rodeo rider, a drifter who went from town to town and probably had a woman in every one of them, so getting tangled up with him again was a fool’s game. If she were ever to forget that, she could only imagine how badly things might end between them now.
Chapter 7
An hour later, Luke pulled up next to one of the two pumps at the Pic ’N Go and got out of his truck, wincing at the sudden twinge of pain in his knee. He filled his truck with gas, then parked beside the building and walked stiffly into the store. A woman holding a loaf of bread stood over two kids picking out candy bars. Along the windows at the front of the store were three Formica-topped tables surrounded by four chairs each, a place to sit and have a burrito or a hot dog. He decided he’d order one of each.
As he was grabbing a copy of the Rainbow Valley Voice from the stand to read while he ate, an older woman came out of the back wearing a green apron and a pair of beige pants. She moved with the gait of a woman with a little arthritis and a lot of bad attitude. Her hair was a little thinner than he remembered, and a little grayer, but it was still Myrna Schumaker through and through.
The woman and her kids came to the register, and Myrna rang up their purchases. After they left the store, Myrna tossed the receipt the woman had left on the counter into the trash, then turned around.
Luke knew the precise moment she recognized him. She stood motionless, her jaw going slack before she closed her mouth again and turned away, rearranging a few energy bars on a point of purchase display and acting as if he wasn’t even there.
He came to the counter and set the paper down. “Well, hello there, Mrs. Schumaker. Long time no see.”
She grabbed the newspaper to ring it up.
“Why don’t you give me a burrito and a hot dog, too?” Luke said, nodding to the heated glass case beside the counter. “Those sure do look good.”
Myrna grabbed the food from the case, stuck it in a bag, and started ringing everything up.
“Now here you’re acting as if you don’t remember me,” Luke said. “I think you’ve hurt my feelings.”
“Oh, I remember you,” Myrna said. “I remember you painting graffiti on the side of my building and shoplifting beer. I assume you’re just passing through?”
“Now, you know nobody just passes through the Valley. You have to work to find this place.”
“So what’s your business here?”
He would have loved to have told her he’d just gotten out of Huntsville after doing hard time, or that he was working for a Mexican drug lord pushing crack, just to see if gossip got around town as quickly as it used to. Those things were no more true than some of the stories people told about him all those years ago, but since when did these people care about the truth?
“I’m the new caretaker at the shelter,” he said.
Myrna’s eyes widened with surprise. “Shannon North hired you to work at the shelter?”
“That’s right. But don’t worry. It’s only temporary. Three months and I’ll be out of here.”
“Hmm,” she muttered. “Never took Shannon for a crazy girl. Now I gotta wonder.” Myrna took the ten-dollar bill Luke gave her, stuck it in the register drawer, and handed him back his change. “Maybe she doesn’t remember what a troublemaker you were.”
Of course she did. But in the event she didn’t, Luke knew Myrna would let her know, along with every other citizen of Rainbow Valley. By the end of the day tomorrow, there wouldn’t be a person in town who didn’t know that one of its most notorious citizens was back.
Luke took the bag and the newspaper and sat down at one of the tables. He knew Myrna would prefer it if he left her store, but he decided it was going to be a long three months if he couldn’t at least sit down and have a bite to eat in public. As he unwrapped the burrito, Myrna started talking on the telephone, which meant she was already spreading the word.
Luke heard soft footsteps behind him. He turned to see a little boy several feet away near the potato chip display, looking at him curiously. He had close-cropped blond hair and big blue eyes. He wore a pair of ragged denim shorts and