The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club

by Lexi Eddings

  It wasn’t going to be comfortable. It wasn’t going to be easy. If it meant he’d be safe for Lacy to be around, he’d do whatever was necessary.

  But she might not let him. She might have come to her senses and realized he’d been right after all. She had outgrown Coldwater.

  And him.

  He wavered between letting her go and trying to change her mind. If he loved her, and he was sure he did, shouldn’t he stand aside and let her take the dream job she wanted? All day long, his thoughts chased each other like squirrels circling the same tree trunk. Even once Ethel and Lester went home and he turned the OPEN sign over, he was no closer to an answer.

  Jake looked across the Square to Lacy’s windows. If she was packing to leave, she wouldn’t have time to fix supper. The least he could do was take her something to eat. Surely after all they’d been through together, she’d let him feed her one last time.

  * * *

  Lacy wasn’t packing. She hadn’t decided whether or not to accept Neville’s offer and in the meantime, she still had a job with the Gazette. She was working on an article about the college’s summer term. While she made notes, she also decided to call her sister, Crystal, tomorrow. She was the dean of admission at Bates, after all. What better source for her piece? And it would be a chance for Lacy to actually talk to her sister.

  The truth was, Crystal was just so poisonously good, Lacy had been avoiding her. Since she’d been home, she’d only seen Crystal and her family at a couple of “command performance” dinners at their parents’ home. It was wearying to be in the presence of perfection and judge herself wanting by comparison. Still, she thought her relationship with her sister might improve with time.

  If she went back to Boston, there’d be no time.

  Yet another thing to regret if she took Boyleston, Quincy, and Lodge up on their offer.

  But the main reason for staying in Coldwater was Jake, and he’d pretty effectively taken that reason away. If he wouldn’t let her near him, why stay just to torment herself?

  Someone rapped on the door. She went to answer it, thinking it was Heather. Her friend had often dropped by since Lacy had stopped spending her evenings with Jake. Instead, when she opened the door, she found Thomas O’Leary on the other side.

  She tried to slam it shut, but he shoved the door all the way open and came in without being invited.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He shook his head and made a tsking noise. “That’s not very hospitable. I thought people out here in flyover country were friendly sorts.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in jail?”

  He feigned shock. “Whatever happened to presumed innocent, darlin’? My brother Malcolm and me are out on bail. And speakin’ of that, a little birdie in the DA’s office tells us you’re going to be the Commonwealth’s star witness.”

  So that’s how he’d found her, an informant close to DDA Hopkins.

  Lacy took a step back. “I’m not the only witness.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re the strongest. If you don’t take the stand, all Hopkins will have to trot out are thieves, embezzlers, and con artists who got caught and pled out in exchange for their testimony. Jurors don’t like that a lot,” Thomas explained. “So that’s why Malcolm and me are keen on seeing that you don’t speak against us.”

  When she was younger, Lacy had read the Narnia books. In one of them, C. S. Lewis wondered if it was possible for men to go wild on the inside while still looking human on the outside. There was a glint in Thomas O’Leary’s eye that made Lacy think he was one of Lewis’s wild ones. There was no pity. No empathy. No recognition that she was anything more than an obstacle for Thomas and his brother to shove out of their way.

  Permanently.

  “Where is your brother? Back in Boston?”

  “Oh, Malcolm will be touched you asked after him, indeed he will. But you’ll soon see for yourself that he’s just fine. He’s waiting for us down in the car.”

  A lookout ready for a clean getaway. “OK. You win. I won’t testify.”

  “Ah, now, why don’t I believe you?” Thomas said with a charming smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Tell you what. You come for a little ride with me and my brother and we’ll see if you can convince us.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Now would be the perfect time for Effie to leap down in her wildcat mode, but she was cowering from her perch above the cabinets.

  Thomas pulled out a small handgun that had been tucked into his jeans at the small of his back. “I hope you’ll come quietly. If your neighbor should pop by unexpectedly, things could get . . . messy.”

  * * *

  The hackles on the back of Jake’s neck rose when he passed by the sand-colored sedan parked behind Lacy’s building. He didn’t remember seeing it there before. It had out-of-state plates, but he’d walked by it before he could make out the logo. Jake knew just about everybody in town, but he didn’t recognize the guy drumming his fingers on the wheel.

  Surely that wasn’t enough to warrant the prickles on his spine.

  No, God, please. Not another episode.

  But he didn’t flash. Instead, he focused. As he continued to walk, balancing the insulated caterer’s bag in both hands before him, he thought about all the times in Afghanistan when that prickle had saved his life. It was a holdover, his CO had told him, from a time when people were less civilized. It was the same instinct that made a doe raise her head the instant before a hunter framed her in his sights.

  There were still some pretty uncivilized folk in the world. Jake couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had eyes on him and without good intent.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he heard footfalls on the iron staircase above him. Lacy was coming down with another man who had one arm around her waist, the other hand behind his back. Besides being so cozy with this stranger, there was something off about the way she carried herself—shoulders hunched, fingers bunched into fists. Her eyes went wide when she saw him, then she quickly averted her gaze. The guy cinched her closer to him.

