by Lee Kilraine
Yours forever, Joe
The three women sat in the silent kitchen with quiet tears running down their faces.
“Oh my,” Beatrice said.
Lu sat back in her chair in wonder. “He gave me permission to move on. Love again. How did he know I would need it?”
Agatha snorted through her tears. “Permission? An order is more like it.”
“Oh, it’s so very romantic.” Beatrice sighed. “It’s a love story worthy of Hollywood.”
“Not yet it isn’t.” Agatha leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “It doesn’t have a happily ever after yet.”
No, no, it didn’t. Maybe it was time to do something about that.
Chapter Twenty-three
Three years ago, when Lu’s world shifted, she’d been lost in grief and pain. Nothing felt right, like trying to run a race underwater. She’d come to Climax looking for a way forward, and what she was finding—sometimes painfully—was herself. She wasn’t the Lu she used to be before Joe died because back then she was half of Lu and Joe.
No. Coming to Climax had been the first step on her own solitary path. That path had some missteps, U-turns, and even a full stop . . . or two. But she looked around the diner as she pushed through the door and realized . . . she was going to be okay.
She took a deep breath, letting the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and Dave’s biscuits embrace her. Those dreams she’d let fall away when Joe died? She was ready to pick them back up. No more just going through the motions. This girl wasn’t going to settle for being stuck again.
For the first time in what felt like forever, she didn’t feel like she needed to tie sheets together looking for an emergency escape. Joe’s letter had helped. It had eased a bit of the tightness in her chest and given her another little push down her path. Sure she was scared, but excited too. She was finally ready to grab her life back. To dream again and go after those dreams. And yes, even one day to love again.
Sooner rather than later, she needed to tie Tynan down to the nearest immovable object and force him to listen to her explanation and her apology. And maybe, just maybe, the stubborn man would be willing to be a part of her life. He could deny it all he wanted, but there was an attraction between them. A serious attraction she finally felt brave enough to explore.
But even if Tynan wanted nothing to do with her, she would be okay. She’d probably want to do something to him like key his car on her way out of town. Ha! Kidding!
Settle down, Lu. First she needed to make sure Dave hadn’t fired her, because her new, unstuck life included the dream of running a farm-to-table restaurant. Something she’d have to run by Dave, of course, but if he hated the idea, she could always start her own place. Nodding to herself, she walked over to the counter and leaned her elbows on it to peer into the kitchen.
“Hey, Dave.” Her body tensed waiting for his response. He had a right to be mad at her because she’d agreed to work and then just fallen off the face of the earth for three days.
She saw him lean down to look at who’d called him, then he poked his head into the pass-through.
“What do you think you’re doing?” His gaze narrowed on her. “Get your butt back here and help.”
“Yes! Oh, awesome! Dave, you’re the greatest.” She danced around in a circle and then hustled back into the kitchen. Renee smiled and gave her a pat on her butt when she passed behind her.
“What’s awesome is it’s crazy today and we’ve got a lunch crowd to feed and no good food to feed them.” He frowned down at the flat top he was prepping with oil. “It’s going to get busy in here today, so go ahead and double everything.”
Busy? Was it some town holiday she didn’t know about? Small towns had them, like arts and crafts festivals or barbeque cook-offs. It didn’t matter. She looked around and smiled, excited to be back and working. She wanted to hug Dave for letting her come back.
“No.”
“No, what?” Lu hadn’t realized she’d been staring at him.
“Don’t hug me. I’m not a hugger.” He frowned and gestured around the small kitchen. “Show your appreciation by making some meals and half-decent sides.”
“I’ll have you know, my sides are way better than half-decent.” She moved over to the sink to wash her hands. “And I bet under that tatted-up, gruff, scary biker dude, you’re just a teddy bear wanting a hug.”
He threw her a mean-looking glower.
“Or maybe not.” Yikes. She dried her hands and went to gather the produce she needed from the walk-in refrigerator. But she grinned as soon as he couldn’t see her face.
