The Maverick's Midnight Proposal

She’d been fortunate to get a job at Daisy’s Donut Shop. The part-time hours had allowed her to earn a little bit of income while also providing the flexibility she’d needed to take her father to his various doctors’ appointments and therapies. When Ray Armstrong had finished his treatments, she’d been able to increase her hours and now she was working full-time. Since the doctors had officially declared her dad to be in remission, he’d been pressuring his daughter to return to school and complete her degree. In the spirit of compromise, she’d been taking some online courses and was now only a few courses shy of completion, but she was still happier baking than studying.

Her friends liked to tease that she would be the perfect wife and homemaker, but she hadn’t yet met a man who agreed with their assessment.

Maybe having her heart stomped on time and time again should have taught her to be wary, but there wasn’t anything she wanted more than to fall in love, get married, fill her home with babies and her kitchen with the sweet scents of baking, so she was trusting fate to put the right man in her path.

In the meantime, she kept busy filling Daisy’s display case with mouthwatering goodies. Since the morning rush had passed and it was still early for lunch, Eva took advantage of the lull to brew a fresh pot of coffee, then sipped a cup while she took inventory of the goodies that remained. The white chocolate cranberry cookies had sold out, which made her feel pretty good. Her boss had protested that there was no need to expand their offerings beyond the tried-and-true muffins and doughnuts, but Eva had been playing around with some of her grandmother’s recipes, tweaking here and there, and the residents of Rust Creek Falls—most of them creatures of habit—had overcome their reluctance and started to look forward to daily specials.

Today’s pumpkin spice muffins had been gone within the first two hours of the shop’s opening, the sticky buns had sold out shortly after and there were only two eggnog biscotti remaining in the jar on the counter. She pulled an empty tray out of the case—the cheesecake-stuffed snickerdoodles had also been decimated by the morning crowd—replaced the liner and set out neatly decorated gingerbread boy and girl cookies.

She glanced up when the bell over the door chimed, and her heart immediately skipped a beat.

He was back.

The handsome cowboy with the sexy voice and troubled eyes.

She’d hoped to see him again, but she hadn’t expected that her wish would come true so quickly.

“You’re back,” she said, because her brain couldn’t seem to focus on anything else.

He seemed surprised that she’d remembered him from earlier—or maybe he thought he should remember her from years ago—but he only said, “I’m hungry.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place.” She smiled, wanting him to feel welcome, and wishing she could ease the tension that was evident in the line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders. “Breakfast or lunch hungry?”

“Huh?” He looked at her blankly.

She didn’t know where he’d gone after he’d left the doughnut shop earlier, but it was apparent that his mind wasn’t occupying the same physical space as his body.

“Are you hungry for breakfast or lunch?” she asked again.

“I don’t even know what time it is,” he admitted, glancing at the watch on his wrist.

“It’s definitely time to get you some food,” she decided. “How does a roast beef sandwich with steak-cut fries sound?”

“Delicious.”

She smiled again as she filled a mug with coffee and set it on the counter, then gestured to the chair. “Sit.”

He sat, then lifted his eyes to meet her gaze. “Are you always this bossy?”

She winked at him. “Only when the occasion warrants.”

She left him with his coffee while she slipped into the kitchen to get his food, pausing first to pull out her lip gloss and quickly swipe the wand over her lips.

“He’s back,” she told Tracie, tucking the tube into her pocket again.

“Who’s back?” the cook asked.

“Luke Stockton.”

“That’s old news,” Tracie said, continuing to chop cabbage for the coleslaw she was making. “Half the town saw him in here this morning.”

“I don’t mean he’s back in town,” Eva told her, piling thinly sliced beef onto bread to make his sandwich. “I mean he’s back here. Sitting at the counter.”

“Is that why you’re loading up that plate?”

“He said he’s hungry.”

The cook chuckled. “And the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” she agreed.

Eva felt her cheeks flush. “I’m not interested in his heart.”

“Just his body?” Tracie teased. “Can’t blame you for that—the man is spectacularly well built.”

Eva’s cheeks burned hotter. He certainly was that, but that wasn’t why she wanted to feed him. Or not entirely.

“He looks a little...lost,” she said, adding fries to the plate.

“He hasn’t been home to Rust Creek Falls in twelve years,” the cook reminded her. “He’s probably feeling a little lost.”

Twelve years.

Eva couldn’t imagine being apart from her family and friends for more than a decade. Even the few months that had passed between visits when she was in college had seemed like an eternity. “I wonder why he stayed away for so long.”

“There was a lot of speculation about that,” Tracie mused. “But if you want the truth, you’d better ask the man himself.”

“I just might do that,” she decided.

“Wait,” the cook said when she started out of the kitchen.

Eva held back a smile as the other woman added a couple of sprigs of parsley to the plate.

“Presentation matters,” Tracie reminded her. “You know it, or you wouldn’t have retouched the gloss on your lips.”

Unable to deny that she had done just that, Eva silently took the plate and returned to the counter.

“Thanks,” Luke said when she set the meal in front of him.

“Enjoy,” she said, and busied herself tidying up the arrangement of mugs as he picked up his fork.

She was glad that he was early for lunch, so that he was the only customer in the doughnut shop and she was able to focus exclusively on him. Although she suspected that even if she’d had a line all the way to the door, she would have found her attention solely on the handsome stranger.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked when he’d polished off the sandwich.

He looked up, obviously surprised by the question, but immediately shook his head.

She gave him another minute before she asked, “Where did you go when you left here this morning?”

He dipped a fry into the ketchup he’d squirted on his plate. “To see my sister.”