and her concern was so sincere it was palpable. Most people tended to look right past the waitress, seeing only her sex-on-heels curves and exotic face, but Shelby had always thought the woman had an unpracticed compassion about her, something that made her easy to be around, to talk to, as if she took pride in her ability to care.
She was also one of those girls who looked like she’d had big dreams but somehow life got in the way. Somebody else’s life, Shelby thought sadly, taking in the way she always looked ready to drop everything at a single phone call.
“You aren’t too full for a slice of peach pie now, are you?” Jake’s eyes lit up and Faith slid Shelby a sly, sideway glance. “That is, if it’s all right with your mom.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Shelby stalled, hoping to get some sort of response out of him. He had always kept his feelings close, just like another Tucker she knew. And Shelby wasn’t above using dessert to get him to open up. “Faith’s right, you didn’t eat much dinner and you know the rules.”
“Please,” Jake begged, dragging it out. And for the first time since he’d walked into that kitchen he resembled the sweet kid she loved.
“All right, just this once.”
“Thanks, Mom. You rule.” Jake high-fived Faith.
“One peach pie à la mode, coming right up. And can I get you anything, Shelby? A fresh cup of coffee?”
Shelby looked down. Jake wasn’t the only one who had ignored his meal. Her plate looked like it should be coming out of the kitchen, not being sent back. And her coffee, now cold, was still full to the brim. “No thanks, I’m fine.”
That was the lie of the century. And Faith, as attuned to the turmoil rolling off Shelby as she was at uncovering her customers’ whole life histories, knew it. She shot Shelby a stern we’ll-talk-later look and disappeared through the swinging double doors.
Jake had polished off most of his pie and was currently working on the pool of vanilla ice cream at the bottom of the bowl. Although they hadn’t talked much about anything, and he hadn’t brought up Cody, his shoulders weren’t quite as slumped as when they’d sat down and his face was a little less pinched.
“Coach said that there’s this football camp next month. It’s a whole week and you get to sleep there. In bunk beds. All the guys are going.”
“Sounds like fun,” Shelby said. But it didn’t. She couldn’t imagine Jake being gone for a whole week. He was only nine. Way too young to be going off to sleepover camp. Right? He’d only had his first sleepover at Ryan’s a few months ago. And that was after meeting his family and getting to know them.
“Coach said it would be good for anyone wanting to play first string. Especially me ’cuz I need help with my arm.”
Coach coach coach! Shelby didn’t think Jake needed help with anything. He’d gotten his athletic ability from Cody—thank God—and his willingness to commit wholly of himself from her. She’d only put him in the sport because Silas had convinced her it would be a good way to make friends and feel a part of something. Going in, no one had warned her that football in Sweet Plains—well, the entire state of Texas—was law. Right up there with God, guns, and BBQ.
“I’ll ask your coach about it.”
“He told us to give this to our parents.” Jake rustled through his bag and set a patriotically inspired application on the table.
Shelby looked at the flyer and her heart sank. There, at the top, bold, collegiate letters read, “Tri-County Father/Son Summer Football Bootcamp.”
Shelby peered over the paper at her son. His face said everything he was feeling but couldn’t put into words and Shelby vowed then and there that she would do whatever it took to get her son a daddy. Even at the cost of her heart.
Jake sank back in the booth and spooned at the ice cream, his ready smile from a moment ago gone. “Why did he have to come back now?”
Why indeed. “I don’t know, sweetie. Maybe because he was finally ready to.”
“He didn’t seem ready to me. Seemed like he wanted us gone.”
That he did. Wasn’t going to happen though. “I just don’t think he was expecting us to be there is all. We surprised him.”
“I hate surprises.”
“I know.” Shelby placed a hand over his, struck again by how similar Cody and Jake were. He let her hold it for a minute but quickly snatched it back when Faith reappeared.
“I’m guessing he found his appetite after all.” The waitress took in the empty bowl and winked at Shelby. “I’ll take the licked-clean appearance as a compliment to the chef.”
Jake scrubbed the leftovers off his face with the back of his hand. “It isn’t Ms. Luella’s. But it’s close.”
“Don’t you let Mrs. McKinney hear you say that. The last man that compared those two women’s baking, and found Mrs. McKinney lacking, wound up hog-tied to the church flagpole. On a Sunday.” Faith leaned in and whispered—Jake eating up every word. “Wearing nothing but his tighty-whities and peach pie.”
“No way.”
“Yes, way,” Shelby confirmed. “She went on to take first place in the Summer Sweet Spectacular pie cook-off that year. And those two women have been going back and forth, swapping first and second place, ever since. If Mrs. McKinney wins the pie portion, Ms. Luella’s chili receives the blue ribbon.”
“If you ask me, the judges are just too scared to do anything else,” Faith laughed.
Jake’s eyes widened. “But that’s cheating.”
“Maybe so, JT.” Faith shrugged. “But in a town this size, and with those women, it’s also called smart. Not sure what they’ll do this year with the pie portion being canceled.”
Shelby looked around The B-Cubed, took in the silver pole, mechanical bull, the country-style dance floor, and found herself relaxing a little. Even smiling. Some forty years back, Bartholomew McKinney, fourth-generation owner of The Bluebonnet up and died, buck naked, in the arms of a woman who was definitely not Mrs. McKinney.
The men in town broke out into a riot, one worthy of calling in the National Guard, when Mrs. McKinney, Sunday school teacher and woman scorned, discovered her husband’s family business had more to do with debauchery than doing people’s taxes, and turned the county’s only strip club into an actual eating establishment that followed health codes. They tried to persuade her, shut down her business, run her out of town, anything to get their “gentleman’s” club back.
It only took a few weeks, a public statement that she would be releasing her husband’s clientele list, and one bite of her buttermilk biscuits with sweet-hot pepper jelly to win the townsmen back. And she’d ruled the Sweet Plains culinary world ever since.
“Gina said this year the judging will be impartial and fair. She refuses to be bullied.”
“Mark my words, she’ll cave. They all do. Only a crazy person would be stupid enough to take on a woman defending what’s hers,” Faith added.
“You
