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  Instead of laughing, she looked at him in a way that made his heart pound. “But you didn’t fail. The diner’s doing great.”

  Something in her voice touched him. She sounded as proud as if Jake’s Place belonged to her. “Yeah,” he said, “actually, it is. I don’t know why or how.”

  “I do.” She smiled. “Great food, a staff that loves working for you…”

  “I work them to the bone,” he said.

  “So I’ve noticed.” Her smile was warm and rich.

  Scrounging desperately for some impersonal small talk and coming up with nothing, he was deeply relieved when their breakfast plates showed up. It pleased him no end to see how enthusiastically Abbie dug in.

  “This biscuit is too good to be true,” Abbie said, spreading the homemade strawberry preserves Jake bought from a local woman on top of enough butter to block even the healthiest aorta. “Barney got it right for sure.”

  “Want another one?”

  “No, please, no. I’m going to have to run to Amarillo and back to work off this one.”

  She was glad to be home. Glad to be working for Jake. Hanging around with him had always made her feel good about herself. He teased her, laughed with her—he was like the big brother she’d never had.

  Yes, just like a brother. She’d been, thank goodness, a sensible enough girl not to get a crush on her boss, so they’d had an easy friendship. She’d hoped they could go right back to it as if time hadn’t passed, but she realized she was noticing things about him now that she hadn’t all those years ago. Like how green his eyes were. That his light-brown lashes were thick and long. That his body was lean but powerful-looking, and his shoulders had that broad, muscular look that made you feel safe when he was around.

  She suddenly didn’t feel safe and dragged her thoughts away from Jake’s body. He’d invited her to breakfast to talk about menus, and she felt it was definitely time to get started. “I’m so glad you can cater the benefit dinner. It’ll be an affair to remember.”

  Good grief, could she have said anything more Freudian? She’d never for a moment dreamed of having an affair with Jake.

  She barreled on. “I haven’t spoken to Rafe’s wife about the details yet, but it’ll be a seated dinner, so the sky’s the limit where the menu is concerned. I thought we’d spend about forty-five minutes just standing around talking, so do you think some simple hors d’oeuvres would be in order? We can hire valley kids to serve, of course—”

  Jake was listening intently, the gleam of his amazing eyes heightened by the morning sun coming through the windows. “Yes, definitely hors d’oeuvres, scattered around on a few tables. Incidentally, the food and labor will be my contribution, so don’t worry about the cost.”

  “But—”

  He plowed right over her protest. “I was thinking beef Wellington, potatoes Anna, roasted asparagus, sautéed grape tomatoes as a surprise, an endive salad to start and a knock-’em-dead dessert that I haven’t figured out yet.”

  “Endive? When did you get so fancy?”

  “When it comes to food…” He grinned. “I’m as fancy as they come. And oh, yes, our homemade sourdough bread. The meal will be a gourmet take on meat and potatoes. What do you think?”

  Her eyes met his. “It sounds perfect.”

  He smiled. For a long moment, he gazed at her, catching and holding her attention. She couldn’t look away. Then some spark, some indefinable awareness passed between them.

  At last, Jake cleared his throat and looked away, shattering the sensation. He turned the conversation back to the benefit dinner menu, but Abbie wasn’t really listening. Something odd had just happened, something personal, unsettling.

  A pull of attraction had danced between them. She’d never felt anything remotely like that before with Jake, and she didn’t like it. Now wasn’t the time to do anything reckless. She liked him. He was a friend. That was all.

  She realized with a start that Jake had stopped talking. He was looking at her with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “That’s good,” she said quickly.

  “Good that I’m worried about Barney’s health?”

  Abbie blinked. Yikes. She hadn’t heard a word he’d said about Barney. “No. I mean, yes. Yes, I think it’s good of you to worry about him if he’s working too hard. Maybe you should talk to him, see if you can get him to take some time off.”

  He looked even more curious. “You okay?”

  Other than the fact that she had no idea what career she was going to pursue and now she was finding herself attracted to one of her oldest friends, everything was just terrific.

  “I’m fine. Just distracted. Too much has happened in the last couple of days.” She stopped talking, no longer certain what to say next.

  He came to her rescue. “That’s understandable.”

  He smiled at her again, and this time, her heart actually seemed to flutter. Good grief! What in the world was wrong with her?

  “Cinnamon rolls, right out of the oven,” Colleen said, appearing beside the table.

  Abbie had never been so happy to see another person. “Thank God,” she said, realizing too late she’d said it aloud.

  Jake and Colleen stared at her as if they thought she’d lost her mind. She couldn’t blame them. It definitely was a possibility.

  “Guess you really need these,” Colleen teased her. “I didn’t realize it was a cinnamon-roll emergency.”

  Abbie shot a glance at each of them, feeling her face heat up, then reached out and grabbed a roll, hoping it would restore her sanity.

  There was no doubt about it. She needed to go back to school.

  Fast.

  5

  When Abbie left, Jake felt the room had dimmed as if somebody had closed the curtains.

