grinned deviously at her over Rex’s head, and she knew he was already thinking of trying to get her on that thing. But it didn’t matter to her one bit, because he’d just said he was going to the fair. She never thought she’d hear him say those words.
They hopped out of the truck and headed inside. A wave of heat from the giant stone fireplace in the center of the large space and the charcoal smell of the grill engulfed Lila. She paced across the cement floor, stopping when Rex bent down to try to pry out one of the old coins embedded in it throughout.
“You won’t ever be able to get one of those to come out,” a portly man with ruddy cheeks and a kind smile said to Rex, as he walked over to them. “He tries every time he comes in…” He clapped Theo on the back. “Nice to see you again, sir.”
Theo nodded hello.
The man turned back to Rex and Lila. “Glad you could get this guy out of his little coffee shop. Sometimes I think he sniffs too many coffee beans because no matter how hard I try, I can’t get him in here. And who wouldn’t want to come?” He waved a chubby arm around the establishment, and Lila took in the wall of flat-screen televisions, the chandeliers made of antlers hanging from rafters constructed with smooth logs that reached up to the center of the stone chimney, and the enormous fresh Fraser fir tree full of rustic ornaments in the corner.
The man leaned in toward Lila as if he had a secret to tell. “We have Wednesday night football here, and we’re just itching to get some new blood into our fantasy football pools, but this one won’t budge. I was thrilled when I heard he’d moved into town, but then he stayed inside that coffee shop and never came out.” He held out his hand. “Buddy Bennett.”
Lila shook his hand. Then he reached down and offered one to Rex, who was still trying to get the coin out of the floor. The little boy refocused and shook Buddy’s hand.
“Rex, have you ever heard the story of how those coins got into the floor?”
“No, sir,” Rex said, still picking at one of them.
“The gold belt snakes through this part of Tennessee all the way to North Carolina,” Buddy told them. “When the first owner built the original floor, he whittled out little divots in the wood to house the coins he’d found in a watering hole on the property. But kiddos like you, Rex—and I’m guessing thieves in the night as well—picked them out, so many, many years later, they were laid in concrete and glossed over with a sealer. Those coins were from the gold rush of the 1800s.”
“Oh?” Lila peered down at the coins.
“Back in 1831, I think it was, people emptied their old coins into the watering hole that sat on the property to make room in their pouches for the gold they were fixin’ to find. But when they got to pannin’ in the river, they discovered there wasn’t enough gold in there to make any of them rich, so they moved on to other places. You can still see flecks of that gold on a low day in the river outside.”
Rex’s eyes grew big. “Can we try to get some?”
Buddy laughed, his belly heaving like old St. Nicholas. “I reckon you can, but you might want to wait until the warmer months if you’d like to keep your fingers. It’s so cold in the shade that frostbite’ll take ’em right off.” He reached over and grabbed a handful of menus from the hostess station. “Where’d you like to sit today—your choice.”
“We wanna throw horseshoes,” Rex told him excitedly.
A big smile split Buddy’s flushed face. “You do, do ya? Well, I’ll give you the table next to the horseshoe toss. Come on to the back with me.” He started toward a small hallway on the side of the main dining area as they all followed. “How many are throwin’?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Three!” Rex said excitedly. “We’re gonna show Lila how to do it, aren’t we, Theo?”
Theo bit back a smile.
“All right,” Buddy told them, as they reached a table next to an enormous horseshoe pit. It had old burlap bags at the bottom to soften the fall of the horseshoes, and instead of a stake in the ground for a game of horseshoes, there was a