The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  A white line edged Jase’s jaw, and his eyes flashed with fire. “That’s fine by me,” he growled back. “Let’s just step outside, shall we?”

  Katie closed her eyes, engaged in a visible struggle with her temper, and then opened them again, speaking calmly. “That’s enough,” she said. “From both of you. This isn’t the old days, when you used to strip the hide off each other out behind Jessie’s barn. You’re grown men, and you’re family, and I’ll thank you to act like it.”

  Jase raised an index finger, as if to shake it under Katie’s nose, thought better of the idea when he saw the look in her eyes, and let his hand fall to his side. “I’m sorry about missing Janie’s school meeting,” he told his wife, “and Ellie’s dance program, too.”

  “Tell it to your daughters,” Katie said, and pushed past him to leave.

  “Katie—” he reached for her, and missed. After shooting one ferocious glance in Chance’s direction, Jase followed Katie out of the café and into the parking lot. It seemed fitting to Hallie that the snow was beginning to melt; tempers ran hot in Primrose Creek.

  “Let’s go see about your truck,” Chance grumbled, watching the retreating couple with an expression Hallie couldn’t read.

  For a moment, she didn’t know what he was talking about, she’d been so absorbed in the drama playing out between him and Jase and Katie. “Oh . . . yeah,” she agreed. “Right.”

  He looked at her and she saw an old sorrow in his eyes.

  Tell me, she wanted to say, just as he had done earlier. But she knew she didn’t have the right to ask, especially when she wasn’t willing to give up her own secrets in return.

  “I’ll look after the kids,” Madge volunteered. The breakfast crowd had thinned out, Hallie noticed, once again aware of her surroundings. “You go on with Chance and get your business taken care of.”

  “We’ll be good,” Kiley said, in a pleading voice, obviously afraid Hallie would refuse to leave them, even in such a safe and cozy place as the Last Chance.

  “Please,” Kiera added.

  Hallie hesitated for a moment, then worked up a smile, and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks, Madge.”

  Madge grinned, a blue crayon in hand, working on a place mat of her own. “No problem,” she said. “Just be back here by eleven or so, so we can get ready for the lunch rush.”

  Hallie, once the owner and operator of one of the most popular restaurants in Scottsdale, Arizona—no small accomplishment in a town where trendy eateries were plentiful—was pleased at the prospect of slinging hash in a high-country greasy spoon, even on a trial basis; work was therapy for her. “Any particular dress code?”

  Madge exchanged the blue crayon for a yellow one. “Jeans and a blouse are all right,” she said. “If Wynona doesn’t blow in on schedule, we’ll order you a couple of uniforms from the supply house. Their sales rep is due sometime next week.”

  Hallie pictured herself in a pink nylon number like Madge’s, and had to smile. “Great,” she said. “See you in a little while.” She spoke to the girls again, as Chance held her coat for her. The small, ordinary courtesy surprised her, though she didn’t let it show. “You behave yourselves while I’m gone.”

  Kiera beamed, Kiley rolled her eyes. “We will,” Kiley promised. “Okay,” Kiera said, at the same time.

  Outside, Chance got behind the wheel of his pickup, fired up the engine, and leaned across to push the passenger door open for Hallie. She climbed in, settled herself, fastened her seat belt. Through the windshield, she could see what must have been Katie’s bookstore. The sheriff’s car was parked out front, and he stood on the sidewalk, gazing into the shop. He seemed, to Hallie, the very personification of loneliness.

  “Poor guy,” Hallie murmured, and winced inwardly when she realized she’d been thinking aloud.

  Chance made a derisive huffing sound. “Don’t waste your sympathy on him. He’s got women all over the county looking to cheer him up.”

  Hallie was stung, on Katie’s account. “He doesn’t look like the type to run around,” she said.

  Chance kept his eyes on the road. “Looks,” he replied, “can be deceiving.”

