Josie Day Is Coming Home

by Lisa Plumley

  Are you going to go see Mom and Dad?

  The truth was, Josie didn’t know. If she was going to live in the same town with them, maybe she might as well…. No. For now, the answer was no. If her parents found out she was here in Donovan’s Corner, they could track her down themselves. If they didn’t….

  Well, if they didn’t, at least then Josie would know where she stood. Once and for all.

  The old-timers were the first to notice.

  In retrospect, Luke should have expected that. But he hadn’t. He’d been too busy forking up his last bite of Frank’s famous cherry pie when the hubbub started. By the time it spread to his rear-corner booth, it was a full-on scandal—and all the retirees at Frank’s had front row seats.

  “You ever seen hair like that?” one of them asked.

  “No, sireee. ‘Cept in a movie.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “Desiree probably did it down at the salon,” Byron Hill, Desiree’s husband, volunteered. “She’s always cooking up something crazy for them gals. Says it’s ‘hair art.’”

  Skeptical chortles followed. Then nodding and murmuring took over. Whatever they were looking at, it had them transfixed. Swallowing his last bite, Luke gave in to idle curiosity. He squinted toward the diner’s big plate glass window. He couldn’t see a thing past the clump of gray-haired male retirees congregated in their usual booths.

  “That hair can’t be real,” one of them said, pointing outside. “Not with a color like that.”

  Luke only knew one woman with unbelievable hair color. A weird prickling sensation whooshed through him. He told himself it was probably just a surge of impatience to be done with waiting for that one particular woman to give up on Blue Moon. He motioned for his check.

  “Whoo-whee! Is that one of those belly button shirts? I’ve seen ‘em on the Jerry Springer show, but—”

  “Not lookin’ like that, you haven’t.”

  A moment of silence. Then more murmuring.

  “Damn,” old man McKee said, mopping his brow with a napkin.

  Luke consulted his scrawled-out guest check, then dropped a five dollar bill on the table. Enough with the mystery. Nothing ever happened in Donovan’s Corner. If he knew the locals, they’d probably spotted Marianne Wilson on her recumbent bike. Any deviation from the norm passed for scandal around here. He slurped the rest of his coffee in a single gulp.

  “Well, belly button shirt or not, it can’t beat those shoes.” One of the retirees chuckled. “Those are the damndest things I’ve ever seen. How do you think she stays upright?”

  “Ballast,” another retiree said knowledgably. “Plenty of ballast.”

  A hushed appreciation of feminine “ballast” followed.

  Luke, being male, deigned another look outside. He was as big a fan of “ballast” as the next guy. And he had a sneaking suspicion….

  “Will ya’ look at the way she walks?” Byron sounded awed. “Just like Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Yeah,” breathed another retiree. “Or Jayne Mansfield.”

  “Quit yer gawking, you old coot.” Luanne, the waitress, whapped Byron upside the head. “You’ve got a wife at home. Or did you forget?”

  “No. Sheesh.” Byron rubbed the back of his head.

  The rest of the men looked away for a minute, wearing sheepish expressions. Then McKee pointed outside.

  “Hey, she’s comin’ this way!” he yelled. “Duck!”

  Eight men scrambled for the closest booths. Two grabbed menus and buried their noses in them. Another waved his coffee cup at Luanne for a decoy refill.

  The waitress gave him a withering look.

  Luke grinned. If you wanted good service at Frank’s Diner, it was a bad idea to ogle anybody but Luanne.

  “Holy smokes!” one of the retirees said, staring outside again. “I know her. That’s little Josie Day. Warren and Nancy’s girl.”

  “Jenna?”

  “No. The other one.”

  A shocked silence fell over the retirees.

  Then, “The one who ran off to Las Vegas.”

  At that, even the local women in the nearby booths perked up their ears. Several bouffant-haired heads swiveled toward the diner’s front door. Luke felt a strange energy in the air, an almost palpable curiosity. This was exactly what he’d meant about people in Donovan’s Corner. It didn’t take much to stir them up.

  The bell over the diner’s front door jangled. Josie stepped inside.

