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It must have been the Universe having a laugh at his expense to put the one woman he didn’t want to see in a room where he couldn’t avoid her. She didn’t look any happier to be trapped alongside him, and he couldn’t really blame her for that. Hell, he could still feel the slap across the face she’d given him at the TCC fund-raiser last month.
He was eleven years older than Angela, and she was the daughter of Sterling Perry, Ryder’s enemy. But still, he couldn’t help looking her way whenever her back was turned.
“Will you need that last sack of flour?” Mavis asked, bringing him back to the task at hand.
“I don’t think so.” He stood up, looked around at the brightly painted walls, the family-style tables and the long serving counter that was now crowded with sandwiches, a kettle of fragrant soup and a huge urn of coffee.
Looking back to the woman in front of him, he said, “We should be able to ride this out. We’ve got enough food and plenty of space for everyone.”
She nodded. Mavis had been running the shelter for ten years, and she didn’t shake easily. A black woman with sharp brown eyes and a no-nonsense attitude, Mavis ran a tight ship.
“We might have more people wandering in here for help, too, so you’ll be in charge of lugging that fifty-pound sack out of the way.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Then while she continued to talk, Ryder’s gaze slid past her to Angela. She was handing a sandwich and a bowl of soup to a young man who winked at her in thanks. Ryder was captivated by her.
Somehow, Sterling Perry, a man to whom money and position meant everything, had managed to create a daughter who was completely at home in a shelter, helping others. She was a mystery and damned if Ryder wasn’t intrigued. It seemed Angela had more of her late mother, Tamara, in her than her father.
Ryder had been friends with Angela’s mother, too many years ago to count. And that thought reminded him that he had no business looking at this woman and wishing things were different. He was too old for her. There was too much drama in the past still snaking into the present. And then there was the fact that at the moment, Angela hated his guts.
She wore a deep blue shirt, gray jeans with black boots and somehow looked elegant even under the circumstances. Her blond hair hung in a straight, golden fall to her shoulders, and her blue eyes picked up the blue of her shirt and shone even brighter than usual. He wanted to talk to her. To explain a few things, if he could.
It was only recently he’d heard the rumors that she’d no doubt been listening to just before she slapped him. Ryder wanted to tell her that he’d never had an affair with her mother, Tamara. That he hadn’t blackmailed her and that her mother’s father had willed Ryder that land twenty-five years ago because Ryder had been Tamara’s friend when she hadn’t had another.
He really wanted things set clear between them. She deserved the truth, he told himself sternly. Of course, it had nothing to do with what she made him feel whenever she was within five feet of him. And hell, even he didn’t believe that. But as much as he wanted to talk to her it would have to wait because her safety and the safety of everyone at the shelter had to come first. Even as he thought it, someone pounded frantically on the door.
“Open up!”
Instantly, Ryder bent down to shift the heavy bag from in front of the door, then swung it wide. A young couple with two little kids looked like drowned rats as they squeezed through the door, chased by pelting rain and the call of thunder.
“Wow, it’s ugly out there,” the man said, holding out one hand. “I’m Hank Thomas. This is my wife, Rose, and our kids, Hank junior and June.”
Ryder looked at the kids. The boy was about five and June closer to two. They looked tired and cold, and their mother seemed to be on the ragged edge.
“Looks like you’ve been out in it a while,” he said.
“Truck got swamped when we tried to get out of the city,” Hank told him, and swept his son up into his arms.
“We didn’t know what to do,” Rose added, swaying her daughter on her hip. “Then we saw lights through the cracks of the plywood on your windows.”
