Confessions of a Small-Town Girl

“Wonder what’s keepin’ him,” she heard Amos mutter.

“Keepin’ who?” her mom asked. Turning around, Dora absently smiled through the window at Kelsey’s suddenly frozen features, then reached one at a time for the older men’s breakfasts.

“Sam.” Scratching his balding head, Amos added a few more furrows to his weathered brow. “He’s usually here by now.”

Barely breathing, Kelsey watched the silver-haired Charlie eye his plate as her mom set it in front of him. Fork in hand, he poked at an egg yolk to make sure it was done to his liking. “Might be he drove to St. Johnsbury. Told us yesterday he’d have to make another trip into the lumberyard,” he reminded the man on the stool next to him. “I keep tellin’ him things aren’t as handy here as he’s used to in the city. Got to make lists. Pick up everything in one trip.”

Amos pressed his white stubble-covered chin toward the collar of the T-shirt shirt tucked into his coveralls. As he did, he eyed his similarly attired friend through the top of his black-rimmed trifocals.

“Doing the work he does, you think he don’t know about makin’ lists?”

Charlie, his own glasses rimmed in silver, eyed him right back. “What’s being a policeman got to do with anything?”

“He’s not a policeman. He’s a detective. You can tell by those shows on the TV that there’s a difference,” he explained, sounding as if the man being discussed hadn’t pointed out the distinctions himself. “I’d think that a man who goes around lookin’ for clues and such about crimes would be prone to keepin’ lists of what he knows and what he don’t.”

Kelsey’s mom gave the elderly men a patient smile. “I doubt he’s gone anywhere just yet,” she assured them both. “You know he wouldn’t make that long drive before fillin’ himself up. He hasn’t missed breakfast here in the two weeks since he arrived.”

“That’s ’cause he loves your cookin’, Dora,” came a gravelly voice from a table behind the men. “By the way, Kelsey, you’re doing good this mornin’, too.” A white ceramic mug was raised in her direction. “Good to see you home.”

Exposed by the window her mom had made wide so she wouldn’t miss anything while working in her kitchen, Kelsey smiled into the half-filled room. Smiley Jefferson had been the postal carrier for as long as she could remember. His front tooth had been missing for about that long, too.

“It’s good to be home, Smiley.” It had been until a few minutes ago, anyway. “I hear Drew and Kathy had another baby. Congratulations.”

“He finally got himself a grandson.” The owner of the only gas station in town grinned as he looked up from his breakfast. “Just don’t ask him to show you pictures. You get him started and the mail will never get delivered.”

There was no such thing as a private conversation at Dora’s Diner. Not when nearly everyone there knew everyone else. The quaint little establishment with its maple tables and chairs and bulletin board papered with handwritten notes of locals seeking to barter everything from farm equipment and labor to hay and eggs was as much the center of the community as the community center down the street. It was also the root of the town grapevine.

Much of what Kelsey had always loved about remote and rural Maple Mountain, Vermont, was the sense of acceptance and community she’d always felt there. Many of the locals were set in their ways and independent to a fault, but they protected their own. Neighbors helped neighbors. If someone hadn’t been heard from in a while, someone else checked on them to make sure they weren’t just busy or being reclusive. They were like extended family to her. And, like family, she loved them in spite of their quirks as much as she did because of them.

The acceptance was reciprocal. No matter how long she remained away, for a year, sometimes two, she was always welcomed back.

Her attention wasn’t on that comfortable familiarity, however. All she felt as the front door opened and heads lifted to see who was joining them was a distinct sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

Sam MacInnes hadn’t been anything more to her than a passing memory in the dozen years since she’d last seen him. Since she’d gone off the deep end for him as she had, she’d obviously thought him rather incredible back then. But she’d been a teenager at the time. Having been raised in conservative and totally unsophisticated Maple Mountain, she’d been a fairly sheltered one at that.

Years of living in cities had left her far more worldly and infinitely less impressionable than she’d once been. Still, she wasn’t quite prepared for the six feet of solid muscle and testosterone in a faded NYPD T-shirt and worn jeans that walked into the room.

He totally dominated the space.

He made no effort to draw attention to himself. If anything, it seemed to her that his manner as he returned the greetings of others with an easy, appealing familiarity seemed decidedly low-key. He was simply the sort of man other men sensed as a prime example of their own, and either envied or emulated. Women simply stopped to stare and reminded themselves to breathe.

She didn’t remember his hair being so dark. Its shade of sable looked so deep it nearly seemed black in the overhead lights. And his silver-gray eyes spoke more of a quiet, watchful intensity than whatever romantic notion she’d had about them all those summers ago. Yet what struck her most as he moved closer was the rugged maturity that carved lines of character in a face that had once merely been handsome—and gave him an aura of power and utter control that seemed downright dangerous.

He’d barely met her eyes when she jerked her glance away and slipped behind the wall to the grill.

The thought that he might have already found the diary sent her heart to her toes.

With her pulse pounding frantically in her ears, she heard coffee being poured into a mug and her mom’s cheerful, “’Mornin’, Sam. Good thing you showed up. These two were gettin’ worried about you.” The mug slid across shiny pine. “I just told ’em not a minute ago that you wouldn’t leave without havin’ breakfast first.”

