Home to Montana

“We get a pretty big rush until ten o’clock. Then I take a break until it’s time to set up for dinner.”

“Unless you have to chop wood.”

“Well, yes. Things do come up.” After years of serving customers, she suddenly didn’t know what to do with the coffeepot she still held in her hand. She licked her lips. Set the pot down on the counter. “Do you know what you want for breakfast? Or do you need a minute?” She was the one who needed a minute to get her head on straight. Whatever was wrong with her?

“How ’bout a couple of over easy eggs, hash browns and wheat toast?”

“Coming right up.” She returned the coffeepot to the warmer and started to write up Nick’s order. Her pencil poised over the order pad, she stopped. Her mind had gone blank. Totally empty of everything except his eyes and how he’d looked at her. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember what he’d ordered.

She gnawed on her lower lip. There was no reason for her to go brain-dead simply because the man had gotten a shave and a haircut.

Her face flamed as she turned to ask him to repeat his order, and that’s when her brain finally shifted back into gear. Over easy eggs, hash browns and wheat toast. She quickly wrote down the order and passed it through to Billy Newton, the morning short-order cook.

Plucking up the coffeepot, she skirted the counter—and Nick—refilling customers’ cups and chatting with the regulars.

A large booth near the kitchen door was permanently reserved for the “old duffers” group, men whom she’d known all of her life and were now retired. They came in to visit and gossip, drinking gallons of coffee and putting together thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles that remained spread out on the table until they were completed.

“Good morning, gentlemen.” She held up the coffeepot, and two of the four men seated at the table slid their mugs toward her for refills. “How’s the world today?”

“State’s talking about widening the back road to Plains to make an alternate route for tourists.” Ezra Cummings was the senior member of the group, still agile and mentally quick at the age of ninety-two.

“Ain’t worth it,” Abe, a retired lumberman, complained. “Ought to save the tax money and send them tourists back where they come from.”

“Don’t send them all back, Abe.” Alisa set the pot down, picked up a piece of the puzzle, studied it a moment then fit it in right where it belonged in the waterfall part of the woodland scene. “Remember Mama and I need those tourist dollars to keep afloat.” She spied another puzzle piece and dropped it into place.

The old duffers nodded their approval. Alisa had been doing jigsaw puzzles for as long as she could remember. By now, finding the right spot for the oddly curved and angled puzzle tiles was instinctive.

She carried the pot over to Dr. McCandless, who had been her pediatrician when she was young and now was Greg’s. He was sitting alone in a booth. Sometimes Mama came out to join him for breakfast.

“Good morning, doctor. Can I fill it up for you?”

“Just halfway. My doctor says I should ease up on the caffeine.”

“We do have decaf, if you’d rather.”

“Can’t see the sense of drinking coffee if it doesn’t have a little kick to it.” His youthful smile crinkled the corners of his pale blue eyes and made them twinkle. A longtime widower, it was amazing some woman hadn’t latched on to him by now.

By the time she returned the coffeepot to the warmer, Billy had Nick’s order ready. She considered asking Dotty, who was serving the table section, to deliver Nick’s breakfast to him at the counter. But her pride, a stubborn streak much like her mother’s, wouldn’t let her succumb to acting like a coward.

“Two eggs over easy, hash browns and toast.” She slid the plate in front of him. “Ketchup’s right here on the counter. Jam too.” She slid the jam closer to him. “Anything else you need?”

“It looks good. I could use a coffee refill if you have time.”

“No problem.” Of course she had the time. He could see no one else was sitting at the counter. So why did he have to be so nice and polite? He’d been polite as a kid, too. Never teasing the girls or chasing them like some of the boys did. One time he’d even picked up a book that she had knocked off her desk onto the floor. After that the girls had all started dropping their books or pencils or some silly thing to get his attention.

He’d been unfailingly kind even though he’d known what they were up to.

Shaking her head, she tried to wipe away the memory. Just because he’d been a polite kid didn’t mean anything to her now. People changed a lot in twenty years.

Mama came out from the kitchen wearing a butcher apron and her graying hair in a net. “Alisa, have you seen Nick?” She spied him at the counter. “Well, now, aren’t you the handsome thing without all those whiskers.”

His cheeks deepened to a rich shade of red. He dipped his head, focusing on scooping up a bit of egg yolk with his toast.

“No rush, young man,” Mama said. “Finish your breakfast. Then I’d like you to try to fix those loose boards on the back steps. I noticed last night that they were wobbly. Don’t want anybody to fall, particularly when they get iced up this winter.”

“I’d be happy to give it a try.”

“Alisa, honey, you can show Nick where we keep the tools when he’s ready.”

Her stomach sank. Perfect. Just what she wanted to do. Spend more time in Nick’s company. Not.

Chapter Four

Excruciatingly aware of Nick and his dog following her, Alisa led them to the equipment shed behind the diner. She heard his footsteps on the gravel. Caught the faint scent of his tangy aftershave on the breeze. Felt his eyes boring a hole into her back.

Straightening her spine, she gave her hair a little toss as she keyed the padlock open and slid the door aside. There was nothing to be nervous about. She’d been in this shed for one reason or another with Jake Domino any number of times.

Nick Carbini wasn’t any different. They were both handymen. Or so she told herself as Nick brushed past her into the shed, planting himself in the dim light at the center of the garage-size structure.

Rags stretched out his leash to investigate on his own.

“You’ve got lots of equipment,” he commented, checking out their four-wheel drive Jeep and the old aluminum fishing boat on a trailer beside it. Her father had named it Dreamer because of his dream to own his own business.

She turned on the overhead lights. “We use the Jeep to clear our own parking lot when it snows and to get around town when we need to in winter. In the summer, we can drag a tiller for the small garden where we raise fresh vegetables.”

“Ah, that’s why the julienne squash tasted so good last night. Nothing beats from-garden-to-table fresh vegetables.”

“We’re pretty much at the tail end of the vegetable garden now.” It surprised her that he’d noticed the fresh produce. Most men wolfed down their meal without even tasting it. Apparently Nick took a little more time with his dinner.

“The hand tools are to your left.” Hammers, hand saws, screwdrivers, and pliers hung neatly on a Peg-Board. “Have you done much carpentry work?”

“One summer when I was a teenager I got on a construction crew as a helper.”

“Is that what you do for a living? Construction?” She could have bitten her tongue for asking, but the words had simply popped out of her mouth. Her curiosity had gotten the best of her.

He poked around checking out the power tools next to the workbench and hefted a power saw. “Not usually. I only lasted on the job for a couple of weeks. I dropped a load of two-by-fours on the boss’s foot. He wasn’t real happy with me.”

“Guess that was long after you moved away from Bear Lake.”

He turned slowly to look at her. “You know I used to live here?”

Trying for casual, she leaned back against the Jeep and crossed her arms. “We were in the same third-grade class.”

He returned the power saw to its place and crossed the shed to her. He studied her face, but there was no recognition in his eyes.

An irritating sense of disappointment tightened her lips.

“That was a long time ago,” he said.