head a couple times to get the image out of her head.
“No. No, no, no. I don’t want to know anything about Eric’s—you know. I just wondered—did you tell him anything about me?”
“No. I just checked to make sure you and him weren’t, like, doing it in the office. Because you’re like a sister to me, and that would be weird.”
Weird indeed. Sarah ran her fingers through her hair and rested one hand on the wheel. “You didn’t tell him I was from Two Shot?”
“Nope. Didn’t tell him a thing. I didn’t even tell him we were roommates, but he kind of figured that out.”
“Okay.” Sarah sucked in a deep breath. It came a little easier now that one worry had been eased. “Thanks. I have to go now. But hey—I’m glad you’re happy, okay?”
“Thanks!” Gloria giggled. “I sure am. And have fun with your sister!”
Sarah thought of Mike and sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll try.”
Chapter 26
Once Sarah had finished talking to Gloria, the drive into town was too short. Before she’d even had time to think about who might be at the diner, what they might say to her, and how she should respond, she found herself guiding her car into a parking space a half block from her destination.
Stepping out of the car, she rummaged for change. When had Two Shot put in parking meters? Back when she’d lived here, nobody had wanted to come to town bad enough to pay for parking.
She shoved in a dime and cranked the lever, then fed in another. Thirty minutes should be long enough to get breakfast, make some connections, and get out. If things went wrong, she could use the expiring meter as an excuse for leaving—as long as it really was expiring. Because she had no doubt that someone passing on the street would notice a new car in town and take note of how much time was on the meter. Two Shot had its share of champion busybodies, and they didn’t have much to do but gossip.
In fact, one of them was hustling toward her right now.
“Eddie.” She couldn’t help smiling at the white-clad figure. Eddie Johnston had been chief cook and bottle-washer at Suze’s when she’d worked there in high school, and apparently he still was. He wore the cowboy uniform of a boldly striped cotton shirt and jeans, but a grease-spattered apron decorated with handprints in various shades of egg, orange juice, and maple syrup took the shine off the outfit. An old-fashioned white cap that made her think of hot dog vendors at a ballpark was perched on his thinning hair.
The progress of Eddie’s hairline was a sign of how long she’d been gone. It had moved up his forehead and was obviously headed on an inexorable march up and over his crown, but his wide grin, bracketed by deep smile lines and punctuated by a dimpled chin, was still the same. So were his protuberant eyes, which bugged out even more at the sight of her.
“Hey, don’t you have some hotcakes to flip?” She’d thought long and hard about her approach, and come to two resolutions: Keep it light, and act as though she’d never left. As though she’d never scorned the town and all it represented. As if she hadn’t savored the long-sought experience of leaving Two Shot in a cloud of dust and moving on to bigger, better things.
“I gotta feed the meter before that danged marshal catches up to me and slaps a ticket on my truck.” He stepped toward her, then away, then toward her again, clearly divided between good citizenship and good manners.
“Well, don’t let me keep you.” She gave him a perky smile. “I’ll see you at Suze’s.”
There. That was easy. She walked away, leaving Eddie to hurry down the sidewalk toward his truck, which was propped half on, half off the curb a few cars down. Eddie had been notorious for his bad driving when she’d been in high school, to the point where the driver’s ed teacher issued a warning to steer clear of his red-and-white pickup.
Some things never changed.
But the encounter with Eddie was just the way she wanted things to go, and that made her feel a little better about her prospects. She could do this. She’d been away from Two Shot for years, and people had probably forgotten what a snob she’d been.
Not that snobbery had been the real reason behind her retreat from the friendships and connections of her childhood. The truth was,