Earlier, his gut had been so twisted up in knots over the impending reunion with his sister that he hadn’t been able to eat anything. Now that the initial meeting was over, he realized he was famished.
He hadn’t forgotten about the Ace in the Hole—or the thick, juicy burgers that were served with a mountain of crispy fries. In fact, the memory alone was enough to make his mouth water and, when his stomach rumbled again, he steered his truck toward Sawmill Street.
But for reasons he couldn’t fathom, he abruptly turned off Sawmill onto North Broomtail and pulled up in front of Daisy’s Donut Shop again.
* * *
After graduating from high school, Eva had wanted to follow her passion and pursue a diploma in baking and pastry arts. But following her heart had led to heartache more times than she could count, so she’d listened to the urging of her parents and opted to study accounting instead. She’d just completed her first year when her father was diagnosed with lymphoma, so she’d returned to Rust Creek Falls to support her family and postponed the rest of her studies.
She’d been fortunate to get a job at Daisy’s Donut Shop. The part-time hours had allowed her to earn a little bit of income while also providing the flexibility she’d needed to take her father to his various doctors’ appointments and therapies. When Ray Armstrong had finished his treatments, she’d been able to increase her hours and now she was working full-time. Since the doctors had officially declared her dad to be in remission, he’d been pressuring his daughter to return to school and complete her degree. In the spirit of compromise, she’d been taking some online courses and was now only a few courses shy of completion, but she was still happier baking than studying.
Her friends liked to tease that she would be the perfect wife and homemaker, but she hadn’t yet met a man who agreed with their assessment.
Maybe having her heart stomped on time and time again should have taught her to be wary, but there wasn’t anything she wanted more than to fall in love, get married, fill her home with babies and her kitchen with the sweet scents of baking, so she was trusting fate to put the right man in her path.
In the meantime, she kept busy filling Daisy’s display case with mouthwatering goodies. Since the morning rush had passed and it was still early for lunch, Eva took advantage of the lull to brew a fresh pot of coffee, then sipped a cup while she took inventory of the goodies that remained. The white chocolate cranberry cookies had sold out, which made her feel pretty good. Her boss had protested that there was no need to expand their offerings beyond the tried-and-true muffins and doughnuts, but Eva had been playing around with some of her grandmother’s recipes, tweaking here and there, and the residents of Rust Creek Falls—most of them creatures of habit—had overcome their reluctance and started to look forward to daily specials.
Today’s pumpkin spice muffins had been gone within the first two hours of the shop’s opening, the sticky buns had sold out shortly after and there were only two eggnog biscotti remaining in the jar on the counter. She pulled an empty tray out of the case—the cheesecake-stuffed snickerdoodles had also been decimated by the morning crowd—replaced the liner and set out neatly decorated gingerbread boy and girl cookies.
She glanced up when the bell over the door chimed, and her heart immediately skipped a beat.
He was back.
The handsome cowboy with the sexy voice and troubled eyes.
She’d hoped to see him again, but she hadn’t expected that her wish would come true so quickly.
“You’re back,” she said, because her brain couldn’t seem to focus on anything else.
He seemed surprised that she’d remembered him from earlier—or maybe he thought he should remember her from years ago—but he only said, “I’m hungry.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place.” She smiled, wanting him to feel welcome, and wishing she could ease the tension that was evident in the line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders. “Breakfast or lunch hungry?”
“Huh?” He looked at her blankly.
She didn’t know where he’d gone after he’d left the doughnut shop earlier, but it was apparent that his mind wasn’t occupying the same physical space as his body.
“Are you hungry for breakfast or lunch?” she asked again.
“I don’t even know what time it is,” he admitted, glancing at the watch on his wrist.
“It’s definitely time to get you some food,” she decided. “How does a roast beef sandwich with steak-cut fries sound?”
“Delicious.”
She smiled again as she filled a mug with coffee and set it on the counter, then gestured to the chair. “Sit.”
He sat, then lifted his eyes to meet her gaze. “Are you always this bossy?”
She winked at him. “Only when the occasion warrants.”
She left him with his coffee while she slipped into the kitchen to get his food, pausing first to pull out her lip gloss and quickly swipe the wand over her lips.
“He’s back,” she told Tracie, tucking the tube into her pocket again.
“Who’s back?” the cook asked.
“Luke Stockton.”
“That’s old news,” Tracie said, continuing to chop cabbage for the coleslaw she was making. “Half the town saw him in here this morning.”
“I don’t mean he’s back in town,” Eva told her, piling thinly sliced beef onto bread to make his sandwich. “I mean he’s back here. Sitting at the counter.”
“Is that why you’re loading up that plate?”
“He said he’s hungry.”
The cook chuckled. “And the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” she agreed.
Eva felt her cheeks flush. “I’m not interested in his heart.”
“Just his body?” Tracie teased. “Can’t blame you for that—the man is spectacularly well built.”
