âI thought youâd started doing your own cooking,â Linda said as she walked over to his table. âCoffee?â
âPlease.â Duane smiled. âIâd be a fool to eat my cooking when youâve got the café here.â
Linda smiled back.
Duane told himself that smiling was a good beginning for the two of them. Thatâs where theyâd started back in junior high school.
âIâm sorry Iâve been gone.â
Linda looked at him cautiously.
âYou needed your friends, and I wasnât here.â
âItâs okay,â Linda said softly as she pulled out her order pad. âWhatâll it be?â
Duane resisted the impulse to throw his heart at her feet. âScrambled eggs and toast.â
This book is dedicated with love to my brother-in-law, Duane Enger. He has graciously allowed me to use his name for the hero in this book with the understanding that I would also include his dog, Boots. Boots plays himself in the book, but the only thing my Duane has in common with his namesake in this book is his love for his high school sweetheart, my sister, Margaret. Well, that and his affection for an old Silverton guitar that he sometimes brings out to play in the evenings.
âI donât care if he did grow up in Dry Creek, heâs still not one of us. Not anymore.â Linda Morgan struggled to keep her voice neutral as she flipped the sign in her café window to Closed and began to stack chairs on tables so she could mop the floor.
A neutral calm was the best she could expect of herself when it came to Duane Enger.
She should have refused to let her younger sister, Lucy, hang his old guitar on the wall of the café when the idea first came up months ago. Then she and her sister wouldnât even be having this conversation now.
Lucy was too young to know there was no point in building a shrine to someone who had left everything behind so he could go off and chase his dream of becoming a rock star. Every time Linda looked at the guitar she remembered that the old six-string Silvertone hadnât been good enough for Duane to take with him. The frets were worn down and it needed new strings. So he had left the Silvertone behind, just as heâd eventually left everything and everyone behind, even her.
The small Montana town of Dry Creek had not been big enough for Duane and his dreams.
Of course, Linda couldnât tell her sister all of thisâespecially not in the tone of voice she was using in her head as she thought it. Lucy had a tender heart and Linda didnât want her to worry that anyone around here held anything against the man Lucy had just started to idolize. A teenage girl needed heroes, and Duane was better than most who were out there.
Besides, Linda told herself, the whole thing with Duane shouldnât bother her anymore. Lots of people were disappointed by their high school sweethearts. She wasnât the only one. It wasnât even worth talking about. It had been eight long years since Duane left Dry Creek. That was plenty of time for a broken heart to heal.
Right now, Linda had more important things to worry about anyway, like keeping the floor clean after all the rain theyâd had this week. The road into Dry Creek was asphalt, but the parking area in front of her café was pure dirt. That meant mud and lots of it. Sheâd already mopped the floor twice today and she had to do it again tonight before she and Lucy headed home. A woman who needed to mop a floor that often didnât have time to be thinking about some man who had left her behind to pursue his fantasy of stardom.
Linda lifted the last chair up. It was half her fault anyway. She never should have trusted a man who couldnât even stick with the name he was given the day he was born. Duane had traded his name for a stage name before he left Dry Creek. That should have been her first clue about how much commitment the man had in his bones. He eventually started going by Duane again, but lots of people still knew him as the Jazz Man.
Linda set the chair down hard on the table and winced when she heard the soft slam. Okay, so Duane might still bother her a little more than she would like. Which was probably natural; she was only human. She might have grown closer to God since Duane left, but she still had a way to go. Her heart had healed, but her head still hadnât totally forgiven him or herself for believing in him.