Her Cowboy Distraction Read online

  “You should do nothing.” Mary got up from her stool and offered Lizzy a sweet smile. “Stop looking so worried. Daniel is a big boy and you might want to apologize to him when he comes in here again, but other than that don’t give it another minute of thought.”

  Easy for her to say, Lizzy thought that night at closing time. She’d been able to think of nothing but Daniel Jefferson for the rest of the evening as she’d worked.

  He’d lost his wife. What a tragedy and it was obvious he’d loved her desperately, had shared with her that forever kind of love that Lizzy had only read about. Almost two years was a long time to grieve, a long time to keep alive a tradition that kept his dead wife in the forefront of his mind.

  Daniel Jefferson was off-limits for any number of reasons, despite the fact that just looking at him made her feel a little breathless. Lizzy wasn’t looking for love. She was looking for adventure, fulfilling a promise she’d made to her dying mother, a promise that would have her leaving Grady Gulch in the next couple of weeks to continue her journey of adventure.

  Even if she was going to stick around for a while, the worst thing she could do was indulge in some kind of crazy crush on a man who was caught up in grief, clinging to a love that could probably never be replaced. That would be just plain stupid, and Lizzy didn’t do stupid.

  After closing up the café, Lizzy and two other young women who had worked that night left the building, walking together to the small cabins they were temporarily calling home.

  Candy stayed in the one on the left of Lizzy’s and Courtney Chambers with her ten-month-old son lived in the cabin on Lizzy’s right. The fourth cabin was occupied by Rusty Albright, a forty-something man who worked as a cook/manager when Mary wasn’t working the kitchen.

  Candy was twenty-three years old, five years younger than Lizzy and, according to what she’d told Lizzy, had moved from a nearby small town into the cabin to work for Mary and be closer to her boyfriend, who was a Grady Gulch native.

  Courtney had been taken in by Mary when at twenty-four years old she’d found herself pregnant and alone and disowned by her parents. She never spoke about the father of her little boy, but Lizzy knew he wasn’t part of Courtney’s life and didn’t contribute to her financially.

  “My feet and my back are killing me,” Candy said plaintively as they walked. It was a complaint she voiced every night. In the brief time Lizzy had known her, she’d realized Candy complained about everything. “I wish I could afford a massage, but on the tips I make here I’ll never be able to afford anything.”

  “Actually, my tips are always pretty good,” Lizzy replied, wishing she had the nerve to tell Candy that a positive attitude was a good thing to possess in life.

  “I just want to go pick up Garrett from the babysitter and then get a good night’s sleep,” Courtney said. “I’m off tomorrow, so I’ll be able to spend the whole day with my baby boy.” Courtney’s face shone with her love for her son.

  “Yuck. No offense, but I can’t think of a worse way to spend a day off,” Candy exclaimed. “I don’t want to think about babies for a long time.”

  “Are you planning anything special with little Garrett?” Lizzy asked.

  “No, just a day of Mommy and Garrett time,” Courtney replied. “He’ll be happy if I give him an empty box to play with.”

  Candy released a dramatic sigh. “I’m just hoping Kevin wants to do something fun tomorrow besides hang out with his friends, drink and argue.” She sighed again. “That’s all we seem to be doing lately when we’re together.”

  By this time the three had reached the point where they each went their separate ways. “Good night, ladies. Enjoy your day off and think about me while you’re both having fun.” Lizzy gave a small wave to the two of them and then headed to the door of her cabin.

  Inside, a small lamp illuminated the area around the sofa sleeper that was already pulled out to make a bed. Lizzy never left to go to work in the afternoon without leaving a light on to greet her when she returned.

  If you counted the bathroom, the cabins were two rooms, with the sofa bed providing the sleeping area, and a kitchenette that was little more than a sink, a small fridge and a microwave.

  The rent Mary charged on these small units was next to nothing when she rented them to the waitresses who worked at the restaurant.

  Lizzy went directly into the tiny bathroom and stripped off the jeans and Cowboy Café T-shirt that was the uniform for the waitresses. She tossed the clothes in a hamper and then stepped into the shower, wanting the feel of grease and grime of work off her skin before getting into bed.

  The minute she stepped beneath the warm spray of water her mind filled with a vision of him. Daniel Jefferson. He definitely wasn’t a Danny, not with those stone-hard features and dark gray eyes. The name Danny implied somebody fun-loving and happy. There had been nothing happy about Daniel.

  The couple of bites of peach pie she’d eaten had been sweet and delicious going down, but they had become tart and terrible when Mary had told her Daniel’s story. She’d eaten the pie he’d apparently meant as some sort of tribute to his dead wife. Jeez, could she have done anything worse?

  Although the last thing Lizzy was looking for in her life was love, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be loved that deeply.

  She threw her head beneath the warm spray of water, hoping it would wash away some of her feelings of guilt and any other thoughts of Daniel Jefferson.

  * * *

  Mary Mathis awoke suddenly, her heart pounding violently. Couldn’t breathe. Her lungs squeezed tight and ached with the need to draw air. She sat up and managed a gasp.

