wore to the office, but it was trembling at the edges as she glanced around the room. Finally her gaze settled on an older man who always perched at the counter. Lane knew he was a retired English teacher from the high school. Sarah had probably been teacher’s pet.
“Hi, Mr. Jenson,” she said.
He turned briefly and offered her a scowl that reminded Lane of some grim hero of literature—Captain Ahab, maybe. It was a look that would send most people skittering out the door, but Sarah stood firm.
“How are you?” she asked in a louder voice. She crossed the buffed linoleum and perched on a stool beside him, clasping her knees in her interlaced hands. “Remember me? Sarah Landon?”
A hushed murmur swept through the diners. Some of them obviously hadn’t known who she was, but judging from the way they all turned away, they’d heard of her. There were no hellos, not even a few casual nods. He could swear the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
Mr. Jenson gave her a scowl and kept on eating. She kept on smiling, but her eyes brightened and he could tell she was holding back tears. He couldn’t really blame her. She might not like the town. She might have made escaping it her lifetime goal. But he’d always figured growing up in a place like Two Shot was like being part of a big, extended family. A troublesome, pain-in-the-neck family, but still a family. And didn’t families forgive each other?
People must have heard who she was working for. He’d been viewed with suspicion, even hostility, when he’d first moved to the ranch and started spending time in town. They didn’t welcome outsiders and they definitely weren’t embracing energy development with open arms. Maybe it was because there were so many older residents and they were resistant to change. Or maybe they’d seen the cautionary tale playing out in Midwest, and didn’t want to experience the same kind of boom-to-bust disaster. In any case, Sarah obviously had her work cut out for her.
She turned to the man on the next stool, who was downing a short stack like it was the last food on the planet and some alien might snatch it away.
“Joe,” she said.
Joe might not be the friendliest guy in the world, but he never seemed to care about folks one way or the other. He treated everyone with the same distant, laconic attitude.
But he wasn’t even speaking to Sarah.
She stood in the aisle, clasping and unclasping her hands.
“Hey, sweetheart,” said a gruff voice. “You can sit with me.”
It was a trucker, heavyset and unshaven, wearing a wrinkled denim shirt and oil-streaked jeans. His black leather motorcycle boots had chains across the instep. Sarah had evidently dealt with his kind before, and she wasn’t desperate enough to deal with one again. “No thank you.” She shot him a killing glare. “And I’m not your sweetheart.”
Great. She could have sassed him off, dismissed him with a laugh, but instead she’d confirmed everybody’s bad opinion by being rude and snooty. Somebody needed to save this woman from herself.
Lane hooked his boot around a rung of the empty chair beside him and pulled it away from the table. “Join us?”
Judging from her grateful smile, she’d never been so happy to see him. She crossed the diner in three long steps and dropped into the chair.
“Hey. Heard you two got together in the Love Nest last night.” Trevor’s tone was just a shade too loud for normal conversation. “I didn’t know you were, you know.” He waggled his eyebrows. Trevor had never been famous for tact. Lane was just grateful he didn’t demonstrate with a hand gesture.
A flush turned her face to a becoming pink. “Lane just needed a place to stay. I was at the cabin, so I… he slept on the sofa.”
“Oh.” Trevor grinned. “Well, excuse me. I saw the way he looked at you when you walked in, and I could’ve sworn he was picturing you naked.”
“He does that with all the girls.” There. The old Sarah was back, flippant and fun. He breathed a sigh of relief and was surprised to realize how much he’d tensed, suffering through her ostracism with her.
“I guess you noticed a lot of people know you’re here for Carrigan,” he said, nodding toward the crowd. Most of the diners had returned to their meals, but a few were still leveling hostile stares in her direction.
“You say that like you’re not a Carrigan yourself,” she said.
“I