Page 5 of Redeemed

“No one better pull that shit again while I’m here is all I can say,” JT said, pushing himself to his feet. He swayed a little but once he steadied himself, he reached a hand down to Sofia. “You’d better come get me immediately ifanyoneharasses you in the future. I’m not gonna have anybody treat you like that again.”

“JT, really, you don’t…”

“Nobody, Sofia. I mean it.” His bleary eyes from a few minutes before had sharpened to espresso brown points as he gazed at her now. The look he gave her seemed possessive. Before she could wrench herself away from his penetrating stare and respond, he blinked, and she caught a glimpse of the old JT peeking out. “Now, I’m hungry,” he said suddenly. “You want something?” He started rattling around in the cabinets and Sofia smiled. “I could eat.”

Thirty minutes later they sat at the counter, enjoying leftover fried chicken and freshly made cinnamon roll waffles.

“I can’t even justify all these calories as a midnight snack since it’s only 10:30,” Sofia said, humming in pleasure around another bite of waffle. A drop of maple syrup dripped from her lip and JT reached out a thumb to catch it. His eyes caught hers as he brought his thumb to his lips to lick off the sweetness.

“You had some syrup…” he said, not breaking eye contact for several long seconds.Jesus, what am I doing?He cleared his throat and tore his eyes away to look back at his plate. He shoveled food into his mouth.

Sofia brought a napkin up to her lips. She could still feel the heat of his thumb on her bottom lip.I’m such a goner.

They ate in silence for a minute, the clinking of silverware on plates the only noise in the empty space. “These are amazing! Why haven’t you put them on the menu?”

JT shrugged. “Just made them up. Think they’re that good?”

She hummed in pleasure again. “They are practically sinful! And if you made some cinnamon syrup...”

He wiped his mouth and nodded thoughtfully. “That would be good. Thanks, Sofia. I think I’ll try that. Maybe Saturday we can offer it as the breakfast special.”

Sofia grinned. There was a little bit of the old JT still in there. “Sounds perfect, boss.”

Chapter five

Whittling and Worrying

ThenextdayafterCommon Grounds had closed, Dani, who had been one of his best friends since childhood, found JT sitting on the bench in front of the café, a pile of sawdust gathering in a pile at his feet from the stick he was whittling on with a small knife. She immediately knew something had happened. His sister, Maggie, had been her first friend when she moved to Gladewater at only eight years old to live with her aunt and uncle after her parents were killed by a drunk driver. JT was soon her second one and the three had been thick as thieves growing up. She could read him as if he were her own brother and JT only whittled when he was especially anxious about something.

She plopped down next to him on the bench. “So, this looks familiar. Looking to make another weapon to stab Zane in the eye again? Maggie will probably frown on that this time.”

The last time she had caught him whittling a stick into a sharp point, as he apparently was no carver, it was after Zane and Maggie had gone through a particularly ugly break up. At the time, she had teased him about stabbing his soon to be brother-in-law in the eye with it trying to lighten his mood.

He gave her a side-eye but kept adding to the pile of sawdust at his feet. “I guess Maggie told you she and Zane found a house.”

Dani smiled broadly. “She did! The old Whitaker place. It’s gorgeous!” she gushed. “It’s going to be a showplace again once Maggie is done with it.”

JT nodded. “I’m sure it will be. I think she’s planning on using part of the property as an event space for the business. There’s a gazebo out in the gardens that’s actually been kept up and the barn can be renovated without too much fuss.”

“I see twinkle light installation in your future,” she said to him playfully. “I’m sure Levi and Zane will justloveto help you install them since they are such experts now.”

JT snorted. Zane and Levi, Dani’s husband, had installed thousands of tiny, white twinkle lights in the rafters of Dani and Levi’s barn under Maggie’s strict instruction. It had been beautiful, but the men were still complaining about the work months later. “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be ready to jump right in to volunteer for that job.”

“So, seems like the move isn’t really making you stress whittle,” Dani said knowingly. “What’s really going on?”

He finally put down his now very pointy stick and folded up his knife laying his hands on his knees. “I’m worried about Sofia.”

“Sofia?” Dani looked at him with a sharp question in her peridot green eyes. “What’s wrong with Sofia? I just saw her a bit ago at the General and she looked fine.”

“Did you hear what happened in the cafe the other day? With the men?”

“No, I haven’t heard. What happened?”

JT proceeded to tell her the story about Michael and Hector and the things they had said to Sofia. Dani’s face flushed red with anger. “They had the nerve to come at her like that in public? I hope you threw them out or worse.”

“Yeah, I threw them out when one of them grabbed her by the arm, but she had already told them off. I didn’t know the whole story until after they were gone. I only caught the tail end of it, but I’d never seen her so mad.”

“Our little Sofia getting in some men’s faces and cussing them? I can’t even imagine it,” she said. Sofia was always so upbeat and unflappable. It must have been really bad for her to go off on someone, and in the café no less.

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