Potato salad, a lite macaroni salad, some couscous, and maybe the spicy three bean salad that had been such a hit when she made up a batch last week. She poked her head into the window.
“Hey, Renee, what busy day are we gearing up for so I know if I should make something special?”
“Where have you been, under a rock?” Renee seemed to be moving at warp speed today, compared to her normal relaxed pace.
“Pretty much.”
Renee did a double take toward her. “Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, honey. This storm has me so flustered, I forgot what you just went through. Are you all right, sugar?”
“I think I finally am, but what storm?” Lu tried to duck even lower to see out through the front windows, but she couldn’t see past all the people in the place. Wow, there sure were a lot of people for lunch today. “Like an early winter storm? I mean, it’s unusually warm outside today.”
“That’s part of the problem, I guess. Hurricane. Darn hurricane season goes through the whole dang month of November, just our luck.”
“What? A hurricane?” Lu turned around to Dave. “Dave, what’s Renee talking about? What hurricane?”
Dave nodded. “It was tracking up the East Coast, then this morning it jogged west, and now it’s heading right for central North Carolina.”
“Toward Climax?”
“Yup. It’s only a Cat 1 right now, and they’re predicting it’ll drop to a tropical storm as soon as it hits land, but it’s the flooding and the wind that do most of the damage.”
“Wow. Okay, so I’d better change the menu plan. We’ll make sides that don’t need to be heated once they’re cooked up. Some big batches of stick-to-your ribs food to feed a crowd.”
“Sounds good. I started soaking a batch of beans last night.”
Renee poked her head in. “The storm didn’t zigzag until this morning. How did you know last night?”
Dave tapped his nose. “I could smell it.”
“Huh. My Aunt Bessie used to say she could smell trouble coming her way.” Renee folded the dish towel in her hand and gave a shrug. “It turned out she just had bad gas.”
Lu and Dave spent the morning cooking big batches of food and making up sandwiches to help feed the emergency responders. Plus, there were some streets in town that were prone to flooding, so they’d organized a volunteer sandbag brigade, and they would likely need food too.
After eight hours they were as prepared in the diner as they could be. They reached a point where they couldn’t hold any more trays of food in the ovens or refrigerator shelves. There had been a beehive of activity in and out all day in the diner, but there was finally a lull. Literally the calm before the storm since the weather reports had the storm making landfall late tomorrow night.
“Lu, we’ve got enough food ready to feed the Marines.” Dave rubbed his forehead with a paper towel and sat on a stool next to the prep counter. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest? We’ll be doing this all over again in another thirty-six hours during the storm cleanup.”
“You’ve been here longer than me.” Lu grabbed the water Renee had passed through to her over an hour ago and swallowed down half of it to ease her parched throat. “You go.”
He shook his head. “I’m not planning on leaving the diner. I’ve got a cot set up in the back office to crash when I need to. Go on and get.”
“Okay. I’ll see
you tomorrow.” She lifted a tired hand in an effort to wave.
“No. Stay home as long as you can. We’re prepped, and like I said, I think our job will start with the cleanup. Hunker down somewhere safe until then.”
Oh, she would. She was so tired, she believed she’d sleep like a baby even if a Category 5 roared through right now. Before she left she was going to sit down and enjoy a piece of Aunt Marie’s banana cream pie, though. She’d earned it, darn it. This would be her third piece since she’d been in Climax. She was trying to figure out the recipe and she knew she was missing something.
She grabbed a slice out of the display case along with a glass of water and moved over to the quietest end of the diner. Closing her eyes, she forked bites of pie into her mouth and chewed slowly, trying to concentrate on separating out the individual flavors. Obviously banana and vanilla bean, a hint of lemon, maybe a dollop of sour cream. But she was pretty sure there was a smoky hint of a liquor there. A drop of whiskey? She was sure there were macadamia nut pieces in the crust. It was sweet and nutty. Mmm.
