going to happen. Meg was plain. She knew it. In fact, she’d been told as much from the age of four, when her pretty mother had no longer been able to hide her disappointment. Her daughter was, at best, nondescript. A shy child with brown eyes, brown hair, knobby knees and pink plastic eyeglasses, Meg wasn’t exactly a Miss Montana hopeful, though her mother had assured her that someday she would blossom into a lovely young woman. She had never blossomed. Not really. And certainly not to her mother’s expectations. She wore contacts now, but her eyes and hair remained a nondescript brown and she’d obviously inherited her decidedly nonvoluptuous body from her father’s side of the family.
She was grateful for that, actually. Her mother, sweet and foolish, had enjoyed looking in the mirror and unbuttoning her uniform to show a little more cleavage. “You have to flaunt ’em if you’ve got ’em,” she’d say, giving Meg a wink. Loralee believed in the power of blue eye shadow, underwire bras and high heels. And, despite having married five times, remained convinced that Mr. Right was just around the corner. The perpetual stack of romance novels next to her bed and her tendency to weep during made-for-TV movies led Meg to believe her mother would never, ever change. Despite Loralee’s exhausting marital history and age—sixty-two was a rough estimate—she showed no signs of slowing down. Men still circled around her to admire and be admired. Loralee didn’t disappoint.
“Meg!” Al broke into her self-pity. “Phone!”
She took the portable phone from him without looking at the caller ID.
“Willing Café,” she said, wondering if she should get her hair highlighted.
“Sweetie,” sang a familiar voice. “How’s everything at The Shame?”
There was no use reminding her mother that the “Dirty Shame” was now the much more respectable “Willing Café.” Loralee didn’t listen. “Hi, Mom. Believe it or not, I was just thinking about you.”
“You’ll never believe what Joan and I did this morning! We played golf! Can you believe it? Golf,” her mother chirped over the phone. “I’ve hit the mother lode.”
“The mother lode of what?”
Loralee, too busy talking to answer questions, had continued, “I’ve taken up golf myself. There are men everywhere, Megs. Lovely men who enjoy talking to a woman once in a while.”
Her mother wasn’t a gold digger or an opportunist. She’d married men she’d felt sorry for, or thought she was in love with and could help with their drinking problem or their gambling issues, or, in one drastic case in 1988, a shy trucker who’d decided it was time to go straight. Men took advantage of Loralee, not the other way around.
“Be careful,” Meg warned, feeling much too old to deal with another stepfather. “Don’t even think about getting married.”
“Honey, I’m done being young and silly,” Loralee said. “But I’m not about to sit around this condo and watch Joan knit charity afghans.”
“No,” Meg said, “of course not. But maybe you could borrow some yarn and learn to—”
“And I don’t like the casinos that much,” she mused. “Joan does, though, so I go along to keep her company. We like the buffets.”
Unlike her youngest sister, plump Aunt Joan had married a man who needed no fixing. She’d waited forty-one years to find the love of her life, which Meg thought was admirable. They’d been married thirty years when he died, leaving Aunt Joan with no financial worries and a spacious two-bedroom condo overlooking a golf course. She’d begged her sister to move to Arizona. Loralee had flown down for a visit last year and showed no sign of returning.
“We’re going to join a league, so we’ll play almost every morning before it gets too hot. What do you think?”
“That sounds fun.” In no universe could Meg picture her mother playing golf or, for that matter, being content to live with her much older, conservative sister. However, both women seemed pleased with the arrangement so far. Meg suspected that soon enough Loralee would find life with Aunt Joan a little tame and move back to Willing.
“We might drive up in the spring, make a road trip out of it. See a bit of the country. And you, of course, sweetie. Are you going to come down for Christmas? I’m on the internet right now, looking at flights. I can book it right now for you, what do you think?”
“I don’t know about Christmas, Mom. Maybe I’ll come down in January, like last year.”
“You can’t tell me that place is busy over the holidays. I know better.”
“I can’t travel if there’s a storm—”
“There’s always a storm.”
“Yes.” And it was difficult to drive to the airport in three feet of snow. “And I’d rather not get stuck in an airport when I could be home.”
“You should move down here. Get out of the cold weather,” her mother said, as she did near the end of every phone call to her daughter. “We sit by the pool every afternoon, you know. A little sun would do you good, brighten you up a bit.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Meg fibbed.
“You’re at a nice age to find an older man, sweetie. You could get highlights, a bright red bathing suit—men love red. And a spray tan! I’ve been saving coupons—”
Meg punched the on switch on the empty food processor and raised her voice, “Static, Mom! I can’t hear you!”
And feeling relieved and guilty, she hung up.
Loralee meant well, but she refused to accept her daughter’s single lifestyle. I want you to be happy. I want you to find a man and have babies. I don’t want you to be alone every night.
Fair enough. That all sounded good, but Meg had had a shot at all those things once, a very long time ago. Even then she’d known that dreams didn’t always come true. In the years that followed, when she’d finished school and worked at her dream job, she’d assumed she’d meet someone special, someone who would charge into her world and fill her empty heart with massive amounts of love. Who would make everything good and right and perfect simply by taking her into his arms.
Just the way Owen MacGregor had.
But fifteen minutes ago she’d watched that particular man leave the restaurant and stride across the gravel parking lot. And she knew she’d given up on fairy-tale endings a long time ago.
Her one and only Prince Charming had left the building.
* * *
“IT’S THE CRAZIEST idea I’ve ever heard.” Owen pointed the truck west, out of town and toward home. Boo, busy chomping on bacon, didn’t argue. He didn’t even bother to lick the rancher’s ear, which was the way he usually participated in conversations.
“Good thing I got out of there when I did,” Owen muttered as he adjusted the heating vent. Amazing that by changing his Monday routine in the slightest way, he’d risked getting involved in the wackiest town project since the stealing of the grizzly from Dahl’s.
That memory made him smile. The old man, with typical good grace, had thrown a welcome-home party for the bear once Owen and his teammates
