Michele Hauf - Storm Warning

The owner was handsome, eh? And single?

She wasn’t looking for romance, that was for sure. But a woman could not survive on staticky rerun episodes of Sex and the City and her vibrator alone. Might as well give the man a gander , as she’d heard people say in these parts.

But for the official record, she was just here for the food.

Jason took in the woman who sat before the diner counter. Two stools separated them. After setting a backpack on the floor, she’d pulled off a knit cap to let loose a spill of long black hair. Unzipping her coat halfway revealed a blue-and-white wool sweater that featured snowflakes and reindeer. Looked like one of Marjorie’s knitted projects. Jason had one of those ugly sweaters—it featured a moose and possibly moose tracks (because he could never be sure it wasn’t moose scat)—but he wore it proudly because someone had made it especially for him.

The woman at the counter was not a resident of Frost Falls. And today, of all days, he was particularly alert to strangers. This morning had brought a dead stranger onto his radar. Lunch had found him standing over an autopsy of the same woman. When driving back to Main Street, he’d sighted a shiny SUV that did not belong to a local. He’d run a plate check. Belonged to a Duluth resident. No police record or accidents reported. Worked for Perkins. Probably in town visiting friends.

And now Miss America was sitting ever so close.

She ordered mint tea and the club sandwich with extra bacon. The waitress winked and commented that she was glad to finally use up the tea she’d had stashed under the counter for years.

Jason noted the woman’s cringe when she heard the date of the tea, and he chuckled.

“Not many tea drinkers in these parts,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in The Moose. You passing through Frost Falls?”

“In a means, yes,” she said with an accent that sounded familiar to Jason.

She was an exotic beauty. Her skin tone was olive, and her features were narrow. Bright blue eyes twinkled beneath delicate curved black brows. She didn’t fit the standard profile of the Scandinavians who populated a good portion of Minnesota’s frozen tundra. Gorgeous, too, far prettier than most. And she didn’t appear to be wearing a lick of makeup. Something about natural red lips...

Jason shook off a bittersweet memory of red lips and sly winks. Weird that he hadn’t heard about this beautiful woman from the town’s gossip mill. He turned on the stool to face her. “Name’s Jason Cash,” he offered. “I’m the town’s chief of police.”

For another few months, at least. If and when he lost this job, what would he have to show for his years of service to both his country and this small town?

Not a hell of a lot.

“Nice to meet you, Chief Cash. I’m Yvette LaSalle. I’m not exactly passing through this cozy town. I’ve been here a few weeks. For a, um, vacation. Decided to stop in the diner today because I was across the street making a grocery run.”

“LaSalle.” Must be French Canadian. Nix the Miss America idea, and replace it with...hmm... Her tone didn’t seem to possess the rugged edge the Canadian accent offered. Interesting. And come to think of it, he had heard Marjorie mention something about a newcomer sitting in The Moose last week. Why had Marjorie failed to point out how drop-dead beautiful the woman was? Her gossip was usually much more on point. “I’m glad our paths crossed today.”

The waitress set Yvette’s plate and tea before her.

“Mind if I slide over?” Jason asked. “Then we don’t have to yell across the room at one another.”

“Go ahead.” She pulled a strip of bacon out of the sandwich and munched the crispy slice. “Mmm, meat, how I have missed you.”

“You go off meat for some crazy reason?”

“I am a vegetarian,” she said, prodding another bacon strip, then eyeing it disdainfully. “Or rather, was.” She took a big bite of the sandwich. “ Mon Dieu , that is so good!”

Miss France, he decided. He’d only been assigned a single two-day Parisian job while serving in the CIA. He knew a handful of French words, but beyond that, his capacity for learning foreign languages was nil.

“You must not order the tea very often, eh?”

She rolled her eyes. “I had a misguided craving. I think this’ll be the last time I get tea here.”

“Stick with the root beer,” Jason said. “Root beer never lets a man down.”

“Sounds like a personal issue to me, but to each his own. I like your snowmobile,” she said. “The one parked out front, yes? It looks like a racing machine.”

“Oh, it is.” Jason’s back straightened, and he hitched a proud smile in the direction of the powerful machine parked outside. “Could have been a professional racer. I love burning up the track. But I don’t have the time. This job keeps me on call 24/7.”

“I suppose there is a lot of crime in this sleepy little town.” She tried to hide a smirk, but Jason caught it. A fall of dark hair hid half her eye. Oh, so sexy. And every part of him that should react warmed in appreciation.

The last time he’d felt all the right things about a woman had been two years ago in Italy.

And that had ended disastrously.

“Someone has to keep the Peanut Gang in line,” he offered.

“The Peanut Gang?”

“Bunch of old farts who think poaching wolves isn’t harming the ecosystem. Idiots.”

“I’m not afraid of wolves. I think they are beautiful animals.”

Jason nodded. “They are. But I’ll leave it to my brother, the wolf whisperer, to kneel on the ground and pet them. It’s always best to be cautious around wild animals.”

Yvette nodded, but then said, “I got a great shot of a moose last week. On film, that is.”

“Is that so?”

“I’ve learned to snowshoe out in the forest behind the cabin. Always take my camera along.”

“You should be careful. Those beasts look gawky, but a moose can run fast.”

“Tell me about it. I was photographing the snow-laced birch trees and out of nowhere a moose charged through the deep snow. It was beautiful. But I’m cautious to check for big critters now when I venture out.”

“You should stick to the trails. Safer.”

“Safe is good, hmm?”

Jason almost responded with an immediate yes , but he sensed by her tone that she was angling for bigger fish. Were those thick lashes as soft as they looked? And did she prefer not so safe? Now that was his kind of woman.

“Depends,” he said. “There’s safe and then there’s, hmm...wild?”

“ Wild is not a word I’d ever place to anything in this town.”

If that wasn’t some wanting, repressed sexual desire in her sigh, Jason couldn’t guess otherwise. She had been in Frost Falls a few weeks. Why had he never noticed her before? And could he hope Alex hadn’t already hooked up with her?

“You, uh, like wild?” he asked.

“I do.” She finished off one triangle of the sandwich, but from his side view Jason noticed her smile did not fade.

Oh, he liked the wild, too. In so many ways.

The waitress set his bill down before him. He did not put it on the station’s expense account. He couldn’t see asking the town to pay for his meals. And now with the closure notice hanging over his head, he wanted to be as frugal as possible with the city budget. Much as he didn’t like sharing the investigation with the BCA—yes, Ryan Bay, the looker, had arrived in town—it was a good thing, considering they had the resources and the finances to serve the investigation properly. As soon as the final autopsy report arrived, Jason intended to meet with Bay at the station house and go over the evidence.