Read the book: «Hometown Honey»

Chapter One

“Only twelve thousand biscuits left to bake,” Cindy Lefler said cheerfully as she popped a baking sheet into the industrial oven at the Miracle Café. Though she loved the smell of fresh-baked biscuits, she had grown weary of the actual baking. One time, she’d tried to figure out how many biscuits she’d baked in her twenty-eight years. It had numbered well into the millions.

“I wish you’d stop counting them down,” grumbled Tonya Dewhurst, who was folding silverware into paper napkins. She was the café’s newest waitress, but Cindy had grown to depend on her very quickly. “You’re the only one who’s happy you’re leaving.”

“I’ll come back to visit.”

“You’ll be too busy being Mrs. Dex Shalimar, lady of leisure,” Tonya said dreamily. “You sure know how to pick husbands.” Then she straightened. “Oh, gosh. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Cindy patted Tonya’s shoulder. “It’s okay, I know what you mean.”

She still felt a pang over losing Jim, which was only natural, she told herself. The disagreement between her husband’s truck and a freight train had happened only a year ago. But she had picked a good one when she’d married him. And she’d gotten just plain lucky finding Dex.

“It’s almost six,” Cindy said. “Would you unlock the front door and turn on the Open sign, please?” A couple of the other waitresses, Iris and Kate, had arrived and were going through their morning routines. Iris had worked at the café for more than twenty years, Kate almost as long.

Tonya smiled. “Sure. Um, Cindy, do you have a buyer for the café yet?”

“Dex says he has some serious nibbles.”

“I just hope the new owner will let me bring Micton to work with me.”

Cindy cringed every time she heard that name. Tonya had thought it was so cute naming her baby with a combination of hers and her husband’s names—Mick and Tonya. Micton. Yikes! It was the type of backwoods logic that made Cindy want to leave Cottonwood.

Customers were actually waiting in line when Tonya opened the door—farmers and ranchers, mostly, in jeans and overalls, Stetsons and gimme hats, here to get a hearty breakfast and exchange gossip. Cindy went to work on the Daily Specials chalkboard, suspended high above the cash register.

“’Morning, Ms. Cindy.”

She very nearly fell off her stepladder. Still, she managed to call out a very pleasant, “’Morning, Luke.” The handsome sheriff’s deputy always unnerved her. He showed up at 6:10 a.m., like clockwork, five days a week, and ordered the same thing—one biscuit with honey and black coffee. But every single time she saw him sitting there at the counter, that knowing grin on his face, she felt a flutter of surprise.

Kate rushed over from clearing a table to pour Luke his coffee and take his order. The woman was in her sixties. at least, but Cindy could swear Kate blushed as she served Luke. He just had that effect on women, herself included. Even now, when she was engaged—hell, even when she’d been married to a man she’d loved fiercely—just looking at Luke made her pulse quicken and her face warm.

She refused to blame herself. It was just hormones. The man was sexier than the devil himself, with that curly chestnut hair and those eyes, green and dark as a cool, mossy pond. In high school, he’d worn his hair long and unruly, sometimes past his shoulders, as part of his go-to-hell image. He’d made girls drool back then when he was still a skinny teenager. He’d inspired Cindy to do a lot more than drool. Now, with that uniform and the wide shoulders to fill it out and the hair cut shorter in a futile attempt to tame it, he was even more mouthwatering.

“So, how are the wedding plans coming along?” Luke asked Cindy. A bystander might assume the question was borne of polite curiosity, but Cindy knew better. Luke Rheems had despised Dexter Shalimar on sight, and he never missed an opportunity to subtly remind Cindy that he thought she was a fool for marrying Dex.

“There aren’t many plans for me to make,” Cindy said breezily. “Dex is handling all the arrangements. We’re flying to Lake Tahoe, getting married in a little chapel in the mountains and then Dex is going to teach me to ski.” It was the sort of vacation she’d always dreamed of. She and Jim had visited Lake Tahoe before, of course. She’d gasped at the breathtaking scenery, the opulent homes, the flashy casinos. But there’d been no money for skiing or gambling, and they’d slept either in their truck or at a cheap motel.

This time, her honeymoon would be four-star hotels, fancy meals, private skiing lessons.

