“You’re awfully quiet.” Chris stopped and looked down at her until she looked up into his face, shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun with her hand.
“Your life is so full. You have Livvy and Kaitlyn and the Dip ’n’ Dine. I don’t see how you have room for anything else.”
“Sarah, listen to me.” Chris brushed a curl from her face, letting his hand linger on her cheek. “My life has, or had, a huge emptiness, no matter how full my days were. I’d say big enough to drive a truck through, but you’re nowhere near that big. This I do know, though—since you’ve been in my life, that emptiness is no longer there.”
Sarah started to open her mouth, but Chris laid two fingers against her lips. “Wait. I’m not done.” He took a deep breath and blew it out in a gust. “I spend a big chunk of my time kicking myself for dumb things I’ve said or done, and this may wind up being one of those times. But I’d a hundred times more rather kick myself for something I did than something I didn’t have the guts to do. A little while ago you said ‘I love you.’ I know what you meant. You meant you loved the way I made you laugh, or the way I can play the fool sometimes. But listen to me. I love you. And if love is that punch-in-the-gut feeling that never goes away, I’ve loved you since I first saw you in the Dip ’n’ Dine last summer. All it does is keep getting stronger until I can’t think of anything but how I want to spend my life loving you. Now if you want to run for the hills, go for it. But know that I’ll be here waiting for you.”
Sarah didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Chris was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t really blown it when she said, “You know, I had always pegged you as the strong, silent type, but you sure talk a lot.”
He stared. “That’s it? I pour my heart out and you just tell me I talk too much?”
“Oh, I didn’t say too much, just a lot. And by the way, I’m done having someone else do my thinking for me. If I want to run for the hills, I’ll do it without anyone’s permission. And if I say, ‘I love you,’ I’ll be the one to say what it means. Got that?”
“Got it. So . . . what did you mean?”
She looked up at Chris, and the smile that filled her face and shone in her eyes radiated through him like sunshine.
“I mean I love you.”
There was nothing for him to do but kiss her then, and he lifted her off her feet to do just that. It was a good kiss, warm and deep and passionate.
“Gross. Would you guys stop that? Miss Nancy Jo says dinner’s almost ready and you have to come in now.”
But not very long.
1
Pure and simple, Kaitlyn Reed hated her job. She hated getting up in the early hours of a cold, dark January morning to get there. She hated the curious to outright hostile looks of the diners she served. She hated that she didn’t really have a choice about whether to work at the Dip ’n’ Dine. But most of all, she hated taking orders from Juanita Sheppard.
Truth be told, she wasn’t very good at taking orders from anyone. Her reputation back in Scottsdale as a creative, avant-garde stylist had gained her positions in some of Scottsdale’s toniest hair salons, but those jobs never lasted long. And neither did the jobs she’d held after she left Scottsdale. Kaitlyn simply could not stand being told what to do. And employers always seemed to think they had to give directions. Nine times out of ten, if they had just given her five seconds, she’d have completed the task before they even mentioned it. But they’d go and bark their orders, this white-hot flare would shoot through her, and before she even realized she had said anything, she was out the door, purse and final paycheck in hand.
“Here. You need to refill this and make the rounds.” Juanita shoved a nearly empty coffeepot into Kaitlyn’s hands. “And tables four and six need busing. Let’s keep our eyes open, Kaitlyn, and try to stay on top of things.”
Kaitlyn’s eyes narrowed. True, her brother had asked Juanita to show her the ropes, but Kaitlyn was about ready to grab that rope and strangle her with it. Holding the pot in both hands, she started after Juanita, who hadn’t even paused as she breezed by.
No telling what pyrotechnics the early breakfast diners at the Dip ’n’ Dine might have been treated to if her brother, Chris, who owned the diner, hadn’t intercepted her.
“Why don’t I take care of the coffee?” He took the coffeepot from her and gave her a wink. “You go ahead and clean those tables. And Kaitlyn? Try not to throw the dishes in the bin so hard you break them, okay?”
