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  “Don’t let Gabriella hear you call her a little girl,” Jude warned seriously. “She’s certainly more woman than you ever went out with—except for maybe that Julia Tierney.”

  Something within Liam tensed at the mere mention of Julia’s name. It always did. Everyone had at least one person they thought of as “the one that got away.” Julia was his.

  “He never went out with Julia,” Toby told Jude.

  Jude looked a little confused. “I thought Liam asked every girl in his senior class out,” Jude said.

  “He did ask,” Toby answered, keeping a straight face. “But Julia was the only one with the good sense to turn him down.” He turned his sharp blue eyes on Liam. “That wounded your fragile pride, didn’t it, big brother?”

  “Shut up, both of you,” Liam ordered in a flat, emotionless voice. “And for the record, my pride’s not fragile and it wasn’t wounded. Not going out with me was Julia’s loss, not the other way around,” he informed his brothers in a no-nonsense voice.

  He saw Toby’s mouth drop open and wondered why since he hadn’t exactly said anything earth-shattering or that novel for that matter. The next moment, both his brothers were scrambling to their feet, as if, belatedly, to show their respect.

  “Funny, I remember it the other way around,” a melodic female voice behind Liam’s chair said.

  Caught off guard, Liam swung around so fast he almost caused his chair to tilt and deposit him on the sawdust floor. He managed to steady the chair at the very last moment, preventing a spill and a great deal of embarrassment on his part.

  The object of their conversation was smiling a greeting at his brothers.

  *

  Julia had stopped by the Horseback Hollow Grill with a definite agenda in mind. The Grill was the town’s only restaurant and she had just happened upon a situation that could very well enable her to bring a second eatery to the small town.

  She had been looking at The Grill with fresh eyes, as if she’d never seen the place before, when she’d heard Liam Jones making a commotion as he banged down his mug. Curiosity had prompted her to move closer to his table to find out what was going on. Ordinarily she would have kept to herself, but she was feeling hopeful about her future for the first time in a long time, so she’d decided to indulge herself and find out what the man was carrying on about.

  He had certainly changed a lot since their high school days, she couldn’t help thinking. His build had gotten way more muscular and his tan appeared to be permanent, no doubt from his days on the ranch. But what he had gained in looks, he had lost in temperament. From the little bit she had caught, he sounded as though he was well on his way to becoming a grumpy old man, not the exciting, wild-eyed bad boy she had known in high school.

  “Hello, boys. How are you?” she asked, looking at Toby and Jude. Then, as they nodded, offering almost a synchronized chorus of “Fine, how are you?” she looked at Toby. Her blue eyes crinkled as she asked, “How are the kids, Toby?”

  “They’re doing great, thanks for asking,” Toby told her, beaming.

  She didn’t leave it there, although she knew she could have. But she was serious in asking after the children Toby had selflessly taken in—surprising a lot of people—and she wanted Toby to be aware of something.

  “You’re doing a good thing, Toby, taking those children in like that,” she said warmly. “Kids need to feel wanted. It anchors them.”

  *

  So now she was dispensing child-rearing advice? Liam thought. Well that went with the territory, didn’t it? Julia had always acted as if she felt she was above him and, by association, above his family, as well.

  “Since when did you start dabbling in child psychology?” Liam asked, acutely aware that the one girl in high school who had actually hurt his budding male ego was still going out of her way to ignore him. And even more acutely aware that no matter how much he tried not to let it bother him—it did.

  “That’s not psychology, that’s just common sense, Jones—or should I say Fortune Jones?” she asked, the corners of her mouth curving as she looked at him.

  “Might just be wiser not to say anything at all,” Liam countered.

  Jude and Toby exchanged looks and pushed their chairs in against the table.

  “I think that’s our cue to leave,” Jude said to his younger brother. He then tipped the rim of his hat to Julia. “Nice seeing you again, Julia.”

  “Yeah, see you around,” Toby echoed his brother, tipping his own hat belatedly.

  Liam waited until his brothers had walked out of the bar before he said, “If you’re expecting to hear the same from me, you’re going to have to wait until hell freezes over.”

  Rather than be affronted, Julia smiled up at Liam. “I’ve never expected anything from you, Liam, except exactly what you delivered. Which was nothing,” she added after a beat in case there was any question as to her meaning.

  He was not about to take the bait, he told himself. Instead he said mildly, “Been sharpening that tongue of yours, I see.”

  Julia inclined her head. “I guess you just bring out the worst in me, Jones.”

  He appeared unfazed by her assessment. “I didn’t know there was anything else to bring out,” he replied mildly.

  “Is that why you asked me out that time in high school?” she questioned with a knowing smile. She had been more than a little attracted to him at the time, but he had always had all these simpering girls around him, ready to do anything he asked just to be with him. It had been enough to turn her completely off. There was absolutely no way she would have ever allowed herself to be part of an adoring crowd, a devoted groupie like the others. Liam had had a large enough ego back then without her adding to it.