  Had she wanted to stay longer?

  He couldn’t tell. At some point in the conversation she’d gone off into her own world, gotten jumpy and nervous.

  Which had made him jumpy and nervous. He missed the old days when he could relax around her. This new Abbie, grown-up and gorgeous, made him uncomfortable.

  He hated it. No, not hated. It freaking frightened him.

  The FedEx delivery person came through the door as Jake was on his way back to his office. The packet had come from Abernathy Foods, Inc.

  He signed for the envelope and opened it. Plane tickets from Amarillo to New York. Notification from a car service he’d had no idea was available in Falling Star that a driver would pick him up at eight Wednesday morning to take him to the airport, and yet another statement regarding the driver who would pick him up at JFK airport in New York to take him to the St. Regis Hotel.

  Clearly, Abernathy Foods was sparing no expense.

  Also included was an itinerary: who he’d meet with, and when, and why.

  Should he even consider franchising? Could he really let other people get involved in his diner?

  He had no idea what to do. All he knew was that he had too many things to worry about at the same time, and it was addling his mind.

  Abbie’s insides were churning with uncertainty and tension as she left the diner. The meeting hadn’t gone well. She only hoped she wouldn’t act the same way when she came to work later that afternoon.

  She had enough going on without getting sappy about Jake. She was grateful to him for giving her a job. Gratitude. That’s what it was.

  Okay, he was a good-looking guy, but she knew a lot of good-looking guys.

  Maybe she was just tired. Life with her mother and father, then just her mother, had been a protective cocoon, but now she was a butterfly, out in the real world where she had to make her own way.

  She couldn’t go on living at home. Her maturity would regress five years in a week. Her mother would treat her as she had when Abbie was a child, cooking for her, doing her laundry, cleaning her room. It was already happening, in fact. She’d stepped out of the shower this morning to find her bed already made, and the few clothes she’d put in the hamper were go
ne.

  Could she even afford a place of her own? It wouldn’t hurt to look, would it? She sat down on one of the old-fashioned benches that were placed here and there on Main Street and opened the browser on her cell phone. Falling Star wasn’t big, so she didn’t really know where to look for ads. Finally, she found one.

  She was familiar with the row of townhouses at the bottom of Hubbard Hill. They were new and cheaply built. She’d hate to think how they were furnished.

  “Room for rent at…”

  No, thanks. If she didn’t need independence and solitude, she’d stay at home with her mother.

  There were so few rental offerings that they took about a minute to skim. She knew every house, every apartment in town, and knew none of those few would meet her needs, even if she could afford them. The decent places were snapped up as soon as they came on the market.

  She sighed and got up from the bench, not aiming for any destination in particular. She reached the library and paused. Libraries always soothed her soul, made her forget the world outside.

  She wandered in, tempted to go to the children’s section and relive the books she’d loved way back when, but something drew her to the computer. She typed in “health care professions” and watched a list of books appear on the screen.

  None of the books that interested her were on the shelves, which didn’t surprise her. She’d have to request some.

  The head librarian was walking her way, so she ducked into the stacks. She didn’t want to hear yet again how surprised everyone in town was to see her back at home. And how stunned they were that she’d left medical school, and how amazed they felt that she’d done something so terrible to her wonderful mother.

  Hey, nobody in town was more surprised, stunned or amazed than she was.

  She wandered the aisles for a few minutes, looking for the what-to-do-with-your-life section. She could use a book or two on that topic.

  Not finding any, it occurred to her to check the Psychology section. She could surely use a little counseling. As she skimmed the titles, one book seemed to jump out at her. The title was Get a Grip: Understanding Your Emotions.

  She flipped through it, seeing discussions on transference, projecting, and other psychological terms with which she wasn’t familiar.

  Suddenly she realized what was going on with Jake.

  In a psychology class she took in undergraduate school, they’d talked about how people often confuse their emotions.

  For instance, sometimes a person would transfer what they were feeling about one person to another person. Or what they were feeling in one situation to another situation. Often, they’d fall in love with their therapists simply because the therapists had helped them with their problems.

  Exactly what she was doing with Jake. He was helping her deal with her problems. She was confusing her gratitude with something else. It was as simple as that.

  What a relief. Now that she understood what was going on, she’d be able to see him as a friend again. She picked out a couple of additional books and joined the checkout line.

  Fortunately, the head librarian was reading to a group of toddlers. The bored teenager behind the desk checked Abbie out and said, “Those are cool earrings.” Nothing else.

  It was a first for this town. Maybe things were improving.

  Maury would be leaving in a few minutes for football practice, and he was wielding the chef’s knife in a rapid, rhythmic motion, chopping onions as if no one else in the world could get those onions chopped.

  Jake watched him for a moment and saw he didn’t look like his usual contented self. “Don’t like chopping onions?”

  Maury didn’t turn around. “Sure I do. I like thin-slicing better, but chopping is fine.”

  Jake tried again. “You let a ball get past the line yesterday?”

  “Nope.”