  4

  C hance drew his truck to a stop behind Hallie’s, shifting into neutral and yanking the handle of the emergency brake. “Wait here,” he said. It was bitterly cold, even though the sun was out; no sense in both of them freezing their asses off. Hallie ignored him, pushed open her door, and jumped to the ground. Her hands were stuffed into the pockets of her coat and her chin was set at an obstinate angle that made him want to laugh out loud. Passing the rear wheel of her own rig, she stopped and kicked it, hard.

  Grinning to himself, Chance went around to the front of the truck, unhooked the latch with a curved finger, and raised the hood. He knew at a glance that there was no saving that old engine; it had thrown a rod, and that was the least of its problems. He let out a long sigh. Closed the hood again.

  Hallie was hugging herself against the cold. Stubborn woman. She could have stayed in his truck, where the heater was blasting, but no. That would have been too easy, he supposed. “It’s not good, is it?” she asked, in a small voice that said she was unaccustomed to trouble, at least in large doses.

  “No,” he said. “I’d say that old truck has seen its day. You could probably sell it for scrap, though. Get a few hundred, if you’re lucky.”

  She sucked in a breath big enough to seriously deplete the atmosphere, then gave a hissing sigh and threw her head back, gazing up at the cold sky, absorbing the news. “Great,” she said, at some length. “Now what do I do?”

  He figured it must be a rhetorical question; she certainly wasn’t asking him for suggestions. So he waited, raising the truck’s hood again and fiddling with the carburetor, just for something to do. Talk about beating a dead horse. It was a miracle, in his view, that she’d covered any real distance at all in that wreck-on-wheels.

  She stomped one sneakered foot. “Damn.”

  He closed the hood again, dusted his gloved hands together, then rested them on his hips. “I take it you don’t have the money for another car.”

  She glared at him. “Not much gets by you, does it, Cowboy?” she snapped. Then she bit her lower lip, and her expression was pained. “I’m sorry,” she sighed, spreading her hands, letting them fall against her sides. In a way, he’d liked it better when she showed some fight. He’d been less afraid for her then.

  He swept his hat off, put it on again. Shrugged. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got a thick hide.”

  “What about a new engine?” she asked, hope flaring in her eyes. He felt a proportionate rise in his own spirits. “How much would that cost?”

  He sighed. Gave a speculative figure.

  Her face fell. “Shit,” she said.

  He bit the inside of his lower lip to keep from laughing again, guessing she might fling herself at him in a fury if he did. “Shit” was a minor-league curse word, but hearing her say it was encouraging. For a few moments there, he’d been sure she was going to give up, maybe, or at least break down and cry. He never could abide a woman’s tears.

  He waited.

  She continued to pace. “How am I going to get to work?” she demanded.

  Chance didn’t reply; she still wasn’t talking to him—she was confronting the universe. A good sign.

  She slammed one fist into her palm. “You’d think just one thing would go right, wouldn’t you?” she expounded. Then she stopped, and her face changed again. A sort of woeful humor quirked at the corner of her mouth. “Okay, so maybe a couple of things have gone right.”

  He wanted to help her, to make everything all right, but he didn’t need a season of Oprah episodes to know he couldn’t fix Hallie O’Rourke, that they’d both be worse off for the effort if he tried. Still, he had to do something. “Jessie has a Jeep, under a tarp in her shed. You could drive that.”

  “I’m already living in the woman’s house,” Hallie protested, looking e
xasperated now, as well as a little frenzied. “I can’t just help myself to her car!”

  “I don’t think she’d mind,” he said, folding his arms because damn, it was cold. Couldn’t they have this conversation in the truck, where there was heat? “We’ll go to her place and call her, if that will make you feel better. Believe me when I say, Jessie will be so grateful to have somebody staying right there on the place, she’ll probably want to adopt you.”

  She scraped her upper lip with her teeth. “We can’t just leave this pile of junk sitting here,” she said, gesturing toward her dead truck.

  “I’ll call Bob Riley when we get to the house. He’ll tow it to his junkyard. At least you’ll get a few bucks out of the deal. If you’ve got a clear title, that is.”

