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  Shaking his head, Link followed her inside.

  The heady scents of coffee, warm cinnamon rolls, and maple icing wafted over them, and Link couldn’t keep from inhaling deeply. The mingling of aromas had a calming effect on him.

  Shayla set the little girl down at a child’s table near the cash register. The stack of coloring books and buckets of crayons and markers on the table looked like a scene from one of his sisters’ homes, and the little girl was instantly distracted.

  Flecks of ice sparkled in Shayla’s wild Afro. She looked gorgeous as ever, even if her complexion now seemed more gray than the creamy mahogany shade he remembered. Behind the counter, she consulted an order pad. “You had two dozen Parker House and a loaf of rye, right?”

  “Yes. I guess. Whatever Mom ordered.” He didn’t have a clue and couldn’t remember right now if his life depended on it. No doubt, his mother—He took in a sharp breath. Mom! He’d left her on the phone thinking he’d been in an accident. She’d be frantic.

  He reached into his pocket then remembered his cell was still in the truck. At least he hoped it was. “Hang on a sec, would you? My phone . . . Be right back.”

  She barely nodded and went on wrapping the bread.

  He risked ruffling the little girl’s hair as he went by. She flinched at his touch, but at least she didn’t start screaming. Shoot, his ears were still ringing.

  He jogged out to the pickup and did a quick walk around, inspecting it much the way Shayla had inspected her daughter. The truck was caked with dirty slush and mud, and the back right tire was scuffed where it had met the curb, but otherwise, no worse for the wear. He considered reparking since the truck had parallel parked itself across two angled parking spaces, but there were plenty of open spots on the street, and he didn’t want Shayla to think he was leaving.

  After calling his mother and giving her a carefully edited version of the morning’s events, he tucked his cell in his pocket and trotted back into the shop.

  A white bag with the bakery’s logo stamped on the side sat waiting on the counter, a receipt stapled to the side.

  He looked at it. It seemed a little high, but he retrieved his wallet from his back pocket and extracted a twenty-dollar bill.

  She made change and handed it to him without a word, seeming a little dazed. Well, he was too. He bent to peer into her eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She wiped her hands on her apron and came around the counter, peeking at the table where her little girl was bent over a coloring book.

  He held up the bag of rolls. “Thanks.” He almost felt like he should apologize, even though he’d done nothing wrong, but under the circumstances, he decided it would be best not to press the issue. No sense getting her riled all over again.

  He headed out the front door, but halfway to the truck, he remembered the extra cinnamon rolls his mom had requested before all the excitement. Or was it coffee cake? He hurried back inside. “Sorry, I almost forgot! My mom wanted—”

  Behind the counter, Shayla stood with her face buried in the skirt of her flour-dusted apron, her shoulders heaving.

  Link’s heart stopped for the second time that day. “What’s wrong?” He looked around for the little girl. She was still coloring, seeming perfectly fine and oblivious to her mother’s tears.

  Shayla quickly turned away, dabbing at her face with the hem of the apron. But not before Link saw the tears blazing shiny trails down her smooth cheeks. When she faced him again, her forehead and cheeks were smudged with flour. “What do you need?”

  “Are you sure? Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine.” Her lips firmed. “What else do you need?”

  Her tears rattled him now, and he stuttered. “My mom . . . um . . . she wanted something to serve for breakfast at the inn. She mentioned coffee cake, I think.”

  Shayla walked to the end of the pastry case and pointed to a ring-shaped confection with crumbly stuff on top. “We have this one. Or a pumpkin loaf.”

  “Okay. I’ll take two of those rings.” He hesitated, watching her closely. “You sure you’re okay?”

  She ignored his question and went to work boxing the coffee cakes. “That’ll be sixteen forty-seven.”

  “Um . . .” He waited for her to look up from the register. “You have flour”—he smiled and brushed his own cheek—“on your face. From your apron, I think.”

  She wheeled away, rubbing at her cheeks as if they were on fire.

