The BFF Bride (7 page)

“What about us?” Lucas and Katie hung over her back, and Tabby laughed and pulled out two more boxes of crayons.

“You guys, too. But I thought you were all anxious to get your food?”

They snatched their crayons and spread out on their stomachs, dumping everything out in a haphazard pile while they flipped open their coloring books.

“Hey.” Evan tugged her hair as he threw himself down among them. “How’s my favorite sister?”

She barely had time to respond, because it seemed as though everyone in town suddenly descended on the park all at once. Tabby got up to help her nieces and nephew get settled with their plates of food, and then she got busy helping Pam keep the tables—which were groaning under the weight of potluck dishes—somewhat organized. She passed out paper plates, helped fill plastic cups with punch and carried servings of cake and pie to the masses. And all the while, she kept her eye out for Justin.

But he never showed.

She hated the disappointment that sat like a lump in her gut. If she hadn’t expected him at all, she would have enjoyed the event as much as she always did.

Still, she kept a smile pinned on her face at least until the bulk of the people had departed and the band had packed up its instruments. There were only a few die-hard celebrators hanging around after that. Someone was playing a radio loudly, and when Tabby checked the dwindling contents of the last punch bowl, she caught her breath at the strong alcohol content. Once again, despite Pam moving the serving tables, someone had managed to spike the punch.

There were only adults left in the park, so she didn’t dump out the bowl, but left it and moved on to loading up the cart from her restaurant with her empty trays. She had plenty of light to work by. The white lights strung on the Christmas trees were still lit. From now until New Year’s Day, they’d automatically turn on at dusk and off at dawn. With the music coming from the radio and the sound of laughter from the diehards, it wasn’t unpleasant work.

She even poured herself a half cup of the spiked punch and sat down on the raised platform of the pavilion to sip it.

* * *

And that’s where Justin found her.

Sitting on the edge of pavilion stage, with her legs hanging down, swinging them back and forth.

He couldn’t help but smile at the sight as he walked toward her. “Remember when Joey Rasmussen got caught behind the pavilion making out with—”

“Yvonne Musgraves?” Tabby tilted her head slightly, and her hair slid over her shoulder. He saw how the Christmas tree lights were reflected in her eyes when he stopped in front of her. “Lots of kids got caught making out behind the pavilion.”

He sat down beside her and dumped the messenger bag with his laptop and the files he still needed to go through that night next to him on the stage. “You didn’t get caught.”

“Because I never made out with anyone behind the pavilion.” Her voice was dry.

“Ever?”

She let out an exasperated laugh. “Don’t sound so shocked. Just because the spot was a hotbed of passion with the various girls you and Joey would get back there doesn’t mean every high school kid was doing the same thing.”

“I only ever took Collette back there,” he retorted, defending himself. “But I think Joey had a different girl every week.”

“He did have variety. Whereas you simply took Collette there every chance you got.”

Tabby swung her legs a few times while they fell silent. Bob Dylan was singing about “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” from someone’s radio. Justin inhaled the spicy scent put off by the dozens of Douglas fir trees and wondered when the last time was that he’d just sat somewhere to
be
.

Then his stomach growled, butting in on his uncommon contentment. He wished he hadn’t lost track of time while he’d been working. He’d missed all the food. There was nothing left on the picnic tables except a big old-fashioned punch bowl that was nearly empty.

“Why’d you break up with her, anyway?”

He dragged his thoughts away from his stomach. “Who? Collette? She dumped
me
. In favor of her brother’s college roommate. You ought to remember that. You were there when it happened.”

“Not Collette.”

She was talking about Gillian, he realized.

And the last person he wanted to talk about was Gillian. She was also the last person he wanted to think about.

“She slept with someone else.” He leaned forward and looked toward the bare tables set up adjacent to the pavilion. “Is the punch any good?”

In answer, she handed him her plastic cup. “Spiked.”

“It’s ten at night. Of course it’s spiked.” He took a healthy swig and nearly coughed as it burned all the way down. “That’s a helluva lot heavier a dose of spiking than we used to pull when we were young.”

“Speak for yourself on that
we
,” she said. “I never pulled that particular stunt. You forgave her the last time she did it.”

Trust Tabitha Taggart not to be diverted from the conversation. “More fool on me.”

“You’ll forgive her this time, too.”

He sighed. In the seven years of their on-again, off-again relationship, Gillian had never come home with him to Weaver. His brother and parents had only met her one time when they’d come to Boston and toured his lab at CNJ. Her disinterest in the people who mattered to him had been only one of the problems between them.