  Her pink outfit and rainbow shoes were the same ones from this morning. Both looked twice as colorful as anything in the diner. In them, she reminded Luke of a Technicolor starlet in a black and white movie. The whole place sort of…faded to gray around her. She was all he could see.

  “Hi, Luanne. Hi, Frank!” Not noticing Luke yet, Josie waved to the diner’s employees, standing on tiptoes to see past the counter into the kitchen beyond. She surveyed the restaurant, then headed for an empty booth, her trademark sashay firmly in place. “Hey, Mr. McKee.”

  McKee’s ruddy face turned ten times pinker. Luke would’ve sworn the man blushed. His reaction was contagious, too. Every last retiree surrounding him wore a similar rosy hue and aw-shucks expression.

  “Hi, Mrs. Webster. Hi, Debra-Ann.”

  The women seated opposite the retirees stuck their noses in the air. The pair behind them snapped their ketchup-splattered menus upward to hide their faces.

  Noticing them, Josie looked troubled. She continued gamely down the aisle between booths, all the same. Summoning up another smile, she nodded to two more customers. Then she greeted another pair, a husband and wife Luke recognized.

  “How’s it going, you two?” Her tone sounded warm. Friendly. “Still hanging out at Frank’s, I see.”

  “Hmmph.” The wife stood with such force that her hair curlers wobbled beneath their headscarf moorings. She grabbed her husband’s arm without another look at Josie. “Come on, Henry. I changed my mind about that pie.”

  “But you love the pie here, Linda.”

  “Not“—she shot an indignant look at Josie—”anymore.”

  The two bustled out of the diner. Openmouthed, Josie watched them. Then she seemed to realize she was still standing in the middle of the restaurant. She spotted an empty booth and slid onto the worn red vinyl, all her attention fixed on the menu propped behind the napkin dispenser. She pulled it out.

  Aside from a trembling in her fingers, she seemed all right to Luke. Composed, straight-backed, and with a neutral expression on her face—although he sort of missed the beaming smile she’d entered the diner with. Bothered by what had just happened, he dragged his gaze away from her. What he saw when he looked around didn’t improve his mood.

  To a customer, every last person was either gawking at Josie or studiously not noticing her. He didn’t get it. Donovan’s Corner wasn’t exactly a hotbed of friendliness to newcomers, but this was ridiculous.

  Then he remembered. Josie wasn’t a newcomer.

  Another minute passed. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what. Despite the fact that she’d just moved into his house, he barely knew her. Was she one of those talk-talk-talk women? Or one of those distract-me-with-gifts women?

  These days, Luke didn’t have much to offer in the gift department.

  Josie kept her face firmly behind her menu. Only her Barbie-painted fingernails showed—and he didn’t think they endeared her to the rest of the plainly outfitted people in the diner. She was a flamingo among pigeons, a customized flame-painted Kawasaki V-Star racer among stock motorcycles. She stood out, whether she wanted to or not.

  Right now, she did not.

  The hell with it. These yokels needed a lesson in how to treat a lady, Luke decided.

  Before he could do anything, though, Josie surprised him.

  “Luanne, when you get a minute, could I have the cheeseburger plate, please?” she asked suddenly, her voice carrying. “And a Diet Coke to go with it?”

  The waitress, clear across the
diner and with no obvious intention of serving her newest customer, didn’t so much as glance up. “We’re all out.”

  “Out of cheeseburgers?” Josie shot a significant glance at the tabletops surrounding her. Several of them sported thick white plates full of the day’s special—cheeseburgers and fries. “You’re out of cheeseburgers?”

  “Yep.” Luanne studied her pad of guest checks, then shoved her pen behind one ear. She put both hands on her hips. Her next glance took in Frank’s rapt clientele. “I expect we’ll be out of cheeseburgers all week long.”

  All week long hung in the air, as blatantly false as Josie’s hair color.

  Josie gave Luanne a steady look. “Fine.”

  She slid her menu behind the napkin holder again. She rose, taking a few seconds to smooth out her track pants and tug down her tank top—motions that held the retirees mesmerized. Then, chin held high, she headed for the door.

