ahead a grade and he had been behind because of the dark time after his father had died when he was eight, when Billie had gone off the deep end and dragged him aimlessly around the country from flophouse to homeless shelter to the backseat of her car.
He had hated being older than everybody else but still struggled in school—with English class, especially. He had never been a very big reader until long road trips with the Pioneers when he had little else to do. Charlotte, on the other hand, could have been an English teacher herself, even at twelve. She knew her stuff and he had been savvy enough to take advantage of the generous help she offered him.
He would venture to say, Charlotte Caine had been the only reason he had been able to keep his grades up high enough to allow him to participate in school sports.
In a roundabout way, he supposed he had her to thank for his whole career with the Pioneers—which didn’t explain the instant attraction that had been simmering in his gut since the moment he had walked into that candy store and saw her standing behind the counter looking fresh and lovely.
What was wrong with him? He didn’t have time for this. Harry Lange had offered him one chance at redemption, one chance to move beyond the demoralizing isolation of the past year and prove he was more than lousy headlines.
He couldn’t screw this up. He needed to focus on repairing his damaged reputation, not on Charlotte Caine, no matter how much she had changed.
* * *
THIS WAS THE hardest thing she had to face.
Other people had their Rubicons, their Pikes Peaks. She had her dad’s café.
As she walked from Sugar Rush down the street and around the corner to Center of Hope Café after work, her stomach rumbled in anticipation. She swore she could already smell delicious things sidling through the air, tempting and seductive.
Yeah, she worked all day in a candy store, surrounded by chocolates and caramels and toffee, but there she could resist temptation. It was her business and she certainly wanted to produce a delicious product but she supposed it was a little like being the teetotaling owner of a distillery. She didn’t mind a little fudge in moderation once in a while but she never had a desire to stuff herself until she was sick.
This, though. The gnawing craving for some of her father’s comfort food sometimes kept her up at night.
Gooey rich macaroni and cheese. Shepherd’s pie, with thick roast beef and creamy mashed potatoes coating the top like a hard snowfall on the surrounding mountains. Cinnamon-laced apple pie with Pop’s famous homemade vanilla ice cream.
Her dad’s café specialized in the kind of food that numbed and sedated, that soothed hunger pangs and heartache in equal measure.
Despite eighteen months of struggling to change a lifelong addiction to it, whenever she stumbled over one of life’s inevitable bumpy patches, she still craved a hit of Pop’s cooking like a junkie needed crack cocaine.
She knew why. She knew the food at the café represented more than just butter-laden calories. It was her mother waiting for her with a warm towel fresh from the dryer at the end of a rainy walk home from the school bus. It was Pop snuggling her on his lap for a bedtime story, his whiskers tickling her neck. It was summer nights spent sleeping in the tree house with her brothers behind their home while crickets and frogs filled the night with song.
Pop’s food was like home, or at least the home she remembered before the winter she turned ten, when everything changed forever.
On days like this, with her emotions in chaos, she wanted nothing more than to be snugged up against the counter at the diner, burying every concern and feeling of inadequacy under calories.
Drat Spencer Gregory anyway. He had no business coming back to town and leaving her so shaken, filled with dismay and memories and the echo of old pain.
Lasagna. Wouldn’t a big plate of lasagna, dripping with cheese, hit the spot right about now? She bet Pop had some hot and ready. She only had to say the word.
She sighed, increasing her pace. She wouldn’t ask for lasagna. She was stronger than the craving. She only had to remember how hard she had worked the past eighteen months to reshape her life. No matter how provoking her day might be, she couldn’t go back to old habits, the well-traveled pathways in her brain that would inevitably lead her to a destination she no longer wanted.
Instead, she had a chicken breast at home in the refrigerator, soaking in her favorite low-fat marinade of lemon juice, tarragon and a splash of olive oil. As soon as she finished a few errands, she would throw it on the grill along with some vegetables and be far better off.
She pushed open the door and the familiar rich scents surged through her bloodstream like a solid jolt of high-octane caffeine.
“Hey, girl.” Della Pine, who had been waitressing at the Center of Hope as long as Charlotte could remember, greeted her with a wide smile on her wrinkled cheeks. She tottered toward Charlotte in the painfully high heels she always wore, even when she had to spend all day on her feet.
Despite the extra inches, the woman still barely reached Charlotte’s chin, except for her hair, which towered over both of them in all its teased glory.
Charlotte leaned in and kissed the waitress’s cheek, smiling at the familiar olfactory concoction of hair spray, cold cream and lavender powder.
The café was busy, as usual, hopping with the dinner rush. The clientele was generally a healthy mix of tourists and locals. She recognized a few of the latter and raised a hand in greeting.
“Is Pop around?” she asked when Della grabbed a couple menus off the counter by the door for a pair who had come in after Charlotte.
Della jerked her head toward the back. “Check the office. We had some trouble with one of the beef suppliers. Last I checked, he was still trying to iron it out.”
“Thanks.”
She headed toward the office, fighting through the temptation to stop and order a few things off the menu on her way.
Chicken-fried steak, maybe, with a big side of garlic mashed potatoes.
Pop was wonderful at running the Center of Hope Café. Over the years, she had learned more from watching him than any of her business classes in college. She had learned by example how to be a responsible, caring employer, how to be kind to customers and workers alike, how to treat everyone with dignity and respect.
And he cooked one heck of a pork chop.
She sighed as she walked into the office, tucked in behind the kitchen.
This place was as familiar to her as her own childhood on Winterberry Road.
Heaven knows, she had spent enough time here when she was a kid. Even before her mother died, she had loved coming to Center of Hope, hanging out at a table and doing homework while she listened to the sounds of life around her.
During the hard, ugly two years Margaret Caine fought cancer, coming to the diner had been an escape from the fear, from the pain and sickness that seemed to seep through the walls of their home like black mold.
She had avoided that toxic sludge as much as possible. Her mother mostly wanted to sleep anyway, and Charlotte had hated being there. Maybe she
