In This Town

by Beth Andrews

  Please. Men, no matter their height, all wanted the same thing and there was nothing G-rated about it.

  She also never bought into the idea that some handsome prince would ride up and carry her off, far from a mundane life of endless toil. No, Tori used to believe something much more dangerous, much more insidious than poisoned apples and ravenous, transvestite wolves who liked girls in red hoods.

  She’d actually bought into the idea that she could escape her small hometown, could go somewhere far away from the rumors, the envy and resentment and, worst of all, the pity she’d lived with her entire life. That she could make her dreams, all her big plans, come true. And that finally, she’d achieve the greatest lie of them all.

  A happy ending.

  Talk about delusional, Tori thought as she wove her way between tables in the Ludlow Street Café’s dining room. Nothing like life coming along and giving some poor fool dreamer a sharp smack upside the head to knock some much needed sense into her. Getting pregnant at eighteen did that for her. Made her realize that sure, sometimes dreams did come true.

  Just not for her.

  So she’d stopped wishing and hoping for spectacular and had settled for average. Which had turned out to be a good life.

  If good didn’t quite live up to the expectations she’d built for her future when she’d been a teenager, she had no one to blame but herself.

  “Here you go,” she said to Mr. Jeffries as she set his usual breakfast—two eggs over easy, white toast and three slices of bacon—in front of him. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “More coffee when you get a chance, dear,” he said, smiling at her as innocently as a baby.

  The smile, combined with the fact that he looked like a harmless grandfather with his round cheeks, ill-advised comb-over and a seemingly endless supply of blindingly bright bow ties, hid that he was a groper.

  Tori wouldn’t have minded if he’d been a better tipper. Or if he had roaming hands with some of the other above-legal-age waitresses at the café. But nope. She, and only she, was lucky enough to get what he deemed a love tap—but was actually more of a hopeful squeeze.

  So when she caught sight of his age-spotted hand heading her way, she neatly sidestepped. “No problem. I’ll be back in a second with that coffee,” she said, making sure to sound pleasant and courteous.

  Then, because for all his faults, Mr. Jeffries was a regular customer and only a minor nuisance, she amped up the usual amount of wiggle to her hips as she walked away. Just to give him something to look at.

  Young, old or in between, men all liked to look. But only she decided who got to touch.

  She grabbed the coffeepot and refilled Mr. Jeffries’s cup, leaving another handful of creamers at his table since he always pocketed several before he went home. Half the café’s tables and booths were filled, voices and the occasional laugh mixing with the sounds of silverware scraping plates, of dishes being cleared. The air smelled of strong coffee, toasted bread, bacon and deep fried potatoes, the odors clinging to her hair, the tiny particles of grease permeating her clothes, her skin. By the end of her nine-hour shift, she’d smell like a walking, talking French fry.

  The joys of working in the food industry. Smelly clothes, greasy hair and tired, aching feet. But it was the only thing she’d ever known, as she’d been waiting tables here for the past fifteen years. Fifteen years. Literally half her life.

  She wasn’t sure whether to be proud she’d stuck with something for so long…

  Or depressed as hell.

  She exhaled heavily as if she could blow away the tension that question caused. No sense being either. This was her job, her life.

  But…God…what if? What if something more, something different was possible?

  The thought, the mere idea of leaving Mystic Point, of finally going after the life she’d always wanted, was exhilarating. Empowering.

  Scary as hell.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, snapping her out of the crazy fantasy of ever leaving Mystic Point. The back door to the café opened and Nora Sullivan stepped into the narrow hallway as Tori checked her phone. Great. Layne was calling. Again. She glanced at Nora.

  Stuck between her sisters. The curse of being the middle child.

  She clicked Ignore on her phone and faced Nora. “Well, hello there, stranger,” Tori said, her own black skirt feeling too short, too tight compared to her sister’s orange dress, the hem of which skimmed just above Nora’s knees. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  If Nora noted the censure in Tori’s tone, the light accusation, it didn’t show in her easy smile or blue eyes.