  Something about the way Josie walked there caught Luke’s eye. He would have sworn she was sort of going sideways, with a swoosh and a bump that looked weirdly sexy. He’d seen something like those movements before, but he couldn’t place where. They were theatrical. Dramatic. And goofy as all get out, if the truth were told.

  Hell, he thought, getting up to follow her. She really was crazy.

  Chapter Five

  By the time Josie made it to her convertible and peeled rubber back to Blue Moon, she was boiling mad. She clutched her cell phone as she stomped across the circular drive, barely hearing Parker’s commiseration on the other end of the line.

  “I wound up doing a showgirl walk to get out of there,” Josie said. “A showgirl walk! Just to try to hold my head up. I must be losing my mind.”

  “Nah. I did one into a Fantasy Tan booth last week,” Parker confided. “The attendant probably thought I was nuts.”

  “But gorgeously tanned.” Everyone in Vegas was familiar with Parker’s perma-tan habit.

  “Of course,” Parker agreed, a smile in her voice. “Anyway, after a while the showgirl walk is second nature. We both know it. Jacqueline is a showgirl-walk Nazi.”

  Not comforted, Josie fumed. “I’m telling you, it’s a nightmare here. The house Tallulah gave me is a wreck, the people are mean—”

  “So come home. You don’t need that crap.”

  “—the stupid lock on the front door won’t work.” Cradling the cell phone with difficulty between her chin and shoulder, Josie jiggled the Blue Moon doorknob the way she had this morning. Nothing happened. “I was crazy to leave Las Vegas. I don’t belong here, Parker. I don’t. I never did.”

  Parker murmured sympathetically.

  “I tried to get the utilities hooked up at my new house,” Josie went on, “and the people at the utility company practically slapped me in cuffs.”

  “Oooh, kinky.”

  Josie rolled her eyes. “Apparently, I left some overdue bill unpaid when I left here. By now, with penalties and fees tacked on, it’s a zillion dollars or something.”

  “So come home. Jacqueline is holding your spot for you, you know.”

  “I know. Thank God, too. It looks as if I’m going to need it.” Josie glowered at the uncooperative door. She kicked it. “Even my house doesn’t like me.”

  “It’s not the same without you here. There’s nobody to tell me cheesy jokes.”

  “Oh, Parker.” At the loyalty in her friend’s voice, Josie felt a wave of homesickness wash over her. Great. Less than twenty-four hours into her great adventure and already she was buckling under. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “Hey, at least you’re not trout fishing.”

  Josie mustered a weak smile. Giving up on opening the door for now, she sat on the porch steps. They were made of smooth stone, as cold and unwelcoming as the rest of the place.

  “The thing is, I had this great idea to open a dance school here.” At the admission, tears welled in her eyes. She blinked. The view of the overgrown estate grounds came into focus, reminding her—unfortunately—of exactly how big a mess this really was. “You know, like I used to talk about doing? There’s this ballroom here that would be perfect for a studio…. Oh, who am I kidding? This whole idea was crazy to begin with.”

  “You could make it work.”

  That was Parker. Always encouraging.

  “Or you could wind up one of those nutty old ladies who live in abandoned mansions. You could wear only black and peek out the windows at the neighborhood kids. They’d be so scared, they’d pee their pants.”

  “Nice vision of my future. Crazy Lady Wets-a-Lot.”

  “I’ll keep you company. I do a great bloodcurdling shriek. Must be in the genes.”

  At that, Josie perked up. That sounded like a clue to Parker’s mysterious past. “In the genes? What genes?”

  “Umm, my skinny jeans. There’s nothing like wriggling a size eight ass into a pair of size six jeans to make a girl scream bloody murder.”

  Josie was sure Parker was hiding something.

  But before she could question her further, a distraction appeared. Luke. And he seemed to be bearing gifts.

  “Parker?” Interested in spite of herself, Josie let her gaze roam up Luke’s blue jean-clad legs, skim past his hips, and settle on the paper sack in his hands. “I’ve gotta run. Welcome Wagon’s calling.”