  Something was definitely up. Jake lowered his eyes as well, and started up the stairs, studiously not looking directly at the guy by Lacy’s side. With the caterer’s bag in his hands, he could pass as a delivery boy. He exaggerated his limp to present a non-challenging appearance.

  When they passed on the broad staircase, Jake saw that the guy was holding a SIG Sauer pistol behind his back. Its muzzle was pointed in Lacy’s direction. He shoved the caterer’s bag between the man and Lacy, and made a move for the piece.

  The gun fired, splattering meat loaf and biscuits and bits of insulated nylon everywhere. Lacy screamed as the guy gave her a shove that sent her over the railing. Jake launched himself at the man and they rolled down the staircase together, clattering to a stop at the bottom.

  The man tried to wiggle away, but Jake wrestled him down, straddled him, and proceeded to beat the tar out of him. He’d held a gun on Lacy.

  A beating was too good for him.

  He heard the guy in the car shouting. Someone was coming toward them at a run, but Jake couldn’t seem to get out of his adrenaline-fueled aggression. Then sirens blared and there was more shouting. Jake was vaguely aware that the other man had been subdued by a sheriff’s deputy.

  All his frustration over losing Lacy because of his own unwillingness to change, and then almost losing her for good because of this lowlife bleating under him, made Jake’s blood boil. He just couldn’t seem to stop pounding the man.

  It took two men to pull him off.

  “Easy there, marine.” One of them was Lester.

  The other was Daniel. “Come on back, Jake,” he said softly. “It’s OK. We got this.”

  Jake drew a shaky breath as the pent-up fury subsided. “I would have killed him.”

  “I know. But you didn’t.”

  “Thank you, man.”

  “You did the same for me one time. Let’s call it square.” Another deputy
lifted the man to his feet, cuffed him, and frog-marched him to the waiting cruiser to join the other guy in the back. Jake looked around for Lacy. She had been cornered by an EMT, who was checking her out.

  “How did you know to come?” Jake asked Daniel.

  “Lester called to report some suspicious-looking characters parked behind this building,” Daniel said, giving his father a grudging nod.

  “When you’ve people-watched as much as I have over the years, you get so you can spot the ones that are up to no good pretty darn quick,” Lester said. “After I seen them guys hanging around, I hotfooted it over to the Regal and used the phone in the lobby to call it in.”

  “And you believed him?” Jake said to Daniel.

  “Let’s just say I gave him the benefit of the doubt this time,” Daniel said. “Everyone’s entitled to it once in a while.”

  Lester beamed. It wasn’t a full-blown reconciliation, but at least father and son were on speaking terms now.

  Jake left them to find Lacy.

  As soon as she saw him approaching, she pulled away from the EMT who was trying to take her blood pressure and ran toward him. He hugged her close. It felt like a miracle that she was hugging him back.

  “Jake, oh, Jake, you’re hurt.”

  There was a cut on his temple that was bleeding like a son of a gun, but he didn’t feel any pain. That would come later.

  “I was bringing you dinner,” he said, feeling stupid after the words came out. It wasn’t at all what he wanted to say. Then he realized if he didn’t say what was in his heart right now, he’d regret it for the rest of his life. “I was coming to tell you I’m seeing a shrink. I’ll do anything to keep from putting you in danger. I’m going to get better, Lacy.”

  “That’s not possible, Jake. You’re already the best.”

  That was so far beyond what he’d hoped she’d say, it almost didn’t register in his brain.

  “I was coming to . . . to . . .” Words failed him. Instead, he fished around in his pocket and came up with his grandmother’s ring. He should do this right. He should drop to one knee, but if he took the time to assume the position, he might lose his nerve. “I love you, Lacy Evans. I’ll love you till they lay me in the dust. Don’t go back to Boston.”

  “I love you, too.” She leaned down and palmed his face. “As long as we have each other, Coldwater Cove is the happiest place on earth. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Epilogue

  Re: Mr. Bradford Endicott

  The defendant has been arrested by Belizean authorities for running a real estate scam on tourists in San Pedro. Mr. Endicott is incarcerated in the country’s central prison while he awaits trial. The Endicott family’s lawyer has indicated that they will no longer resist our efforts to extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial for embezzlement in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

  How do you want to handle this matter?

  —a note from Percy Junket, personal assistant

  to Deputy District Attorney Ethan Hopkins

  DDA Hopkins scribbled a note to his assistant, telling him to “misplace” the paperwork connected with the Commonwealth’s extradition request. Hopkins would have Junket find them again in a year or so. By then, Endicott would be more than happy to face the music closer to home.

  A Belizean prison was no day at the beach. Sometimes, the scales of justice balanced just fine without any help from him at all.

  He couldn’t have arranged matters better if he’d tried.

  From the Coldwater Gazette Society column

  Mr. and Mrs. George Evans are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter Lacy to Jacob Tyler, decorated veteran and oldest son of the late Marvin Tyler and his wife, Mary, who survived him. Not that he was any bother, she says.

  A November wedding is planned.

  The bride predicts “a good time will be had by all.”

