by Olivia Miles
“What’s that, Rosemary?” Anna’s younger sister, Jane, came around the corner, clutching a stack of books to her chest. She glanced at the cover of the one on top and then slipped it into its proper slot in the cookbooks section, which bordered the café portion of the store.
“Your sister here was disagreeing with my statement that men and women cannot just be friends.”
“Sure they can!” Jane smiled. “Look at Luke and Grace. They were friends for years before—”
“Before!” Rosemary raised her finger triumphantly into the air. “They were friends before they started dating. But I know my son.” She began to wag her finger, oddly enough in Anna’s direction rather than Jane’s. Anna bit back a sigh and swept the crumbs from the counter into her palm, before dusting her hands off over the trash can. “He didn’t want to only be friends with Grace. A pretty girl like that? No, no, no. He befriended her as a way of getting to know her. To be close to her.” She shrugged smugly. “There’s always more to it.”
Anna snorted, causing Rosemary’s smile to immediately fade. She bristled, glancing around her group with an incredulous look, her blue eyes wide with indignation. At least five of the women ducked their heads, pretending to leaf through the pages of their well-thumbed paperbacks. Anna found herself wishing her mother had decided to join the group, but Saturdays were busy for Kathleen’s interior design business. Still, a little backup would be nice, and Jane was much too polite to stand up to the likes of Rosemary Hastings, especially as she now worked for her at the ballet studio.
“Always is a pretty strong word, Mrs. Hastings. Sometimes friendships do evolve, but sometimes they don’t.” And sometimes they shouldn’t, she thought, frowning.
“Well, I’m speaking from personal experience,” Rosemary huffed.
“As am I.” Anna straightened the baskets of pastries on the counter and untied the strings of her apron. She should have left ten minutes ago, and here she was engaging in an utterly pointless debate.
“Oh?” This bit of news seemed to pique Rosemary’s interest.
Refusing to elaborate, Anna handed her apron to Jane, who was taking over the afternoon shift while Grace manned the storefront and register. “Well, it’s been lovely, but I’m afraid I have to get to the café. Enjoy your book club, ladies!” She smiled warmly, hoping that would put a gracious end to the conversation, but the expression on Rosemary’s face said otherwise.
“Anna Madison, in all the years I have known you, I have never once seen you with a male friend. Romantically or otherwise.”
Oh, how little she knew. Anna folded her arms across her chest and looked to Jane for reinforcement, but her sister simply raised her eyebrows and turned back to the coffee machine, adding to Anna’s mounting frustration.
“Well, that’s not true. I’ve dated plenty of men.” One in particular, but she needn’t mention that. Ever. No one in Briar Creek knew about the relationship she’d had in culinary school, and she intended to keep it that way. “Maybe not recently, but there have been men. Lots and lots of men.”
From behind her she heard Jane quickly fumble for the tap. The rush of water did little to drown out her soft laughter. Rosemary, however, was not amused. Her lips pinched as she roamed her gaze over Anna’s defensive stance. “You work too hard. A pretty girl like you should be married by now.”
A gasp escaped from somewhere deep in her gut. Anna gaped at Rosemary’s army of hopeless romantics, now nervously staring at their open paperbacks as if cramming for a test, and looked around the room for someone, anyone, who would find Rosemary’s opinions as appalling as she did. She turned to Jane, who had decided to keep her back firmly to the room, and tossed her hands in the air before slapping them down at her hips. “This is the twenty-first century. I’m a career girl. It happens to suit me perfectly fine.”
“Now, calm down,” Rosemary ordered. “You clearly misunderstood me.”
“Did I?” Anna glanced at her watch, and her pulse kicked with fresh anxiety. Already noon and the lunch crowd was probably in full swing.
“I meant you’re all work and no play. You deserve to have a little fun.”
All work and no play. Anna could think of one person in this town to whom the exact opposite applied. None other than Rosemary’s own nephew, Mark Hastings. Yet somehow she didn’t hear Rosemary complaining about his single status.
Not that Mark was ever single, she corrected herself. More like Mark was never committed.
“Last I checked, Briar Creek wasn’t exactly crawling with available men,” she pointed out, leaning back against a bookshelf. Oh, how her legs ached from standing so much. She hadn’t stopped since she climbed out of bed this morning. At four o’clock. A vision of a steaming bath and good glass of Cabernet brought a faint smile to her lips. It was Saturday after all, and it wasn’t like she had any other plans for her evening. By the time the dinner crowd trickled out, and the receipts were looked over, she could be on the couch and in her flannel pajamas by eleven, easy.