  He laughed. “At least you’ve got some color in your cheeks now.” Stupid thing to say. “You were looking pretty pale—earlier, I mean.” Stupider thing to say. “You got it.” He pointed to her face. “It’s all off now. I just thought you’d want to know. Before your next customer comes in.”

  She glared at him. “That’ll be sixteen forty-seven,” she said again.

  “Oh. Sorry.” He filed through his wallet. He only had a ten, plus the change she’d given him earlier. He handed her his credit card.

  She ran it and slid the receipt across the counter for him to sign. He scribbled his name and handed it back.

  “Thank you.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes and seemed anxious to get rid of him. Nothing like last time when he’d flirted, and she’d flirted back, offering him a sample of a new sticky bun recipe they were testing.

  Those warm, gold-flecked eyes flashed at him. Only today they flashed defiance, not the intense interest he thought he remembered from before.

  The back door opened and a tall black man stepped through. He nodded in Link’s direction. “Mornin’.” He looked at Shayla then back at Link. “Everything okay here, baby?” He came and put a protective arm on her back, his hand cradling her neck.

  Great. He’d been flirting with a married woman. He squelched a sigh. And now she’d probably tell her husband that he’d almost killed their daughter. He’d checked for a wedding ring the first time he met her. He was positive there’d never been one. But then, it probably wasn’t a good idea to wear a ring when you worked in a bread-dough factory. That’d teach him to assume.

  “Everything’s fine.” Shayla looked over to where Portia was coloring, then wriggled out from under the man’s embrace. She tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. But a second later, she crumpled back into the guy’s arms.

  He leveled a glare in Link’s direction. “What’d you do?” he growled, taking a step toward him, even with Shayla draped over him like a coat.

  “No!” Shayla pulled the man’s arm. “It’s okay.”

  Link took a step back, scrambling to explain. “Your little girl ran out into the street. I . . . almost hit her. With my truck.”

  “That true?” The man looked down at Shayla, then cut his glare toward the table where the child sat. His countenance visibly softened when his gaze landed on her. When Shayla didn’t answer, he tipped her face upward, as if he might read the truth in her expression.

  She cast her eyes down, but nodded. “She’s okay, Daddy. She wasn’t hurt.”

  The man narrowed his eyes at Link. “What happened?”

  Link swallowed. “Like I said, she ran out in front of me. I couldn’t get stopped on the ice. Truck skidded pretty good, but it didn’t even graze her. It was close though. She’s a lucky little girl.”

  He wanted Shayla to come to his defense—to tell the guy that he’d bailed out of his truck and rolled to safety with the little girl in his arms. He was pretty sure Shayla had seen that part, despite her accusations. But he kept it to himself, suddenly more eager to get the heck out of Dodge than to stand here and paint himself as a hero.

  The man looked to Shayla as if for confirmation. Link saw nothing in her eyes, but apparently the guy was satisfied Link hadn’t tried to kill anyone.

  “I’ll be going now. If . . . if you have any other questions or”—he shrugged—“whatever, Shayla knows where to contact me.”

  He gathered the cake boxes and strode to the front of the store, feeling foolish. And confused. She’d called the g
uy “Daddy.” His sisters called their husbands that sometimes when they were talking about their kids. And the guy didn’t look old enough to be her father, but a little too old to be her husband. Not that that meant anything these days. Of course even if the man was her father, she could still have a husband. She had a kid after all.

  He climbed in the truck, jabbed the key into the ignition, and revved the engine. She probably was married. He sure hadn’t known that when he’d flirted with her. And in his defense, she had never given him one single back-off-buddy-I’m-married signal. Not one.

  If she had, he would have run hard and fast in the opposite direction.

  2

  Thanks, honey. That’s perfect.” Audrey Whitman lifted the coffee cakes from the bakery boxes Link had delivered, then quickly covered them with a clean tea towel—that is, hid them from Grant. Her husband was not to be trusted around fresh bakery fare. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten.”

