TAKE A CHANCE (Chance Colorado Series)

by Mayhue, Melissa

  This was so much more than Logan had expected. More than he’d ever dared to hope for. Could it be possible that Matt didn’t resent him as much as he resented himself?

  “Absolutely, we can. You free tonight? We could catch up over burgers and beers at the Main Street.”

  “At the café?” A puzzled expression swept over Matt’s face but vanished in the blink of an eye. “Done. My social calendar is pretty empty these days. See you there at six?”

  “At six, then,” Logan agreed, turning to nod his farewells to Matt’s mother and grandparents. “Mr. Flynn, ladies.”

  Then she caught his eye.

  “You remember Allie, right?” Matt nodded toward his sister, a smile crinkling his face. “Not that you could very well forget someone as obnoxious as she used to be.”

  Logan remembered Allie all right. Just not as she stood before him now. She’d been a pudgy little girl with a head full of curls and thick glasses sliding down her nose, always trying to follow Matt everywhere he went.

  Somewhere along the line, she’d ditched the glasses and all that pudge had grown into curves. And those curves had definitely shifted to all the right spots.

  “You turned out pretty good,” he heard himself say, as if his inner thoughts had detoured straight out of his mouth without bothering to make the full transit through his brain.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, her gaze flickering up to catch his for a second before darting down toward her feet, even as her cheeks mottled a lovely shade of red.

  It had been a while since anyone had blushed for him, though maybe he was misreading her reaction. Still, he found that he liked it.

  “Looks like they’re ready to start,” Matt’s grandmother noted, tugging at her husband’s hand. “Sit down with me, Papa.”

  “I’d better be getting to my seat, too,” Logan said, backing away, unable to tear his gaze from Allie. “See you tonight, Matt.”

  He forced himself, finally, to turn around and walk away, back to the area where members of his family had gathered.

  Taking the seat his sister had saved for him, Logan ran a hand over the back of his neck, attempting to unscramble his thoughts.

  Today was supposed to be about Danny, and his focus needed to be up front where Danny’s grandmother tapped a fingernail against the microphone in preparation for her speech.

  Still, in spite of his best efforts, he found his attention straying across the sea of chairs time and again, back to the petite blonde standing next to Matt.

  What the hell was wrong with him? He was a twenty-seven-year-old man, for the love of God, not some fifteen-year-old horndog. And yet, here he was, completely unable to stop himself from staring at her. Maybe his buddy Tanner was right about needing to get back into the dating game in a serious way before he morphed into some kind of weird old man.

  After his breakup with Shayla, he’d promised himself that he was never getting involved with another woman. He still felt that way. A casual evening with a female acquaintance when he hit Grand Junction or Denver was fine, but never here in Chance. Dating a woman in his hometown would be too much like getting involved in a relationship, and, as he’d learned the hard way, relationships were for fools.

  “Is that Allison Flynn standing over there next to Matt?” Katie leaned around him to get a better look. “I’d heard that she was coming back to Chance to look after her mom, but I didn’t realize she was back yet.”

  It would appear that his sister had a much better source of information for what was happening in town than he did.

  “I wonder if Ryan knows she’s back,” Katie mused. “They used to date, you know. Most of their senior year in high school, as I remember it.”

  Logan hadn’t known. And now that he did, he wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea.

  Around him, people applauded politely as Danny’s grandmother began to speak about the wild and witty young man her grandson had been. And though Logan tried to pay attention, his gaze continually wandered back to the spot where Allie stood.

  So she’d dated his younger brother. Funny that Ryan had never mentioned her. Or maybe he had and Logan simply hadn’t been listening.

  Another glance in her direction and Logan’s decision was made. He needed to make some time to have a chat with Ryan when his brother came home.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She was never getting out of this chair again. Never standing on her own two miserable feet again. Not ever.

  Allie stretched out in the recliner, wiggling her poor, tortured toes. If it didn’t hurt so bad to stand, she’d go fill the tub with the hottest water she could bear and soak her feet.

  “Pass,” she murmured, closing her eyes and settling deeper into the soft old chair. This felt too good to interrupt for anything else.

  Her mother and brother had both gone to their rooms to rest after the exertion of attending the dedication at the community center, so the living room was all hers. With fresh air wafting in through the open windows and only the sound of Grainger’s snoring to punctuate the silence, it was beyond peaceful here. Home was comforting in a way she’d forgotten home could be. Lulled by the rhythmic noises coming from the old dog curled up on the end of the sofa, Allie felt herself drifting into that wonderfully nebulous state between waking and sleep.

  It was there, in that not-quite-real world, where her imagination bloomed unchecked, that he always came to her. The only difference today was that the Logan O’Connor who invaded her half-dream was an older, updated version of the teenager she’d fantasized about for so long. Logan 2.0.

  In her mind’s eye, he strode toward her, his dark eyes fixed on her as if she were his only reason for being here. A smile slowly lit his face as he approached, and her body reacted to his acknowledgment of her with a shiver of anticipation.

  In the space of a heartbeat he stood next to her, his gaze holding hers as his head dipped toward her. She could hear her own heart pounding, echoing in her ears, as loudly as if someone knocked on a nearby door. She closed her eyes and leaned up into him, waiting for that magical instant when his lips would caress hers.