Eva’s cheeks burned hotter. He certainly was that, but that wasn’t why she wanted to feed him. Or not entirely.
“He looks a little...lost,” she said, adding fries to the plate.
“He hasn’t been home to Rust Creek Falls in twelve years,” the cook reminded her. “He’s probably feeling a little lost.”
Twelve years.
Eva couldn’t imagine being apart from her family and friends for more than a decade. Even the few months that had passed between visits when she was in college had seemed like an eternity. “I wonder why he stayed away for so long.”
“There was a lot of speculation about that,” Tracie mused. “But if you want the truth, you’d better ask the man himself.”
“I just might do that,” she decided.
“Wait,” the cook said when she started out of the kitchen.
Eva held back a smile as the other woman added a couple of sprigs of parsley to the plate.
“Presentation matters,” Tracie reminded her. “You know it, or you wouldn’t have retouched the gloss on your lips.”
Unable to deny that she had done just that, Eva silently took the plate and returned to the counter.
“Thanks,” Luke said when she set the meal in front of him.
“Enjoy,” she said, and busied herself tidying up the arrangement of mugs as he picked up his fork.
She was glad that he was early for lunch, so that he was the only customer in the doughnut shop and she was able to focus exclusively on him. Although she suspected that even if she’d had a line all the way to the door, she would have found her attention solely on the handsome stranger.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked when he’d polished off the sandwich.
He looked up, obviously surprised by the question, but immediately shook his head.
She gave him another minute before she asked, “Where did you go when you left here this morning?”
He dippe
d a fry into the ketchup he’d squirted on his plate. “To see my sister.”
“I can only imagine how excited Bella must have been when you showed up.”
Thick brows drew together over his dark blue eyes. “How’d you know Bella is my sister?” he asked warily.
“I heard Ben Dalton call you Luke,” she confided.
“It’s quite a jump from my first name to my family connections,” he pointed out.
She shrugged. “When someone returns to town after a dozen years, people are bound to talk.”
“No doubt,” he admitted, his tone grim.
“All good stuff,” she told him.
He lifted his mug, swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “It seems that you have me at a disadvantage.”
“How so?”
“You obviously know my name—and apparently a lot more—but I don’t know yours.”
She touched a hand to the bib of her apron. “Oh. I forgot my name tag today,” she realized. “Eva Rose Armstrong.”
He set down his mug and proffered his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eva Rose Armstrong.”
She felt a tingle through her veins as her palm slid against his. His hand was wide and strong, with calluses that attested to a familiarity with manual labor. It was a man’s hand, and every womanly part of her responded to the contact.
“Eva,” she said. “My friends call me Eva.”
“Are we going to be friends, Eva?” he asked, releasing her hand.
“I think so,” she said, not daring to admit that she already hoped friends was only the beginning of what they would be to one another.
“I could probably use a friend,” he admitted, dredging another fry through ketchup. “I don’t think I have any left in this town.”
“You haven’t stayed in touch with anyone here?”
He shook his head and shoved the fry into his mouth.
“I have to admit that piques my curiosity,” she told him.
“You know what they say about curiosity.”
She ignored the warning. “Twelve years is a long time to stay away from your family.”
“I was working.”
The abrupt response and clipped tone cautioned her to back off, but she pressed on anyway. “You didn’t get any time off?”
“Ranching is a full-time job.”
She nodded an acknowledgment of the fact. Though her parents both worked in education, no one who lived in Rust Creek Falls was oblivious to the arduous demands of working the land. “No time to make a phone call?”
“How do you know I didn’t?” he challenged.
“Did you?”
He pushed his now-empty plate aside. “No.”
“Well, you’re here now,” she said. “That’s a start.”
“Maybe,” he allowed, lifting his mug again, only to discover it was empty.
“More coffee?” Eva offered, wanting to give him an excuse to linger at the counter awhile longer.
Although the lunch crowd would soon fill up the tables, she didn’t want to watch Luke Stockton walk out the door because she didn’t know when—or even if—she would see him again. And maybe it was unreasonable and irrational, but she couldn’t help feeling that the man sitting in front of her was going to change her life—but only if she could get him to stick around long enough to do so.
“No, thanks,” he said. “Just the check.”
“How about dessert?” she offered as an alternative. “I made the pies fresh this morning, and the coconut cream is a favorite of many customers.”
“Actually, I’m more of an apple pie kind of guy.”
“We have apple, too.”
He rubbed a hand over his flat belly and shook his head. “That sandwich was more than enough to fill the hole in my stomach.”
She reluctantly wrote up his check and slid it across the counter.
His fingers brushed hers as he reached for the slip of paper, sending little sparks dancing up her arm and making her wonder how she would respond if he ever really touched her.
Unfortunately, he seemed completely unaffected by the brief contact.
“Thanks,” he said. “For the meal and the company.”
“My pleasure,” she told him.