  Link shook his head. “Nope. Just took longer than I expected. Here’s your change from the twenty, but I had to put the coffee cakes on my credit card.” He laid a wad of wrinkled bills on the kitchen counter, then deposited a few coins on top. “Here’re your receipts.”

  “No, you keep the change. That’s your gas money. Hang tight, and I’ll pay you for the rest.” She smoothed the receipt out with the palm of her hand. “Sixteen dollars? For two little coffee cakes?” She shook her head. “I’m in the wrong business.”

  “If you don’t need anything else, Mom, I’m going to head out.” He seemed distracted. “I’m pulling an extra shift tonight.”

  “Sure. You go on. I’m set. Thanks again. See you Tuesday.”

  “Not sure about Tuesday. I’ll let you know.” Link inched toward the door, seeming a little too eager to get away.

  She wondered if he had a date. From her lips to God’s ears. “Oh, hey! You said you slid on the ice? What happened?”

  Link stopped with his hand on the door like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “You didn’t smash up your truck, did you?”

  “No. No damage. Just scared the snot out of me.”

  “Yeah, so I heard. Except snot’s not what I heard.” She gave him the look. The one her kids used to call “Mom’s stink-eye.” Probably still did. She knew her kids weren’t angels, and she appreciated that they cleaned up their mouths around her and Grant—and the grandchildren, she hoped. But as she’d always told them when they were kids, what slipped out in a moment of crisis was a good indicator of what was in their hearts. She hoped Link had taken note. But he was a grown man—twenty-nine!—and she wasn’t going to hassle him about his mouth now. That was between him and God. Still, she couldn’t help but think that a good woman would smooth out her boy’s rough edges.

  With a sheepish grin that made him look like a little boy again, Link opened the door. “Tell Dad hi. See you later.” He gave a little wave and exited before she could say more than “drive safe.”

  Hmm. She knew her son, and something was definitely up.

  Oh, that it was a girlfriend!

  ***

  The roads were still slick and Link drove with a newfound caution. The more he thought about the close call this morning, the heavier his gut felt. In the blink of an eye, his life—and the lives of so many others—could have changed in horrific ways. He truly didn’t think what happened had been his fault. He hadn’t been speeding. He was sure of that. And yes, he’d been pulling double shifts for several weeks now, but he wasn’t sleep deprived. Still, he had been distracted—on the phone with Mom, thinking about work . . . about flirting with the pretty girl at the bakery. Shayla.

  He threw up a prayer of thanks that things had turned out the way they had. That the little girl was safe. Although her existence sure did throw a wrench in things. Even if Shayla was available, a single mom wasn’t exactly on his list of things to look for in a woman. But probably a hazard of dating at his—according to his sisters—ripe old age. He remembered his mother saying something about her and Dad not being surprised if he ended up with a woman who’d been married before. He rolled his eyes. They all acted like he was fifty or something. Never mind that some days he felt like fifty.

  Part of it was work. He didn’t really mind his job, but it wasn’t where he’d envisioned himself at this point in life. He’d been with Carson Tech since one month after graduating from Southeast Missouri State. It was just a job. An entry level job—testing electrical wiring—that really had nothing to do with his business major. It was merely supposed to be something to pay the bills until he found a “real” job.

  Yet here he was, six years later—no, almost seven now. Man, where had the time gone? He’d gotten a couple of raises over the years and had managed to put away some savings. But that was only because his apartment was a hole in the wall studio in a not-so-great part of town.

  He pulled up to the apartment and parked along the curb, praying he didn’t have to scrape the windshields before he went in to work tonight. Flipping on the lights inside his studio, he tried to view the place with objective eyes.

  No way around it: he’d be embarrassed for any woman to see where he lived. Not to mention, walking in the front door was essentially walking into his bedroom. Despite his sisters’ attempts to convince him to fix the place up, he hadn’t done more than move in some of Mom and Dad’s castoff furniture and buy some matching dishes off Craigslist.