  He saw the flicker of alarm in her eyes, there and gone, in less than a moment. She went around to the passenger side, wrenched open the door, flipped the latch on the glove compartment, and rummaged. Her blue-jeaned butt looked good from where Chance was standing.

  Soon enough, she produced a piece of paper. After examining it with squinty intensity, she thrust the document in his direction, grinning. “It’s been signed over.”

  Chance read the title. Sure enough, there was a scrawled signature on the proper line. Legally, the vehicle was up for grabs, the property of whoever paid the fees and filed for ownership. He deciphered the name. “Who’s Lou Waitlin?” he asked. He’d automatically registered the Phoenix address.

  For a long time, she just looked at him. Then she shoved a hand through her chin-length hair and gnawed at her lower lip again. “Just a guy. I bought the truck from him a few weeks ago.”

  She’d taken too long to answer. He let her know, with a look, that he didn’t believe her. “Whatever,” he said. He gestured toward his own rig. “Hop in. I’ll take you back to Jessie’s.”

  She strode over, opened the door, and climbed up into the seat. She was gazing straight ahead when he got in and started the engine.

  “Do you want me to call the tow truck?”

  She didn’t look at him. Just leaned against the window on her side, the fingers of one hand splayed in her hair.

  Once they were rolling, he took his cell phone from his shirt pocket and got Information on the line. A few moments later, he was talking to Bob at the junkyard. He asked the other man to pick up the truck and promised to check in with him later.

  “This is taking up a lot of your time,” she said, when they turned in through Jessie’s gate and started up the driveway.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “Don’t you have to earn a living?”

  He chuckled. “No,” he said. “I guess I’m what you’d call a gentleman farmer.”

  She smiled at the term, though the threat of tears glinted in her eyes. “Must be nice,” she said. She glanced at her watch, a thin gold one, out of sync with her discount-store clothing. He knew she was worried about being late for work.

  They hit the rutted part of the road—he’d been after Jessie for years to have it graded and then paved—and the truck bounced on its springs. “It has its good points.”

  Watching him, she simply raised an eyebrow. Her right elbow was propped on the lower part of the window, fingers curled against her cheek.

  He wanted to tell her a lot of things about himself, both mundane and profound, and that surprised him. How he’d been a rodeo champion in college, for instance, and how he’d yearned for this place all the time he was away. He was generally inclined to play his cards close to the vest, operating on the old saying that everybody’s business is nobody’s business. They pulled into Jessie’s driveway, came to a stop in front of the shed where her Jeep was stored.

  Inside the house, Hallie immediately started a pot of coffee. Chance noticed that she glanced at the clock over the sink periodically, agitated at being separated from her children and probably still fretting to herself about getting to work on time, though she still had an hour.

  Chance took the cordless phone from its hook on the wall and ran a mental finger down the list of numbers on the typewritten itinerary Jessie had pinned up nearby. He punched the appropriate buttons and waited while the call rang through to her hotel in Kansas City.

  Jessie answered immediately, and there was an eager note in her voice, as though she was hoping to hear from one particular person. “Hello?”

  “Jessie, it’s Chance. I’m calling from your place.”

  He heard her catch her breath. “Is everything all right?”

  Chance wasted no time reassuring her. “Things are fine out here,” he said quickly. “Fact is, I called to introduce you to your new house-sitter. Her name is Hallie O’Rourke. Want to say hello?”

  Jessie sounded surprised, and full of questions. She tried to get more details out of him, then sighed. “Put her on,” she said cautiously.

  Chance handed the receiver to Hallie, who hastily smoothed her hair, as though trying to make herself more presentable. It was, he thought, amused, a little like dressing up to sing on the radio.

  “Hello?” Hallie said.

  While the conversation continued, Chance poured two cups of coffee, set one out for Hallie, and wandered into the front room, sipping from his own mug as he went. He crossed to the desk where Jessie’s computer stood, lifted off the dust cover and, for no particular reason, flipped the On switch. Hallie’s voice trailed in from the kitchen, and he knew from her tone that Jessie was giving her the third degree, in that gracious way of hers. He doubted that she’d have any better luck in that department than he had. Hallie O’Rourke—if that was her real name—wasn’t giving anything away, not when it came to her past, at least.

