the time to flash through Beau’s mind.
He was about to die.
Good.
Allegra would grow up without a father. Tragic, but ultimately better for her.
The semi rammed into the side of the limousine with the earth-shattering force of a bomb and their screams rose up in a chorus of terror and agony.
As Beau’s world spun out of control and then went black, one face filled his mind’s eye. One beautiful image ushered him through the excruciating pain and fear and into the next life, if there was a next life for the sorry likes of him, which there probably wasn’t.
He saw the bright amber eyes, heard the joyous laughter and felt the love.
Jillian. God, I loved you. You never knew how much.
She smiled at him and he rejoiced at what was now and had always been the most beautiful sight in his life. And then he died.
Chapter 2
Six months later
“Someone’s leased the Foster place.” Blanche Rousseau, vibrating with excitement over today’s gossip, hurried into the kitchen with a brown bag of groceries in each arm.
“Really?”
Jillian Warner paused in her relentless kneading of bread dough and eased the curtains aside. Peering out the window over the sink, she surveyed the Foster place, perched atop the tree-dotted hill at the end of their street.
She half expected to see a moving van speed by, buuuut…no.
Nothing about the massive and weathered white house looked any different in today’s midmorning light. The wide veranda still begged for a fresh coat of paint, and so did the columns. The bushes, as usual, were overgrown monstrosities that would soon reach out to grab unsuspecting children who wandered too close, and the windows were still vacant and eerie.
She was about to return to her dough when a distant flash of movement caught her eye. A big black dog—a standard poodle, maybe—rounded the Foster place, barking with excitement. Oh, and was that the tail end of some sort of SUV in the driveway?
Maybe, but who really cared?
Jillian let the curtain drop and attacked her dough again. They didn’t have time for gossip when there was bread to be made and meals to be cooked for ten hungry guests.
Blanche, meanwhile, set the bags on the wooden counter and surveyed Jillian’s progress with pursed bubblegum-pink lips.
Oh, Lord. What now? Jillian tried to concentrate on her task, but there was no ignoring Blanche—not the blue-beaded chain of her cat’s-eye glasses, her white-blond teased beehive circa 1962 or her plump frame squeezed into electric-blue stretch pants and a matching jacket—especially when she got in a mood.
Finally Jillian looked up, exasperated. “What?”
“You need to ease up on that dough, honey,” Blanche drawled, her lilting Louisiana tones thick with disapproval. “You trying to make shoe leather or dinner rolls?”
“This may surprise you, Blanche, but I’ve made a decent batch of rolls once or twice in my life.”
“That does surprise me,” Blanche muttered, now eyeing Jillian’s work with raised brows. Clicking her tongue, she moved along the counter.
Jillian glared after her, irritated.
Sometime soon she’d have to break the sad news to Blanche—that she was not, in fact, Queen of the Universe here at the historic Twin Oaks Bed & Breakfast outside Atlanta—but for now she’d let this latest insubordination pass.
Though she hadn’t been listed on the contract for sale Jillian signed three years ago when she moved here from Virginia, Blanche had come with the B & B, just like the dormer windows, railed porch with rockers and twelve bedrooms.
Jillian was new to running the B & B and Blanche was…well, old. Since Jillian needed Blanche’s experience and expertise, Jillian spent a lot of time swallowing her retorts.
Jillian floured the counter and reached for the rolling pin. “So who bought the house?”
“No one over at the grocery knows.” Blanche rummaged in one bag and produced several dozen eggs and a couple pounds of butter. “Must be someone with a lot of money, though, ’cause that place needs some W-O-R-K. Maybe it’s a nice man for you. Now that you’re dating and all.”
Jillian rolled her eyes. She’d wondered how long it’d take Blanche to raise this topic and was surprised it had required—what?—fifty whole seconds.
“I am not dating,” she said, now using a floured glass to cut dough rounds and place them on the baking sheet. “I had one dinner with a man—”
“And coffee with him last week. Coffee plus dinner equals dating.”
“I don’t date,” Jillian said flatly. “I meet the occasional nice man and have dinner.”
“Very occasional.” Blanche’s backside poked in all its considerable glory from the depths of the refrigerator, where she was now arranging food. “Since this is the first man I’ve seen you have dinner with in three years.”
Affronted because there was no need for such an unvarnished recitation of the sorry state of Jillian’s love life this early in the day, she put the glass down and frowned at Blanche.
“You just focus on baking that chicken for lunch, okay?”
“No sex.” Blanche emerged from the fridge and pulled a tragic face on Jillian’s behalf. “No fried chicken. All work, no fun. No wonder you’re so uptight all the time. You haven’t got much to live for, far as I can tell.”
Jillian laughed, but it was as hollow as most of her laughter these days. Something inside her had broken and, three years later, she still hadn’t found a way to fix it. Maybe it was time to face the fact that the old Jillian, the happy one, was damaged beyond repair.
The funny thing was, she didn’t really care. Here at the B & B, which she’d bought with her divorce settlement because she didn’t want to return to practicing law and she needed something to do now that she was no longer the first lady of Virginia, she’d built something more lasting than happiness: peace, personal satisfaction and self-sufficiency. Even better, she’d found a mother’s pleasure in seeing her child discover the world.
Wasn’t that good enough?
She knew how to meet a payroll and balance the books, manage several employees, feed up to thirty people in the dining room, unclog a toilet, install storm doors and bandage scraped knees. Best of all, Allegra was happy and healthy.
Those were the important things. As long as they were on track, it didn’t matter that Jillian felt dead inside—when she felt anything at all.
A clatter in the hall jarred Jillian out of her thoughts and she looked around in time to see Barbara Jean,
