Her Cowboy Distraction(2)

As Candy left the booth he pulled one of the slices of pie in front of  him and shoved the other to the opposite side, as if anticipating the  arrival of another diner. But, in the four weeks that Lizzy had watched  this ritual, no other diner had ever shown up to sit across from him.

He'd eat his pie, drink his coffee and not make eye contact with anyone  in the place. Then he'd leave and the second piece of untouched pie  would be thrown in the trash. It was a waste of good pie, but more than  that it seemed like such a waste of good man.                       
       
           



       

Lizzy had speculated for the past four weeks each time he'd been in the  café. All she could figure out was that each week he made a date with  somebody he hoped would show up but who never did. Although Lizzy  couldn't imagine a man like him being stood up by any woman with a  beating heart.

Suddenly she wanted to make some kind of contact with him. She'd thought  about him often after the first Friday night she'd seen him and had  watched his actions and that spare piece of pie bite the dust.

You wouldn't dare, a little voice whispered in the back of her head as  an idea began to form. It would be completely rude, wouldn't it? He'd  think you were completely crazy. She tried to talk herself out of the  strong impulse that had sprung into her mind.

But, she would dare. Since her mother's death four months before, Lizzy  was doing a lot of things she would have never considered doing before.

She hadn't even realized she'd made up her mind to follow through on her  impulse when she found herself on her feet, her coffee cup in hand as  she headed for the third booth from the window and the handsome cowboy  who sat all alone.

She didn't give herself a chance to think, to second-guess what she was  doing as she slid into the booth seat across from him and set her coffee  cup on the table next to the extra piece of peach pie.

Gray eyes. She hadn't been close enough to him until now to see the  color of his eyes. His stunning, long-lashed gray eyes stared at her as  if she were a creature from another planet.

She gave him one of her brightest smiles. "As you can see from my name  tag, my name is Lizzy Wiles. Well, actually my name is Elizabeth Wiles,  but everyone has always called me Lizzy."

She noticed he'd already eaten half his slice of pie, and he continued  to stare at her as she picked up the spare fork and took a bite of the  piece of pie in front of her. "It seems such a shame to throw this away  after you leave each week. Personally, my favorite is apple, but Mary  makes a mean pie no matter what kind it is."

Up close he was nothing short of amazing. Chiseled cheekbones and a firm  square jaw radiated masculine strength, but his full lower lip  whispered of something hot and dangerously sexy.

Still, it was his eyes that captured and held her. They were shadowed  pools that, at the moment, simmered not only with a vague astonishment,  but also with an underlying sadness that she hadn't expected, that  seemed to pierce through her very soul.

"So, what's your name, cowboy?" she asked, aware that she sounded like a heroine in a Western romance novel.

The fork he held in his hand had never wavered until now. He carefully  set it down next to his half-eaten pie, his eyes still holding that look  of ambiguous surprise.

Before she realized his intention, he slid out of the booth, walked to  the front door, grabbed his hat and then disappeared out of the café.

She stared after him, horrified that she'd apparently offended a paying  customer to the point he'd left the café. He hadn't even finished his  pie.

Her heart thundering with the feeling that she'd just made a dreadful  mistake, she got up from the booth. What have you done, Lizzy? You  should have just taken your break and minded your own darned business, a  little voice inside her head chided.

She hurried into the kitchen, where she found Mary, the owner of the  café, seated on a stool at a small table while Junior Lempke worked the  grill, his tree-trunk-sized arms bulging beneath a grease-stained  T-shirt.

"Mary, I think I just did something awful," Lizzy said as she pulled up a  stool next to her boss. Lizzy's heart still banged painfully fast as  she looked at Mary.

Mary Mathis was an attractive blonde with soft blue eyes and a beautiful  smile. She not only mothered her ten-year-old son, Matt, but also her  entire staff. "Lizzy, I've only known you a month, but I can't imagine  you ever doing something awful," she replied.