  You’re safe. Nobody can harm you. Just breathe. The rational little whisper in the back of her brain slowly calmed her. Just breathe.

  Her heartbeat finally slowed to a more normal pace and she sat for several moments and drew in deep breaths to steady herself.

  From the faint illumination of the night-light plugged into the wall next to the bed she could see that nothing was amiss in the small room, that all was as it had been when she’d gone to sleep.

  There were no strange noises, nothing to be afraid of. She was safe here, and the terror of whatever dream she’d suffered slowly fell away.

  She knew from experience that any further sleep would be impossible for a while. She never went directly back to sleep after one of these awakening panic episodes.

  Always the first thing she did after waking in the middle of the night was get out of bed and walk across the living room to the bedroom where her ten-year-old son slept.

  She now stood in the doorway of the larger second bedroom, her heart filled with love as she gazed at the towheaded boy who sprawled in the bed as if frozen in the middle of motion.

  That was Matt, always moving, always smiling. He was a happy boy who loved his mother and loved this place they had called home for the past eight years.

  He was the glue that held her together on nights like this, when panic swelled up inside her and unwanted terrible memories tumbled through her mind.

  He was such a good kid. He did well in school, had a kind heart and lots of friends in this small town that had embraced them when they’d arrived here.

  She moved away from his door and went back into the living room. She turned on one of the lamps next to the sofa and sank into its overstuffed comfort.

  The apartment consisting of two bedrooms, a living room and a large bathroom was located in the back of the café. According to Violet Grady, the old woman Mary had bought the place from, her father had had only enough money to build one building, so he’d decided to put the café and his living quarters all under one roof. The only thing that separated the living space from the business was a locked door in the café kitchen.

  Mary loved the fact that when she was at work Matt was only a few steps away at home. She could be a responsible business owner and a present mother at the same time.

  Who would have ever thought that at th
irty-three years old she’d live in a small town like Grady Gulch, own the Cowboy Café and be happy feeding the townspeople and watching her son thrive and grow?

  Sometimes it scared her when she looked back on the past eight years and realized that for the most part fate had been responsible for her good fortune and the place she was at in her life now. She’d worked as a waitress for three years in the café before Violet had come to her with a plan to help Mary buy the place. Violet had been like an angel sent to Mary when Mary had lost all hope.

  But, Mary never forgot where she’d come from, the horrible events that had eventually led her to be here and now. She never forgot that in the blink of fate’s capricious eye it could all be destroyed.

  That’s what made her sometimes sit up in the middle of the night with her heart pounding and in the grip of a panic attack, because she knew her business, her happiness and her son could all be taken away from her. And the worst part was that there were times when she believed that might be what she deserved.

  Chapter 2

  Daniel stood on the back deck of his house, still half reeling with shock at the waitress’s actions in the café even though he’d left there hours before.

  It was as if he’d just been jerked awake from a lifetime nap and was more than a little surprised to find himself still breathing.

  He’d been in a fog and suddenly it had lifted and there was a strange woman seated across from him, a woman with long brown hair with shiny blond highlights, an impudent upturned nose and eyes the color of whiskey. Her smile had been so wonderfully warm as she’d eaten the pie he’d ordered for the wife he’d lost.

  As always, thoughts of Janice brought with them a crushing guilt that pressed so tightly against his chest it left him almost breathless.

  For the first time in almost two years he consciously shoved away those thoughts and instead brought a picture of the waitress from the café into his mind.

  Lizzy.

  Elizabeth Wiles, but everyone called her Lizzy. She definitely wasn’t from Grady Gulch. He’d lived there all his life and knew practically everyone in town. Besides, nobody who was a Grady Gulch native would have had the gumption to do what she had done.

  For the most part for the past eighteen months, everyone in town had pretty much left him alone in his prolonged grief and guilt stupor.

  He hadn’t noticed her in the café before tonight, but that didn’t mean anything. Daniel had stopped looking at people, had stopped taking in his surroundings when he left his ranch, since the day he’d buried Janice.

  In the cast of the moonlight overhead he could see his cattle in the distance, some of them lying down for sleep, others grazing on the early summer grass. He turned his gaze upward.

  Here in the country the stars looked close enough to grasp in your hands. Her eyes had held a sparkle like the stars. Lizzy’s eyes.

  What had stunned him more than anything was that for just a moment as he’d stared at her, as he’d seen that spark in her eyes and the warmth of her smile, an unexpected surge of energy, of life had washed through him. It was something he hadn’t felt for a very long time.

  With a deep sigh he turned and went back into the big house that resonated with a depth of silence he’d almost become accustomed to experiencing each time he walked through the door. Almost.

  He needed to go to bed. It was just past midnight and there would be chores to get done early in the morning. But, he’d always found sleep difficult on Friday nights, when thoughts of Janice intruded heavily into his head.

  Still, as he got into bed minutes later, it wasn’t thoughts of Janice that filled his head, but rather thoughts of Lizzy, who preferred apple to peach and had, for just a minute, made Daniel feel something other than his own pain.

  He fell asleep with a vision of whiskey-colored eyes in his head and awakened just after dawn with the same emptiness that had been his life for the past year and a half.