In hindsight, now that he’d finally made the break, it was easy to see how futile it all had been.

“I don’t have to forgive her,” he said. “When I realized I didn’t even care, I knew I was done.”

Tabby made a soft little humming sound of disbelief.

He didn’t want to debate the topic with Tabby. There was no point to it, because there was no way she could possibly understand the level of done that he’d reached with Gillian.

As far as he knew, Tabby had never been involved with anyone beyond a few dates. If he’d taken a leaf from her book, he’d have moved past Gillian after two dates and saved himself a helluva lot of chaos.

He finished off the contents of Tabby’s plastic cup, then pushed off the stage and stood. “What kind of food did I miss out on?”

“The usual. Fried chicken. Three-bean casseroles. Seven-layer salad with peas and cheese. About twenty boxes of pepperoni pizza and more store-bought pies than Shop-World carries. Bubba’s barbecue.”

His ears perked. “Bubba’s barbecue? Any left?” His stomach growled again, right on cue.

And loud enough for her to hear, because she made a face and rolled her eyes before standing also.

“It’s only because you own the place that I’ll open up Ruby’s in order to raid Bubba’s leftovers.”

He grinned and dropped his arm over her shoulder, ignoring her quick little flinch. “Bubba will never know,” he promised.

Chapter Seven

B
ubba knew.

And he complained about it through the entire morning rush the next day.

Tabby didn’t usually work on Saturdays. But she’d gone to the diner to take care of the books, which she did in one of the corner booths, because Ruby’s diner had never possessed something as fancy as an actual office space.

She had a filing cabinet shoved into one corner of the kitchen, along with several narrow lockers that the crew could use to store their personal belongings. But an office? A space to house a computer, a desk or even the phone?

That hadn’t been necessary in Ruby Leoni’s day, and Tabby—who’d been managing the place longer than anyone else besides Ruby—hadn’t found it necessary, either.

Even if it did take a table out of the rotation on a particularly busy Saturday morning.

“You leave setting the special to me,” Bubba said, dropping a hand-scrawled sheet of paper on her table as he passed by with a loaded tray to deliver to a six top. “Can’t do that when you’re comin’ in all hours of the night, eatin’ it up.”

“I think the customers will survive, Bubba.” Her voice was mild. She was used to Bubba’s occasional dramatic flare-ups. They’d been coming a little more frequently since he’d started cooking privately for Vivian Templeton, but Tabby blamed that on Vivian’s regular chef, Montrose. According to Hayley, Montrose was pretty much a monstrosity in the personality department. The chef had been with Hayley’s grandmother back in Pennsylvania, and to say he had a highfalutin attitude was putting it mildly. “Instead of the special, they’ll order off the menu. No harm in that.”

“Harm in not having any pulled pork when folks come wanting it,” he muttered after he’d delivered his tray and was heading back to the kitchen.

“Then put it on the menu.”

If the temperature hadn’t taken a nosedive overnight, she’d have just worked out back, where they had a grassy, treed area with a picnic table to use during breaks. But the weather was hovering below freezing, and she wasn’t a glutton for punishment. She also could have worked at home, but the sight of Justin’s truck parked outside had made her too antsy to stay there.

She wrote out the last of the paychecks for the month as well as the handful of bills and logged everything into the laptop computer sitting open on the table in front of her. She’d take the checks out to the Rocking C for Erik to sign sometime that weekend if he didn’t come into town before then. She looked over Bubba’s scrawled list of supplies and ingredients and put together an order for the coming week. Some things—like the strawberry jam, the dairy and the eggs—she sourced locally. Other staples—flour, sugar and the like—she got from distributors out of Casper or Cheyenne, occasionally even Denver, depending on where she could get the best deals.

For a small-town diner, the quantity of food they went through was almost shocking. But she’d long ago realized that—whatever else might be going on in the world—people still found their way to Ruby’s for a cup of joe and a bite to eat.

And thank goodness for it, or she wasn’t sure what she’d be doing with her life. Painting was something she enjoyed. But she’d realized a long time ago that it didn’t feed her soul the way running Ruby’s did.

She smiled to herself. She fed others to feed herself.

“What’re you sitting there grinning about?” Justin slid into the bench opposite her.

She looked at him over the screen of the laptop and only smiled a little wider. She couldn’t help it.

It was Saturday. Her bookkeeping was done, and it felt like all was right with the world. “Snow,” she answered him. “Weatherman’s calling for it by tonight.”

He shook his head. “I talked to my uncle Matt this morning. He said it wasn’t coming yet. And you know his nose for snow.”

