employee, were manning the oven.
“Let me guess,” Josie said as she took the order sheet from Roxy. “Detective Steve Kincaid?” She didn’t wait for Roxy’s answer, but instead pointed Gregory to the waffle maker while she got eggs from the fridge. “I don’t know why you let him get under your skin. Every woman in town thinks he’s hot and sexy and would love to get a little of his flirtation and a taste of his lush lips, but we all know he’s not really the serious type.”
“He looks like some surfer dude who wandered in from a beach instead of a detective on the police force.”
Josie grinned at her. “And you look like a hot, take-me-to-bed-right-now kind of woman instead of the man-hater you really are.”
“I’m not a man-hater,” Roxy grumbled. “I just refuse to buy into anything any of them are trying to sell.”
Josie looked down at the wedding ring that had adorned her finger for the past three months. “Sometimes they’re just selling you love,” she replied, her voice gooey with sentiment.
The honeymoon stage, that’s all it was, Roxy thought. Josie had married her high school sweetheart three months ago. Sooner or later the honeymoon would pass and real life would intrude—and that’s when everything went to hell.
Roxy knew.... She’d lived it with her mother for the first seven years of her life. Men had led her mother to utter destruction, and Roxy wasn’t about to make those same kinds of mistakes. She was good by herself, thank you very much.
It took only minutes for the three meals to be prepared and served, and by that time other diners had entered to get breakfast and enjoy the ambiance of the cozy eatery.
The three dining areas were named by the wallpaper and color theme in each room. The main area was the blue room, papered in a rich blue satin paper with antique glassware and trinkets on display on various shelves. The second biggest room was mauve, also decorated with a variety of antiques, old hats and framed news articles that chronicled the history of Wolf Creek.
The final dining area was the green room, which hinted of an outdoor eating experience with lush plants and the requisite antiques used to flavor the room.
For years this had been Roxy’s dream. She’d worked two jobs since the age of eighteen in order to have a healthy down payment on a place.
The Dollhouse only used the best and freshest ingredients, utilizing local farmers and the nearby Amish community to assure quality in every dish they prepared.
She’d been open less than four years, and already she was functioning firmly in the black. This place wasn’t just her dream; it, along with spending time with her two younger sisters and her aunt, was her very life.
For another half an hour she took orders and served customers. Allie Jenkins, one of her part-time waitresses, worked the crowd, as well.
Roxy was standing in the kitchen doorway waiting for an order to be ready for delivery when her cell phone rang. It was Marlene.
“Roxy, she’s not here. The door was unlocked. I’ve gone through the entire house and she isn’t here, but her car is in the driveway and her purse and all the baked goods are on the counter ready to transport.”
A thrum of thick anxiety shot off in the pit of Roxy’s stomach. “But she has to be there someplace if her car is there.”
“Roxy, I’ve checked every room in the house. I even went down to the basement, and there’s no sign of her.” Marlene’s voice rang with a touch of the anxiety that grew bigger and bigger inside Roxy. “What do you want me to do?”
“Have you called Sheri?” she asked, referring to their youngest sister.
“I did, and she hasn’t heard from Aunt Liz since around two o’clock yesterday afternoon.”
The simmer of anxiety moved into full chest-crunching alarm. “Go home and try not to worry,” Roxy told her sister. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. I’ll take care of things.” That’s what Roxy did—she took care of things when her aunt wasn’t available.
And why wasn’t she available? Had Roxy’s mother, Ramona, showed up after all these years and asked Liz to go someplace with her? Or had Ramona called and Liz gone running with no thought of anything else?
That could only mean bad news. Where Ramona went, chaos followed.
Liz had a soft and forgiving heart for everyone, and despite everything Ramona had done over the years, Liz would easily want to believe the best of her much younger sister. Liz would definitely drop everything if Ramona had called.
It had now been an hour and a half since she’d expected Liz to show up, and the alarm inside Roxy could no longer be ignored. There was only one thing she knew to do.
With stiff shoulders and the feeling that the world was suddenly all wrong, she went back into the blue room, where the three detectives were just finishing up their breakfasts.
“I need your help,” she said without preamble. “We can’t find my aunt. She’s missing, and I need you all to go to her house and see if you can find out what’s happened to her.”
Jimmy, a handsome Italian, frowned. “How long has she been missing?”
“Almost two hours,” Roxy replied. “My sister has been over to her house and can’t find her anywhere. Aunt Liz’s car is there, but she isn’t. Something is wrong.”
“Roxy, we can’t check out someone who has only been missing for a couple of hours,” Frank said kindly. “She’s an adult. She’s allowed to be missing if she wants to be.”
“I’ll go.” Steve drained his coffee cup and then stood and looked at Roxy expectantly.
Both of his partners looked at him in surprise, and a sinking feeling swept through Roxy.
Of the three men at the table, the last one she wanted to have anything to do with was Detective Steve Kincaid. But at the moment her concern for her aunt overweighed her disgust at having to deal with the handsome devil.
* * *
Steve had no idea what he was doing. Why had he offered to check this out for a woman who had made it clear in a hundred different ways that she didn’t think much of him?
The minute she climbed into his unmarked car, the scent of her filled the confines. She smelled of some kind of fresh floral perfume and a combination of exotic spice scents, and he was glad that the passenger seat hadn’t been covered with the usual fast-food wrappers that normally adorned it.
He knew there were three Marcoli sisters, but he didn’t know any of them well. They had all been younger than him, and the only interaction he’d had with any of them had been Roxy, who both fascinated and repelled him at the same time.
She was slamming hot with her short, curly dark hair, full lush lips and figure meant for lovemaking. But her tongue was sharp enough to slice a tough cut of meat, and she’d made it clear that she didn’t particularly like him.
“So I gather your aunt comes in each morning and delivers baked goods for you to put on the menu?” he asked as she pointed in the direction of
