A Weaver Christmas Gift. Allison Leigh

the thought particularly welcome, though.

      “You can take that away,” Casey told Merilee, nudging the still-full plate toward her.

      “Want me to get you something else?”

      He shook his head as he slid off the bar stool. He drained the last mouthful of beer and pulled some cash from his wallet that he dropped on the check. “Catch ya later, Merilee.”

      She scooped up the money with a smile and turned to the register. He left the bar and headed toward his truck, parked in the lot that was situated between Colbys and the dance studio.

      Even at that hour of the evening, there was still activity over there. Business was obviously going well for his cousin.

      He drove out of the lot but was too restless to head home. He briefly considered dropping by his parents’ place. Maggie and Daniel Clay still lived in the house where Casey had been born and raised. But he decided against it. He enjoyed his folks’ company, but he wasn’t in the mood for a dose of happy hearth and home. For the same reason, he didn’t drop by J.D.’s place. His sister and her husband, Jake, were always welcoming, too. Jake’s twin boys—preteen hellions that they were—would be chasing around while two-year-old Tucker did his level best to keep up with his big brothers.

      He rubbed his fingers absently over the gnawing in his chest and drove without stopping right past his own house—a hundred-and-twenty-year-old farmhouse that he’d moved from the country into town and restored with his dad’s help—all the way to Shop-World, which was on the other side of Weaver.

      His excuse was he needed to pick up some groceries for his empty refrigerator. That Janie lived out by the big-box store was just a coincidence.

      Her bright and shiny silver pickup was parked in front of her condo when he trolled past. She’d turned on her porch light. He looked up at the still-dark window on the second floor directly above the door. Her bedroom. He doubted she’d gone to bed. She was probably puttering around in her kitchen or the walled-in yard she had out back, where he’d always parked before when he’d come calling. It was rare for her to just sit and chill. She always seemed to need to be doing something.

      He circled the block, giving up the pretense altogether that he cared about groceries when he passed Shop-World for the second time without a glance, and slowly drove past her condo again. The light had gone on in her bedroom window, and she was standing in front of the window looking out.

      Dammit.

      No way she’d fail to see his dusty black pickup truck creeping, two miles an hour, down her street when there was a big ol’ streetlamp overhead. Speeding up would make him look even more stupid. Stopping altogether wasn’t an option.

      She wanted things he couldn’t give her, he reminded himself.

      Then she lifted her arms and closed the white plantation shutters, cutting herself off from view.

      Another needless reminder. She wanted things, but not from him.

      His jaw tight, he turned around and drove home.

       Chapter Four

      “Arlo Bellamy.”

      Jane turned her attention from the strawberry daiquiris she was mixing for a trio of young women she’d just carded to Hayley, who was sitting at the end of the bar. “What?”

      Hayley tucked her hair behind her ear. She was nodding. “Arlo Bellamy. I don’t know why I didn’t think of him before. He’s my neighbor. You should go out with him.”

      Despite herself, Jane’s gaze flicked toward the pool tables.

      It was Saturday night and the Clay contingent was out in force. Casey was there, wielding his personal pool cue with his typical expertise. He had at least a dozen relatives with him. With a group that large, she would have assumed they were celebrating something special. But experience had already shown her that when it came to the Clay family, they didn’t seem to need any special reason to socialize en masse.

      “He’s thirty-eight,” Hayley was saying. “He’s the estate lawyer who has that office down on Second Street.”

      Jane focused with an effort on her friend’s voice rather than Casey. “The one who has that bronze horse statue out in front?”

      Hayley nodded. “I think you’d have a lot in common.”

      “Never met him.” She couldn’t recall the lawyer ever stepping foot in Colbys.

      “So? He’s nice.”

      “How do you know? Just because he’s a lawyer?” She flipped on the blender and assembled three glasses in front of her. “Guy could be a stalker.” She thought of Casey driving past her house the other evening.

      She’d been dangerously close to beckoning him to come inside.

      And where would that have gotten her?

      Certainly no closer to marriage and a baby.

      “I doubt he’s a stalker,” Hayley said drily. “He’d have chosen to live somewhere other than Weaver where he’d have a larger pool of pickings.”

      Jane killed the blender and poured out the sweet drinks. Personally, she found the daiquiri concoctions sickening, but they never failed to appeal to a good portion of her patrons. She swirled whipped cream on top of the pink drinks and set them on a tray for her server to pick up, then started on the next order. She’d been tending bar for so many years that the motions were routine. Comfortable. “If he’s so nice, why haven’t you dated him?”

      Hayley gave her a look. “Girlfriend, you are the one who says she’s on the hunt for a husband. Not me.”

      “Nor me,” Sam Dawson said as she stepped up to the bar and slid onto the stool that Hayley had been saving for her. “Sorry I’m late.”

      Unconcerned, Hayley waved her hand toward Jane. “You’ve met Arlo,” she said to Sam. “Tell her he’s a nice guy.”

      “He’s a nice guy,” Sam said obediently. Her dark blond hair was pulled into the usual knot at the back of her head. “No arrests since I’ve been here.”

      Hayley grinned. “See, Jane? No arrests.”

      Jane set a bottle of light beer in front of Sam and flipped off the bottle cap in the same motion before turning back to her order. “High praise, all right.” She wondered if Casey had ever been arrested.

      Probably not. From all appearances, as a general rule the Clays seemed to be a highly upstanding lot.

      “Arlo might not want to go out with me, then.” She pulled the bottle of Grey Goose down from the shelf behind her and poured it liberally over ice. “I have been.” She followed the vodka with a splash of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and set the drink on another tray. For whatever reason, cocktails seemed to be the order of the evening among the crowd. Usually beer and margaritas were the heavy favorites but that night she was serving up everything from Manhattans to Slippery Nipples.

      “No way.” Both Hayley and Sam looked agog.

      She paused in front of them, long enough to pull another steaming rack of glasses out of the dishwasher. “That’s how I met Gage in college. A couple dozen of us were protesting the unfair firing of a professor and we all got picked up.” She set the rack on the rubberized mat next to the small sink and moved down to the taps. “Eventually, the charges were dismissed.”

      A burst of laughter came from the crowd of Clays surrounding the pool tables, drawing more eyes than just Jane’s. Which was fortunate for her, because she had no witnesses to the way she managed to spill Guinness over her hand while she watched Casey’s fine, fine behind as he leaned over for his shot. She shut off the tap and swiped her hand over her apron, then loaded up another tray. She had three cocktail waitresses on hand that