  “Anyone else would have realized that I’d asked you out because I didn’t want you to feel left out and wonder if there was something wrong with you. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “There’s a difference between being left out of a crowd and being superior to the crowd. You seemed to thrive on having all those girls fawn over you and, frankly, I never saw what all the attraction was so I never wanted to join that very limited club,” she informed him. There was no way in heaven she’d admit to being attracted to him then—and she was even more unwilling to admit that the attraction had never really faded away.

  His eyes narrowed, pinning her down. “For someone who didn’t want to join the club, I sure caught you looking at me enough times,” he recalled.

  “Yes, I looked at you,” she admitted. “But if you’d actually looked back at me, you would have realized that was pity in my eyes, not admiration.” She shook her head, her long, straight hair moving like a mesmerizing red cloud as it framed her face. “But you just assumed that all the girls were so crazy about you.”

  This could go on for hours. Though he would have never admitted it out loud, they were pretty evenly matched and he wasn’t about to get the best of her any time soon. She might not have anything else to do—since she was obviously not rushing back to the grocery store she managed for her ailing father—but he had a ranch to run.

  “I don’t have time for this,” he declared abruptly.

  “You never did have time for the truth,” he heard her say as he turned his back on her and walked out of the bar.

  It took Liam a while to cool down. Longer than the trip back to the ranch. Julia Tierney was the one person in town who could raise his blood pressure to dangerous heights with no effort at all.

  She could also do the same thing to his body temperature.

  Chapter Two

  As was her custom six days a week, Julia came down from the small apartment above the store where she lived at exactly 7:00 a.m. to unlock the front door to the Horseback Hollow Superette, the town’s only grocery store, which had been in her family for several generations. It was also the only grocery store for thirty miles.

  The store served its customers from seven until seven Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, the hours were
somewhat shorter. However, since Julia did live just above the grocery store, she could always be reached in case someone had a “food emergency” of some sort—such as relatives showing up for a forgotten dinner just when the cupboard was bare.

  Running the family business had not been what she’d envisioned doing with her life when she had been a senior in high school, but this was—at least for now—the plan that life seemed to have in store for her.

  Twelve years ago she had been all set to go away to an out-of-state college with an eye out to someday perhaps owning her own restaurant. She’d loved to cook ever since she could reach the top of the stove without the benefit of using a stool. She could still remember the very first thing she had prepared for her parents: cinnamon toast. At four she’d been proud enough to burst at what she’d viewed to be a major accomplishment: toast buttered on both sides with a dusting of cinnamon.

  Her parents had been nothing but encouraging and supportive from the start, telling her there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do or become if she set her mind to it.

  And then, just like that, her world had come crashing down all around her.

  Right before she was to leave for her first semester at college, her father had had a heart attack. For a while it was touch and go and the doctors weren’t sure if he would pull through. There was no way she could leave him or her mother at a time like that.

  And even when her father began to come around, she found more than a ton of reasons that kept her right where she was. Between concern over her father’s health and trying to keep up her mother’s morale—not to mention because her parents needed the income to pay for her father’s medical bills—there was no way she could find the time to go away to school. Her family needed her too much and she’d refused to leave them high and dry.

  Though they always had part-time help at the Superette, there was really no one else to keep things going. Math had always been her mother’s undoing.

  So Julia had stayed on, putting her dream on hold—which sounded a good deal better to her than saying that she was giving up her dream—and doing what needed to be done.

  Looking back now, that almost seemed like a lifetime ago to her.

  With time, her father, Jack, had improved somewhat, although he was never again the hale-and-hearty man he’d been before the heart attack. And eventually, she’d seen the color come back into her mother’s face to the point that Annie Tierney no longer looked as if she was auditioning for the part of a ghost.

  As for herself, she’d gone from being a carefree, whimsical young girl to being a practical, pragmatic young woman with the weight of the world occasionally on her shoulders.

  But she managed. She always managed.

  Those years had also seen her married and then divorced, neither of which happened with a great deal of emotion or fanfare. Marrying Neal Baxter, a local boy who had just returned to Horseback Hollow to practice law after getting his degree, seemed like the right thing to do at the time. She and Neal were friends and Julia had honestly believed that having a friend to go through life with was a smart thing to do.

  But a few years into the marriage, a marriage that seemed to be built on little more than mutual respect and a whole lot of boredom, she and Neal came to the conclusion that they really liked one another far too much to be trapped in something that promised no joy to either of them.

  So an uncontested, amicable divorce settlement was quickly and quietly reached. They each came away with whatever they had brought into the marriage.

  It was a case of no harm, no foul, except that Julia had learned that dreaming about things you couldn’t have—such as a passionate marriage—really did hurt.

  After that, the store became her haven, her home base. It was the one thing she could always depend on to be there. After a time her job became so ingrained she went about her day’s work routine practically on autopilot.