“Dex handles a lot for you, doesn’t he? The sale of your restaurant and your house, your wedding, your honeymoon. He’s chosen where you’ll live—”

“Dex is in real estate,” Cindy broke in, climbing down from the stepladder. She couldn’t spell and argue with Luke at the same time. “Why shouldn’t he handle my real-estate transactions? It’s what he’s good at. As for our home, yes, he did pick it out and furnish it. But I’m no good at decorating—he hired an expert to do that. Anyway, I’ve seen it and it’s perfect. A no-fuss penthouse with all maintenance taken care of.”

“And no backyard. Where will Adam play?”

She lowered her voice, getting truly irritated. “Don’t you start laying that guilt trip on me. My son is going to have a fabulous childhood. Dex has business all over the globe, so we’ll all travel the world together. Adam will meet and play with children of all cultures. He’ll frolic in alpine meadows and on Jamaican beaches. He’ll sample fresh foods from Italy and Indonesia. You act like he’ll be deprived simply because he doesn’t have a postage stamp of grass to call his own.”

“I happen to believe a child does need a few blades of grass to call his own.”

“And when you have a child of your own, you can raise him in a little backyard like a rabbit in his hutch. With the same view, seeing the same people, eating the same foods day in and day out.” She knew she should stop there, but he’d hit her hot button. “And he’ll grow up to be just as closed-minded and provincial as everybody else in this town, afraid of anything that’s strange or foreign or the slightest bit different.”

Luke arched one eyebrow at her, surprised by her outburst. “Is that how you see your Cottonwood neighbors? A bunch of ignorant, closed-minded xenophobes?”

Cindy was embarrassed to admit she didn’t know what xenophobe meant. But that was part of her point—and part of why she wanted something different for Adam. Sure, she’d traveled the country, but she’d never been to college. She wasn’t well read. She didn’t know anything about stylish clothes or entertaining or even how to fix her hair, which was currently pulled back in a loose ponytail. Dex had never criticized, but if she was going to be the wife of a high-society millionaire, she was going to have to work on her shortcomings.

To mask her ignorance, she changed the subject. “You’re just raining on my parade because you’re jealous.”

“Jealous? Oh, yeah, right. Of Dex? He’s a pencil-neck weenie.”

“Now you are obviously desperate, resorting to name-calling. By the way, I never heard the results of your big investigation into Dex’s background. You were going to uncover all his terrible secrets, right? The three other wives, the jail time, the sixteen illegitimate children?”

At least Luke had the good grace to look slightly ashamed. “He checked out,” was all he said.

As Cindy had known he would. She hadn’t just fallen off the turnip truck yesterday. She’d done a little checking of her own. Dexter Shalimar, though notoriously publicity wary and camera shy, was considered Houston’s hottest bachelor and one of its richest residents. His company, Shalimar Holdings, was one of the largest privately owned real-estate-development companies in the nation and one of the few that didn’t take a terrible beating during the recent recession. He’d never been married, had no children, had never been arrested. He was a major contributor to several charities and had come in seventeenth last year in the Boston Marathon. What was not to like?

As to whether she loved him—well, that was another matter. Jim would always occupy a very special place in her heart, and he couldn’t be shoved aside. But she was very, very fond of Dex, Adam seemed to adore him and she knew of many strong marriages based on mutual respect and affection.

Luke finished his biscuit and took his coffee in a to-go cup, as always. At about seven-thirty, the town-square business owners started arriving. Then, a little later, the moms who’d gotten their kids off to school showed up, along with the retirees. The breakfast trade had hardly let up before the early lunch crowd started trickling in.

It was a good, busy morning. But then, the café had always been a moneymaker. An unofficial historic landmark, it had supported Cindy’s family comfortably for generations. Still, Cindy had never felt any real attachment to the business. She’d worked here evenings and weekends and summers since she could remember, with the exception of the eight years she’d traveled the country with Jim in his 18-wheeler. To her, the Miracle Café meant turning down every other opportunity that had come her way—cheerleading, drama club, soccer. Her parents had worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week, and she’d been expected to follow suit.

The workload had only gotten worse since her mother’s death. As the sole owner, Cindy found it nearly impossible to take a long weekend, much less ramble around the country.

Now that she had Adam, she thought as she transferred a selection of meringue pies from cooling racks in the kitchen to the glass-fronted bakery case out front, the café was even more confining. She brought the baby to work with her, as Tonya did, where all the waitresses and even the busboys took turns spoiling him. But Cindy herself was so busy, she didn’t feel as if she spent enough time with him.