The chuckle she heard sounded as deep and rich as the brew her mother had just poured. “I didn’t realize I was getting that predictable. But you’re right.” His tone grew grateful. “Thanks, Dora,” he said, apparently referring to the caffeine she’d just slid toward him.

With the clink of metal against glass, her mom slipped the carafe back onto the big double coffeemaker. “What are you pickin’ up from the lumberyard this time?”

“More two-by-fours. But I’m not going into St. Johnsbury until I get all the walls upstairs torn out and see what else I’ll need. I’ve run into more wood rot up there than I did downstairs.”

“That’s because the roof was so bad.” Amos punctuated his conclusion by stabbing a bite of pancake. “The Bakers replaced it so they could sell the place. That thing sagged like an ol’ mare. Leaked in buckets, I’d imagine.”

“They told Megan about the water damage,” Sam replied, speaking of his sister. “She didn’t care. She and the boys fell in love with the place.”

“I can see why they’d do that.” Silverware rattled as her mom put together a setting. “It’s a pretty piece of property, with that creek and all. Kelsey used to like going out there herself when the elder Mrs. Baker was still alive. She was friends with her granddaughter.

“Speaking of which…Kelsey, I mean,” she continued, her tone utterly conversational, “she got here last night. Her plane was late arrivin’ in Montpelier, so we’ve hardly had a chance to visit. Have we, Kelsey?

“Kelsey?” Puzzlement entered Dora’s voice as she turned to where her daughter had stood only moments ago. “Where did you go? I want someone to meet you.”

Kelsey didn’t respond. Protected by six feet of wall, she was too busy closing her eyes, shaking her head and wishing her mom wasn’t so impossibly social. Dora Schaeffer had never met a stranger. Any tourist who came in more than once was remembered, along with where they were from and where they were going. She also knew every resident for a radius of fifty miles. If she didn’t know them personally, she knew of them, about them and who they were related to—along with most of their business. People tended to confide in her and what they didn’t confide, she overheard or pried out on her own. It was widely rumored that between her, Agnes Waters at the general store and Claire McGraw, the mayor’s wife, there was hardly a secret in town.

The only person her mom didn’t know as well as she thought she did was her own daughter.

There were advantages to that small failing. In a matter of seconds, it became apparent that she’d never had a clue about her daughter’s wild crush on the man watching her reluctantly step back into view. Her mom didn’t even seem to think she knew who Sam was.

“Kelsey, this is Tom and Janelle Collier’s nephew, Sam. He’s taking time off to work on the old Baker place for his sister.” The arches of her pale eyebrows merged. “I told you the Bakers finally sold the place, didn’t I? After Jenny married Doctor Reid?

“Anyway,” she hurried on, sounding as if she didn’t want to sidetrack herself as she turned back to the man quietly watching her strangely silent daughter, “Kelsey is helping out through the holiday, like I told you.” Holding her casted arm protectively at her waist, she set a napkin and utensils on the counter for him. “I don’t know what I’d have done if she hadn’t been able to make it. It’s just us locals and a few lowlanders on vacation out at the lakes right now, but give it two days and that road out there will be bumper-to-bumper with folk coming to celebrate the Fourth of July. They’re all going to be hungry, too.”

He had big hands. Kelsey noticed that as he wrapped one around his mug. He had a nice smile, too. A little reserved. Kind of sexy.

He was smiling at her. Feeling an odd jolt join her panic, she jerked her attention to the older man pouring more maple syrup over the melted butter on his pancakes.

“Good thing you had her to call on, Dora,” Amos informed her mom. “You’d have been up a creek with Betsy being gone like she is. You thinkin’ to hire somebody to help her when she gets back?” He aimed his fork at her cast. “Leastwise until you get rid of that thing?”

Not by a hair did her mom’s tight bun budge as she adamantly shook her head. “Betsy will take her shifts and I’ll take mine,” she insisted, speaking of her part-time cook, and new grandmother of twins. The birth of those babies had required Betsy Parker’s presence in Burlington to help her daughter and son-in-law—right through the busiest week of summer.

“I just need to get used to this thing,” Dora muttered, frowning stubbornly at her encumbrance. “Once the crowds are gone this weekend I’ll be fine. In the meantime, I’ll have Kelsey freeze me up a bunch of pies and such in case Betsy needs more time with those babies.”

The frown melted as she glanced back at Sam. “You used to come in here when Kelsey was in high school,” she reminded him, returning to what she’d rather talk about. “When she wasn’t in the kitchen, she waited tables for me. You might remember having seen her back then.”

Kelsey knew her mom was just being her usual chatty self. As far as the older woman was concerned, her little diner was her home and her guests were treated with the same hospitality she would have offered had they been in her living room—which, technically, they were. The entire first floor of the old two-story house Kelsey had been raised in had been converted into the diner after her father passed away twenty years ago. She and her mom had lived in the rooms upstairs. Her mom still did.

Since Dora was just being her gregarious self, Kelsey ordinarily wouldn’t have thought anything of her mom’s casual comments. But having her mom prod Sam’s memory was the last thing she wanted her to do—until she realized he seemed to have no memory of her at all.

“Sure,” he said, in that vague way people did when they didn’t want to be rude and say they had little or no recollection of a person. “Your mom said that you live in Scottsdale now. You’re a chef?”

“Pastry chef,” she explained, because it was all she could think to say.

A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth again. “I’m an apple pie man myself. Will you make any of those while you’re here?”

“Probably.”