had something to do with the lit firecrackers he’d once stuck inside their mailbox.
As he passed by them, Hildy looked at him, looked away, then jerked her head back, coming within inches of running into a lamppost. He glanced over his shoulder to see her chattering away to Honey, who was looking at him with eyes so big a Martian with good vision could have seen them without a telescope.
A minute later, Luke slid into a booth at Rosie’s across from Rita. At the counter, the waitresses had already noticed him. They were chattering like chipmunks and eyeing him as if he were the special of the day. Finally Bobbie Whatshername emerged from the fray and headed to their table.
“Luke Dawson,” she said with a big smile. “Heard you’re back in town for a while.”
“That’s right.”
“Missed you at the reunion a few years ago. I was kinda hoping you’d show up.”
She seriously thought he might show up to a Rainbow Valley High School reunion? “Yeah, I was real sorry to miss that.”
“What can I get for you?”
Bobbie took their order, gave Luke what she probably figured was a sexy smile, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“You should have told me you were short on money,” Rita said. “I’d have let you borrow—”
“No. I don’t borrow money. Not from anyone.”
Rita nodded. “How are you and Shannon getting along?”
He shrugged. “She’s the boss.”
Rita smiled. “Yeah. She’s never had any trouble calling the shots.”
“I remember your management style being a little less hands-on,” Luke said.
“Yeah, but you can’t argue with the way she gets things done.”
“No wonder you wanted her to take over the shelter.”
“Nah. That didn’t really have much to do with it.”
“Well, then. It must have been her amazingly uptight and annoying personality.”
Rita smiled. “Nope. That wasn’t it, either.” Then her smile faded. “I wanted her for the job because there’s nothing on this earth she wouldn’t do for those animals. But sometimes that’s a problem, because she puts people who want to adopt them through the wringer. She’s afraid nobody else will take care of them the way she does. But that just means more animals and more work. She’s going to burn out something awful. She’s close to it already.”
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Luke said. “In the end, nothing gets her down. She’s tough.”
“To a point. She doesn’t fool me, though. And you shouldn’t let her fool you. I think the older she gets, the worse it gets, because she realizes there’s only so much one person can do. And that’s just not acceptable to her.” Rita folded her arms on the table. “Only a few weeks after she came back to Rainbow Valley, somebody brought us a greyhound who’d been starved and abused. He had four broken ribs and a punctured lung. In spite of everything she did, giving him medicine, staying with him twenty-four hours a day, he didn’t make it. I know she seems tough as nails, but she fell apart. She sat there beside that poor dog, tears running down her face. She told me she has nightmares about injured and homeless animals crying out for help, but suddenly she’s paralyzed and she can’t do anything about it. She was crying so hard she could barely get the words out. I’ve never seen anything so heartbreaking in my life.”
Luke couldn’t imagine that. To him, Shannon had always been strong. Resilient. A force to be reckoned with. But this…
“I wondered right then what I’d done encouraging her to come back here,” Rita said. “I told her maybe she belonged back in Houston after all. But there was no stopping her after that. The next morning, she shook it off, picked up her sword, and went into battle again. But don’t let her fool you. Her heart is way closer to the surface than you think.”
A few minutes later, Bobbie brought their lunch. Luke may have had a problem with Rainbow Valley as a whole, but he’d never had any argument with Rosie’s chicken-fried steak.
“I know she came to the shelter last Sunday,” Rita said. “That’s the day she needs to be doing something else. Anything else.”
“I told her that. She went home.”
“Good. That’s good.” Rita’s face grew uncharacteristically serious. “Will you do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“While you’re here…will you watch out for her?”
Watch out for her? That made no sense to Luke. Shannon wasn’t the kind of woman who would take kindly to anyone holding her hand.