  He’d been able to pick up some extra shifts this fall, hoping to save enough to afford a better place after the first of the year. But in the back of his mind, he knew what he really needed was to find another job. Not just because of the money. But because he was afraid if he didn’t get out of Carson Tech now, he’d be retiring from here. And he wanted more than that out of life. A lot more.

  He shrugged out of his jacket, flipped on the TV, and navigated to the sports channel. He could save a hundred bucks a month if he canceled cable. He rarely watched it now that he was working overtime anyway. An involuntary sigh escaped him, and he went to the fridge for an almost empty carton of orange juice. Drinking from the carton, he kicked off his shoes and settled on the futon.

  Settled. That was his problem. He’d settled for a life that was comfortable and easy, but he didn’t like being settled at twenty-nine. And it got worse every year. His friends from high school and college were all either married with kids, or off living in some exotic spot in the world. There were a few slackers like him, but fewer every year. And in truth, it might not have bothered him that much if it didn’t bother his family.

  Of course his little brother—God rest his soul—had set the bar high. He had beat Link to the altar when he got married at twenty-one. To Bree Cordel, who set the bar even higher. Tim had been a Marine by the time he was twenty-two. Then dead—a hero—two years later. Tough act to follow. It seemed strange that his brother, who’d been only a year younger than Link their whole lives, was now almost five years younger—forever twenty-four in Link’s mind and memories.

  The TV droned on. Scores of games he didn’t really care about. And even though he was only working the seven-to-eleven shift tonight, he needed to catch some shut-eye before heading in. He put his feet up and closed his eyes.

  The truck started sliding. He slammed on the brakes but nothing happened. He slammed harder. Nothing! The little girl stood there in the middle of the road just looking at him. Staring. Like she wasn’t even afraid.

  “Porsche!” It was Shayla’s voice. He was sure of it.

  He pushed the brakes harder, but it was like stepping on a dry sponge.

  “Porsche!”

  Why was she yelling that? He wouldn’t mind having a Porsche, but he drove a Dodge Ram. With a hundred seventy thousand miles on it. And if he couldn’t get the beast to stop, he was going to hit that little girl!

  Stop!

  Link bolted upright on the futon. He broke into a cold sweat, his heart racing. He’d almost hit her! Another split second and . . .


  No. It was only a dream. A nightmare. She was fine. He’d seen her with his own eyes. Everybody was fine. But it had been too close. Way too close.

  Thank you, Lord. He took a deep breath and got to his feet, trying to shake off the terror of the dream. The TV said it was 2:27.

  Porsche. Where had that come from?

  Thinking back, he was pretty sure Shayla had screamed that word. In real life. Maybe it was the little girl’s name. He’d heard stranger names, although he didn’t even want to think about why somebody would name their kid after a sports car. Tim had teased him once that he was named “Link” because he’d been conceived in the back of the ’75 Lincoln Continental Mom and Dad owned the first few years they were married. He didn’t think it was true, but . . . Eww. Thanks a lot for nothing, bro. Hope you’re happy for putting that image in my mind for the rest of my adult life.

  Porsche. Maybe it was just part of his crazy nightmare. Some dream interpreter would probably say it represented his deep, dark desire to drive a fast sports car away from life as he knew it—or some other wacko mumbo jumbo.

  He looked at the clock again. The bakery in Langhorne would still be open. He probably should call and make sure everything was okay. He could almost hear his dad’s voice. It would be the right thing to do. Dad was always all about doing the right thing.

  He grabbed his jacket and his keys off the counter. If he hurried, he had time to do one better: he’d go and see for himself if everyone was really okay.

  3

  The bells on the door jangled, and Shayla Michaels looked up to see who had the nerve to show up five minutes before closing time. She’d just sent her part-time college help home early, and she was eager to call it a day.

  Her breath caught. It was the guy from this morning—Link. She pretended not to see him and busied herself boxing up the day’s unsold pastries for the homeless shelter in Cape Girardeau—ironically where she’d first met him. They’d been on a first-name-only basis, but thanks to Google, she now knew his name was Link Whitman. And his parents ran the Chicory Inn up the road a few miles off Chicory Lane.