  When had her baby sister become so adept at camouflaging her feelings? Or maybe Tori had just lost her ability to read her? Neither thought sat well.

  “Good morning,” Nora said cheerfully, as if they’d last seen each other yesterday instead of two weeks ago. As if nothing was wrong.

  Tori knew better.

  She tossed the old grounds from the coffeepot into the garbage. “It’s a little early to be so chipper. Even for you.”

  That was Nora’s thing. Being bright and sunny and optimistic. Hey, whatever got her gears grinding, but honestly, just the thought of being that freaking merry all the time gave Tori a headache.

  “Did Layne get a hold of you?” Nora asked, smoothing a hand over her blond hair.

  God forbid even a single strand try to escape the tight twist she insisted was professional-looking but was really an affront to stylish hairstyles everywhere.

  “She wants us to meet her at the station.”

  “I know, she told me. Three times.”

  Waving at someone in the dining room, Nora scrunched up her nose. “She called me twice and sent four text messages. She’s nothing if not persistent.”

  “Yeah, persistent. Demanding. Bossy. Annoying—my personal favorite. And for the love of God, don’t do that thing with your nose,” Tori continued, adding fresh grounds to the pot. “You look like a rabid bunny ready to tear the heads off innocent children.”

  “Please, I’m adorable and you know it.”

  “True. But the problem is that you know it. Layne and I shouldn’t have told you you were pretty so often when you were little. We created a monster.”

  Nora waved that away. “You created a self-assured, confident, independent woman, but that’s neither here nor there,” she said, sounding like the attorney she was. “What is here and there is that we need to get going or we’ll be late. You can ride with me and Griffin.”

  “I won’t be anything,” Tori said, rinsing the coffeepot before filling it with chilled, distilled water, “because I’m not going.”

  Nora stared at her as if she’d suddenly declared she was going to shave off her eyebrows. “Of course you’re going.”

  “Why? Because Layne wants me to? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m working and I will continue to work until my shift ends at two. I’m not about to drop what I’m doing, leave Celeste in a bind and abandon my customers and coworkers just because my older sister decrees it.”

  Layne wasn’t the boss of her. A fact her older sister didn’t seem to be aware of.

  Tori hated that Layne demanded she drop everything whenever the whim hit her. Tori may not be the assistant chief of police like Layne or an attorney like Nora, but she had a job, one she took seriously. One she couldn’t afford to be away from—literally. Ever since her divorce, she’d barely been able to make ends meet.

  No one told her the price of freedom would be so damn high.

  “I don’t think Layne would’ve asked you to leave work if she didn’t feel it was important,” Nora said, proving that, despite her angelic face, she could be as stubborn as her sisters. “So, come on.” She clapped her hands lightly, her tone high-pitched as if she was calling a hesitant puppy. If she whistled, Tori might have to hurt her. “Let’s go.”

  Tori turned on the machine. “Look, don’t think you can avoid me for weeks—”

  “Don’t be r
idiculous,” Nora said, her arms crossed, her cheeks pink.

  “—and then waltz in here and make demands. I’m not going. Deal with it.”

  “First of all,” Nora said, hurrying after Tori as she walked toward the other side of the restaurant, “I haven’t been avoiding you.”

  Tori stepped into the large alcove separating the dining room from the kitchen. “Ever since you started sleeping with Griffin York you’ve barely been around. Does he keep you chained to the bed?”

  Sharon Cameron’s booming laugh drowned out whatever Nora had been about to say. “He could chain me to the bed,” Sharon said. “I’d even bring my own restraints.”

  “Not helping,” Tori called to her coworker as Sharon took several place settings back into the dining room.

  Patty Tarcher, a rotund, gray-haired, sixty-year-old grandmother of ten set food-laden plates from the order window onto a tray. “I say enjoy it while you can,” Patty told Nora. “Once they hit fifty, men’s libidos drop like a rock in the ocean. Never to be seen again.” Balancing the tray with one hand, she snagged an extra set of silverware off the long table behind them and peered over the top of her glasses at the sisters. “That’s why God invented those little blue pills. Things are magic, I tell you. Pure magic.”