That would all change in a couple of months, she thought with a warm glow. She would travel from one adventure to another, the way she’d always dreamed. And once she and Dex were married, she was going to travel with him—she and Adam. She’d seen a lot of her own country before Jim’s death. Now, the world would be her oyster.

“Cindy?” It was Tonya, a water pitcher in one hand, menus in the other. “Those two ladies in booth three want to speak to you.”

Cindy glanced over to the booth by the window. In it sat two women, both blond, both obviously not from Cottonwood. One was dressed in a business suit, her artfully highlighted hair twisted into a complicated configuration atop her head. The other had really funky, spiky, frosted hair and an abundance of silver jewelry.

Could be a real-estate agent and her client, she thought optimistically. Cindy smoothed her apron, wiped her hands on a towel and, with a parting glance at Luke that told him to stop messing with her, she approached the women.

“Hello,” she said brightly. “I’m Cindy Lefler, owner of the Miracle Café.” She stretched her hand out in greeting to the one in the business suit.

The other woman squeezed her hand briefly. She didn’t smile. “Sonya Patterson. And this is Brenna Thompson. Please, could you sit down?” She indicated the red vinyl banquette across from her.

Cindy sat next to the one called Brenna, feeling apprehensive. “What can I do for you?”

Sonya set a leather briefcase on the table and snapped open the locks. She withdrew a color photo and slid it across the table toward Cindy. “Do you know this man?”

The photo was a bit blurry, as if it had been blown up. Clearly the man in the picture had had his arm around someone else, who’d been cropped out.

“Of course. That’s my fiancé, Dexter Shalimar,” Cindy said tightly.

Sonya’s eyes seemed to grow brighter and Brenna sat forward slightly. “The real-estate tycoon?” Brenna asked. “That Dexter Shalimar?”

“Yes. Is it so unbelievable that he would want to marry a waitress?”

Neither woman answered Cindy’s question. Instead Sonya asked, “Do you know where he is? Right this moment, I mean?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s in Malaysia on a business trip. Look, what is this about?” Cindy had an unpleasant crawly sensation at the back of her neck.

Sonya sank back in her seat. “Oh, I hope I’m not too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this except to just blurt it out. The man in that photo is not Dexter Shalimar. His name is Marvin Carter and he’s a con man.”

Cindy’s face grew hot. “I don’t know who you think you are or what you’re trying to pull, but Dexter Shalimar is no con man. Would a con man give a woman a ring like this?” She always tucked her three-carat engagement ring into her pocket while she was working. She pulled it out now and flashed the enormous pear-shaped diamond under Sonya’s nose.

Sonya gave the ring a perfunctory glance. “Hmm. It looks a lot like mine.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a ring that was identical to Cindy’s.

“And mine.” Brenna opened her leather backpack and also produced a similar ring.

“I assume you haven’t had it appraised,” Sonya said. “It’s a cubic zirconia. Worth about twenty-eight bucks. I think he buys them by the gross.”

“I don’t believe you,” Cindy said flatly. “He is Dex Shalimar. He drives a Porsche 911. He’s just bought us a million-dollar penthouse. I’ve been there.”

“Oh, the penthouse on Riva Row?” asked Sonya. “That would be my penthouse. Or it used to be mine, until he sold it out from under me, pocketed the cash and skipped town.”

Cindy’s head was beginning to buzz. This couldn’t be true—it just couldn’t be. “I want you to leave,” Cindy said frostily.

“Of course.” Sonya flashed her a sympathetic smile. “I know how hard this is, believe me. But check your bank accounts. If there’s still any money in them, count yourself lucky. And change your account numbers.”

Sonya slid out of the booth. Brenna scrambled after her. They both looked at Cindy sadly, as if she were a puppy they were leaving behind at the dog pound. Then they left the café, Sonya’s heels tapping on the linoleum floor.

Cindy just sat there. Should she try to get in touch with Dex, tell him two mad women were running around maligning him? He’d said he would be out of touch. But surely his company would know how to contact him.

Then an awful, alien thought stirred in her brain. She should call the bank. Just to be sure.

Someone scooted into the booth across from her. She looked up to see Luke Rheems, his handsome face etched with concern. “Cindy? You okay? Who were those women?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine? And those women are nutcases. You should keep an eye on them, Luke. They’re up to no good.” Then she stood up and made a hasty escape before her panic took control of her and she started screaming.