She wasn’t going to let him rain on her parade. “Well, maybe the famous Matthew Clay nose will be wrong for once. It could happen.”

“Anything
could
happen,” he allowed. “But it won’t snow yet. Not today.”

She closed the laptop and tucked the checks to be signed into a folder. “Usually by the beginning of December we’ve had at least
one
snow. Even if it doesn’t stick. But not this year. Did you come in for breakfast?”

“What else?”

She smiled through the sting. It was silliness in the extreme to entertain the idea he might have come to see
her
. Particularly when he was staying two doors away from her. “As long as you’re not wanting pulled pork barbecue for breakfast, you’re in the right place.” She slid out of the booth. “What’ll it be?”

“Pancakes and sausage.”

“Turkey or regular?”

He looked surprised. “You serve turkey sausage now?”

“Gotta change with the times,” she drawled. “We even have a quinoa salad and cucumber water. The mayor’s wife is partial to both. So what’ll it be?”

“Regular.”

“Coming up.” She went over to the counter to give Bubba the order. The other waitresses were all busy, so she started a fresh pot of coffee in the brewer and carried the carafe back to fill Justin’s mug.

He’d flipped open her folder of checks and was fanning through them. “They’re not signed.”

“Erik signs them.”

She moved to the next table, holding up the carafe. “Refills for you?” Both young men—she was pretty sure they worked out at Cee-Vid—pushed their empty mugs toward her. She filled them and continued around the diner, greeting and filling until the carafe was empty and she moved the freshly full one onto a warmer and started another pot. She’d barely finished that when the delivery truck came with a package. She signed for it and peeked inside, recognizing the custom-made storybook she’d ordered for Hannah for Christmas, and stored it in her locker in the kitchen. Then she delivered Justin’s pancakes to him, along with a little pitcher of warm maple syrup.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah.” He stuck the checks back in the folder and gestured at the empty bench across from him. “Sit. I thought you didn’t work on Saturdays.”

She sat. “This isn’t work.”

He snorted softly. “Most people would disagree. Want a pancake?” He lifted the edge of the one on top of his stack.

“Nope.”

He let the edge down and dumped the entire pitcher of syrup on top. “Why don’t you sign the checks?”

“Because I’m not on the bank account. No reason to be.” Neither was he, but only because he hadn’t been around to add his name to the account when Erik had changed banks several years ago.

“You should be.” He took a mammoth-size bite of syrup-drenched pancake and gestured slightly with his fork. “You take care of everything else around here. What happens if Erik’s not around to sign a check and you need money for something?”

She lifted her eyebrows. “I’ve got petty cash. It’s a system that’s been working for a lot of years. Why are you suddenly so interested?”

He shrugged and attacked his pancakes again with the enthusiasm of a man who hadn’t eaten in days, much less twelve hours ago in this very restaurant. “I’ve always been interested.”

She could have argued the point but couldn’t imagine to what purpose. Interested or not in the management of the place, he was still one of the owners. “Did you get your homework done last night?” Over Bubba’s purloined pulled pork, he’d told her about the work he still needed to get through.

He nodded and shoveled more pancake into his mouth.

“You’re gonna choke,” she said drily and got up again to make another round with the coffee. Hayley and her new husband, Seth, came in before she was finished, and she gestured toward a booth that had just been cleared. “Be right with you two.”

The couple smiled and crossed toward the booth, stopping to say a few hellos on the way.

Tabby headed back toward Justin when the door jingled again, and she looked toward it, a greeting already on her lips.

She’d only ever seen Gillian Jennings in a photograph. A snapshot that Justin had pulled out of his wallet ages ago when he had started dating the woman in college.

But Tabby recognized her now. From the top of her gleaming light blond hair to the toes of her expensive, ridiculously high-heeled pumps.

Feeling something go cold inside her, she approached the newcomer, anyway. “Can I help you with something?”

The woman smiled, seeming friendly enough. “Directions, I’m hoping. All the cars on the street are parked in front of this place.”

“It’s a busy morning.” Tabby wondered how long it would be before Justin would look up from his pancakes to see his erstwhile lover standing fifteen feet away. “Directions where?”

Gillian pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of the light brown leather jacket that fit her svelte figure like a glove and read off the address of Tabby’s triplex. “I’m looking for my fiancé,” she added with a smile.

Tabby went a lot colder. “Oh,” she inquired with amazing mildness. “What’s his name?”

Gillian tucked away the paper again. “Justin. Justin Clay. He always said Weaver was a small town, but I never imagined just how small. Do you know him?”