  “Way more information than anyone ever needed to know,” Tori said.

  “Thanks, Patty, but Griffin’s and my relationship isn’t based solely on sex,” Nora said, humor underlying her prim tone.

  Patty frowned. “Now that’s a shame. Those are the best kind.”

  Tori and Nora watched Patty leave. “Oh, my God,” Tori breathed. “I’m going to need to scrub my brain to get rid of the image of Patty and Stan putting that little blue pill to use.”

  Nora’s lips twitched. “Isn’t Stan the guy who plays Santa at the annual Christmas party?”

  “Ugh. Stop. Now I’m imagining him dressed as a jolly old elf.” At Nora’s laugh, Tori grinned. “I miss you, baby girl.”

  For some reason, that comment made Nora look guilty. Tori’s eyes narrowed. No doubt about it, something was going on—she just had no idea what. But she was sure whatever it was, Griffin was to blame.

  “I miss you, too,” Nora said, rearranging the stack of wrapped silverware. “I’ve just been busy—”

  “Tori,” Celeste Vitello, the café’s owner, called from the other side of the window. “Order up.”

  “Busy,” Tori repeated, placing plates onto a tray. “Right. Too busy for your family.”

  Nora sighed. “You know it’s not that way between me and Griffin, right?”

  “Not what way?”

  “Just sex.”

  That was Nora’s first problem. She should keep whatever was between her and Griffin purely physical. Keep her heart out of it. “Does it matter?” she asked, lifting the tray and walking into the dining room.

  Never one to give up anything easily, Nora caught up with Tori as she set omelets in front of a twenty-something couple.

  “Of course it matters,” Nora said when Tori returned the tray to the alcove. “You’re my sister.”

  “And yet you continue to ignore my sage advice about Griffin.”

  “Because you’re wrong about him.” Her tone gentled. “He’s a good man. I lo—”

  “Oh, no. No, no, no.” Tori covered her ears. “Do not start spouting off about your great love for him. Let me keep believing it’s only physical between you two and will someday soon come to an end. It’s the only way I’ll be able to sleep at night.”

  Nora crossed her arms. “You know, instead of blaming me for this perceived distance between us lately, you might want to start considering how you’re partly to blame.”

  Tori’s eyes widened. “Because I don’t like your boyfriend?”

  “Because you don’t respect my ability to make decisions for myself. Most women would be happy to hear their baby sister is in a serious, committed relationship with a man who loves her.”

  Tori couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Honey, I’m not most women.”

  She may not have Nora’s brains or Layne’s ability to frighten the masses with one scowl—and legally carry a gun—but she did know men. It was one of her greatest strengths. And Griffin York was trouble.

  Okay, so he was the best kind of trouble, the kind that came wrapped in a brooding, darkly handsome, super sexy package.

  A pretty exterior for sure, but underneath? A cynical, bitter person who only hurt those who tried to get close to him. Who tried to love him.

  Took one to know one, after all.

  “Speak of the devil,” she murmured as she stepped out to check her customers’ drinks and noticed Griffin come in through the front door. The man looked like the poster child for the Bad Boy Club in his work boots, faded jeans and battered leather jacket.

  She crossed to the drink station only to be followed by Nora. A moment later, Griffin joined them, making Tori feel cornered.

  “Is she coming?” he asked Nora.

  “Yes,” Nora said at the same time Tori spoke.

  “No.”

  He rubbed his thumb along the underside of his jaw. “Glad that’s cleared up.”

  Nora took a hold of Tori’s arm and gently tugged her into the hallway. “I’m sorry this is a bad time for you,” Nora said, and Tori knew she meant it. Nora rarely said anything she didn’t mean. Tori almost envied her ability to be so open and honest. So willing to put her true self out there for others to judge. “But we all know this must be about the case.”