  Before unlocking the door, she first prepared the store for customers. Produce was put out and carefully arranged in the appropriate bins. The breads, pastries and especially the doughnuts were baked fresh every morning—she saw to that even though it meant she had to get up extremely early to get the goodies to the store in time to arrange the display. It was her one creative outlet and she looked forward to the scents of sugar and butter in her kitchen each morning.

  Aside from that, there were always a hundred different little details to see to and Julia kept a running checklist in her head at all times, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.

  She did all this by herself and even, at times, found the solitude of the store comforting at that hour.

  So when she saw her mother in the store, Julia was more than a little surprised. Her mother was sweeping the aisles, a chore Julia normally took care of just before opening, a full hour before she normally came in. Annie always arrived after having made breakfast for her husband.

  Judging by her presence—not to mention the look on her mother’s face—something was definitely up.

  Julia approached the problem—because there had to be a problem—slowly by asking, “Mom, what are you doing here?”

  Looking far from her normally sunny self, Annie answered, “It’s my store. I work here. Or have you forgotten?”

  “I know you work here, Mom,” Julia said patiently, “but you don’t come in until after eight. Everything okay with Dad?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

  Julia realized that was the only thing that would make her mother break with her regular routine. Her mother was nothing if not a creature of habit. It was Annie who had taught her that a regular routine would give her life structure.

  And she had been right.

  If it hadn’t been for her routine, Julia was certain that the act of setting her goals and dreams aside would have crushed her spirit so badly she wouldn’t have been able to function and come through for her parents the way she had. She had taken everything over, becoming what her mother was quick to point out was not just her right hand, but her left one, as well.

  Julia owed that to a well-instilled sense of structure, not to mention to a very keen sense of family loyalty.

  “Your father,” Annie said, answering her question, “is the same as he was yesterday and, God willing, the same as he will be tomorrow. Well, but not perfect.” She paused to smile at her daughter. “But then, no man is ever perfect.”

  It was a familiar mantra that her mother had uttered more than a handful of times.

  What was different this time was the sadness around the edges of her smile. And the deeper sadness she could see in her mother’s eyes.

  Taking the straw broom out of her mother’s hands, Julia leaned it against the closest wall. She then took both of her mother’s hands in hers and said, “Mom, if your face was hanging down any lower, you wouldn’t need that broom to sweep up all that imaginary dust you always see on the floor. You could use your chin. Now come clean. What’s wrong?”

  Annie took a breath, apparently struggling to find the right words.

  “It’s you.”

  Julia stared at her mother. Whatever she’d expected to hear, it wasn’t that.

  “Me?” she cried incredulously.

  Her mother’s answer had succeeded in stunning her. How could she possibly be responsible for that look of utter devastation on her mother’s remarkably unlined face? Hadn’t she all but lived and breathed family and the business for twelve years now, leaving aside her own hopes and dreams?

  In her view, that would have been cause for her mother to celebrate, not look as if someone precious to her had just died.

  “Mom, how can you say that? What more can I do? I’m almost knocking myself out every day to make sure the store stays open and running,” Julia pointed out.

  Her mother shook her head, her expression telling her that she just didn’t understand. “That’s just it, Julia. You shouldn’t have to be knocking yourself out. This is the time of your life that you should look back on fondly when you get to be my age. Y
ou shouldn’t be forced to feel like you worked your life away.”

  “But I don’t feel that way, Mom,” Julia protested with feeling. Granted, there were times when she felt as if she did nothing but work, but for the most part, she did fine running the grocery store—not to mention putting out her baked goods in a little area that was set aside for the shopper who required a cup of coffee and a pastry to jump-start their morning.

  Rather than look relieved, her mother looked as if she was growing agitated for her.

  “Well, if you don’t, you should,” her mother insisted. “You should be resentful that your father and I stole twelve perfectly good years of your life away from you by allowing you to be here for us.”

  Still holding her mother’s hands, Julia led her to a chair over in the corner, just behind the main counter, and knelt in front of her, looking directly into her mother’s kind, warm eyes.

  “Mom, what’s this all about?” she asked gently.

  “Maybe I’m seeing things clearly for the first time in years. This isn’t fair to you, honey,” she insisted, “making you work here day after day. You’ve sacrificed your education, your career, your marriage—”

  “Hold it,” Julia declared, holding up her hand. “Back it up, Mom. First of all, I didn’t sacrifice my education. I can always go back to college. It would take a little doing, but it’s not impossible. Second, I do that. I can get a career going. And besides, the one I had my eye on back then didn’t ultimately require having a college degree so much as it required dedication—it still does,” she said, unlocking the front door, then walking back to her mother.

  “And third, working here was not what killed my marriage. Mutual, soul-snuffing boredom did that.” Julia sighed, feeling a wave of sadness taking root. She had never failed at anything before, but it was about time she accepted the fact that she’d failed at marriage. “Neal and I should have never gotten married in the first place.”

  “But Neal was such a nice boy,” Annie pointed out, protesting the whole idea that their marriage had been a mistake from the beginning.