relationship?”
“Mine ended my marriage.” It was the first he’d ever said it out loud to another living person, and why he’d said it here, now, to Gwen Langworthy, he didn’t know. He didn’t like not knowing.
Picking up the bill the waitress had left on the table, he glanced at it, pulled out his wallet, left a tip, stood and said, “I’ll take care of this. I want to ask the cashier a few questions.”
The restaurant had emptied out and the cashier sat on the stool by the register, reading a romance novel. Romance might come alive in books, but that was the only place anybody would find it, Garrett decided as he made his way to her.
By the time the cashier closed the book and stood, Gwen was by his side, the fruity-flowery scent of her annoying him, her energy invigorating him, her beauty capturing him. He fought against the capture.
He was aware of Gwen watching him while he paid the bill. She was such a distraction, he wanted to put her outside while he completed his questioning. But he knew she wouldn’t stand for that.
A few minutes later, to his surprise and Gwen’s, the cashier described the couple in more detail than the teenager at the convenience store, then pointed them toward the waitress who had been on duty that night.
Mandy Jacobs remembered the couple. But foremost on her mind was batting her lashes at Garrett and flirting with him for all she was worth. “The girl had soup and the cute guy had a burger. They didn’t leave a tip, that’s why I remember them so well. That’s about all I know. I’ll ask around, Mr. Maxwell. I’ll be sure to contact you if any of the other girls saw anything or remember more than I do.”
“That would be great,” he told her, handing her his card. “We appreciate all the help we can get.”
Fluttering her lashes at him a few more times, she encouraged him, “You be sure to sit at my table next time you come in.”
“I’ll be sure to do that,” Garrett returned with a smile.
Gwen hadn’t said a word during the interchange and as they stepped outside, she muttered, “Talk about charm.”
“She probably does that with every man she waits on. Better tips.”
“You didn’t do anything to discourage her.”
Unreasonably, Garrett felt a bit of male satisfaction at Gwen’s comment. “She could have had information I needed, and she still could find out something. You just never know.”
Stopping, he took Gwen’s arm. “Why would it bother you if she was flirting with me?”
“It didn’t bother me,” Gwen protested quickly. “But she’s an impressionable young girl and if you give her hope…”
“The Silver Dollar doesn’t hire anybody under eighteen so she’s not so young—not the way you mean, anyway. And…I never encourage anything more than answers to my questions.”
When Gwen studied him for a very long time, he asked, “Are you involved with anyone?”
“No.”
“Did you have a marriage that went south, too?”
After a brief hesitation, she answered, “No, I didn’t get that far. My fiancé stood me up at the altar.”
“On your wedding day?” Garrett was truly astonished by that piece of background.
“On my wedding day. And I don’t intend to ever let that happen again. I’ll never again depend on a man to make me happy or trust a man the way I trusted Mark.” Moving away from him, maybe embarrassed because she’d said too much, she pointed to the decal on his SUV. “What’s that for?”
“I belong to a network of pilots who help with search and rescue. That’s our logo.”
“You’re a pilot?”
He nodded.
“Do you have your own plane?”
“I inherited my dad’s.”
“You lost him?” she asked so sympathetically he was reminded she’d known loss, too, albeit in a different way.
“Yes. Seven years ago. In some ways it seems like yesterday and in others it seems like forever.” When his parents divorced, he’d gone to live with his father. College had only been two years away and the judge had acceded to Garrett’s wishes to move to L.A. with his father rather than to Wisconsin with his mother. Losing his dad to cancer had been a blow he hadn’t expected.
“Do you still have your mom?”
“I sure do. She lives in Wisconsin now, and if I don’t faithfully call once a week, she worries.”
His gaze on Gwen, he watched as a wave of sadness passed over her face. Was it the reference to motherhood? But before he could probe a bit, she said, “You’re a complicated man.”
“No more complicated than you are.” Knowing that their conversation would soon lead to more personal territory that was better left unexplored, he asked, “Where are you going now?”
“Back to the hospital. I want to hold Amy for a bit.”
Immediately, he could envision Gwen holding that precious child and the turmoil inside him was too stormy to analyze. “I’ll follow you there. A nurse was going to see if she could find the clothes Amy was wearing the night she was brought in.”
“I wonder why the sheriff didn’t take them. He looked at them, but didn’t take them.”