His grin lightened his words but not her temper, and after shooting one last murderous glare at Juanita, who was chatting with a customer and clearly clueless about the apocalypse she had so nearly brought down upon herself, Kaitlyn ducked into the kitchen to find Carlos, her one friend and ally in this awful place.
“How can you stand her?” Kaitlyn could almost feel steam coming from her ears. She shot another look into the dining room as Juanita’s voice reached them.
“Who? Juanita?” Carlos Montoya pulled a pan of biscuits out of the oven and straightened to look at her. “She’s okay. Gets a little bossy sometimes, but you don’t need to let it bother you. I don’t.”
“Well, you don’t have to. You’re in here. I’m the one she’s treating like her own personal servant.”
On cue, Juanita appeared at the window to the dining room. “Kaitlyn? Those tables still need busing and we have people waiting for a table. Let’s save the chatting for our break, okay?”
Kaitlyn’s mouth popped open on its own accord, but before she could say anything, Carlos spoke for her. “She’ll be right there, Juanita. I needed her in here for a minute. The bins are right there, though, if you want to go ahead and get started.”
Juanita was silenced, but only for a second. “She wasn’t hired to help you, Carlos. She was hired to help me. And I need her out here.”
She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at Kaitlyn before whirling away, leaving Kaitlyn fighting yet another flash of rage. Carlos shook his head and turned back to his biscuits.
“Take a second and cool off. Here. Eat a biscuit. Then go on out there and bus some tables. Just do your job and let Juanita roll off your back. I mean that.” His voice took a serious tone Kaitlyn had not heard before, and she paused in mid-bite. “This place doesn’t belong to Juanita. It belongs to your brother. He’s a good man. And if you think you owe him anything, keep the cat fights out of his restaurant.”
His dark eyes held hers for a long moment before she dropped her glance and took a thoughtful pull off her biscuit. She hated it that Carlos wasn’t just taking her side against the insufferable Juanita, but she had to admit he was right. She did owe Chris. Big-time. If there was one person in her life who had always been there for her, it was Chris. When they were growing up, it was he who tried so hard to take the place of their always-busy parents. When she got pregnant at sixteen, it was he who stood by her decision to have the baby when everybody else told her what a bad idea that was. Seven years later, when she decided she was tired of motherhood and had dropped off her daughter like a puppy at a pound, he had taken Olivia in and given her a home. And several months after that, when Kaitlyn found herself alone and penniless and beginning to understand what a world-class idiot she had been, Chris, without a word of recrimination, brought her home and took her in too. Yep. One could say she owed her brother.
“Kaitlyn?” Juanita had appeared at the window again with a brittle smile. “Are you coming?”
Kaitlyn took a deep breath and held it before exhaling in a long slow whoosh. She smiled too and squared her shoulders. “Coming.”
She stopped just before pushing her way through the door into the dining room and turned to Carlos. “For Chris.”
He raised his spatula in salute. “For the boss.”
If Juanita noticed her new, cooperative attitude, she certainly gave no sign. In fact, her instructions, always frequent, seemed more curt and brusque that ever. More than once during the day, Juanita had backed Chris into a corner, and fro
m her glances in Kaitlyn’s direction and the fact that she had actually lowered her voice to a near whisper, Kaitlyn could only surmise that the discussions were about her.
Chris listened as he always did. He lowered his head to better look into Juanita’s face, nodded thoughtfully as she spoke, then smiled, straightened, said a few words, and put his hand on her shoulder before walking away. Whatever he said could not have been what Juanita was looking for, because she always glared in Kaitlyn’s direction before huffing off.
For Chris. Kaitlyn took another deep breath and held it as long as she could before slowly exhaling. For Chris. For Chris. For Chris . . . and for my sweet, abandoned Livvy.
Cathleen Armstrong lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Ed, and their corgi. Though she has been in California for many years now, her roots remain deep in New Mexico where she grew up and where much of her family still lives. After she and Ed raised three children, she returned to college and earned a BA in English. Her debut novel Welcome to Last Chance won the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Genesis Award for Women’s Fiction. Learn more at www.cathleenarmstrong.com.
Books by
Cathleen Armstrong
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Welcome to Last Chance
One More Last Chance
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