Keeping her gaze straight ahead, not acknowledging any customers’ or employees’ looks of concern, she headed for her office and slipped inside. Both Adam and Micton were napping, thank heavens. Micton was still tiny and slept most of the time, anyway. Adam, however, had just turned fourteen months, and he was getting more active by the minute. Soon he would be too much to handle at work, and she would have to find a full-time babysitter.

She paused a moment to watch her son sleeping, his thumb in his mouth, his favorite blanky clutched in his other hand. He was the light of her life. She’d never expected to enjoy motherhood. But she’d taken to it like a hog to mud, proving that she did in fact have at least one domestic bone in her body, contrary to what her parents had always said.

Enough distraction. She had to call the bank. And then, when she heard everything was as it should be, she could laugh off her momentary worries.

Cindy found the number in her Rolodex, then dialed. She asked for her personal banker, Mary Dietz.

“Oh, hi, Cindy. It’s nice to hear from you. How can I help you?”

Cindy made her request to check the balance in her checking account. It was exactly where it should be, seven hundred and change. She breathed a little easier.

“And my money-market fund?”

There was a long silence. “That account is closed.”

“No, you’re thinking of my mother’s account. I closed that out last year when her estate was settled. I’m talking about my personal savings account. Here’s the number.” She rattled off the long account number.

Another long silence. “Cindy, Mr. Shalimar closed that account last week. I handled it personally. He said you were investing the funds into real estate.”

That buzz was starting up in Cindy’s head again. “Are you sure?” But she knew that was a stupid question. Mary didn’t make mistakes.

“Oh, my gosh, of course,” Cindy said, masking her panic as best she could. “I forgot he was going to do that. Okay, never mind. Sorry I bothered you.” She hung up.

Could it possibly be true, what those women had told her? That Dex wasn’t Dex at all, but someone named Marvin who’d given her a fake ring, shown her a penthouse that wasn’t even his and made off with close to three-quarters of a million dollars—Jim’s entire life-insurance benefit, her parents’ life savings and both her and Jim’s savings?

She picked up the phone again, frantically dialing Dex’s cell number. She got a recording that the number wasn’t valid. She dialed again, thinking she must have misdialed in her haste. But she got the same result.

On a mission now, she pulled the Houston phone book from her bottom desk drawer and looked up the number for Shalimar Holdings. Dex had always told her not to bother calling him at the office, where she would have to wade through layers of receptionists and secretaries to get to him. His cell was always on, always with him and a much easier way to reach him.

She dialed the business number, reached a secretary. “This is an emergency. I really, really need to get word to Dexter Shalimar. Does he have an assistant or someone I could talk to?”

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“This is Cindy Lefler, his fiancée. I know he’s in Malaysia, but surely you people have a way of getting through to him in an emergency?”

Long silence. “Mr. Shalimar is not in Malaysia. Nor does he have a fiancée named Cindy or anything else. Shall I transfer your call to security?”

Cindy couldn’t speak. She simply hung up the phone.

She had to get out of here, go home, pull herself together. She couldn’t let her customers or employees see her falling apart. She couldn’t let anyone know what was happening until she’d figured it out for herself.

She packed up Adam’s diaper bag and her purse and car keys, then gently picked up Adam from his playpen. He stirred slightly, then opened his eyes and blinked blearily at her.

She cuddled him against her shoulder. Thank goodness he wasn’t a cranky baby. He was very adaptable, willing to sleep anywhere, eat anything, play with whatever was on hand, allow anyone to hold him. He would be a fabulous traveling companion, she’d told herself many times.

She ducked into the kitchen long enough to tell her cook, Manson Grable, that she was going home because she didn’t feel well.

“Is there anything I can do?” Manson asked. He was sixty, portly, round faced and had worked for the Miracle Café his whole adult life. “Can I send you home with some chicken soup?”

“I’ll be fine—just a headache.” She forced a smile and had almost made it out the back door when a booming voice from the dining room snagged her attention.

“I’m looking for Cindy Lefler!”

She considered escaping, then decided it might be important. With a heavy heart, she walked back through the kitchen and out the swinging doors into the dining room.

Standing in the middle of the dining room, looking something like King Henry VIII in madras shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops, was the man who’d spoken.

“Hi, I’m Cindy Lefler,” Cindy said, lacking her usual smiling hospitality. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Ed LaRue.”

She looked at him blankly. The name meant nothing to her.

“I’m the new owner of the Miracle Café,” he continued, still grinning. “Soon to be Ed’s Enchilada Emporium!”