Lizzy's cheeks burned with sudden shame. She should have never listened  to that evil inner voice of hers. "You know that guy who comes in every  Friday night and sits all by himself and orders two pieces of peach pie  and a cup of coffee?"

Mary nodded. "Daniel Jefferson."

Daniel Jefferson. Lizzy now had a name to go with the handsome face and  the hot body. "I ate his peach pie," Lizzy blurted out. "The extra  piece, I mean. It was just a crazy impulse," she added hurriedly. "I'd  watched him every Friday night and nobody ever joined him to eat the  pie, so tonight I decided to."

Mary's blue eyes widened with surprise. "Oh, my goodness. What on earth did he do?"                       
       
           



       

"Nothing. He never said a word to me. He just got up and left the café."

Mary took a sip of her iced tea and gazed at Junior, who was carefully  flipping a burger, a frown of deep concentration across his broad  forehead. "Maybe it's a good thing." She looked back at Lizzy. "Maybe  you shook him up just a little bit. Lord knows that man needs something  other than his grief to think about."

"Grief?"

Mary nodded. "Daniel and his wife, Janice, used to come in here every Friday night for pie and coffee."

Wife. Of course a man who looked like Daniel Jefferson would have a  wife. She frowned at Mary. "But, if he has a wife, then why since I've  been working here does he always come in all alone?"

"About a year and a half ago Janice and her best friend, Cherry Benson,  were killed in a car accident. It was a terrible tragedy, both for  Daniel and the Benson men, who had already lost their parents years ago.  Anyway, every Friday night since Janice's death Daniel has continued  what had been their tradition of coming in for pie and coffee."

"And the pie I ate was meant for his dead wife." Lizzy swallowed hard  against her horror. She felt as if she'd somehow spit on his wife's  grave. "Oh, I feel so awful. I'm so stupid."

"You aren't stupid," Mary replied. "You just didn't know his background."

"What should I do now? How can I make this right?"

Lizzy thought of the sadness she'd seen in his eyes. Grief. It was  definitely an emotion Lizzy understood intimately, still suffered from  when it came to her mother's recent death.

"You should do nothing." Mary got up from her stool and offered Lizzy a  sweet smile. "Stop looking so worried. Daniel is a big boy and you might  want to apologize to him when he comes in here again, but other than  that don't give it another minute of thought."

Easy for her to say, Lizzy thought that night at closing time. She'd  been able to think of nothing but Daniel Jefferson for the rest of the  evening as she'd worked.

He'd lost his wife. What a tragedy and it was obvious he'd loved her  desperately, had shared with her that forever kind of love that Lizzy  had only read about. Almost two years was a long time to grieve, a long  time to keep alive a tradition that kept his dead wife in the forefront  of his mind.

Daniel Jefferson was off-limits for any number of reasons, despite the  fact that just looking at him made her feel a little breathless. Lizzy  wasn't looking for love. She was looking for adventure, fulfilling a  promise she'd made to her dying mother, a promise that would have her  leaving Grady Gulch in the next couple of weeks to continue her journey  of adventure.

Even if she was going to stick around for a while, the worst thing she  could do was indulge in some kind of crazy crush on a man who was caught  up in grief, clinging to a love that could probably never be replaced.  That would be just plain stupid, and Lizzy didn't do stupid.

After closing up the café, Lizzy and two other young women who had  worked that night left the building, walking together to the small  cabins they were temporarily calling home.

Candy stayed in the one on the left of Lizzy's and Courtney Chambers  with her ten-month-old son lived in the cabin on Lizzy's right. The  fourth cabin was occupied by Rusty Albright, a forty-something man who  worked as a cook/manager when Mary wasn't working the kitchen.

Candy was twenty-three years old, five years younger than Lizzy and,  according to what she'd told Lizzy, had moved from a nearby small town  into the cabin to work for Mary and be closer to her boyfriend, who was a  Grady Gulch native.