Timber Creek (Sierra Falls 2)

Laura sat up straight. “I do not. I was just thinking. ”

“About Eddie. ” Pearl tittered.

Ruby tried to hide her grin. “Last time I saw sparks like that, Bear and Edith got engaged. ”

“I do love a wedding. ”

“Promise you’ll have it in spring,” Ruby cooed.

Pearl gasped. “The waterfall is so pretty in spring. ”

Laura gave it up. As the sisters smiled and nodded, she considered sparks. Well, of course there were some sparks between them. There always had been. The only thing was, while once Eddie had been just the sexy bad boy, now he was tanned and strong and all man. He looked more delicious than any cake.

And he wasn’t her type.

Right?

Fourteen

Helen cleared her last table of the lunch rush. “Thanks,” she muttered, seeing the tip. Two dollars on a twenty-dollar check. She pocketed it with a frown. “Ten percent. That’ll pay the gas bill, for sure. ”

She carried the dishes into the kitchen, and Billy and Sorrow snapped apart when they saw her. There wouldn’t be many more patrons till dinner, and they’d been taking advantage of the lull by doing some canoodling, Sorrow’s untouched sandwich beside her on the counter.

“You could get a room,” she said with a smirk. “It is a lodge, after all. ”

But then her gut churned. Her husband was out there, somewhere. Maybe he’d gotten a room—some seedy place to share with a girlfriend.

Because there had to be a girlfriend. Why else hadn’t he come home again last night?

She kept herself looking good, and when that hadn’t worked, she flirted with other men to show him proof of how desirable she could be, but that hadn’t worked, either. She didn’t know what else she could do to make herself attractive to him.

Billy laughed at her comment, clueless to her turmoil. “A room? Now there’s an idea. ” He never took anything personally—he’d been wearing a permanent ear-to-ear grin ever since he and Sorrow had become engaged. He stood behind her now, nibbling her neck as she attacked her sandwich. “Whaddya say? We could get started on that basketball team. ”

Helen loaded up the dishes as quickly as she could. “I’ll give you some space,” she muttered, getting out of there.

The two of them…it was too hard to watch sometimes. Had she and Rob ever been like that? She thought maybe so, in the early days. They’d ended up with three kids somehow.

The jokes about Billy and Sorrow’s future kids began after he’d bought her that big Excursion, when Laura wrecked the old car. Helen was happy for them—really she was—but it sure was hard to watch the carefree way Sorrow had taken to that fancy new SUV. The Baileys griped about money, but the way the girl had slid into that new Ford, it seemed like it was nothing for her to have a brand-spanking-new car, like she was entitled to such a thing.

But then there’d been her own accident around the same time. She’d hit a patch of black ice and slid into another car, and like that, the hood of her old Dodge had folded up like an accordion, no good to nobody. But had Robbie gone out and gotten her the keys to some fancy new car, crowing about how he needed her safe at all costs? No, the man had snapped at her, some distant look on his face, his eyes empty but for an anger she’d begun to see more and more frequently.

So she’d taken on an extra shift, carrying her own anger, lodged in her heart like a splinter she couldn’t pluck free.

She grabbed the carafe and made a pass through the dining room, refilling coffees, all the while surreptitiously taking stock of the few women in the room. Are you her? she wondered, studying each face. Are you the woman my Rob is sleeping with?

The bell on the door dinged, and in walked Damien Simmons. He was unaware of her eyes on him as he scanned the room and chose a booth.

It was a surprise how he hadn’t stopped coming to the tavern after all that’d passed between his family and the Baileys. She guessed he needed this community more than he let on. He’d taken his breakup with Sorrow better than anyone had expected, though she supposed it was easy not to be too proud when you were as handsome and as rich as Damien.

His eyes met hers, lasering in like he’d known all along she’d been watching. “Hey, Helen, you all right?”

She caught herself just standing there and jumped into action. “Yeah, sorry. ” She scampered over to hand him a menu.

She grabbed the pitcher of ice water and filled his glass. “Do you need to take a look, or is it the usual?” The guy was a fitness freak, and it was always a chef’s salad, hold the bread, and the day’s meat special on the side. “The dinner special’s not up yet, but we’ve got some pot roast from last night I could serve up. ”

“Sounds perfect. ” He gave the menu a quick glance, then handed it back to her. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Of course. ” She brightened her smile—it was what men wanted, wasn’t it? Pretty, smiling faces? And Damien was an especially good tipper, so best not to jeopardize that. “I am, now that you’re here. ” She winked.