“I’ll make sure someone’s with Annie, but I don’t want her to hear any of this,” Dana Sue said. “I need advice.”
“Is Maddie coming, too?”
“I’m calling her next. I wanted to make sure you were available.” She needed both their perspectives if she was ever to make sense of her own mixed emotions—Maddie’s romanticized version of her relationship with Ronnie and Helen’s far more skeptical one. “Seven-thirty okay?”
“Fine with me,” Helen said. “My client’s here, so I need to run. I’ll see you tonight.”
Five minutes later, Dana Sue also had Maddie’s agreement to meet her at Helen’s, and a commitment that Ty and Cal would drop in on Annie, bring her favorite Chinese takeout for dinner and make sure she ate every bite on the menu plan. Satisfied, Dana Sue sat back and tried to relax. There was nothing she could do to stop Ronnie from buying the hardware store or restarting a hardware business on Main Street, but maybe Helen and Maddie could tell her how to avoid falling for this latest evidence that her ex-husband was a changed man. She needed to know tonight, so she could be prepared for spending an entire day with him at the fall festival tomorrow, a command performance she could see no way around if she wasn’t to disappoint Annie.
Focusing now on this grand scheme of his, she tried to recall a single time in all the years she’d known him that Ronnie had so much as hinted that he wanted to operate his own company. He’d always been perfectly content to work construction jobs that brought in good money, but didn’t tie him down.
Of course, he could have said the same thing about her. She’d worked in various restaurants from time to time, waiting tables in some, working as a hostess in others, then finally gravitating toward the kitchen, which had felt right from the first moment she’d tried it. She’d literally learned the business from the ground up and finally found a way to capitalize on all the years she’d spent in the kitchen with her grandmother and mother making old-fashioned Southern dishes for family gatherings. Dana Sue was a self-taught chef who’d developed not only her instincts about food, but a head for business.
If she hadn’t split up with Ronnie, she doubted she would ever have found the courage to strike out on her own and open Sullivan’s. It was only after Helen and Maddie encouraged her to take a chance, worked with her on her business plan and helped her to secure the loans that she’d finally trusted herself enough to try. The success that had followed had been beyond her wildest hopes and dreams. Why shouldn’t Ronnie be ready for the same kind of risks and potential rewards? And why did she find it so disconcerting?
* * *
Those were the questions Dana Sue asked Helen and Maddie when they were all settled on Helen’s patio that evening. She and Helen had margaritas, their drink of choice for serious discussions, while Maddie sipped a nonalcoholic frozen fruit drink since she was still nursing the baby.
“He’s really going to do it?” Maddie asked, looking delighted. “That’s fantastic. It’s just the shot in the arm Main Street needs. With only Wharton’s in business, it looks so sad now.”
“I think you’re missing my point,” Dana Sue complained. “It means he’s definitely staying.”
Maddie grinned. “And that surprises you? Isn’t that exactly what he’s been telling you since he got here?”
“I didn’t believe him,” Dana Sue admitted, then corrected herself. “I didn’t want to believe him.”
“Or maybe you were scared to believe him,” Maddie suggested, her tone gentle.
Dana Sue shrugged. “That, too.” She turned to Helen. “What’s your take on this?”
“I have to admit, he’s caught me off guard. This plan of his is exciting and ambitious and it just might work. Where’s he getting the money? Does he have it?”
“Apparently so. He said something about his partner being his boss from Beaufort and Mary Vaughn’s uncle.”
Helen regarded her with surprise. “If they were right there, why didn’t you go over to the table to find out what was going on?”
“Mary Vaughn,” she said succinctly. “It was making me a little crazy to see her with Ronnie. Of course, that was before I knew they were talking real estate. But still, I wouldn’t put it past her to set her sights on him.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “Would you listen to yourself?” she asked impatiently. “You’re making up excuses to keep from grabbing the man, even though you know you want him back. Ronnie’s not interested in Mary Vaughn. He never was, not even when she threw herself at him back in high school. He chose you then and he’s chosen you now. You’re the only one too blind to see it.”
“I’m not sure I believe it, either,” Helen said.
Maddie scowled at her. “Because you’re jaded. You really need to start practicing another kind of law. Divorces are giving you a very cynical outlook when it comes to love. If it keeps up, you’ll never give a relationship even half a chance.”
“I believe Cal loves you,” Helen responded, a defensive note in her voice. “Besides, I’m not the issue here. I think I have good reason to distrust Ronnie’s feelings for Dana Sue. So does she.”
Maddie groaned. “People make mistakes. People regret them. People change. You show me a human being without flaws and I’ll show you the most boring individual in the universe.”
Dana Sue watched Helen struggling to come up with a response to that, and decided to say what she knew the other woman was thinking. “Helen thinks she’s perfect,” she said. “Isn’t that right, sweetie? And we know she’s not boring.”
Helen frowned at her. “Of course I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes.”
“Really?” Dana Sue feigned shock. “You have?”
“Okay, stop teasing,” Helen grumbled. “I know nobody’s perfect, but some mistakes are bigger than others and don’t deserve to be forgiven.”
Maddie nudged her with a bare foot. During her pregnancy she’d
