His First and Last (Ardent Springs #1)

by Terri Osburn

  She gave a noncommittal shrug, her eyes yet to meet his. “I didn’t exactly get a no. She’s willing to let me work the week of the Main Street Festival.”

  As Lorelei lost interest in Champ, the dog nudged his owner’s hand, looking for more attention. Spencer obliged with a scratch under his chin.

  “That’s something. Maybe you’ll do so well, she’ll keep you on.”

  “She also suggested I bring in something she can sell, but we both know I don’t have a crafty bone in my body.”

  Spencer turned in his seat to play with a lock of Lorelei’s hair. “Depends on what you mean by crafty.”

  If looks could kill, he’d be choking for air. “Forgive me if I’m not in the mood to laugh. This is my life, Spencer. My screwed-up-beyond-saving life. Whoever said you can’t go home again knew what he was talking about.”

  “Ah, Thomas Wolfe.”

  Now he had her attention. “You know who said that?”

  “I suppose someone else might have said it before, but it’s the title of a Thomas Wolfe book.” He was a reader. She didn’t have to look so surprised.

  “What did you ever see in me?” she asked, taking him by surprise.

  “Uh . . . What?” Several answers came to mind, but few he figured she’d believe. And most he wasn’t willing to admit since he still saw them in her today. Though tarnished and dimmed in places, the Lorelei he loved was still in there. Whether she believed it or not.

  “You’re a genius compared to me.” Lorelei pushed off the swing, sending it into motion so that Spencer was forced to put his boot down to keep the seat from taking off Champ’s head. “Your background is as screwed up as mine, if not worse, and yet you have your life together. You have a job and you’re going to school and people respect you. Maybe that’s the one thing I did right,” she added, storming off toward the front door.

  Spencer caught her before her hand reached the screen. “What did you do right?”

  “I took myself out of your life,” she answered, rare tears dancing at the edge of her lashes. “If I’ve screwed up my own life this bad, imagine what I would have done to yours.”

  “Lorelei, you haven’t screwed up your life.” Out of instinct, he tried to pull her close, but Lorelei bolted away.

  “You look at me and you see what you want to see, Spencer. You always did.” She shook her head. “Open your eyes, because the woman standing before you is a mess. I have nothing to show for my life but the clothes in my broken suitcases. I’m thirty years old and I’m no better off than a child.”

  He wasn’t about to encourage her pity party. “You’re the one who needs to open your eyes. You have a grandmother who loves you and would do anything for you. You have two good legs and a strong back, and there’s nothing wrong with that brain of yours except this delusion that life owes you something.” Spencer took off his hat to run a hand through his hair, then slammed it back on. “You get what you give, Lorelei. You work hard and you earn the life you want.”

  “You think I didn’t work hard in LA?” she asked. “I worked my butt off. I took classes and worked endless night shifts so I could run around auditioning all day, only to be told that I wasn’t pretty enough or tall enough or short enough or stacked enough. Do you know what that’s like? Do you?” she drilled. “No, you don’t. So forgive me for wanting a break. For wanting something good to finally come my way.”

  “Getting a job waiting tables would be a break?” Spencer asked. “Really?”

  Lorelei threw her hands up. “I don’t know. It would have been something.”

  “It would have been more of what you hate doing.” She needed to see that this was an opportunity to start over. “Take this chance to find something else. What did you love doing in the past that you’d want to do again? Something besides acting.”

  “I don’t know what I could do in this dinky town.”

  “Forget the town. That’s an excuse.” Spencer wrapped his hands around the tops of her arms and gave Lorelei a gentle shake. “What did you love to do that you’d want to do again?”

  Blue eyes darted around the porch as she struggled to find an answer. Then, out of nowhere, she said, “Baking.”

  Spencer stilled. “Baking?”

  “Yes,” she said, shaking him off. “The only thing I loved doing was helping Granny in the kitchen. There’s a method to baking. You know, if you do A, B, and C exactly as the recipe calls for, you’ll get it right.” Lorelei’s voice grew stronger as she continued. “And baking isn’t like cooking, where you can throw in a pinch of this or take out a cup of that and the dish still turns out fine. Baking takes precision. There’s no ambiguity to it.”