  “Allie,” he breathed, in a jarring, feminine voice that sounded nothing like his own.

  The perfect moment of fantasy shuddered, shimmered, and slipped away like a wisp of smoke.

  “Allie? You in there?” The raised voice was accompanied by more of the knocking she’d heard before.

  Well, damn.

  Allie scrubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes as she pushed down the recliner’s footrest and stood. Next to her, Grainger lifted his head as if that were the best he could manage.

  “Some great guard dog you are,” she muttered, making her way toward the front door. “Chester could do a better job of scaring people off than you do.”

  Her cousins, Dulcie and Desi, waited on the front porch.

  “There you are!” Dulcie said. “We were beginning to worry when no one answered but we saw your car out front.”

  “We weren’t worried,” Desi corrected, following her sister into the living room. “Dulcie was. She’s as bad as an old woman. Always has been.”

  That much was true. Dulcie had always been the most cautious, the most levelheaded of the three of them.

  “Why don’t we head back to the kitchen?” Allie said. “I’ve got some tea in the fridge.”

  They could visit out there without any worry about waking up her mother or Matt.

  Her guests slid into chairs around the big wooden table in the corner of the kitchen while Allie gathered glasses and the pitcher of iced tea.

  “So,” she began, filling each of the glasses before sitting down herself. “What is it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  The two women exchanged a look over their teas and then Dulcie leaned forward, arms outstretched on the table, her hands clasped around her glass.

  “Mama Odie says you’ve come home to stay. Is that true?”

  “I guess it is,” Allie answered, consciously holding ba
ck the sigh her answer brought with it.

  Though moving back to Chance certainly hadn’t been her original plan, now that she was here, now that she’d seen her mother’s condition for herself, there didn’t seem to be any viable option but to stay. Besides, she had nothing waiting for her anywhere else.

  “Have you thought about work yet? About what you might want to do now that you’re back?” Desi asked. “There isn’t much in the way of jobs around here. Unless you’re thinking to try for something up at the resort.”

  Allie shared a look with her cousins. Work at the resort? Not likely. The Last Chance Ski Resort was the closest thing to a major employer in the area. Except for the fact that the Reillys, who owned it, seemed determined to hire from outside the valley. Though their two families, along with the O’Connors, had originally founded the valley together, something had happened a few generations back and they’d mostly gone their separate ways. The Reillys especially seemed determined to distance themselves from their roots in Chance. Rumor had it that their money had even played a major role in getting the big highway detoured around Chance, an event that had nearly been the deathblow to the fading little town.

  Even if that weren’t the case, the resort was the last place Allie would want to spend her days. It held too many uncomfortable memories.

  “I honestly don’t know yet,” Allie answered at last, pulling herself back from her musings. “I haven’t exactly thought that far ahead.”

  “Well.” Desi tapped her dark purple nails against the glass she held. “Think about it for a minute. If you could do absolutely anything in the world you wanted, what would you pick?”

  Anything she wanted? Unbidden, Logan’s face floated through her thoughts. What was wrong with her? All she had to do was see the guy up close and eight years of convincing herself he didn’t mean anything to her had slipped away, as if they were no more than a matter of days.

  Sipping her tea, she stalled for a bit as she forced his image from her mind and tried to think of an answer to her cousin’s question.

  “After six years of working in a bookstore, sales is about the only thing I’m qualified to do. But, the way I remember it, most of the shops here in Chance are staffed by the people who own them, so I’m not holding out a lot of hope for a sales job here.”

  A queasy heaviness settled over her at the prospect of job hunting. It was why she’d avoided making any plans. She just prayed she could find something to earn a living in Chance. Her savings were minimal and her credit card hovered near its limit, so a regular paycheck was a necessity. But traveling any distance to find that paycheck would defeat the purpose of coming back here to keep an eye on her mother.

  Desi stopped her tapping and leaned forward. “I didn’t say anything about what you’re qualified to do, now did I? I asked you what you wanted to do. Those aren’t at all the same sort of—”

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” Dulcie interrupted in her always practical way. “A little over a year ago, Desi and I cleaned out Papa Flynn’s old building on Main Street and started our own business, a coffee shop. The Hand of Chance Coffee Emporium.”

  Now there was a gargantuan task if Allie had ever heard of one. Papa Flynn had been collecting his treasures for over sixty years, and for as far back as she could remember, that old building had been stuffed to the gills with all manner of junk.

  “I wish I’d been here to see that endeavor. It must have taken quite the effort to open your coffee shop.”

  “I wish you’d been here to help.” Desi grinned and sat back in her chair. “In spite of what my sister says, the Hand is hardly what anyone could call just a coffee shop. We do coffee, all right. Some of the best you’ll find in the state, as a matter of fact. But Dulcie bakes her wonderful breads and sweets and I have a space to craft and sell my jewelry. Both of us are living our dreams in that old building. We were hoping you’d consider joining us.”