The quiet was interrupted when the side door closest to Lu flew open, causing the bell above it to clang like crazy. Two of Tynan’s brothers strode in with a woman. They sat in the booth next to her and ordered a round of coffee when Renee stopped by. Crazy how similar, yet how different, Tynan and his brothers looked. She’d met his two brothers, Kaz and Paxton, the twins she had trouble telling apart, but not the one sitting at the table in the police uniform.
“Coffee coming right up.” Renee grabbed the pot of coffee from behind the counter and returned lickety-split. She set out the mugs, filling them as she talked through the rising steam. “Hey there, Delaney. Quinn, y’all got everything set before the storm hits?”
The cop brother reached out for his cup, pulling it toward him. “Not yet, but we’re on schedule. Everyone’s calm and pitching in, so we’ll be just fine.”
“Did one of you boys get over to your parents’ house? They had water clear up to their porch with the last big storm.”
Kaz nodded. “Paxton’s over there right now. He’s helping Dad set up sandbags, but you know he’s doing his lawyerly best to convince them to leave.”
The woman, Delaney, reached out her hand and grabbed Renee’s forearm. “Hey, what about you? Do you need anything?”
“Thanks, sugar. When I’m done working here I’m heading over to Wanda Sue’s for a hurricane party. We’re breaking out the good chocolate and a bottle of wine.”
Renee left to pick up an order and Lu decided she was too distracted to figure out the mystery ingredient. Oh, darn, she’d just have to have another piece of pie tomorrow until she figured it out. She licked the last of the pie off her fork like a five-year-old, glad no one was watching.
“Lu?”
Darn it. She dropped the fork and it clattered to the table. Turning toward whichever Cates brother had called her, she wiped her mouth with the napkin in case there was evidence of her pie obsession. “Yes? Oh, hello.”
It was the brother she’d met her first day at Tynan’s worksite. Paxton . . . or was it Kaz? Somehow she never got his name right. “Paxton, right?”
“Kaz.” He smiled like that happened often and then introduced her to Quinn and Quinn’s fiancée, Delaney.
There was an awkward pause, which she filled by taking a sip of water just as Kaz said, “You haven’t happened to have heard from Tynan, have you?”
She coughed and sprayed water across her table. Her eyes watered, and she felt the heat rise in her cheeks as she patted the drops with the napkin. “Me? No. Why would I have heard from Tynan?”
Delaney shrugged. “Just rumors around the Grapevine.”
“Have you tried at work?” She squinted an eye while she recalled what day it was. “Unless the schedule changed, wasn’t he set to have had the electric crew starting today?”
Quinn nodded. “Yeah, Ty’s crew said the electric crew showed up but Ty didn’t.”
Lu tilted her head. “That’s very unusual for him. He always has everything organized and scheduled to the minute and the centimeter.”
“Okay, well, sorry to bother you.”
“It’s fine.” She slumped back against the booth, worried but trying not to look it so as not to worry his family any more. She casually scooted closer to their booth in the hopes of hearing more information about Tynan. The man might hate her, but she had definite feelings for him. If she could help, she would.
Quinn cleared his throat. “Has anyone else noticed that Tynan’s been acting off the last few months? Like he did when he first got back from Afghanistan.”
“I asked him point-blank when he came back from the funeral a few weeks ago,” Delaney said. “He promised he was fine.”
Someone smacked the tabletop. “Dammit. Dammit. It goes back to that wedding he went to, when was that?”
They got quiet, and Lu peeked over to see them all looking up at the ceiling for the answer.
Delaney snapped her fingers. “May.”
Kaz nodded. “I think it goes back to that kid again.”
Lu turned her head toward their table.
It only took them about two seconds to remember who she was.
“Oh, hell.” Kaz cleared his throat. “Sorry, Lu.”
“It’s fine.” She’d never understand it, but she’d finally accepted it. It would always seem unfair, but it would have been just as unfair if Tynan had died. Or any one of the others.
There was a moment of silence, and Quinn reached over and squeezed Delaney’s hand.
“Yeah, well, it messes with your head,” Delaney said. “And it doesn’t ever really go away.”