  Reaching for the mouse, he zeroed in on the icon for Jessie’s Internet server and clicked twice. Her password was stored, and he got online with no more effort than that. Within a few moments, he was logging on to a familiar Web site. He clicked Search and a name box came up, and he filled it in without hesitation.

  Lou Waitlin.

  Jessie Shaw’s voice was quiet, but vibrant with life. She seemed thrilled to have a perfect stranger living in her house. Hallie took an occasional sip of the coffee Chance had poured for her, and got a word in edgewise when she could. “You just make yourself at home,” Jessie said, while Hallie stood in the kitchen doorway, watching Chance, who had switched on the computer. “There’s food in the freezer out on the back porch—help yourself. If you’ve got a valid driver’s license, you can use my Jeep, too. It’s not good for any machine to just sit around gathering dust that way. And I suppose Chance has shown you how to look after the horses?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You’ll want to be careful around Trojan. He’s a caution, that one. But he’s got a good heart.”

  Hallie’s eyes narrowed a little as she watched Chance, typing busily at the computer. The click of words was rapid and steady; no two-finger cadence for him. She waited for Jessie to ask for references—that would be the end of her short career as a house-sitter and horse-tender—but the question never came. No doubt Jessie thought Chance had already gotten the pertinent information, and was willing to trust his instincts.

  “I have twin daughters,” Hallie heard herself telling the woman on the other end of the line. “They’re seven.” She dared reveal little or nothing of her past, but she needed to offer something in return for all this trust.

  There was a smile in Jessie’s voice. “The house must be so pleased,” she said.

  “Pardon?” Hallie had been watching Chance, wondering what he was up to, and it took her a moment or two longer than normal to absorb Jessie’s words.

  Jessie laughed. “That place has a heart and a soul,” she said, and made the idea sound rational. “For several generations, it was filled to the rafters with noisy children. I never married, never had a family of my own, so it’s been mighty quiet around there—except for when Chance and Jase were boys, of course.” She paused, sighed. “It’s been a lonely house.”

  Chance swiveled in the desk chair,
tossed Hallie a thoughtful glance, and went back to what he was doing. Her stomach churned with anxiety. What was he up to? Was he checking her story? She knew he’d seen Lou’s name on the truck title earlier. If he ran a search, he might find out about the murder . . .

  “Of course you can use my computer, too, if you want to,” Jessie was saying. “You could e-mail me, keep me up on all the gossip around Primrose Creek, while I’m traveling. I carry a laptop everywhere I go. I’m working on a family history.”

  Somehow, Hallie managed a smile. If the phone had had a cord, she might have twisted it around her neck and hanged herself, she felt so guilty for deceiving this good, generous woman in any way.

  She leaned against the framework of the door that led into the kitchen, still watching Chance. “I imagine I’ll hear plenty of that, working at the Last Chance Café,” she said. She couldn’t help thinking of the scene she’d witnessed just that morning, between Jase and Katie Stratton, with Chance on the fringes. There was a story there, that was for sure. Briefly, she wished she knew Jessie Shaw well enough to ask.

  Jessie chuckled. “In Primrose Creek,” she observed, “all roads lead to the Last Chance Café.”

  Chance pushed back from the computer, turned to face Hallie. Although she saw questions in his eyes, she was reassured by the slight smile curving his lips.

  “Jessie?” Hallie said sincerely, “Thank you. Thank you for giving the twins and me a place to stay. I promise I’ll take good care of your horses and the house, too.”

  “I’ll be home soon,” Jessie replied. “Just briefly, though, I’m afraid. My agent has booked a whole new batch of gallery tours for me.”

  It was more than Hallie could take in, the thought of Jessie returning to Primrose Creek, for however short a time. She was simply too frazzled to think about what she’d do then, where she and the children would go. “Here’s Chance,” she said, a little too quickly, and held out the receiver to him.

  He accepted it. Listened. Said good-bye, and pushed the button to disconnect.