the moment he and his nicely healed nose were absorbed in the menu.
“Hey,” she said, approaching the table with a carafe of coffee.
“Hey.” He tipped his mug right side up and Meg filled it for him. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. What can I get you?” She used her best cheerful-friendly-waitress voice, as if he was a tourist she’d never seen before. He frowned just a little.
“It all looks good,” he said, copying her tone. “How about the Hungry Man Special, with scrambled eggs and bacon? And with an extra side of bacon to go, please.”
“Sure.” This wasn’t so hard. She could do this. Meg didn’t write down the order for fear her fingers would shake. Silly, but she had her pride.
“So how’ve you been?” He took a cautious sip of coffee and looked at her with real interest. As if he actually wanted to know the answer.
“Just fine. And you?”
“I’m good.” He kept looking at her, studying her face until, still gripping the handle of the carafe, she backed up a step. She was conscious of how she must appear to him, dowdy Margaret Ripley in her apron, worn jeans and thick athletic shoes. “Well, I’ll go put your order in.”
“Thanks.”
With that she turned and headed toward the kitchen. She returned the carafe to the coffee machine, wrote up the order before handing it to Al and, on the pretense of checking supplies, escaped to the back room. There wasn’t much privacy in either the town or the restaurant, but there was a tiny alcove behind the walk-in freezer that provided the perfect place to hide for a few minutes. Meg leaned against the gray wall, took a deep breath and eyed the calendar tacked to the wall. October was here already, with a long winter ahead.
She should be over it. She was over it. She was a grown woman, capable of running a business and running her life. She had friends. And a home. She dated when she wanted to, though she seldom wanted to, and rarely ever thought of the eighteen-year-old girl who had fallen foolishly in love with a young man she could never have. His presence here couldn’t upset her if she didn’t allow it to, but she hoped he wouldn’t make breakfast at Willing’s a habit. They’d each become so good at pretending the other didn’t exist, so why stop now?
* * *
“AND SO WE have to ask ourselves—what do women want?” Jerry Thompson desperately needed to know the answer. He tapped his pen against the empty page of the legal pad spread before him and studied the yellow-lined paper as if the solution to his problems would magically appear. When he looked up, the six members of the town council stared back at him.
Bachelors all, they were a varied group. On his left sat Les Purcell, a young cowboy who had been injured on the rodeo circuit and now lived with his grandparents. Seated next to Les was Pete Lyons, a nice enough guy who looked as if he slept in his clothes.
“Now, there’s one heck of a question,” Les muttered. “Anyone who has the answer to that can write a book, go on Dr. Phil and make a pile of money.”
“It’s a valid question,” Jerry, recently elected mayor—because Art Woodhouse died and no one wanted the job—and full of ideas, looked across the table at the owner of the only auto-repair place in town. Hank Dougherty was likely too busy to watch much daytime television.
“What’s Dr. Phil got to do with it?” Hank asked.
“Nothing. Just that he knows everything.”
“Or thinks he does,” Les said.
Jerry took a swallow of coffee. Obviously this was going to take more time than he’d thought. “Let’s not get off track. I’m serious about this. We need to know what women want and then we have to give it to them.” He ignored the spurt of laughter that followed this declaration and frowned. “I’m trying to get something going here. We’re talking about publicity. About money coming into town. About women coming into town.”
“Women? What kind of women?” This question came from Jack Dugan, who Jerry figured had no problem getting dates.
“Single women,” he replied, as if he was talking to a bunch of first-graders. Not that he had any idea what it was like to talk to schoolkids. But this group, the city council and various other men who enjoyed free coffee once a month at the town meetings and sat around a couple of pushed-together Formica-topped tables, was about as dense a bunch of men as he’d ever met. No wonder they didn’t have women of their own, or at least a date once in a while. Not that he himself was much different. He’d had two dates since he left Los Angeles three years ago and neither one had been what anyone would remotely call a success.
Pete, a thirty-something rancher who also drove the school bus, leaned forward. “How old are these women gonna be? And they’re not gonna be from a foreign country, are they?”
“Like the Russian mafia and the mail-order brides,” Mike Breen, the town treasurer who ran the county newspaper, added. “Saw it on Law & Order last night. Scary stuff.”
This was quite the suspicious group. Jerry took a deep breath and started over again. “No, Mike, they’re not going to take your money and kill you when you want to divorce them.” He’d seen that episode himself. “Look,” he said, eying the six bachelors who comprised the council. They weren’t a bad-looking bunch. They could be cleaned up, their shirts ironed or, better yet, replaced. They had a rugged appeal he knew some women were attracted to, but he had severe doubts that his constituents had the skills to keep a woman interested past the first date. Heck, most of them couldn’t make it further than a getting-to-know-you bottle of beer. “I have a friend in Los Angeles who’s putting together an idea for a reality show.”
“Like Survivor?” Hank perked up. He was fifty-five, widowed, with two grown daughters and a decent property in town. He might appeal to an older demographic, maybe the over-forty women.
“More like The Bachelor.”
Jack, who worked at the feed store, grinned. “Man, that’s a great show, that Bachelor. I never miss it.” The crowd grumbled their displeasure, but Jack didn’t waver. “You should see the women,” he insisted. “They act crazy, and they’re gorgeous and they sit in a lot of hot tubs with the bachelor. Everyone tries to get a date with the guy and lots of times he can’t tell the crazy ones from the ones who really like him.”
Jack was young and good-looking, struggling to keep a small cattle outfit afloat while working in town. He picked up odd carpentry jobs and was careful with his money. And, Jerry thought, he’d look perfect on TV.
“That’s right. Hot tubs and hot women in bathing suits.” Now he had their interest.
“The only hot tub in the county belongs to MacGregor,” Gary Petersen, retired from the co-op, whispered. “And he just sat down behind you, Jerry, so you might want to keep your voice down.”
Jerry restrained himself from turning around to see if Gary was telling the truth. He’d never met Angus MacGregor’s descendant but he’d read a lot about the family history. They’d practically invented cattle ranching in Montana.
“Thanks, Gary, for pointing that out.” Jerry wrote hot tub on his paper. “I’ll bet the TV production would spring for something. Either that or maybe we could