  Join them? What on earth could she possibly do in a bakery-slash-jewelry store? It was all Allie could manage not to laugh out loud at the suggestion. If it weren’t for frozen food and microwaves, she would have starved to death a long time ago. And as for creativity, sticking flowers in a vase without breaking their stems was a major accomplishment for her.

  “That’s really sweet of you to offer. But I can’t cook worth a darn and there’s not a creative bone in my body, so I don’t see me being much of an employee for you.”

  “There’s nothing sweet about it,” Desi said. “We already have a cook. And a jeweler. We’re looking for something else entirely. Another leg for our business stool, so to speak. That’s why we asked what you really want to do.”

  A silence hovered over the table while two identical pairs of eyes bored into Allie.

  A stool leg? Allie was at a loss as to what her cousins wanted from her. “I guess I could be a waitress, if that’s what you need, but I wouldn’t call it my dream job.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Dulcie huffed, pushing up from the table to pace around the kitchen. “Books, you doofus-butt. You’ve always loved your freakin’ books. Didn’t you just say you’d been working in a bookstore for the past six years?”

  Allie nodded, still confused by what her cousins were suggesting. “Of course I love books. But where would books fit into your shop?”

  “In the back, actually,” Desi said, grinning. “It would take some hard work, but we’ve been talking about it for a while. We just don’t have the expertise. Or the time.”

  “The building’s big, Allie. Surely you remember that.” Dulcie sat back down, her eyes shining with excitement. “We hauled all Papa Flynn’s junk upstairs and cleared out the whole lower level for the Hand of Chance. Even with the kitchen and seating and the jewelry side, there’s still a lot of empty space. From day one we’ve thought it would be perfect to have a new-and-used bookstore in the back to encourage people to come in and linger. Maybe even set aside part of it to lend out books, since we don’t have a library in Chance. What do you say? You think you could run your own bookstore? Are you up for it?”

  Her own bookstore would be a dream come true. Especially if it involved being able to get books in the hands of people who wouldn’t otherwise be reading. But the twins didn’t realize what a massive undertaking they were proposing. Or maybe what they didn’t realize was that she was penniless.

  “Yes, of course, what you’re describing would be awesome. Totally awesome. And I’d love to be a part of something like that. I’m really honored that you’d consider me for it.” Allie clasped her hands together on the table. “But there’s no way I can start a business of my own. Let’s not even get into how many bookstores are failing now. The initial costs for something like that would be enormous. I’d need shelves and seats and, geez, tons of books. The thing is, I can’t afford to buy any of that stuff. I’m basically broke.”

  “You wouldn’t need to.” Dulcie glanced at her sister, waiting for a nod from Desi before continuing. “At least not in the beginning. As far as furniture goes, you could find everything you need upstairs in Papa Flynn’s stuff if you’re willing to use antiques. I know we hauled some old bookcases up there. You’ll just have to dig your way through everything to find what you’d like to use.”

  Maybe the twins were right. Maybe she could… but no. Reason reared its ugly head and dragged her back to reality.

  “I don’t see how I could possibly make something like that work. I’d need to order books to sell. Or, at the very least, buy used ones somewhere. The way things are right now, I’d be lucky to afford one book for my own reading.”

  “You don’t have to make it work by yourself. We make this work together. Mama Odie and Papa Flynn helped us to start out. The building still belongs to them, but as one of their grandkids, you’re as welcome to use it as we are. The Hand has done really well for us. We could lend you the money to order some books.” Desi grinned and sipped from her glass of tea. “You could pay us back after you get things up and running and you’r
e making a profit. Having people sitting around, reading books, they’re bound to want a coffee. And once they smell the food, we make even more money. It’s a win-win-win partnership.”

  “As far as setting up a lending library, that should be easy enough,” Dulcie said. “I bet you could get people around town to donate books they have stuck away in bookcases or closets. I know there are some boxes of old books in Papa Flynn’s stuff.” Dulcie reached across the table and laid her hand over Allie’s. “Won’t you at least come over and look around the shop before you say no? See for yourself the potential of what we’re suggesting. It would be so cool to have the three of us be together again, like old times.”

  Working with her cousins was a definite selling point. Even with a two-year age difference between them, they’d been her best friends and confidantes all through their childhood.

  “Okay. I’ll think about it.” After all the trouble her cousins had gone to in dreaming up this plan for her, to do otherwise would be rude. “I have to drop Matt off at the café around six, so maybe, if things work out, I’ll try to stop by after that.”

  “Good.” Dulcie stood up, a grin covering her face. “We need to get going. Because of the dedication, we shut everything down for the morning, but we have to get over there and get opened now. We’ll look forward to seeing you sometime after six.”

  “I just know you’ll be on board once you see the place. It has a vibe all its own.” Desi threw her arms around Allie for a hug, but pulled back, her brow wrinkled, her eyes fixed on the doorway to the room beyond. “Who’s that?”

  Allie turned, seeing no one until Chester’s loud yowl drew her gaze downward.

  “Oh. That’s my cat, Chester.” She leaned over and stretched out a hand only to have the cat completely ignore her as he hurried past her to rub against Desi’s leg. “Maybe it’s more accurate to say that he’s the cat who lives with me rather than calling him my cat.”