  “And the cookies and breads don’t care if you’re pretty enough or tall enough,” Spencer said, leaning against the porch post. “They turn out the same so long as you follow the recipe.”

  A grin teased at the corners of Lorelei’s mouth. “Yes. I guess that’s a plus.”

  “Then there you go,” he said, throwing an arm across her shoulders as he opened the screen door. “Lorelei the Baker is born.”

  Could she really do this? Lorelei stared through Beluga’s windshield once again, gnashing her teeth over what to do next. In her brief perusal of Snow’s shop, she hadn’t seen anything edible. Not even candies near the register. So there was no reason to believe Snow even wanted to sell food. After all, breads and cookies had expiration dates. Jewelry and waffle irons did not. But that also meant Lorelei could provide an item that wasn’t already in supply among the inventory.

  Snow wanted something to fill a void, and that’s what Lorelei could give her.

  Before her confidence could wane, Lorelei marched through Snow’s front door, pausing beneath the jingling bells to let her eyes once again adjust from glaring sun to dim interior. According to the sign in the window, the shop opened at ten. Lorelei planned her visit for 10:02, hoping she’d have a chance to talk to Snow without interruptions from shoppers. The one stipulation the store owner would have to agree to was that no one would know where the baked goods came from.

  If the locals knew Lorelei supplied the treats, they were less likely to buy. So the source had to remain a mystery. Thankfully, Granny had agreed to keep her mouth shut, though getting her to swear not to tell Pearl had been no easy task.

  “Hey there, Lorelei,” said the woman she was there to see, appearing from the back of the store. “I thought I heard the bells go off.”

  “That was me,” Lorelei said, her entire body filling with heat as she fought the urge to run. I will not chicken out, she thought. Moisture covered her palms, and she rubbed them on the front of her white denim skirt. “I’ve thought about what you said yesterday, about bringing in something you can sell.”

  “Really?” Snow’s brows shot up as she leaned a hand on the glass counter. “Do you have something for me to look at?”

  “Not exactly. It’s more of a proposition right now.”

  Snow smiled as she crossed her arms. “I haven’t been propositioned in a while. You have my attention.”

  Lorelei straightened her shoulders as she performed the speech she’d been rehearsing since the night before. “While walking around your store yesterday, I noticed that you don’t sell any food items, and that might be by design, but you did suggest I fill a void and that’s what I’m offering to do. Three days a week I could supply you with fresh, homemade sweets, including a variety of cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and breads. And I can come back at closing time and take whatever hasn’t sold so you don’t have to deal with it.”

  Her potential distributor tapped a manicured fingernail on the counter. “You’re right. I did say fill a void, and that’s something I don’t have.” Glancing around the shop, she added, “I’ve never thought about selling anything edible, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. I’d have to try some samples before saying yes, though.”

  “That can be arranged,” Lorelei replied, her mind already running through which cookies to make.
But she knew if this was going to work, she had to be up front with Snow about the need for anonymity. “There would be one requirement.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No one can know where the desserts come from,” she said in a rush.

  If anything was going to blow this deal, that was it. But Lorelei believed with all her being that if anyone knew she would profit from the baked goods, not a crumb would be sold. She needed to make money from this, especially since she didn’t have a plan B. Heck, this was plan B.

  “An odd request,” Snow said with eyes narrowed, “but I’ve heard enough around town to understand why you wouldn’t want folks to know it’s you.”

  That was good and bad. “You’re still willing to give me a chance? Even knowing my reputation?” Lorelei asked.

  “Anyone who can tell an entire town to go to hell and then have the nerve to come back to it deserves a chance in my book.”

  Good to know the rumors were at least accurate.

  “Miss Cameron,” Lorelei said, extending her hand, “this might be the start of a very profitable friendship.”

  “If your cookies taste anything like your grandmother’s, I’m sure it will be.”

