Confessions of a Small-Town Girl. Christine Flynn

on the griddle, cracked four eggs beside them. He probably needed the huge breakfast to fuel all that muscle, she supposed, only to deliberately change the direction of her thoughts. Thinking about the admittedly magnificent body that had inspired the current reason for her anxiety wasn’t getting her anywhere. Since it seemed he hadn’t found the diary, she needed to get to it before he did. She just needed to figure out how.

      She was praying for inspiration when she set the three plates of food that could have comfortably fed two in the window for her mom to serve. With a smile for Amos when he gave her a surreptitious wink to let her know she’d done well, she turned to make the omelets the tourists had ordered.

      Sam noticed that wink. Digging into his own meal, he might have mentioned how good his breakfast was, too, had she given him any hint that she was at all interested in anything he had to say. Instead he took another bite of heaven on a fork and frowned at himself while the two old guys next to him suggested he stop by for a game of checkers on the porch of the general store, providing he had time later that afternoon, of course.

      Sam liked the two old guys. There were times when he couldn’t get a word out of either of them other than a thoughtful and considered “Yup” or “Nope.” Then, there were days when they seemed more than willing to share whatever they knew, especially if they figured they could help a person out. It seemed, too, that once they got going, they could reminisce forever about what they considered the good old days—which was pretty much any year before 1955. According to both men, not much of anything was made the way it had been before then, and neither had much use for anything that hadn’t existed by the middle of the past century.

      He wasn’t much for games, except maybe the occasional hand of poker. Still, he told them he’d be glad to join them later, since he was looking for as many ways as possible to fill in his time there, and went back to his meal. He wasn’t doing anything but biding his time in Maple Mountain. Any diversion was welcome.

      He still didn’t think the time off the force was necessary. He had adamantly argued the need for the leave of absence his department psychologist had insisted he take three weeks ago. He would argue it now, if given the chance. Yet, as he frowned into his coffee, he would concede that the shrink may have had one small point.

      He’d suspected himself that he had lost the edge on his social skills in polite society. He just hadn’t been prepared to truly admit that loss until now. He hadn’t been able to get so much as a smile out of the attractive blonde he could see coming and going from the long window above the service counter, much less get any sort of conversation started with her.

      He only vaguely remembered the delicate-looking woman Dora had mentioned a couple of days ago. Since he’d eaten only occasionally at the diner all those years ago, he knew he hadn’t seen Kelsey often. But the more he thought about her now, the more he remembered that there had been a cute, long-legged blonde he’d looked for when he had come in. He also recalled that she’d been jail bait.

      She definitely hadn’t possessed the presence or style she’d acquired since then, either.

      She had her mother’s pale wheat-colored hair, only hers was woven with shades of champagne and platinum and caught in a low ponytail with a black clip at her nape. The rest was covered with a short, white pleated chef’s hat that ended below her brow line and revealed the white pearl studs in her ears. Her lovely eyes were as dark as the rich coffee in his mug, her features delicate, her skin flawless and she had a mouth that made his water just thinking about how soft it might be.

      Wearing the high-necked white chef’s jacket he figured she’d brought with her, since he’d never seen Dora wear anything more sophisticated than the hairnet and white bib apron she wore now, Kelsey Schaeffer looked polished, professional. She also seemed as familiar with the patrons she fed as she did the kitchen she moved through with such ease.

      He just couldn’t figure out why she would smile and talk with everyone else, but barely converse with him. Drawing out people was his strong suit. Among a certain, corrupt and incorrigible element, anyway. And cons and criminals were usually an even tougher sell.

      Deciding it wasn’t worth worrying about, he polished off his breakfast, had Dora bag two giant blueberry muffins from the case for later and headed for his truck and the trailer he was temporarily calling home. He had more on his mind than his apparently forgotten ability to flirt with a respectable woman. The department shrink had said he’d grown out of touch with normalcy, whatever that was supposed to mean, and that if he didn’t get back in touch with it, he could eventually lose his sense of perspective and his usefulness to the department.

      The department was his home, and as much his family as those he was related to by blood. Failing it would be like failing himself. He would do what he needed to do to keep that from happening. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d do it.

      It had been three weeks since he’d come off a case that had kept him undercover for over a year. The need to stay under had even caused him to miss his brother-in-law’s funeral after a road-rage incident left his sister a widow and his young nephews without a dad. He had been ordered to take three months to decompress by doing normal things. He was to reacquaint himself with his family, find creative outlets, wind down. Helping his sister by refurbishing the dilapidated old house so she could raise her sons in the country seemed as good a way as any to him to keep from going stir-crazy while he accomplished that goal. Then, after he put in his time, he could get back to the work that had become his way of life.

      There was just one problem. Having spent ten years working his way down the humanity scale from neighborhood beat cop to vice detective to spending the past fourteen months living in the underbelly of New York with crack heads, drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes to break a major drug ring, he wasn’t exactly sure he knew what constituted normal anymore.

      He felt fairly certain, however, that “normal” wasn’t having the pretty blonde who had all but ignored him at the diner show up that afternoon with the smile he hadn’t been able to get out of her before and a freshly baked apple pie.

      Chapter Two

      Kelsey figured she had two options. She could try to get upstairs alone and, depending on how much wall Sam had torn out, get the diary and sneak it out in her purse. Or, she could look around to see how far he was with his demolition and go back when he wasn’t there.

      The nerves in her stomach were jumping as she watched him walk toward her.

      With her oversize handbag dangling from one shoulder, and carrying a pink pastry box with both hands, she left the compact sedan she’d rented at the airport and moved past the construction debris to meet him. Old cupboards, carpeting and a rusted sink formed a pile at the end of the gravel driveway that cut into the deep and wooded lot. Stacks of new lumber nearly blocked the sagging front porch, waiting to be used inside.

      She’d heard that he was living in the long white trailer parked near the curve of the stream that meandered through the back of the property. According to her mom, the leveling of that trailer had been the local event of the day. Charlie and Amos said they’d helped supervise. Lorna Bagley, who took turns with her sister, Marian, waiting tables for her mom, told her she’d packed up a picnic and her kids and headed out to watch—though mostly, the single mother of two had confessed, she had watched Sam. They didn’t get many men as easy on the eyes as that one, she’d confided. Certainly, none as intriguing.

      Since news and gossip were shared freely among the locals, and since nothing pleased some of the them more than to bring someone who’d been away up to date, Kelsey had also learned that Sam had been a detective for years, and divorced for nearly as long. No one seemed to know what had caused the demise of his marriage. No one knew exactly what sort of “detecting” it was that he did, either. Some thought he solved murder cases like the detectives on television. But no one knew for sure. He apparently didn’t say much about his work.

      As unusual and fascinating as his occupation was to certain citizens of Maple Mountain, as far as most of them were concerned what he did in the city was no real concern of theirs. Sam was just Tom and Janelle Collier’s nephew and he’d come to help out a member of