  The case. Their mother’s murder case. Tori bit the inside of her lower lip. Hard. She was tired of hearing about it, thinking about it. It was over. Done. The man who’d killed their mother eighteen years ago, who’d left Valerie Sullivan’s body to rot and decay like so much garbage in the woods, was dead himself.

  As his son stood before her, looking so much like his father, with his dark, tousled hair and slight dimple in his chin, it was all she could do not to throw herself at him, slap and scratch him. Try to inflict some of the pain her mother had suffered at his father’s hands on him.

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” Tori said, hating that she cast Dale York’s sins onto his only child. Especially when so many people cast her mother’s sins onto her. “No sense rehashing it all. It won’t change anything. Won’t bring Mom back or ensure that Dale is rotting in hell as punishment for what he did.”

  “I could carry her out of here for you,” Griffin said to Nora, conveniently pretending Tori hadn’t spoken.

  He’d fit in with her family just fine after all. They tended to ignore her, too. Underestimated her.

  “We could toss her in the trunk,” he added. “Let Layne deal with her when we get to the station.” He rolled his shoulders as if warming up for some heavy lifting, his focus on Tori, his gaze assessing. “What do you go? About one twenty-five?”

  A sound of outrage escaped her even as she sucked in her stomach. “I’ll have you know—” she jabbed a finger at Griffin’s chest, wished it was a fork “—I weigh one-fifteen.”

  Give or take…oh…five pounds.

  “If you say so.” Then he smirked.

  Her hands fisted. God, what she wouldn’t give to knock that stupid grin off his face.

  She tossed her hair back, her high heels bringing them almost eye to eye. “Listen, as much as I’m sure you two enjoy playing Bonnie and Clyde in your spare time, leave me out of it. Because if you lay one greasy finger on me, I’ll have Layne arrest you for assault after I’ve taken my hedge clippers to your—”

  “Now, now,” Nora said. “No need to get all threatening and violent. It was only an idea.” She patted Griffin’s arm. “A sweet one.”

  Tori gaped at her usually levelheaded sister. “There is something seriously wrong with you. What did he do? Perform a lobotomy on you while you were sleeping?”

  “We need to go,” Griffin told Nora.

  She sighed, as if dealing with Tori taxed the last of her usually limitless energy a
nd patience. Well, it wasn’t exactly a day at the beach on Tori’s side of things, either.

  Nora nodded. “I guess we’ll just tell Layne she couldn’t get away.”

  It took a moment for Tori to realize she was the “she” Nora was talking about. “Okay, first of all, I’m standing right here and you acting as if I’m not is really irritating. Secondly, I don’t need you or anyone making excuses for me.” Didn’t want anyone doing so. She stood up for herself. Took care of herself.

  After she’d realized the hard lesson that no one else was going to take care of her.

  Too bad taking care of herself and her son wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be.

  Nora sent her a beseeching look, one made all the more powerful by her sister’s sweetness. “Layne really wanted us both there. She wants you there.”

  Tori’s resolve started dissolving like sugar in hot water. “I guess she’s going to be disappointed, then,” she said lightly before brushing past Griffin and heading back to work.

  But guilt nudged her, hard and insistent as a toothache. Damn Nora. Damn Tori’s love for her. That’s what love did. It trapped you. Made you worry all the time about pleasing someone else, about putting your own wants and needs aside.

  Love made you weak.

  And Tori couldn’t afford to be anything but strong.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing?” Celeste Vitello asked Tori.

  Tori set a stack of dirty dishes into a heavy, plastic bin. “Giving Mr. Jeffries a lap dance,” she said dryly, glancing at her boss. “You?”

  “Now that is a horrifying thought.” Celeste’s dark, wildly curly short hair was held back from her face with a wide, black headband making her brown eyes appear larger, her cheekbones more pronounced. A white apron covered her stretchy black pants and orange T-shirt. “And while I admire your clever wit as much as, if not more than, the next person, shouldn’t you get going? Layne wanted you at the station at nine and it’s already eight fifty-five.”