It took only a couple of minutes for the guys to make coffee. They set a cup before him and then put cream, sugar, and a plate of Anna Jessop’s pecan cookies on the table.
“Oh, man!” Trace grabbed one up, six years melting away to nothing as he bit into one of the most wonderful cookies he’d ever tasted. He recalled the first pecan cookie of Aunt Anna’s he’d eaten. Pure heaven.
He swallowed and nodded to both men. “I hear congratulations are in order. Twin boys! How’s Chloe doing?”
“She’s perfect.” Grant beamed. He reached into his wallet at the same time his brother did. Together they each laid down a picture. Not the same picture but the same small babies. He picked each photo up in turn and had a good look.
“James Donald and Adam Patrick,” Andrew announced. “Both healthy and amazing.”
“Handsome babies,” Trace acknowledged.
“We’re very lucky men,” Grant said.
The proud daddies put the photos back in their wallets, and Trace snagged another cookie.
“What brings you back to Lusty? Just visiting your mom?” Andrew asked.
Trace sighed. He took a sip of his coffee—they’d even recalled he liked a medium blend—and then set his cup down. “Life, I guess. I’ve moved back to Lusty. For how long, depends.”
“Does Jolene know?” Andrew asked. Then he shook his head. “Duh. Of course, she knows. She never said a word to us! Neither did Brandon, and we saw him just a few weeks ago.”
“We’ve been following your Facebook posts,” Grant said. “What a hell of a bunch of fires you were in, my friend. We were really sorry to see your entire town wiped out.”
“It was worse for those whose generations-deep roots were there,” Trace said. He felt a little like he was stalling. Or maybe, the nerves of what he needed to do were getting to him. Just do it. He inhaled deeply, and looked at Andrew, and then at Grant. Grant was the boss, so he kept his gaze locked on the man. “I asked both Brandon and mom not to tell y’all I was coming home, because I needed to come here and ask you myself.”
“Ask us what?” Grant asked.
Trace tried to swallow, but his spit was all dried up. So he mentally crossed his fingers and just let it rip. “If you’d accept my application for one of the positions you’ve got opening up here.” He was able to control the urge to wipe suddenly sweaty hands on his jeans, but just barely.
Both Jessops reacted the same way. They stared wide-eyed at each other. Then they both swore.
“You’re fucking shitting me, right?” Andrew reached over and cuffed him on the arm—the way he’d done whenever Trace had done something stupid in the past.
“Accept your application?” Grant shook his head. “Bud, of course we accept your application. But we don’t need to examine it or think about a damn thing. You want the job, you’ve got the job. You’re hired. Welcome to the Lusty Fire Department, Lieutenant Langley.”
Chapter One
Rachel Cosgrove used her back to open the “in” door to the kitchen. The familiar routine of the small-town eatery was second nature to her now. She’d been working at Lusty Appetites for just over three months and had been a resident of the town itself for all but a week of that time.
Rachel loved everything about Lusty, Texas.
The people here were honest, forthright, and, above all, compassionate. They’d taken her and Elizabeth in as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to do. She really believed that the good luck she’d found nearly four years ago when she’d met a certain nonagenarian had turned her life around. There was no way good luck and meeting Grandma Kate were coincidental to each other.
I think I finally have that guardian angel I always prayed for, and I’m pretty certain her name is Kate Benedict.
Rachel wasn’t religious, but she was spiritual, and nothing in this town, or in these people, did anything but reinforce her lifelong faith in the basic goodness of humanity. This town and her people were proof positive that most people were good and would reach out to strangers if they could.
So take that, Buck Cosgrove, you rotten son of a bitch.
Rachel took just a moment to boot the single, though highly negative thought of her ex-husband out of her consciousness. Buck Cosgrove no longer existed, as far as she was concerned.
Any man who could turn his back on his own desperately ill daughter wasn’t worth another single thought. Period.
Rachel had been doing well since moving to Lusty, but she guessed it would take her a bit longer yet to get to the point where she could completely let that anger go.
She put her attention back on the task at hand. She set the dishes she was carrying onto the counter by the dishwasher then scraped and loaded them into the machine. Three people were in this, the heart of the eatery. Tracy Alvarez-Kendall was working on a batch of eclairs, and it was to her she directed her next words.
“Grandma Kate is in the house. I need a plate with two cream puffs, please.”
“You’re due for your break, Rachel,” Kelsey said. Then she turned to her new cook, Leesa Jordan. “I know you’ve met Grandma Kate,” Kelsey said to her. “I don’t want you to think that she ordered the pastries because she knows you’re cooking today. She’s told me she loves everything of yours she’s tasted.”
Leesa grinned. “I don’t for one minute think she’s avoiding my cooking. I think she’s ordered those cream puffs a couple of times a week in the month I’ve been here. I just figure, when I’m in my nineties, I’m going to eat whatever it is I want, too.”
“Amen.” Rachel grinned because Tracy had said that at the same time she did.
Leesa was an easy-going woman in her thirties, newly settled in Lusty from San Antonio. Kelsey had begun to advertise