  Chapter 8

  Spencer tried to ignore Lorelei’s fidgeting, but she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, which caused her tight skirt to drift higher and higher up her thighs. If she kept it up, he’d kill them both due to failure to keep his eyes on the road.

  “You need to relax,” he said, his own body anything but. They were on their way to a Ruby Restoration meeting. The combination of his awakened libido and concern for how Lorelei would be received coiled Spencer’s nerves tighter than the draw on a hunting bow.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” she said for the fourth time in the last hour. “None of these people are going to want me on this project.”

  Her continued lack of confidence plagued Spencer. Lorelei had always been bold and brash, uncaring of what anyone thought. Now she was the total opposite. He’d go so far as to call her fragile. She’d fretted over the cookie samples for Snow, frustration and doubt causing her to burn the first batch. Then she’d declared the second not good enough and started over again.

  This was not his Lorelei. Something she’d told him, but he didn’t believe it until now.

  “You were worried about the bake sale last Sunday, and that went well,” he reminded her. “Give them a chance.”

  “A chance to chew me up and spit me out.”

  Spencer pulled into an empty space in front of the restaurant and slammed the truck into park. “Where is this coming from?” he asked, turning in his seat. “This isn’t you. This isn’t the Lorelei Pratchett who barreled through life on her own terms and to hell with everybody else.”

  Instead of meeting his anger with her own, Lorelei’s eyes dropped to her lap. “That Lorelei got kicked enough times to change her attitude.”

  “Well, change it back.”

  She turned on him then. “If you think I like what I’ve become, you’re wrong. But you take enough hits and it gets harder to get back up. I’m doing the best I can right now, okay?”

  With that, she dropped out of the truck, slammed the door behind her, and stormed off toward the entrance. This was more than having to admit she was never going to be an actress. He didn’t know what had happened to her out west, but someone as strong as Lorelei didn’t break easy.

  Feeling guilty for pushing her so hard, Spencer exited the truck and crossed the parking lot. He was surprised to find Lorelei waiting for him outside the front door.

  Avoiding eye contact, she mumbled, “I can’t believe you have these meetings at Lancelot’s restaurant.”

  “They let us use the private room every Friday night for free,” he explained. “Nobody else in town was willing to do the same.” Spencer held the door for Lorelei to enter, then nodded at the teenager behind the hostess podium. “Hi, Tina. Is the room filling up back there?”

  “Not yet, Mr. Boyd,” the petite brunette answered.

  As Spencer led Lorelei through the restaurant, she snorted behind him. “Mr. Boyd?”

  “To a sixteen-year-old, thirty is ancient,” he said over his shoulder. “Wait until they start ma’am-ing you.”

  Her voice turned serious. “I am not old enough to be called ma’am.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, darlin’.”

  Lorelei’s huff was lost in the cacophony of voices that greeted them upon entering the private dining room of Lancelot’s Family Restaurant. The room was lined with six coats of armor, each dustier than the one before it. The abundance of metal gave the room terrible acoustics, which made the nine people in the room sound like thirty. The majority of the noise was coming from Harvey Brubaker and Buford, who were in the middle of their usual argument.

  “Earnhardt was the greatest driver ever, and anybody who can’t see that is blind,” Harvey bellowed.

  “Earnhardt couldn’t pop a pimple on Richard Petty’s butt,” Buford answered.

  “Give it a rest, you old blowhards.” The scolding came from Nitzi Merchant, who’d been the secretary at Ardent Springs High since Spencer’s mother had been a student. Maybe longer. “Thank goodness you’re here, Spencer,” she said, waving a hand at the arguing men as she crossed the room. “You’re the only voice of reason on this committee.” With a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, Nitzi turned to the newest member of the team. “Hello, Lorelei. You look as pretty as ever.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Merchant,” Lorelei said, looking anywhere but at the woman addressing her. Leaning into Spencer’s shoulder, she whispered, “I don’t see Granny.”

  Rosie and Pearl had taken in their weekly Friday matinee down in Goodlettsville, but should arrive any minute. “They’ll be here,” he whispered back.

