Milky Way

This time she didn’t stop herself from hugging him. “Thanks, Judson. That means a lot to me.” She stepped back to dig into her purse. “What do I owe you for the lab work?”

“A dozen cheesecake Danishes,” he said, closing her purse and walking her to the door. “By the time I get to Marge’s they’re always gone.”

She hugged him again. “I’ll bring them by tomorrow. Thanks again for your help and your honesty.”

“Any time. Good luck, Britt.”

* * *

BRICK BAUER LOOKED into the back of the station wagon at the crumpled bike and halted Britt’s efforts to pull it out. “Don’t bother,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid it’s DOA.”

She hated to believe that, but Brick never lied to her. He’d been looking out for her since they were children, and Jimmy’s death had made him even more caring and protective.

“You’re sure?”

“Trust me. Someone did a very thorough job. Matt park it behind the truck again?”

Britt smiled at her cousin. “You have a detective’s instinct. Insightful and cleverly deductive.”

He grinned. “Of course. It’s the Bauer way.”

“Are you just coming home, or leaving for work?”

“I’m just off duty.” He glanced at his watch. “Karen should be home in half an hour or so. I can’t believe our shifts coincide for once.”

Britt squashed the surge of jealousy she felt that his marriage was fresh and new and hers was so prematurely over. “Who starts dinner in a two-cop family when the wife’s a captain, and the husband...isn’t?”

He made a pretense of polishing his badge. “Why, the better cook, of course. Sauerbraten. Want to stay?”

“Thanks. I’ve got to pick up the kids.”

Brick frowned. “Is Matt walking his route?”

“He’s using my bike,” Britt said, her expression wry. “A ‘nerdy’ comedown for him, I’m afraid. Marshack wanted to buy him a new one, but I wouldn’t let him. Matt’s got to take responsibility—”

“Marshack?” Brick asked.

“Winnebago Dairy’s district sales manager.” Her forced smile slipped a little. “He came to try to collect. When he left, Matt had propped his bike up against his Explorer and he backed right over it.”

“Matt needs the route if he’s going to go to that Boy Scout thing.” He grinned apologetically. “And your bike is nerdy. Want to borrow my credit card?”

She frowned her disapproval. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

“I know.” He put an arm around her and held her close for a sober moment. “How’re you doing with him? Is he still moody and remote?”

She nodded, happy to lean against her cousin’s strong shoulder. “Yeah. But then, so am I. He’s fairly cooperative. No worse than any other prepubescent boy dealing with the loss of his father.” She sighed, then pushed away, afraid of becoming too comfortable with Brick’s support. “I appreciate your interest, but you’ve got your own household to worry about now.”

“Karen has a meeting Friday morning and I’m off,” he said, opening her door for her. “I’ll come by and fix the porch roof for you.”

She smiled sheepishly. “I already did. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Well, I was using the short ladder because I’d lent the twelve-footer to Judy Lowery, and I overreached.”

He frowned in alarm. “You fell?”

“No. Marshack caught me.” She had a sudden, vivid memory of his hand wrapped around her inner thigh. A deep blush caught her completely unaware.

Brick noted it and raised an eyebrow. “Do tell, Brittany.”

She got into the car, pulled her door closed briskly and lowered the window. “Nothing to tell. He just happened to arrive at a very timely moment. Cut off my supplies, but saved me from breaking my neck.” She smiled and turned the key in the ignition. “That’s life. You have to take the bad with the good.” She blew him a kiss. “Love to Karen. See ya.”

As Britt drove back through town, she cranked up her Clint Black tape to put thoughts of Jake Marshack out of her head. She couldn’t imagine why images of him lingered there anyway. He was just another big-dairy bully making her life more difficult than it already was.

So he was nice looking. Actually, he was a lot more than nice looking. Since she was having to deal with serious realities lately, she could admit to herself that he was gorgeous.

Guilt and confusion filled her simultaneously. Why did that matter, anyway? And how did thoughts of him form when her entire man-woman awareness was always focused on Jimmy—or, rather, his absence?

“You’re losing your grip,” she warned herself. “Work with me here, Britt. Get your brain going on things that are going to mean money, not trouble.”

“All right,” she told herself. “Today was just fated to be a disaster. You can’t fight that. But tomorrow things are going to be different. Tomorrow you are not going to try to fix the roof, you will not have to deal with Jake Marshack, there will be no more bicycles to be run over. Tomorrow you will deliver Danishes to the diner and to Judson, you will take cheesecakes to the lodge, you will visit Grandma Martha. And you will come up with a gimmick.”

There. She felt herself relax. It always helped to hear her problems or her plans spoken aloud. It gave them substance, somehow, and made her better able to deal with them.

Jimmy had always laughed at her when he came upon her talking herself through a dilemma. “You should have gone into politics,” he told her more than once, “then you could have gotten paid for filibustering.”

She enjoyed the memory for a moment, smiling absently at the road, feeling warm and happy. Then the truth crashed in on her, as it always did. It was just a memory. It would always be just a memory. And she and Jimmy would never ever make another one.

Darkness threatened to suck her in like the core of a tornado. But she pulled to a stop at the side of Main Street, grinding her foot into the brake, holding her ground.

She drew one even breath, then another one. “You can do this,” she told herself bracingly. “Four kids are counting on you to get yourself together. A hundred acres that have belonged to a Bauer since the middle of the last century are waiting for you to come up with a gimmick so they don’t become part of some hybrid, megamonster farm.”

Feeling the return of control, she drew another deeper breath and let the car roll forward. She was smiling when she pulled up in front of the ballet school to pick up Renee. “And the food industry is just waiting for your gimmick.”

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a235c0e4-dc99-5e5b-86a7-9865cdfe1162)

JAKE FELT the resentment the moment he walked into the diner. The place had been abuzz with conversation when he opened the door, but it fell silent in the few seconds it took him to walk to the counter. Men in coveralls and baseball caps, men in suits and women dressed for work in town watched him every step of the way. As he settled on a stool at the L-shaped bar, talk started up again, but he got the distinct impression he was the subject of it.

He tried to take it in stride. News got around fast in small towns, and he’d paid four calls yesterday, trying to collect. He was the good guy when he could provide products needed, but the bad guy when he had to collect for them in hard times. He was getting used to being treated like the biblical tax collector or the contemporary IRS auditor.

He indicated the pile of newspapers on the counter between himself and the police officer seated beside him. “Finished with this?” he asked with a courteous smile.

The officer gave him a long, measuring look, then nodded. “Help yourself.”

“Thank you.” Jake found the sports page and decided to lose himself in the Cubs’ spring-training stats.

The woman behind the counter ignored him, while second-guessing the needs of everyone else. A second waitress raced from the kitchen to the banks of booths against the wall. He gathered from the teasing going on back and forth that the woman ignoring him was named Marge and that she owned the diner.