  “Call me if you change your mind about that scary old lady routine,” Parker said. “I’m there in a heartbeat.”

  “If I decide to terrify little kids semi-professionally, you’ll be the first to know.”

  She snapped her phone closed, then confronted Luke.

  “The stupid lock is broken again.”

  “I’ll fix it.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m leaving.”

  He angled his head philosophically. “Leaving?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, tonight. As soon as I can get my stuff out of the house.”

  “Hmmm. You might as well have this first.”

  Unconcerned, Luke pulled something from the paper sack and held it toward her. A Styrofoam takeout box, balanced in his big manly hand. His big, stupid, didn’t-fix-the-lock hand. Unreasonably, looking at him made Josie mad all over again.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Spoiling for a fight, huh? Move over.”

  Before she could protest, Luke hunkered down and nudged her sideways. He settled his studly backside on the steps beside her, then balanced the takeout box on his thighs. Josie couldn’t seem to tug her gaze away from the sight of his hands. They might be incapable of fixing the damned lock, but they did look tanned and gentle against the pearly Styrofoam.

  Pearly Styrofoam? Geez, she was losing it. She had to get out before she started rhapsodizing about supple cardboard or something.

  “Do you always sneak up on people like this?” she groused.

  “I came up past the carriage house.” He nodded toward the pine trees, where the gravel drive meandered once it passed Blue Moon’s front door. “You haven’t seen any of the outbuildings yet.”

  “That’s probably a good thing. If they look anything like the rest of the place, I’d probably have to fire you if I saw them.”

  “Geez. You get crabby when you don’t eat.” He patiently unfolded the arms she’d flopped, crisscross-style, over her lap. He set the Styrofoam container in their place. “Hurry up. Riding here on the back of my bike probably didn’t improve that much.”

  Josie let it sit there. She had a perfectly good sulk happening and Luke was ruining it. It occurred to her that now that she was leaving, she didn’t have to maintain an employer-handyman relationship with him. She could flirt all she wanted.

  “Bike, huh? I love cyclists. No wonder you have such great muscular thighs.”

  His lips quirked. “Must be all that pedaling.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I ride a Harley.”

  “Oh.” Her image of him changed. She pictured Luke on a rumbling bad-ass motorcycle, the wind in his hair and the sun gl
inting from his sunglasses. In her imagination, he looked good. Really good. Apparently she was as susceptible as the next girl to the allure of the stock bad boy.

  Her bad boy reached over and popped the top of the Styrofoam container, unperturbed by its close proximity to her lap. Josie wished she could say the same thing. The smooth slide of Luke’s fingers against her thigh as he steadied the Styrofoam left her rattled. She possessed none of his physical easiness—and, all at once, every ounce of the awkwardness that dance had been meant to train out of her.

  Greasy, salty aromas wafted from the takeout box. Luke pinched three French fries in his fingers and, companionably, offered them to her. Josie shook her head.

  Wow, he looked good. Even while eating filched French fries. His face fascinated her. The angle of his cheekbones, the deep color of his eyes, the shape of his mouth. This close, she could see whisker shadow darkening his jaw—could almost feel its scratchy texture. It made Luke look rough and ready. Sexy. Dangerous.

  Catnip to a lifelong rebel like her.

  “Ever been on one?” he asked.

  “A motorcycle?” Abruptly switching her focus to the pile of French fries in her lap, Josie grabbed one. She munched it while she considered motorcycle riding. “Not yet.”

  “Hmmm.” His assessing expression settled on her. “Most people just say no. Or they look horrified. Like somebody asked them to lick pavement.”

  “So?” Hmmm. Was that a cheeseburger in there?

  “So you said, ‘Not yet.’” Seeming interested in that, Luke chewed a few more fries. He splayed his hands on the porch and studied her. “I might have finally found my dream girl.”

  His half-teasing, half-cynical delivery wasn’t lost on her.

  “Sorry. I could never live happily ever after with a man who bogarts the French fries.” She burrowed deeper into the crispy pile, realizing exactly how hungry she really was. “Hey, there is a cheeseburger in here!”