Redstone, Incorporated: The Best Revenge Part 13

He didn't look or act particularly tired, certainly not like she would be if she had done a marathon like this. The only sign at all was his stubbled jaw, a bit more than the day he'd first arrived here. The look had never appealed to her that much. Until now.

She stared at him. "I don't know what to say. How to...thank you."

He shrugged. "Thank Barton."

"I will, whoever and wherever he is. But all the work you did-"

The shrug again. "Grunt work."

"It would have taken me forever," she said. "Because I would have been..."

This time, when she almost wished he would interrupt her, he didn't. But after a moment of her silence he said softly, "Hurting."

Her eyes widened. And for the third time this morning she nearly forgot to breathe.

"You knew," she said, her voice tiny. "You knew how much it would hurt, because of all the disagreements my father and I had over this."

And for the third time he shrugged. "Done."

"Why?" she asked, still watching him intently. "Needed it."

"So you just decided to break in here in the middle of the night like some good little elf and take care of it all?" "Goblin."

"What?"

"More goblin than elf."

She blinked. Had he just made a joke? Before she could react, a scratching came at the back door. Uncle Larry must have let Maui out, and he'd come over to check on her. That the dog felt able to leave her mother again this morning was a good sign, she told herself.

She started to get up, but St. John stopped her, indicating with a gesture that he'd get the door for Maui. With another gesture at the computer monitor, he conveyed perfectly well, if silently, that he wanted her to continue to explore the new setup.

Which, to be honest, was exactly what she wanted to do. She couldn't quite believe it was all here, everything she'd wanted, as if it had truly been custom tailored for her and for Hill's. Which, apparently, it had.

She heard Maui's happy bark of greeting; the big golden had no reservations about St. John. That comforted her, as did the whimsical notion that somehow the dog knew his grandfather had once adored this man, as well.

To her amazement, she heard St. John greet the dog in turn, using nearly complete sentences.

"Morning, Maui. Come to check on her? Good. She needs you, too, now."

She paused in her explorations to greet the sweet-hearted animal, then went back to the computer. She was aware-very aware-of St. John standing in the office doorway, but he seemed content enough to simply watch as she marveled over each new facet she discovered. When she found she could not only cross-reference the customer list with inventory, but the inventory with any number of possible suppliers she wanted, she couldn't help exclaiming about it.

"Bot," St. John said.

She glanced at him. "What?"

"A bot. Checks supplier Web sites periodically. Specials, deals."

Her gaze whipped back to the screen. "It will do that?"

"Slowly," he said, with a grimace. "Working on that."

She looked back at him. "Going to personally run high-speed fiber optics all the way out here?" Somehow it didn't seem at all unbelievable.

"Settle for DSL."

"I'd be delighted with DSL. I-" "Jessa!"

Her mother's voice startled her out of whatever she'd been going to say. Naomi Hill hadn't set foot in the store of her own volition in weeks, and Jessa didn't know whether the fact that she had now was good or bad. Judging by the urgent tone of her voice, she was leaning toward the latter.

"Jessa! Are you all right?"

Her mother appeared in the office doorway. She gave St. John a curious look, but her focus was on her daughter. Jessa crossed the office quickly.

"I'm fine, Mom. What's wrong?"

"Larry told me that you had a run-in with Al Alden this morning."

Jessa didn't look at St. John, but then she didn't have to; she sensed his sudden tension, felt his newly sharpened gaze on her as if it were a physical connection between them.

"It was nothing, really, Mom."

"That's not what Larry said. He said the man accused you of some kind of conspiracy against him."

She managed to get out a credible laugh. "And you can imagine how crazy that made him sound. It was nothing, Mom. In fact, it just made him look bad in front of Mrs. Walker and a few others."

Seemingly rea.s.sured now that her daughter was intact and relatively unscathed, Naomi let out a compressed breath that actually sounded angry.

"That man," she said, with a fierceness that warmed Jessa, both for the love it implied, and the simple fact of it's reappearance after so long. "I never quite trusted him, no matter how well he charmed everyone else in this town."

Jessa chose her next words with care, as much for the man listening so intently as for her mother. "I know. I remember you saying so when I was a kid."

St. John went even more still, seeming to barely breathe now.

Naomi was patting her arm now. "But Larry said you were brilliant. That you made a fool of him, pointing out that he couldn't spread lies about you being not smart enough to be mayor and then turn around and say you were clever enough to engineer whatever all his problems are."

"He opened the door for that one himself," Jessa said with a smile and a hug for the woman who had apparently rediscovered at least some bit of life outside her own horrible grief. "Yes. Well."

Her mother suddenly seemed to recall they were not alone. She turned to look at the man in the doorway, who hadn't spoken a word. Not that that fooled Jessa; she knew he'd taken in every bit of what had been said.

"You must be our mysterious benefactor," her mother was saying to St. John. "I don't believe I've heard your name, just that you appeared one day."

There was no real accusation in her tone, but she still had a bit of the demeanor of a mother protecting her child. Something St. John had never known, Jessa realized. And yet he responded to it just the same.

To her amazement, he introduced himself with an old-world kind of grace and civility-and full, elegant sentences-she wouldn't have thought the brusque, taciturn man he'd become capable of.