She grimaced. Better to keep that thought to herself.
“Oh, I can think of a few available men around here,” Rosemary said cryptically, a sly smile playing on her painted lips.
“Well, that’s a few more than I can think of,” Anna declared. A familiar pang tightened her chest when she thought of Mark, working just down the street at the diner.
Why was she even thinking about him? She knew his reputation, knew it all too well, and she’d decided long ago to stop hoping one day he’d snap out of it. Mark was a flirt. A gorgeous, irresistible flirt. And a cad. Yes, he was a complete cad. And worse was that he knew it. And he had no intention of doing anything about it, either. So really, this had to stop. Right now.
Anna patted her pockets for her sunglasses and realized they were in her bag. Scolding herself for letting her mind wander down paths that should have been long forgotten, she retraced her steps behind the counter and crouched down to collect her belongings from a cabinet. “Are you going to be all right on your own?” she asked her sister as she stood and gestured with her chin to the increasingly troublesome book club.
Jane gave her a rueful smile. “Don’t worry. You’re forgetting that Rosemary is my boss for twenty hours a week. If you think this is bad, you haven’t seen her at the ballet studio. Trust me, you can never plié low enough for that woman.”
Rosemary had a good heart despite her firm exterior, but nevertheless Anna didn’t appreciate being on the receiving end of unwanted attention. If anyone deserved to be given the third degree in the romance department, it was Mark.
Mark. There she went again, thinking of the one man she should have put out of her mind years ago. Leave it to Rosemary to stir things up.
From across the room, a murmur arose, followed by what sounded an awful lot like squeals of suppressed glee. Jane’s eyes sparked with interest. “Do we want to guess?”
“I don’t think I want to even know,” Anna groaned, hitching her handbag strap higher on her shoulder. She turned slowly to the group, sensing that Rosemary had one last matter to discuss before she could slip out the door.
“The gals and I have discussed it, and we have an idea.” Rosemary paused for dramatic effect. “I am going to find you a man.”
“Excuse me?” Anna choked on a burst of laughter, but Rosemary’s wide smile did not slip. Her hands remained folded primly on her lap, her back ramrod straight, her gaze locked firmly with Anna’s, whose eyes had widened in horror.
“You heard me,” she said calmly. “I am going to find you a suitable match.”
“Oh… please don’t.”
“Well, what about me?” Jane interjected, and at that, every woman who had previously been pretending to ignore the conversation snapped to attention. It wasn’t like Jane to have an outburst, but the true cause of the prickling silence was the suggestion that Jane should go on a date at all. “Why Anna and not me?” she repeated, setting her hands on her hips.
Rosemary did a poor job o
f disguising her shock. “My dear… Anna’s been unattached for her entire life! Why, she must be coming up on thirty by now!”
Not even twenty-eight and she was already earning a reputation as an old maid. This was getting worse and worse. “I’m the same age as Kara, Mrs. Hastings. And what about her? Why not set up one of your daughters?”
Rosemary waved her hand through the air. “Kara and Molly don’t want me meddling in their personal affairs.”
And I do? Anna looked past the café to the pedestal tables artfully arranged with books that dotted the storefront, craning her neck to see if another soul could be seen over the tall wooden stacks, but there was no one in sight. Grace was most likely in the back room, going over the inventory lists or joyfully opening the latest shipment of books and planning a new window display, and that left the two younger Madison sisters to keep things afloat. And my, what a mess of it they were making.
“What about me?” Jane said again.
Anna stared at her, trying to mask her bewilderment. For a moment she had thought this was Jane’s creative way of diverting Rosemary’s fixation, but the conviction in her hazel eyes and the pert little tilt of her nose said otherwise, even though it had been only a matter of months since Jane and her husband had filed for divorce. “Don’t you think it’s a little soon?” Anna asked gently.
“It wasn’t too soon for Adam! He got a jump start while we were still married!” Jane retorted with a lift of her chin. Sensing the alarm in Anna’s expression, she added, “Oh, please. It’s hardly a secret.” She looked at Rosemary. “Fair’s fair. If you can find someone for Anna, you can find someone for me, too.”
“But I don’t even want to be set up!” Anna wrapped her arm around Jane’s shoulder and announced, “Perfect. Mrs. Hastings, you can call on all these so-called available men in Briar Creek and give them Jane’s number.”
