with.
“I just did.” The doors opened. He nudged her inside and stood there until they closed again. “Goodbye, Ms. Stewart. Have a nice life.”
Chapter One
A few days before Winter Solstice, one year later…
“Hey, Dori, hon, you gonna get over here and fill this coffee cup, or do I have to climb over the counter and get it myself?”
“Keep your pants on, Bill.” Dori set down the tray full of dirty plates, grabbed the coffeepot and hurried to fill the man’s cup. Mort’s Diner, in Crescent Cove, Vermont, was decorated to the max for the holiday season: wreath on the door, fake green garland looped everywhere, cinnamon-and candy-cane-scented candles burned and holiday music played constantly.
Jason was there, sitting in a corner booth, enjoying a sandwich and a cup of cocoa. Watching her. He was there a lot, more often than seemed reasonable. Then again, she didn’t suppose there was much work for the police chief of a small, quiet town like this. Hell, maybe it was vain of her to think he came around just to watch her waiting tables. It had been more than a decade, after all, since he’d held her. Since he’d kissed her.
There was nothing between them anymore.
Dori sighed in relief when she heard the jingle bells over the door and saw Sally walk in. After setting the coffeepot back on the burner, she reached behind her to tug her apron loose as Sally came behind the counter.
“You’re an hour late. Again,” Dori said.
“I’m sorry, Doreen. Little Amy had a doctor’s appointment and I only just got her back home.” She pulled her apron around her and tied it in place.
There was always a reason. Always. And it usually had to do with the woman’s small army of children. “Whatever. I’m out of here.” Dori tossed the apron down, snatched her coat off the rack and went into the back room to collect her sorry excuse for a paycheck from the owner.
But she paused near the door as she heard Bill say, “Damn. You’d think she’d have come down off that high horse by now, wouldn’t you?”
Dori stood still, listening.
“It was a hard fall,” Sally said. “Going from a penthouse in Manhattan to her uncle’s log cabin on the lakeshore. From a high-powered job to slinging hash for lousy tippers like you. Hell, she probably used to earn more in a month than she’s made here in…how long has it been now since Dori came running back here with her tail between her legs?”
Bill didn’t answer. The grown-up version of the boy who’d been her summer fling as a teenager—for several consecutive summers—answered, instead. “Eleven months, three weeks and two days.”
“Think she’s gonna stay for good this time?” Bill asked.
“Wish to hell I knew,” Jason said. And there was something in his voice—something kind of pained.
Dori moved to the swinging door, peered through its porthole-shaped glass. He was still at his table in the corner, staring at the sheet of pink notebook paper he held in one hand. It was old, had been folded so long the creases were darker colored. It looked worn thin. As she stared at it, wondering, he lifted his gaze, and Dori backed away from the door.
“She belongs here,” Sally was saying. “Don’t you worry, Jason. She’s gonna realize that by-and-by.”
Now, why was she saying that? As if Jason had any stake in what Dori decided to do with her life. She’d broken things off with Jason ten years ago—in a Dear John letter….
Written on pink notebook paper.
Something knotted in her belly. She told herself she was being ridiculous, snatched her paycheck from the slotted mail holder on the wall and decided to go out the back door rather than walking through the front of the diner again.
Tugging the hood of her parka up over her head, she trudged through the snow to her car and rolled her eyes when she realized she would have to spend a few minutes brushing snow off it before she could go anywhere.
She missed her Mercedes—the remote starter, the heated leather seats, the warm, snow-free garage where she used to keep it parked. But she pulled her mittens from her pockets and thrust her hands into them. She opened the door to start the engine, grabbed the snow brush and slammed the door hard enough to knock some of the snow off. Then she began brushing. A thin layer of ice lay beneath the two inches of snow, and that required scraping. She hated scraping ice.
An old woman walked past the parking lot, waved at her and called, “Cold enough for you?”
“Plenty,” Dori replied.
“Ah, but cold means clear. It’s done snowing. The stars are going to be beautiful tonight,” the old woman said. And she continued on her way.
Fifteen minutes later, Dori had made a hole on the windshield just big enough to see where she was going, and she was heading out of Crescent Cove proper and toward Uncle Gerald’s cabin on the shore of Lake Champlain.
The lake was moody today, dark and choppy except in the spots where it was beginning to freeze over. She drove into the curving driveway, past the big wooden sign with the image of a green sea serpent and the words Champ Tours: $20.00. She made a mental note to take the sign down. She’d dry-docked the boat and closed up the souvenir shop two months ago. No point leaving the sign up all winter.
Champ—Lake Champlain’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster—had been her uncle’s bread and butter for as long as she could remember. She used to come out here every summer as a teen and work for him as a tour guide, retelling the Champ legends until she knew them all by heart, taking people around the lake until she knew it by heart, as well. And spending every free moment with local boy-next-door Jason Farrar.
He’d been her first lover. It had been innocent and clumsy and wonderful. She would never forget that night. But at the end of her last summer here, she’d left him with nothing except that stupid note, telling him she would never be back, and to look her up in Manhattan if he wanted to. He never had.
She’d meant what she’d written in the note. She had never intended to come back here. She wouldn’t have believed in a million years that she would be forced to revive the old business long after her uncle had retired to Boca Raton. But she’d had no choice. Goddess knew she couldn’t survive on the pittance they paid her waiting tables at the diner.
Yeah, Goddess knew all right. She just didn’t particularly care.
Sighing, Dori shut the car off and got out, hoping she wouldn’t have to scrape the car off again in the morning.
She unlocked the front door and went inside, flipped on the lights, heeled off her boots, shrugged off her coat, tugged off her mittens. She went to the wall to turn up the thermostat, then padded into the living room and sank onto the sofa.
On the opposite wall was a tiny plaque. It depicted a Goddess in silver silhouette against a deep blue background, standing in the curve of an upturned crescent moon. Her arms were raised the way Dori’s used to be in the midst of a circle when she was drawing down the moon. The plaque was the one ritual item she hadn’t been forced to sell.
But she had found