"Dameron St. John, Mrs. Hill." He took her hand gently, with the slightest of bows over it. "It's a true honor. And my deepest condolences, heartfelt."

Jessa gaped at him, while her mother gave him a startled smile. Then, as the older woman looked up at the dark, younger man, something odd came into her eyes, something puzzled.

"You remind me of someone," she murmured.

Jessa saw him go very still. He straightened and backed up a step. But he said nothing more, as if those three complete sentences had drained him of any words at all. And only then did she notice Uncle Larry was standing in the doorway, watching this odd little tableau with that fey sort of interest that made her wonder anew just what he was seeing.

"You can see the girl's fine, now, Naomi. Let's be going. It will be good for you-and for Jessa-if you're seen out and about. And your friends miss you."

Her mother didn't look happy about whatever he'd persuaded her to do. "I don't know-"

"One small step, Mom," Jessa said. "Just a start. Then come home. Stay inside for a week, if you want."

She gave in at last, and let Larry lead the way out the door. Maui watched them, then looked at Jessa. "Go," she said. "It will distract her to watch out for you."

The dog trotted after them as if he'd understood every word. And Jessa wasn't at all sure he hadn't.

"Who's watching who?"

She looked at him, then saw, as usual, nothing she could read in his face. But his eyes held a wary, edgy look.

"I'm not sure it matters," she said.

They spent the rest of the morning going over the computer program in detail, interrupted occasionally by a customer.

"Need help," he said as, unasked, he helped her load several bags of garden soil into the back of a pickup.

"I have Greg Walker around in the afternoons, after school. He's a good worker."

"More."

"I like working." Although she had to admit the twelve-hour days and frequent nights spent on paperwork were beginning to wear on her. Although that, she thought, might just change, thanks to the amazing computer system he'd installed, and that she still didn't quite know how to thank him for. "Distraction."

"Yes. Problem?"

He stopped for a moment, whether at her tone or her mimicking of his speech pattern, she wasn't sure. But before either of them could speak, another customer called out from inside the store.

"I'll finish," he said.

She hesitated, then nodded; there were only two bags left anyway. "You're all set, Mr. Cardenas," she told the pickup's owner, an elderly gentleman with gardening gloves sticking out of his back pocket. "Will Matt be home to help you unload?"

"I'll wait until he is," the man said with a grin. "No point in breaking my back when my grandson's trying to beef up for the football team."

Jessa laughed. "Give him my best, and good luck to him," she said, then headed inside.

She found Catherine Parker, a teacher from North Side Elementary, at the counter with a stack of cans of the expensive cat food Jessa always stocked for her. She was the only one who bought the stuff, but she bought enough of it every week-Jessa didn't want to know how many cats the woman actually had-so that they actually broke even on it.

"They're making cat treats now," Jessa said as she wrote up the sale, thinking how much easier it would be to simply enter it in that amazing new software. The software with the bot that had found out that bit of information about the treats in its first perusal of the company's Web site.

"Really? The furry kids would love that. Could you order some?"

"Of course," she said, smiling inwardly, thinking that the fancy system had already begun to pay for itself. She would order the treats this afternoon, when she reordered the food, and then- "-busy morning, what with Tyler Alden and all."

Jessa suddenly tuned back in to Catherine's chatter. "What?"

"You didn't hear? Poor kid, showed up at school today with a broken arm. Fell out of that old maple tree in their yard. Must have landed on his face, too, school nurse says he's going to have a black eye."

Reckless kid, that Adam Alden. Always falling and hurting himself.

Another black eye? That boy's always fighting.

He's bruised up again? Wonder what he ran into this time?

The words from long ago beat at her, and as she had then, she wanted to scream at those long-ago voices, "Can't you see? He's not clumsy, he's not fighting, at least not like you mean."

"Jessa? Are you all right?"

"Fine," she said mechanically. "You just reminded me of something I need to do."

The woman left with a promise to stop by and pick up the cat treats as soon as they came in. Jessa just stood there for a moment, staring at nothing. "Jess?"

She didn't even jump at his quiet voice behind her. Didn't react to his use of the nickname that he, who noticed everything, didn't seem to realize betrayed him. She was too enveloped by an old, aching pain. But this time, she wasn't a child who could be convinced to remain quiet, this time she wasn't a child who knew what she should do but didn't know how to do it without causing even more pain to someone she cared about so much.

She turned to look at him. "Tyler Alden arrived at school today with a broken arm and a black eye. He said he fell. Out of that old maple tree."

She knew how it would hit him, because she remembered too well that he'd used that story once himself, one among many. And it did hit him; he didn't just go quiet and still, he went rigid.

"I made his father angry this morning, and he took it out on the most defenseless person under his control. You know how it works."

He swore under his breath.

"He took it out on Tyler," she said, and then, before she'd even realized she'd decided it was time, she added the words that would change everything.

"Just like he used to take it out on you."

Chapter 17.

She knew.

St. John couldn't deny the s.h.i.+ver that went through him. That it was tinged not just with relief, but a strange sort of pleasure rattled him. He'd been so certain no one would ever recognize him, yet had, he admitted now, secretly wished one person would.

This one.

He considered, for all of a split second, denying it. But he doubted it would work. She was looking at him steadily, holding his gaze in an unflinching manner even those at Redstone rarely did.