  This ranch was where he’d been raised, the only child of a couple who’d had him in their mid-forties. They’d built the large house with the expectation of filling it with lots of children. Unfortunately, the children hadn’t happened until Daniel, and there were no more after him.

  His parents hadn’t lived long enough to see him married, and thankfully they hadn’t been alive to see him widowed. There were times he wished he had a brother or a sister, somebody who would help him get through this endless grief process, and at other times he felt he deserved to never stop the sadness that filled his very soul.

  If things had been different, he would have turned to his best friend, Sam Benson, or one of Sam’s brothers. But Sam’s sister had died in the accident that had also killed Janice. The friendship that Daniel had shared with Sam and his younger brothers had been strained ever since.

  The week passed quickly, as each one always did, with his mind emptied except for the daily chores that were involved in running a ranch with cattle, horses, a coop full of chickens and crops.

  Each day unfolded like the last one, with Daniel spending as much time as possible outside and going into the big, silent house only to shower, eat and sleep.

  It was on Friday evening after dinner as he showered for his regular trip into town that he thought again of the waitress at the Cowboy Café.

  The ritual of driving into town each Friday night, of sitting in the café and ordering the pie he and Janice used to eat every Friday night of their courtship and marriage, had been part of his penance.

  Since her death, each week when he showered to prepare for the night, he’d always been filled with a sense of dread, with the wish that he could turn back time and somehow make things different. But, of course, that was impossible. There was no going back in time to fix things. Some things simply couldn’t be fixed.

  Now as he stood beneath the hot spray of water he felt something much different, and he knew it had to do with the waitress. Lizzy, who had slid into the booth seat across from him and eaten his dead wife’s pie, had also managed to shake him out of his numb state enough to fill him with a strange sizzle of anticipation as he thought of encountering her once again.

  It was six-forty when he left the house for the fifteen-

  minute drive into town to the café. He kept his

  driver’s-side window down, allowing in the sweet scents of early summer that emanated from the pastures and fields he passed.

  Funny, he hadn’t noticed the smells of home for a long time. All he’d been able to smell was the scent of his own misery, the odor of his remorse.

  A knot of tension formed in his chest, a knot that tightened the closer he got to the café. This time he recognized that the tension had nothing to do with his past, but rather was an anticipation of the night to come.

  Would Lizzy be working tonight? He’d been too shocked by her actions to utter a single word to her the week before. He had no idea what her normal hours were at the café. If she was there tonight he wasn’t sure he would speak to her, but the fact that he was even considering it came as a complete surprise to him.

  It was just a few minutes before seven when he parked his truck in front of the café. He sat for several moments, gripping the steering wheel as he stared at the ancient establishment.

  The Cowboy Café had been around forever. Housed in a low, flat red building, a billboard on the roof boasted a cowboy wearing a hat to announce its presence in the area.

  The café was the place in town for good food, a warm, inviting atmosphere and all the local gossip you could want. Mary Mathis updated the menus occasionally, but for the most part the café had remained pretty much the same over the years. The place was essentially the very heart of Grady Gulch.

  He got out of his truck, and as he walked toward the door his emotions suddenly felt wildly out of control. He shouldn’t be thinking about a waitress with amber-colored eyes and silky brown hair. He shouldn’t be remembering the warmth of her smile, the vibrancy of her very presence opposite him in the booth.

  He shou
ld be focused solely on the blond-haired, blue-eyed woman who had been his wife, a woman whose death, and that of her best friend, rested solely on his head.

  Still, the minute the bell over the door tinkled to announce his arrival and he stepped into the air that smelled of savory scents, that rang with the boisterous noise of people dining and laughing, his gaze shot around the room.

  Instantly his gaze locked with hers.

  Lizzy.

  She stood behind the counter, but it was as if she hadn’t been working at all but rather had been just standing there watching the door, waiting for him to arrive.

  In an instant he took in everything about her, the way her shiny hair had half escaped a low ponytail, how her T-shirt fit snug across her breasts and molded to her slender waist.

  In that frozen moment of eye contact he noted the slight widening of her eyes, the way her lips parted as if on a gasp, and a crackling tension snapped in the air.

  He wasn’t sure who looked away first, he or she. He hung up his hat and then made his way to his usual booth and told himself that he was there to honor his dead wife, to punish himself for all the things he’d done wrong on the last night of her life.

  He definitely wasn’t there with any other purpose in mind other than the somber ritual that he felt compelled to perform. He slid into the booth, consciously keeping his gaze away from the counter area and Lizzy.

  It didn’t take long for Candy, the young woman who usually waited on him, to appear at the side of his booth. “The usual?” she asked, as she did every Friday night.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “No, wait,” he added before she could move away from the booth. He drew a deep breath and wondered if he’d completely lost his mind. “Make that a piece of peach pie and a piece of apple.”

  * * *

  Lizzy had been on edge all afternoon, wondering if Daniel would show up this evening. She’d imagined herself apologizing to him in a million different ways throughout the day. The minute he’d walked through the door her anxiety had shot through the ceiling.