  Subtlety wasn’t going to work, so Jake said, “Hey, something’s wrong. The sooner you tell me what it is, the sooner we can fix it.” He moved toward Maury and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders, feeling the tension in his muscles.

  “Something’s happening around here,” Maury said, “and I don’t know what it is.” He kept his eyes fixed on his work, and the knife chopped on steadily, as if it were on remote control.

  Jake knew he had to be honest and open with this boy. “Well, I’ll tell you what’s happening, Maury. A company in New York wants to franchise the diner. You know, open some more like this one. Like the fast-food franchises.”

  “If that happens, everything will change, right?”

  Jake knew he meant “everything will change for me.” He was aware of Maury’s background. His parents had moved from one place to another, looking for a job his father could succeed at, until one day his father gave in to despair and shot Maury’s mother and then himself. However stoic, however oblivious to anything but cooking Maury pretended to be, he feared that the unexpected phone calls and the occasional worried expression on Jake’s face meant his life was about to be turned upside down again.

  It took Jake a split second to decide how to deal with Maury’s worry. “I haven’t decided what to do yet,” he said cheerfully, “so relax for now. I’ll keep you updated so you won’t have any surprises.”

  Maury’s chopping didn’t slow down, but his shoulders seemed to lose some of their tension.

  “If I do say yes, all it means as far as you’re concerned is that after culinary school, I’m going to hire you before anybody else snaps you up. Whatever happens, you and I are a team, okay? Where I go, you go with me as long as you want to.”

  Maury finally turned around. ‘That’s what I want, to work where you do.”

  The simple statement touched Jake’s heart. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, that’s for sure,” he said. “Especially next Wednesday and Thursday nights, because that’s when I’m going to New York to find out what these people are offering and tell them yes or no. Think you can hold down the fort here?”

  Maury gazed at him with his St. Bernard eyes. “I’ll handle it. What are the specials?”

  “You tell me,” Jake said, and in a few minutes, they’d picked out dishes that were less labor-intensive than the ones he and Maury made together.

  “How’d you like to make out the list of ingredients and place the order with the wholesaler?” Jake asked.

  He watched the boy’s face light up. “You think I can do that?”

  “You bet,” Jake said. He didn’t care what Maury forgot, what he ordered too little or too much of. All that mattered was the look on his face. Now that Maury was okay again, he could go back to worrying about the lawyer.

  Then it hit him that the only people he’d told about the franchise offer were Rafe, Clint, Barney, and Maury. What that meant was that they’d become his family, and that felt good.

  Abbie left the library feeling better. She had a few books to read, and maybe something in them would catch her interest. At least she’d taken a step toward planning her future.

  She strolled aimlessly toward home, moving in a crisscross, taking her time, looking at the houses she knew so well, remembering good times—or bad ones—in most of them, the bad ones being dates to parties with the most repellent boys in school because nobody else would invite straight-A Abbie.

  She hadn’t been stuck-up. She’d been engaged in dreams of her future, dreams that lay beyond Falling Star.

  And now she was back. So much for dreams.

  She came to a street she’d always loved, the oldest one in town. Houses sat close to the curb rather than set back, giving the impression of a village. A beautiful old church sat at the end of the cul-de-sac. A straight line of live oak trees that the settlers had planted a hundred and fifty years ago shaded the houses.

  Her favorite house was old Mrs. Langston’s, which was coming up on the right. It was built of irregular stone and topped with a peaked slate roof. An ancient wisteria vine draped over the front door and climbed to the roof, and clematis were staked on
each side of the house.

  There it was, as charming as she’d remembered it. Abbie took one glance and came to an abrupt halt. A For Sale sign stood on the tiny strip of lawn in front of the house.

  Her heart sank. Was Mrs. Langston sick, too sick to stay in her house? Or even worse, had she died? That was surely something her mother would have told her.

  As she stood there staring at the sign and worrying, a car pulled up to the curb. A couple in their sixties got out and came up to her, smiling.

  The woman had been her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Langston’s daughter, Priscilla Banks.

  “Mrs. Banks?” Abbie said. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “And you’re—oh, my goodness,” the woman said, “you’re Abbie Jackson!” She gave Abbie a hug. “I guess I’ve never stopped thinking of you as that serious little girl, all knees and elbows, who already knew how to read when you came to me.” She turned to the man. “I’m sure you know Roger.”

  Who didn’t? He was the state senator representing Falling Star. “Senator Banks,” she said, holding out her hand. “What a pleasure to see you again.”

  “Why, thank you, my dear,” said the senator in his booming voice. “Would you like”—for a second, she thought he was about to offer her an autograph—“a tour of Mother Langston’s house?”

  Abbie shook her head. “I love this house, but I’m not in a position to buy anything. I saw the sign and was worried about Mrs. Langston.” She turned to Priscilla Banks. “Is your mother—”

  “We had to move her to assisted living,” Priscilla said, shaking her head. “She so didn’t want to go.” Then she smiled. “Within an hour after she’d arrived, she’d joined a bridge group and was already making friends.”