Tabby smiled humorlessly and held out her hand toward the corner booth. “As a matter of fact, I do. Obviously not as well as I thought, though.” She raised her voice. “Justin? Somebody here to see you.”

He looked up, his expression instantly thunderstruck.

Tabby didn’t wait around to see any more.

While Gillian gave a little shriek of delighted surprise and clattered on her high heels toward him, Tabby turned on her heel and went through to the kitchen and straight on out the rear door.

* * *

Justin looked from the swinging kitchen door to Gillian’s face and didn’t manage to act fast enough to avoid the arms she threw around his neck as she sat down on the bench seat beside him.

He wanted to curse.

Instead, he looked into Gillian’s deceitful green eyes and pulled on her arms. “What are you doing here?”

She pouted a little but let go of the neck lock. “You’ve always wanted me to come with you to Weaver.” She looked at his nearly empty plate and gave a shudder of horror. “Pancakes? Honey, all those carbs—”

“We broke up,” he interrupted her. “Remember?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “I know you didn’t really mean it.” She snuggled close to his side. “That’s what passionate couples like us do. We break up. We make up.”

He would have scooted farther away if he weren’t already wedged in the corner of the booth thanks to the way she’d launched herself at him. “Not this time.” Since he couldn’t move one direction, he moved the other, shoving her along to the edge of the booth. “Get up.”

She didn’t have any choice but to scramble somewhat inelegantly to her feet. It was either that or get pushed off onto the butt of her expensive suede pants. “Justin, honey, don’t be difficult now. You had to know I’d come. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For me to run after you for once?”

As busy as Ruby’s was, her words were still plainly audible to those around them, and Justin felt an urge to wrap his hands around her throat to stop them. Since he wasn’t inclined to be convicted of strangling a lying woman, he grabbed her arm instead and pulled her toward the front door. “Bubba,” he yelled toward the kitchen, “put Tabby’s laptop and files away for her.”

Then he marched Gillian out the front door and onto the sidewalk. “You know why I’m not working in Boston,” he said through his teeth. “Because you weren’t giving me an hour’s rest getting through Harmon’s project!”

She had to know he was livid, but that had never stopped Gillian. She walked her fingertips up his chest, tilting her head back so her thick blond hair streamed down to the small of her back and she could look coyly at him through her long lashes. “You used to like my little visits to your lab,” she said. “Remember?”

He grabbed her hand and deliberately set it away from him. “That look might have worked on me once, but it’s lost its appeal. I damn sure didn’t come here so you could chase after me!” He wanted to groan when he noticed the couple just rounding the corner on the sidewalk as they headed toward Ruby’s. Pam and Rob Rasmussen.

“Justin!” Pam waved merrily at him as she and her husband reached the café’s glass door. “I heard you were still in town. We missed you last night at the tree lighting.” Her inquisitive gaze lingered on Gillian. “How have you been?”

“Fine, Pam.” He wished she’d just go inside. But naturally, that would be too simple for the hell his life had suddenly become.

“I’m Pam Rasmussen.” She stuck out her hand toward Gillian. “Justin and I go way back. And you’re...” She raised her brows, waiting.

“Gillian Jennings,” Justin said at the same time Gillian did.

Only Gillian went even further. She laughed lightly, as if such a thing happened all the time, and bumped her gilded head against Justin’s sleeve. “Justin’s fiancée,” she added.

Pam’s jaw dropped, and Justin grabbed Gillian’s arm again, tightening his hand warningly.

“Not my fiancée,” he said to Pam. But he knew the damage was already done. No matter what he said to her, she’d have him walking down the aisle with Gillian by the time she finished spreading the latest news. “Excuse us,” he said before pulling Gillian farther down the street. He didn’t stop until he reached the borrowed pickup truck and pulled open the door. “Get in.”

She gave the ancient truck a wary look but climbed up gingerly onto the seat.

All the annoyance he felt came out in the slam of the truck door when he shut it.

Then he rounded the truck, momentarily distracted by the sight of a Rolls-Royce driving down the middle of the street before he got behind the wheel. He didn’t start the engine. “Are you insane?”

She gave a huffy sniff. “There’s no need to be mean.”

“And there’s damn sure no need for you to be here in Weaver. Much less announcing you’re my fiancée!” God only knew what his folks would think when they heard the gossip.

And they would.

To think otherwise would be as insane as Gillian still thinking they had any sort of future together.

And then there was Tabby.

He wasn’t going to forget the look on her face in a lifetime of Saturday pancakes, and that was a certainty.