He retrieved his wallet from the inside pocket of his sheepskin-lined leather jacket, then selected some bills and tucked them under the check before he slid off the stool and rose to his feet.
Her heart sighed as her gaze skimmed over him again. She guessed that he was at least four inches taller than her own five-foot-eight-inch frame, with broad shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist and long legs encased in well-worn denim.
She wanted to tell him that everything was going to be okay, that whatever had caused him to stay away for so long was water under the bridge, that his siblings were all going to welcome him back—because Rust Creek Falls was where he belonged. And she wanted to tell him that she was glad he was home—because she’d been waiting for him her whole life.
But mindful of the brevity of their acquaintance, she wisely kept those thoughts to herself.
Instead, she reached for his check again and impulsively scribbled her cell number on the back of it. “In case you ever need pie...or doughnuts...or...anything.”
* * *
Luke looked at the hastily scrawled digits, then at Eva.
Pie...or doughnuts...or...anything.
Anything?
Was she hitting on him?
As if she could somehow read the thoughts that circled in his mind, her cheeks flushed, the pink color adding a natural blush to her creamy skin.
Eva Rose Armstrong really was a beautiful woman and maybe, under different circumstances, he might consider what she was offering. Hell, there was no might about it. If he’d come to town for any reason other than to reconnect with the family he hadn’t seen in a dozen years, he would already have asked when her shift ended and made plans to meet her later.
But he was in town to reconnect with his family and he had no time—and even less inclination—for anything else. He’d proven adept enough at messing up his own life; he wasn’t going to mess with a pretty young thing who wasn’t smart enough to be wary of strangers.
But she’d been kind to him, so he carefully folded the check in half, then tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket with his wallet. “See ya.”
“I hope so,” she replied, her lips curving into another sweet smile before he turned away and headed to the exit.
Because that sweet smile seemed to promise all kinds of things that he wasn’t sure she meant—and that he couldn’t accept even if she did.
Still, as he turned his truck toward Bella and Hudson’s house, it was Eva’s pretty eyes and warm smile that lingered in his mind.
* * *
Luke’s first impression of Bella and Hudson’s home was that it looked like a million dollars. Of course, his sister’s husband was a multimillionaire so it was entirely possible the house they’d purchased from Clive Bickler was worth that much—or more. It was certainly a lot bigger and grander than the home the seven Stockton siblings had shared with their parents, and the newlyweds lived there alone.
He unlocked the door with the spare key, then punched in the code that Bella had given him to disarm the alarm system. A man with Hudson Jones’s wealth would want to protect what was his, and Luke appreciated that the protection extended to his sister.
Curious about the house and whatever insights it might give to the couple who lived there, Luke decided to wander around. The home was constructed with high-end materials and included all the latest conveniences, but it wasn’t ostentatious. As he made his way from room to room, he couldn’t deny that it had a warm and homey feel, and he was pleased to know that his sister had been lucky enough
to fall in love with a man who could provide her with all the love and luxuries she deserved.
When he stepped into the family room, his gaze was immediately drawn to the river-rock fireplace and the assortment of photos displayed on the mantel. He crossed the glossy hardwood floor for a closer look. The first picture that caught his eye was of his youngest brother, Jamie, standing next to a woman he thought he recognized as Fallon O’Reilly, with three adorable toddlers at their feet. The next frame contained a wedding photo, and the groom looked enough like Hudson that Luke guessed the man was his brother, but the bride looked vaguely familiar to him, too. Beside that picture was one of Danny, cheek-to-cheek with his high school sweetheart, Annie; beside it was a photo of Dana, all grown-up and proud at her high school graduation.
The smile that tugged at his own lips faded when his gaze shifted to the next photo—an older picture of all the Stockton siblings together with their parents, Rob and Lauren. A reflection of the happy family they’d once been. Before he ruined everything.
Suddenly Luke couldn’t bear the thought of facing his sisters and brothers again. He couldn’t face the condemnation he was certain he would see in their eyes when they learned the truth about the events of twelve years ago. It would be better for him—for everyone—if he went back to Cheyenne and forgot any ideas about a happy reunion that could never happen.
He retraced his steps to the door, eager to escape the house, the whole town and especially the memories and regrets that assailed him. He yanked his coat off the hanger and was reaching for the door when the sound of the bell stopped him in his tracks.
What was he supposed to do now?
He felt weird answering the door at a house he was only visiting, so he peeked out the window instead.
Almost eight years had passed since he’d last seen his second youngest brother, and his heart gave a hard kick against his ribs when he recognized him on the doorstep now.
He opened the door. “Danny.”
“I almost didn’t believe Bella when she called to tell me that you were in town,” his brother said.
“So you stopped by to see for yourself?”
“Nah, I stopped by because Bella was afraid you might have been spooked by her emotional outburst and decide to take off again before she got home.” He looked pointedly at the jacket in Luke’s hand. “Was she right?”
The Maverick's Midnight Proposal Page 3
