Friday morning and I’m off,” he said, opening her door for her. “I’ll come by and fix the porch roof for you.”
She smiled sheepishly. “I already did. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Well, I was using the short ladder because I’d lent the twelve-footer to Judy Lowery, and I overreached.”
He frowned in alarm. “You fell?”
“No. Marshack caught me.” She had a sudden, vivid memory of his hand wrapped around her inner thigh. A deep blush caught her completely unaware.
Brick noted it and raised an eyebrow. “Do tell, Brittany.”
She got into the car, pulled her door closed briskly and lowered the window. “Nothing to tell. He just happened to arrive at a very timely moment. Cut off my supplies, but saved me from breaking my neck.” She smiled and turned the key in the ignition. “That’s life. You have to take the bad with the good.” She blew him a kiss. “Love to Karen. See ya.”
As Britt drove back through town, she cranked up her Clint Black tape to put thoughts of Jake Marshack out of her head. She couldn’t imagine why images of him lingered there anyway. He was just another big-dairy bully making her life more difficult than it already was.
So he was nice looking. Actually, he was a lot more than nice looking. Since she was having to deal with serious realities lately, she could admit to herself that he was gorgeous.
Guilt and confusion filled her simultaneously. Why did that matter, anyway? And how did thoughts of him form when her entire man-woman awareness was always focused on Jimmy—or, rather, his absence?
“You’re losing your grip,” she warned herself. “Work with me here, Britt. Get your brain going on things that are going to mean money, not trouble.”
“All right,” she told herself. “Today was just fated to be a disaster. You can’t fight that. But tomorrow things are going to be different. Tomorrow you are not going to try to fix the roof, you will not have to deal with Jake Marshack, there will be no more bicycles to be run over. Tomorrow you will deliver Danishes to the diner and to Judson, you will take cheesecakes to the lodge, you will visit Grandma Martha. And you will come up with a gimmick.”
There. She felt herself relax. It always helped to hear her problems or her plans spoken aloud. It gave them substance, somehow, and made her better able to deal with them.
Jimmy had always laughed at her when he came upon her talking herself through a dilemma. “You should have gone into politics,” he told her more than once, “then you could have gotten paid for filibustering.”
She enjoyed the memory for a moment, smiling absently at the road, feeling warm and happy. Then the truth crashed in on her, as it always did. It was just a memory. It would always be just a memory. And she and Jimmy would never ever make another one.
Darkness threatened to suck her in like the core of a tornado. But she pulled to a stop at the side of Main Street, grinding her foot into the brake, holding her ground.
She drew one even breath, then another one. “You can do this,” she told herself bracingly. “Four kids are counting on you to get yourself together. A hundred acres that have belonged to a Bauer since the middle of the last century are waiting for you to come up with a gimmick so they don’t become part of some hybrid, megamonster farm.”
Feeling the return of control, she drew another deeper breath and let the car roll forward. She was smiling when she pulled up in front of the ballet school to pick up Renee. “And the food industry is just waiting for your gimmick.”
JAKE FELT the resentment the moment he walked into the diner. The place had been abuzz with conversation when he opened the door, but it fell silent in the few seconds it took him to walk to the counter. Men in coveralls and baseball caps, men in suits and women dressed for work in town watched him every step of the way. As he settled on a stool at the L-shaped bar, talk started up again, but he got the distinct impression he was the subject of it.
He tried to take it in stride. News got around fast in small towns, and he’d paid four calls yesterday, trying to collect. He was the good guy when he could provide products needed, but the bad guy when he had to collect for them in hard times. He was getting used to being treated like the biblical tax collector or the contemporary IRS auditor.
He indicated the pile of newspapers on the counter between himself and the police officer seated beside him. “Finished with this?” he asked with a courteous smile.
The officer gave him a long, measuring look, then nodded. “Help yourself.”
“Thank you.” Jake found the sports page and decided to lose himself in the Cubs’ spring-training stats.
The woman behind the counter ignored him, while second-guessing the needs of everyone else. A second waitress raced from the kitchen to the banks of booths against the wall. He gathered from the teasing going on back and forth that the woman ignoring him was named Marge and that she owned the diner.
He finally commanded her attention with a loud but courteous “Ham-and-cheese omelet, please. Hash browns. Sourdough toast. And coffee with cream.”
She glared at him and he added with a pointed look, “When you get around to it. Thank you.”
She came to stand in front of him, the coffeepot held aloft. He got the distinct impression she intended to pour its contents on him if he made one wrong move.
“Fresh out of ham and cheese,” she said aggressively.
He put down the paper. He pointed to the officer’s plate, where half of a ham-and-cheese omelet lay fluffy and plump beside a wedge of wheat toast.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Brown eyes looked back at him evenly. “That’s his ham-and-cheese omelet. He protects the people around here. He doesn’t take food out of children’s mouths and make life miserable for young widows who are barely—”
“Marge,” the officer said quietly, his expression mildly amused. “That’s harassment. Get him his omelet or I’ll have to take you in.”
Marge put down the pot and offered both wrists across the counter. “Here. Do it now. Put me in solitary, but don’t expect me to do anything for this monster who—”
“What is going on?” a familiar voice demanded near Jake’s shoulder.
He turned to find the widow Hansen standing in the small space between his shoulder and the police officer’s. She wore jeans and another baggy sweater, this one a soft blue that was the color of her eyes. She had a wide, flat plastic container balanced on one hand and a big purse hung over her shoulder.
“Hey, babe.” The officer snaked an arm around her and pulled her to him, kissing her temple. He rubbed her shoulder. “Buy you breakfast?”
She smiled at him affectionately, and Jake felt the irritation that had been building in him since he walked into the place develop into anger. “Thanks, Brick. Had it two hours ago.” She placed the container on the counter, then frowned from him to Jake to Marge, whose hands were still held out sacrificially. “You’re arresting Marge?”
Brick grinned. “She refused to serve this gentleman his ham-and-cheese omelet. That’s unconstitutional.”
Britt blinked at Marge. “Why?”
“Because he—”
Jake folded his paper and put it aside. “Forget the omelet. I was just leaving.” He tried to stand, but a soft but surprisingly firm hand on his shoulder held him in place.
Britt’s blue, blue eyes flashed at him. “You stay right there.” She turned to Marge. “Why won’t you