A lip he suddenly, irrationally, had the most shocking urge to suck into his mouth.

Where was a cow emergency when he needed one?

4

SLEEP ELUDED Holly that night. No surprise really. She’d set a new record, even for herself. Alienating an entire town in less than forty-eight hours.

She lay wide-awake in the small bedroom of her tiny apartment above the café. The Mendozas had cleared out quickly for their move to Montana, and yes, the thought came with a tad of bitterness.

Okay, more than a tad.

At least they’d left the furniture. The floors were hardwood and bare except for a few southwestern throw rugs. The walls were bare, too, but for such a small place there were a lot of windows.

The better to let the heat in.

Actually, it wasn’t that bad, if you didn’t count the extremely fat, rude Harry, who’d insisted on coming up with her.

He lay snoring in the kitchen sink.

But other than him, the place was clean and all hers, which made it…almost cozy. Her place in Los Angeles had been rented from a business acquaintance, and so had her place before that. She’d never really had a place of her own, but looking around the very small but oddly homey apartment now, she thought maybe if she could pick her own, it wouldn’t be so different than this.

Except for the cat.

It would be nice to be able to call a place her own, but she couldn’t do that until she figured out where she wanted to be for the rest of her life.

And where she wanted to be was back in a big city, any big city, where she could lose herself in her work, normal work. Where she could be around people like her.

Only the truth was, she’d never been around people like her.

She could tell herself it was the pace of the big city she missed. The movie theaters, the shops…Thai food.

But that was a lie, too.

She didn’t miss those things; she didn’t miss any of it. She just wanted to belong somewhere. Anywhere.

Damn, now she was right back to where she started, wallowing in self-pity.

She couldn’t help it. Everything was wrong. She’d been assured by her parents this would be a short interlude, that the restaurant would sell quickly. That she would be fully staffed. That her duties would be purely managerial.

None of that had happened, which should have made it easy for her to back out. After all, her parents hadn’t kept their part of the bargain, why should she?

But the new and improved Holly wanted to keep her bargains. She wanted to come through.

She wanted her accomplishments acknowledged.

And to do that, she had to succeed.

At any cost. Which meant if she had to continue to cook and clean and serve until she got it right, if she had to force people back into that café and eat her food so that a prospective buyer would be impressed, that’s what she would do. And tough beans to the local population who didn’t want to cooperate.

Finally, this decided, sleep claimed her.

She dreamed about cooking, and how she’d almost, almost, enjoyed herself today while teaching herself to make breakfast from a cookbook. She dreamed about Jud admitting he’d been wrong about her food being inedible. She dreamed about an obnoxious cat.

And she dreamed about one grinning, sexy sheriff.


BY THE NEXT MORNING, Holly was ready to dole out lots of tushie kissing and smiles that she didn’t especially feel.

The biggest problem, of course, was what to serve for breakfast? The café was low on supplies and she hadn’t yet had a chance to get any paperwork going, so she hadn’t ordered anything.

She’d have to go get what she needed herself. Determined, she got in her Jeep, unable to help noticing Riley’s truck was already in front of the sheriff’s station.

So he worked hard, so what? It was no reason to feel a little…melty on the inside. She worked hard, too, dammit, and pushing him from her mind, she drove to the one and only grocery store in town.

She loaded five big containers of instant oatmeal-not low fat-into her cart, and at the last minute added several baskets of blueberries for color. See? She was thinking like a restaurateur already.

At the checkout, she was thoroughly inspected by a midtwenties buxom redhead with the biggest hair Holly had ever seen. Though it was barely seven in the morning, the woman was cracking a big wad of green bubble gum. Checking out Holly’s cream-colored skirt and matching box jacket, she sniffed. “Going to be a scorcher today, you know. You’ll be sweatin’ in those fancy clothes.”

Those “fancy” clothes were light and cool, and very chic. Holly knew she looked good; looking good was important to her. It gave her a semblance of being in control. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“This it?” Her tone was a one on a friendly scale to ten. “This is what you’re going to offer at the café for breakfast?”

“Look-” Holly peered at the woman’s name tag “Isadora-”

“Dora.”

“Dora, then. Could you just check me out here? I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“Why?” She bagged the oatmeal, sniffing disdainfully at the blueberries, as if even she knew that nothing, nothing at all, could decorate instant oatmeal. “You don’t have any customers waiting.”