“Nope.” Rosemary made a grand show of shaking her head until her dangling earrings caught on her red cashmere scarf, which was loosely draped around her neck. She winced as she gingerly unhooked it, and frowned as she inspected the snag in the material.
“Jane just told you she needs help getting back out there.”
“Oh, I heard,” Rosemary mused, dropping her scarf with a sigh of defeat. She smiled at Jane fondly. “And I’m going to help you, my dear. On one condition.”
Beside her Jane was beaming, but Anna was no fool when it came to matters of the heart. Once she had been, but that was a long time ago. “What’s that?” Anna hedged, her chest heavy with dread.
“You have to let me set you up, too, Anna.” Rosemary hid her triumphant smile behind the rim of her mug.
“No way—”
“Oh, come on!” Jane begged, elbowing her gently. Anna stared into the pleading eyes of her sister, noting the flicker of disappointment she saw pass through them. It was the same look that had been there for months now, a lingering sadness behind that brave smile. Jane was the strong one, the supportive one, not the demanding one. Jane was the one who would hand you the last ten bucks in her wallet and then silently go without herself. Jane never asked for anything. And here she was, asking Anna for the one thing she didn’t want to give.
She’d spent how many years avoiding the very thing she was being asked to do: date. Dating led to falling in love, and falling in love led to heartbreak. Jane of all people should have learned that lesson by now, but from the hopeful look in her expression, for some reason it appeared she had not. Somehow, having the father of her child and the man who had vowed to love her ’til death repeatedly cheat on her, lie to her, and then leave her had not destroyed her sister’s belief in love.
“Fine,” Anna said through gritted teeth, ignoring the whoop that went up from the table of women. She was too busy focusing on Jane’s grateful smile. It was the happiest she had seen her younger sister in months, possibly more, she realized. She blinked quickly, never wanting to think of Jane hurting that way again. “And with that, I’m really leaving now.”
“Go, go!” Rosemary said over the ruckus. “I don’t know how you can expect to run that place if you spend all day chatting with us.”
Anna took a deep breath, this time forcing herself to remain silent, and turned to leave. Jane grabbed her by the arm. “Thank you,” she said.
“You owe me,” Anna warned as she slid her sunglasses over her nose. She wound her way through the maze of bookshelves and pushed out into the afternoon sunshine, wondering how she could get out of this little promise she had made. There was no time in her life for men or dating or any of that nonsense. There was only time for work. That’s how it had to be, and that’s how she preferred it. Most of the time.
She lifted her chin, focusing on the sidewalk ahead, on the hours of work that would give her the sense of purpose she craved, when panic stopped her dead in her tracks. There, at the corner of Main Street and Second Avenue, was a gray cloud of smoke. A crowd had gathered opposite the familiar brick storefront, and people along the way had stopped to stare.
A fire truck with sirens blazing whizzed by her, forcing her long blond hair to whip across her face, and it was then that Anna started to run. Not the café, she silently begged, please not the café. She weaved her way through the shocked onlookers, almost knocking over a small child who was grinning at the trucks rushing by, knowing with each step that her worst nightmare was coming true.
Smoke was billowing out the windows now, and broken glass littered the sidewalk. A team of firefighters was jumping off the truck, clutching a long hose. By the time Anna arrived at the Fireside Café, gasping for breath that felt thick and tight in her lungs, there was so much commotion that she couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone. Red lights flashed through the soot that filled the air and caused her to cough. The sheriff was marching forward, barking commands, ordering people to stand back. Firemen stretched their arms wide as they formed a barrier and the mass moved slowly back, gathering Anna into its frantic progression.
She stared at the crowd as she stumbled backward, searching through the blur of her vision for a familiar face, for someone, anyone, to tell her it was all going to be okay, that it was nothing, just a scare.
“Anna, oh God!” Anna whirled around to face her assistant manager, finding some relief in the sight of her friend. Kara’s face was stained with tears.
Panic tightened her chest, forcing her out of her haze. “Is anyone in the building?”
“No. No, I don’t think so,” Kara muttered, shaking her head. She covered her face with both hands as a loud crash split through the town, eliciting a wave of cries from the crowd.
“Probably just a support beam,” a gruff voice called out, and Anna felt her knees begin to buckle. Just a support beam. Just a café. No one was hurt—she was safe, she should focus on that. Yet somehow she couldn’t. All she could do was stand there, clutching Kara’s arm and watching helplessly as everything she had built for herself, everything she depended on, came crashing down around her. Just like everything did in the end.
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