“He sure hasn’t been himself lately. For the past few months he’s been constantly busy. Hardly has time to spend with anyone in the family.” Quinn stared down into his coffee mug. “Did you know he volunteers at the veterans’ nursing home a couple times a week?”
“Nope.”
Delaney sat forward. “Didn’t anyone find it odd that he adopted that dog three months ago? For a man who hates being tied down, a pet—especially a special-needs one—really ties you down.”
Renee had been clearing the table on the other side of them. “Are y’all talking about Tynan? The Grapevine was commending him just last month for his weekly platelet donations.”
“Every week? Where is he finding the time for all this and running a business?”
“That one’s easy,” Delaney said. “He’s probably not sleeping.”
“So let’s get this straight . . .” Kaz frowned across at both Delaney and Quinn. “He’s not sleeping, he’s not dating, he’s donating blood, he’s adopting dogs off death row, he’s volunteering every week at the veterans’ nursing home, and he hasn’t said no to a single favor in months.”
“I heard he bought out the Smith girl when she went around selling Girl Scout cookies. Over a hundred dollars’ worth. And then he dropped all the boxes off at the food bank. Even the Thin Mints.” Renee shook her head. “Land’s sake, what’s going on with him?”
“He’s earning it.” Lu didn’t realize she’d spoken the words aloud until everyone’s gazes turned to her. Oh God. Something tight wrapped around her chest and cut in like barbed wire. “The stupid, idiotic man thinks he needs to earn his life.”
Delaney nodded as she looked at her. “Sure sounds like it to me. Like he’s trying to prove that he deserved to live when his friends didn’t.”
“Well, damn.” Quinn shook his head, looking grim. “For the past two years Tynan’s brought me his handgun before heading off on his trips. He said it was so Ma wouldn’t worry. I just realized he didn’t bring it to me this year.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Lu’s heart squeezed in her chest as everyone stared at Quinn in silence. She knew what day yesterday was. It was a hard day to live through.
“I bet he simply forgot,” Delaney reassured everyone. “He’s been so busy, it would be easy to forget, especially with having to find som
eone to watch his pets too.”
“Sure. And he used to disappear into the woods for a week, so the fact that he’s a day overdue isn’t a big deal.” Quinn took a last gulp of his coffee. “But with the storm heading this way, I’ll call up to the ranger station and have them check on him.”
“Oh, crap.”
“ ‘Oh, crap’ what?” Quinn narrowed his gaze on Kaz.
Yeah, what other oh, crap could be piled on to this situation? Lu was long past being polite and was flat-out listening in on their conversation now.
“You’ll want the itinerary he left with me.” Kaz ran a hand around the back of his neck.
“Of course.”
“It just dawned on me what the damn dog and cat were running around the house with yesterday morning. It’s destroyed. Totally ripped and half-eaten.”
“Well, hell.” Delaney looked between both brothers. “I guess you tried his cell?”
“Yep. Straight to voice mail.” Quinn stood up and leaned over and kissed Delaney. “Don’t worry. I’ll head to the station now and call the park rangers. They usually have a pretty good handle on where all the hikers are.”
“Besides, he’ll probably turn up today, just sneak into town and show up here for supper.” Kaz stood up also. “I’ve got to go check on Tynan’s pets.”
Lu looked out the front windows at the gusting winds whipping the flags and pine trees into a frenzy when she felt a pair of eyes on her. She turned her head to look out the side window. “Um, no, you don’t.”
“Excuse me?” Kaz looked over Lu’s shoulder. “Dammit. How the hell is that dog getting out? I even had him in his crate this time on account of the weather moving in.”
“That’s Tynan’s dog?” Delaney stood up and leaned around to see him. “What’s that lump on his back? Did he adopt a dog with cancer?”
“No. That would be the dog’s pet cat. Don’t ask.” Kaz sighed. “I better go deal with them. Lord knows how. Then I promised I’d go over and help with Mom and Dad’s sandbags.”
“I volunteered to fill sandbags here in town for a few more hours, so I’m out too.” Delaney called across the diner to Renee, then turned and nodded at Lu. “Nice to meet you.”