Beyond Ordinary. Mary Sullivan

The town liked him, but disliked his daughter.

      Elsa had hated Angel in high school, even though Angel had been a few years behind her. Didn’t matter. Boys and men of any age were attracted to Angel.

      Angel tipped her head and smiled. If it felt a little mean, so be it. This was Elsa, after all, herself the meanest woman in town.

      “My mama lives here, in case you’ve forgotten.” Angel turned toward the front door.

      Before she could open it, Elsa said, “William married me, you know.”

      Angel turned back. “That’s nice.”

      “We have three beautiful children and a perfect life.”

      “Fine, Elsa. Let’s get it all out now, ’cause I’ll be in town for the summer and I’m not taking crap from you for the next three months.” She stood, arms akimbo. “To confirm what you’ve always suspected, Bill and I made out one night after a football game.”

      Elsa’s face contorted into a mask of rage. “Proving you’re no better than your mother.”

      “Who were you? Snow White? You’d been dating Bill for two years—you were still dating him—when you got busy with Matt Long and wound up pregnant. Behind Bill’s back. After that, he wanted revenge. You’re a hypocrite, Elsa, no better than any other woman in town, including me and Missy.”

      Angel stomped out of the shop. She was so tired of the fight. It would never end as long as she lived in Ordinary. She stood on the sidewalk to get her rowdy anger under control, then crossed the street toward the diner.

      When she stepped inside, the old familiar scents assailed her—bacon and eggs, grilled-cheese sandwiches, burgers.

      Within seconds, all conversation seemed to stop.

      Someone yelled, “Hey, Angel, when did you get back?”

      Sam Miller sat in a booth across from the counter.

      Angel walked over and leaned her hip against his table.

      “Hey, Sam, how’ve you been?” Angel smiled at the three men with him even though she didn’t know them. By the glances skimming her body, they liked her. Men always did.

      Except for Timm Franck.

      So what? You don’t want him attracted to you anyway.

      She’d been celibate since Neil and planned to keep it that way here in Ordinary. No men. No hanky-panky.

      She wrapped up the pleasantries, then made her way to the cash register. George, cook and owner of the diner, asked her what she wanted to order.

      There was a time when George had been one of Missy’s boyfriends, but that had changed once Angel had become a teenager and George had wanted to switch daughter for mother.

      Both Missy and Angel had booted him out of the trailer and had told him to never come back.

      He still gave her the creeps.

      The words I’m here about the job stuck in her throat. Could she work here every day with George watching her the way he was looking at her now—with greed?

      She almost decided to take the job so she could put him down the first time he tried to touch her, by “accident,” in passing, the way he used to before Angel learned how to fight back.

      Man, she would enjoy giving him a piece of her mind.

      She wasn’t in town to fight old fights, though, despite what had happened with Elsa. She was here for Mama, and she needed money to leave the second she got Phil out of her mother’s life.

      “I changed my mind. I don’t want anything,” she muttered, then left the diner.

      Fuming, she strode down the sidewalk to Chester’s Roadhouse, betting that he’d still have enough affection for her and her mom to give her a job.

      She’d come home broke. She’d wasted her money on that bike, thinking that she would have her degree in a couple of months and would get a full-time job.

      Then Neil…then Neil had—

      Chester needed a bartender. Angel hadn’t gotten her degree, couldn’t do much else, but bartending was something she did really well. She made people happy.

      A niggling feeling caught her unawares. Someone was watching her. She stopped before entering the bar and glanced around.

      Timm crossed the street toward the diner, looking at her. When they made eye contact, he changed direction and approached her.

      What could he possibly have to say to her that they couldn’t have said fifteen minutes ago in his office?

      Sunlight did good things for Timm. It warmed his light brown hair to honey and highlighted that face that had matured into strong planes and angles.

      He was taller than she’d remembered, and lean. For a nerd, he walked with a surprising athletic grace.

      When he got close enough for her to see his eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses, she realized they were chocolate-brown. He wasn’t fast enough in masking his look of admiration of her.

      It warmed her. It shouldn’t have.

      Timm fit into this town too well.

      She didn’t.

      “Hi,” she said. Brilliant. Wow, it wasn’t like her to be tongue-tied. But she didn’t want to say anything that would make her look stupid in front of this guy. He was too smart.

      “Sheriff Kavenagh saw your bike out on the highway,” he said.

      Angel swallowed. Shit. All she needed was to be fined or arrested for starting a fire during a drought.

      “So you told him I tried to burn it?” She couldn’t help the aggression in her tone.

      “No,” he said. He shifted his gaze away from her, studied the shops across the street, wouldn’t look her in the eye.

      “You didn’t? Why not?”

      He shrugged. “I was there to stop the fire, so no problem.”

      “Thanks,” she mumbled. There was a whole lot more she should say, but the words wouldn’t come out. “Well. I gotta go.” She stepped toward the Roadhouse door.

      “The bar’s not open for another hour.” Something in his voice—disapproval, maybe—set her hackles on edge.

      “I’m heading in for a job.”

      “You don’t want to do that.” The helpful man of a minute ago was gone, replaced by a hard-edged judgmental prude.

      “How is it any of your business?”

      “I plan to close this place down.”

      “Why would you close Chester’s?”

      “You saw the bikers last night. They’re ruining the town. Decent people stay away.”

      The implication being that she wasn’t decent. Surprise, surprise. The town’s attitude hadn’t changed about her. Why should it have?

      Timm had always seemed different, though—smarter—and she was disappointed to find he was no better than the rest of Ordinary’s residents.

      Obviously, attending college made no difference in how the townspeople viewed her. They still had her pegged as the trailer-trash girl with the slutty mother.

      “Great talking to you,” she said, her sarcasm tainting the sunny day.

      Without a word, his expression flattened, and he turned and walked away.

      Angel opened the door of Chester’s Roadhouse, irritated by Timm’s assessment of her. Seemed that, in his eyes, the bar was exactly where she belonged.

      Stepping into the dark interior, Angel shook off her funk. She gave