“How do you know?”

“My momma’s sister’s boyfriend’s third cousin is the sheriff’s receptionist. She can see you through the windows, all by yourself inside the café. Your arrival, and the clearing out of the café, has been the biggest gossip to hit town since Jimmy Dalton got caught in the bowling alley trying to cheat Lester Arnold.”

“Terrific,” Holly muttered.

“And then you went and caught the eye of the sheriff, which really grinds my butt.” Dora’s long, metallic-blue fingernails clicked loudly on the keys as she punched in the prices. “I’ve been trying to catch his eye since he came back from college. He’s the hottest, sexiest, most amazing man I’ve ever seen, and he’s looking at you.” She rolled her eyes and blew a huge bubble, popping it noisily. “Go figure, especially since all you’ve done is give him sass.”

“You don’t get out much, do you?” Holly took cash out of her purse and slapped it down.

“You’re telling me you don’t think he’s hot?”

“Hot? No.” Only a little lie, one of the many she’d told, so she couldn’t imagine she was going to hell for this one. “Pesky, yes. Mr. Know-It-All, yes. Insensitive? Oh, definitely. But hot?” Holly laughed. “You can’t mean it.”

“You’re blind, girlfriend.” Dora looked disgusted. “Completely blind. That man is a walking, talking fantasy.”

Holly thought that just maybe Dora was right, but she’d roll over and die before admitting Riley made her yearn and burn. It’d simply been a while since she’d indulged in any fantasies, much less the real thing, so it was no wonder he set her hormones off. She could handle hormones, and she could handle one Riley McMann. Piece of cake.

What she couldn’t handle was everything else.

“I suppose,” Dora said, “that you prefer those pudgy, suit-wearing, smart-talking city boys who don’t know the back of a horse from their own-Oh, never mind. The sheriff isn’t into women like you anyway. He’ll look his fill and get over it. There’s still hope for me.” Dora primped up her already huge hair and sent Holly a nasty grin. “Don’t you think?”

“What I think is, you’re validating my inherent mistrust of everyone in Little Paradise.”

Dora laughed. “Feel free to vacate.”

“Gee, this is such a friendly town. Imagine, I thought I’d have trouble making friends.”

Dora had the good grace to smile sheepishly at that. “I’m sorry. I’m really not usually so rude to customers.”

“Well, aren’t I special?”

“It’s just that the Nirvana is a town landmark, you know? And honestly, even you have to admit, you’ve pretty much ruined it all in one day.”

The unfairness of that reared up and bit Holly, making being nice back all but impossible. “I didn’t ruin it all by myself. You people helped by being as inhospitable and ungiving as possible. I could use some help here.”

Holly couldn’t believe that those last words popped out of her mouth. She’d never in her life asked another soul for help. She certainly hadn’t meant to start now.

“Really?” Dora looked intrigued. “You don’t look like a woman who needs help from anyone, you look pretty self-sufficient to me.”

That was quite possibly one of the biggest compliments she’d ever had, not that she was about to admit it. “I’m capable, thank you very much. But you don’t, by any chance, know someone who wants the job of chef or waitress?”

“Working for you?”

“Well, yeah.”

Dora feigned disinterest, took Holly’s money and gave her change.

Holly thought that was the end of that, until Dora stopped her from leaving. “How much are you going to pay?” she asked.

“Can you cook?”

“Better than you.”

“Come prove it.” Holly knew she didn’t sound like a warm, fuzzy boss, but she didn’t trust anyone in this town farther than she could frown at them. “Wow me. Then we’ll talk pay.”

Dora sized her up for a long moment. “You’re not exactly Miss Merry Sunshine. Are you mean to your employees?”

“Mean? No. Tough? Yes.”

“I can handle tough. How about fair?”

“Yes.” Or so she hoped. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the café’s finances yet. Hell, she hadn’t done anything yet but sink. But she looked at Dora and willed her to want it, even as she pretended not to care one way or the other. “Makes no difference to me, if you want to bag groceries all your life. But if you’re interested in more, in the freedom of cooking what you like when you like it, well then…” With that hopefully enticing speech, Holly grabbed her bag and walked out of the store.