  As if he’d conjured them with his words, the pair entered the room. “Sorry we’re late,” Rosie said. “Did we miss anything?”

  “The usual,” Spencer replied. He’d hoped the group would make a better first impression on Lorelei. How was anyone supposed to take them seriously when their own leadership acted like preschoolers on a playground?

  “When will those two stop arguing about those silly race car drivers?” Pearl asked. “It’s not as if they’re ever going to agree.”

  “They’re men, Pearl. They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they weren’t arguing about something.” Rosie tucked her hand around Lorelei’s elbow. “I’m so glad you’re here, honey. Let’s find our seats so Julie May can take our orders before things get started.”

  Rosie pulled Lorelei across the dining room, with Spencer following close behind, gauging the room for reactions to her arrival. Some didn’t seem to have noticed, or pretended not to. Some looked unhappy but not openly hostile. Harvey and Buford were the ones to worry about. Pearl was right, the two rarely agreed on anything, but if they did agree on something, and that something was a no on Lorelei’s involvement with the committee, Spencer would have a fight on his hands.

  Once the ladies had put in their orders, Spencer added his own. He was half listening to Pearl’s movie review when Jebediah Winkle entered the room. The mayor of Ardent Springs had a presence that could not be denied. Spencer had hoped he would be too busy to attend the meeting, as his mayoral obligations had kept him away before.

  Of course, Spencer could not be that lucky tonight.

  Lorelei felt herself grow smaller as Jebediah Winkle crossed the room. With his broad shoulders and heavy brow, he looked as menacing as she remembered. Becky Winkle had been Lorelei’s nemesis, but her father had been her persecutor—a firm believer in the “sins of the father” philosophy. Only in Lorelei’s case, it was the sins of the mother.

  The woman had pulled the triumvirate of having sex outside of marriage, getting knocked up, and giving birth to a daughter who would no doubt turn out just like her. Regardless of the fact Lorelei had been an innocent child, Deacon Winkle never let her, or anyone else, forget where
she’d come from.

  Dark gray eyes sailed over her, assessing and dismissing in the span of a breath. In that moment, Lorelei knew she wasn’t long for this committee. It would take an endorsement from the Almighty himself to win her a welcome, and that was certainly never going to come.

  The meeting was called to order by Buford Stallings, and Lorelei wondered how he and Jebediah got along—the man who’d been mayor and the opponent who’d unseated him. Lorelei’s knowledge of politics was minor at best, but she couldn’t imagine being friendly with the person who’d taken her job away. Only losing an election was worse, because that meant the people you’d served had decided they didn’t want you anymore. Stallings had been popular back in the day. What had Jebediah told the citizens to win their favor?

  The minutes from the previous meeting were approved, and a treasurer’s report was read, giving the amount raised to date minus expenses and including the profits from the bake sale on Sunday. Lorelei was impressed with the strict professionalism of the meeting, and the fact that a dinky little bake sale in a church hall could raise four hundred dollars. But the funds raised to date were under four thousand total, which left them far from the goal of twenty grand. According to Granny, the group hoped to reach that goal by Labor Day so they could begin repairs before winter set in.

  There was no way that was going to happen without a massive fund-raiser. Something more than cookies and cakes and crochet purses for sale. Lorelei was contemplating ways to raise a significantly higher amount in less time when Spencer was called to address the room. He strolled to the front carrying blueprints and looking like a man who knew what he was doing. Even in high school, Spencer had been confident in who he was and what he wanted. That had been one of the reasons Lorelei was so drawn to him. He’d never been needy, and he’d never expected her to cater to him. They’d been the perfect match in every way.

  Until they weren’t.

  Spencer used pins to hang the blueprints on the wall for the attendees to see. Then he adjusted the microphone and gave his spiel about the changes he’d made to the design and why. The biggest change had been to the roof for the purpose of ensuring the holes that had developed in the current structure wouldn’t happen again, which made sense to Lorelei, so she didn’t imagine anyone would disagree.