  Recipes from the Green Apple Grill

  When I was first married, I didn’t know how to cook. At all. I could set a table and throw together a passable chef ’s salad, but that was the extent of my culinary expertise. As a result, my poor husband received more than his share of burnt offerings that first year.

  Likewise, Jake Tyler hasn’t always been a great cook. He looked for recipes all over the place and then experimented and made his own tweaks. Here are some dishes that appear in The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club.

  Belgian Waffles

  Ingredients

  2 cups cake flour (You can use all-purpose flour instead, but cake flour is finer and lighter. Fair warning: It requires sifting first.)

  ¾ cup sugar

  3½ teaspoons baking powder

  2 eggs, separated

  1½ cups milk

  1 cup butter, melted

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Powdered sugar, sliced fresh strawberries, blueberries, or your favorite syrup

  Nonstick cooking spray

  Directions

  Preheat your waffle iron.

  Combine flour, sugar, and baking powder in a big bowl. In a medium bowl, lightly beat egg yolks. Add milk, butter, and vanilla. Gently stir into dry ingredients until combined. Do not overmix. Beat the egg whites with a whisk until stiff peaks form. Fold into the batter. Do not overmix! (This is starting to be a theme, isn’t it?)

  Spray your waffle iron with nonstick spray. Pour in batter and bake according to manufacturer’s directions until golden brown.

  Serve your waffles dusted with powdered sugar, garnished with fresh strawberries or blueberries. Or you can drown them in syrup if you like.

  The recipe makes about 10 waffles and I’m sorry to have to tell you that two waffles have 696 calories. But Jake says if you enjoy them with someone you love, the calories don’t count.

  Happy Man Meat Loaf

  Of course, men aren’t the only ones who appreciate this dish. Kids love it, too. Moms like the fact that extra veggies can be sneaked into this one-dish meal and no one will ever be the wiser.

  Jake decided it was the perfect “welcome home” meal to bring to Lacy when she was moving into her new place in Coldwater Cove. The meat loaf is warm and satisfying.

  Just like him.

  Ingredients

  8 ounces tomato sauce (Try picante sauce for a Mexican flair. My husband likes Jack Daniel’s Original No. 7 barbecue sauce in this recipe. Use your imagination and your family’s preferences.)

  1 small onion, diced

  1 potato, coarsely grated (You can also add grated carrots or any other vegetable you want. I’ve even made this recipe with grated zucchini. Just add more meat and perhaps another egg to make sure the loaf holds together.)

  2 pounds ground beef (Or ground pork, chicken, or turkey. This is a very flexible recipe.)

  2 eggs

  Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

  8 ounces cheddar cheese, coarsely grated

  Directions

  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

  Set aside ⅓ cup of tomato sauce. In a large bowl, mix onion, potato (and any other veggie you care to add), ground meat, ¾ of the grated cheese, the remaining tomato sauce, eggs, salt, and pepper. Roll up your sleeves and mix it together with your hands to form a loaf. Press the mixture into a loaf pan and top with the ⅓ cup of tomato sauce you set aside.

  Bake at 375 degrees for one hour. Sprinkle the remaining grated cheese to melt on top, return to oven for another ten minutes.

  Serves 4–6 with some left over.

  My husband never minds leftovers. He says sandwiches the next day are the best part of having meat loaf!

  Three-Cheese Deviled Eggs

  Every family has secret recipes. The only way my sister teased the recipe for icebox rolls from my grandmother was to stand over her and write it all down as she made them. She was known to leave a few things out when she wrote a recipe down so no one else’s rolls would ever be quite as good! ;-) My mother-in-law never did divulge the secret to her homemade chocolate sauce. We’ve cobbled together
an approximation. It’s good, but it’s not the same.

  Jake knew he was getting someplace with Lacy when she gave up the recipe for her mother’s three-cheese deviled eggs!

  Ingredients

  6 hard-cooked eggs

  ¾ cup mayonnaise

  2 tablespoons finely shredded Monterey Jack cheese

  2 tablespoons finely shredded Swiss cheese

  2 tablespoons minced chives, divided

  teaspoon ground mustard

  1⁄8 teaspoon pepper

  2 ounces processed cheese, cubed (Velveeta. Yes, I know it’s not considered haute cuisine, but we’re feeding a family, not trying to win Top Chef!)

  Dash paprika

  Directions

  Boil the eggs and let them cool. Cut eggs in half lengthwise. Remove yolks and set whites aside. Mash the yolks in a bowl. Add the mayonnaise, shredded cheeses, 1 tablespoon chives, mustard, and pepper.

  In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the Velveeta on high for 1–2 minutes. Stir until smooth and then add to the yolk mixture.

  Spoon into the egg white shells. Sprinkle with paprika and the remaining chives. Refrigerate until serving.

  If your family is like mine, there won’t be any leftovers. That way you don’t have to worry about refrigerating them after the meal!

  Sweet Cream Raisin Pie

  This is a very old country recipe from “Tiny” Simon, of the very real Simon family of Oklahoma. Tiny is the oldest of eight children. She won’t reveal her age, but her youngest sibling is seventy.

  Here is Tiny’s raisin pie recipe exactly as it appears in the Simon family cookbook. With a comment or two from me tossed in, of course!