The Doctor's Forever Family. Marie Ferrarella

door’s always open.”

      Rick laughed softly. Leaning into his wife, he whispered so that only Olivia could hear him. “My guess is that’s not the only thing that’s ope— Hey!” he cried in surprise as Olivia swatted at him to keep him from finishing his sentence.

      “Hush,” Olivia chided, a warning look in her eyes.

      It wasn’t that she was afraid the older woman would take offense. It was just that she didn’t want her going off on a bawdy tangent the way she knew Miss Joan was very capable of doing.

      Out of hearing range because of the increasing din, Miss Joan laughed at Olivia’s quick movement to silence her husband.

      She guessed at the reason behind Olivia’s actions. She’d come to know both sisters very well since they’d arrived in Forever.

      “Whatever he was about to say, Livy, I’ve heard ten times worse. My second husband, Bill, flew on helicopter missions. He was a tail gunner in Vietnam during the war. They haven’t invented a cuss word that didn’t come out of Bill’s mouth at one time or another.” She paused a moment. “Come to think of it, Bill wasn’t all that different from my first husband, Ray.”

      Putting her memories behind her, Miss Joan shifted her attention to the present and the reason that her diner was filled to overflowing.

      “Well, it looks like everybody’s here who’s going to be here,” she decided, then announced to the sheriff and his wife, as well as to several people who could actually hear her without her resorting to a microphone, “That means it’s time to bring out the cake.”

      “Cake?” Alma Sanchez, one of Rick’s other deputies piped up, coming closer to her boss and the diner owner. For a woman who had a continuing love affair with all manner of sweets, with pastries at the top of the list, Deputy Alma Sanchez was an exceedingly petite, trim woman. “Did someone say cake?”

      “Of course I said cake,” Miss Joan underscored. “You can’t expect to welcome someone properly without having baked a cake in his honor.”

      The diner owner’s hazel eyes darted back and forth, taking Rick into account and then zeroing in on Joe, another young boy she’d watched grow to manhood, fulfilling the promise he’d projected years ago. She had no children of her own, but viewed so many of the town’s younger citizens as her own.

      Joe was standing a few feet away, talking to his fiancée. She needed to borrow him for a few minutes. “Rick, Joe,” she called, raising her voice, “I need a couple of men with strong backs.”

      “Thinking of taking them back to your place, Joan?” Mac Tyler called out, laughing at the joke he thought he’d just made.

      “Better them than you, Mac, that’s for sure,” Miss Joan fired back without missing a beat. “If that man’s ego was any bigger,” Miss Joan confided to Olivia in tones that were not as hushed as they could have been, “he wouldn’t be able to get his head through a single doorway.”

      Mac Tyler had also been sniffing at her heels for the longest time and at this stage of her life, she still hadn’t made up her mind if she wanted to make something of it or not. She couldn’t decide if Tyler was worth the trouble or the effort.

      “C’mon, boys,” Miss Joan gestured to the sheriff and his senior deputy, “I’ve got a cake I need you to bring out of the walk-in.” Glancing over her shoulder, she addressed her words to the people in the diner. “Nobody even think about making a move toward the door. I’m bringing out the cake.”

      Appreciative murmurs greeted her declaration. Everyone knew that Miss Joan’s cakes were conceived in heaven and given an earthly form as an afterthought. Rick’s late grandmother, a woman not easily given to offering compliments, had once asked Miss Joan how she kept her cakes from floating away.

      As Miss Joan left the room, leading the way for her two helpers, Dan turned to Tina and asked, “She always take charge like that?”

      There was more than a little affection in her expression as Tina’s mouth curved. “Actually, this is one of Miss Joan’s more laid-back days,” she said with an amused laugh.

      Dan hardly heard her answer. The din in the diner had swallowed them up without so much as a telltale trace. He was forced to watch her mouth again in order to hear what she’d said.

      He didn’t really mind.