LITMIR.BIZ

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easy drawl drew her to meet his eyes over his coffee cup as he took a sip of the steaming brew.

      Dottie rubbed her suddenly clammy hands on the fronts of her workout pants and gave him a puny smile.

      She’d had a terrible night after she’d finally turned in, which was strange since she’d had such an interesting day. No way had she been expecting the nightmares to start again. When she’d awakened drenched in sweat, her heart pounding in the darkness, not even the small night-light she kept near her bed helped. The only relief, as always, had been to flee outside to the sweet open space where she could sit and talk to the Lord. Her caring Savior was always there for her.

      Everything was fine now. “Good morning to you, Sheriff. Did you sleep well?”

      He raised an eyebrow. “How about you?”

      She shrugged, noticing the two eavesdropping older men sitting at the window hunched over a game of checkers that they were valiantly pretending to play. Instead, they were covertly listening.

      She swallowed the cotton in her mouth. “New surroundings don’t always lend themselves to a good night’s rest. That and Cassie’s snores. Whatever you do, don’t tell her I said that. If there’s one thing a young girl doesn’t want getting out it’s that she snores.”

      Brady chuckled. “You’re probably right about that.”

      Their gazes met. Dottie swallowed, forgetting everything for the moment as what felt like static electricity hummed between them. This was ridiculous!

      She’d hoped she’d only imagined the electricity.

      She hadn’t imagined anything.

      He cleared his throat, set his cup down and motioned to the seat across from him. “Why don’t you join me.”

      She nodded, purely a reflex action. Besides, she did need to talk to him. Pushing away the butterflies tearing up her stomach, she crossed to his booth, glad her limp had eased up this morning. She slid into the bench across from him and looked him straight in the eye.

      No childish infatuation was going to ambush her and muddle her good sense. She had a bigger agenda than this, this infatuation.

      Oh, but he did have nice eyes.

      In her peripheral vision the two checker players leaned out from their chairs a bit, getting their ears a little closer to the action. Shaking herself again, she smiled at them, even though they hadn’t yet acknowledged her existence. Small towns always did have ears, and they had eyes, too, these two just hadn’t caught on to the fact that she was on to them.

      They were a good excuse not to look at Brady and she was thankful for the distraction.

      “I saw you exercising earlier. When I pulled into town, I glanced down that way and you were getting after some crunches. It looked like a scene from the movie G.I. Jane.”

      “It’s part of my rehab.” Mental and physical, but she didn’t say that.

      “At that rate you ought to be strong by tomorrow.”

      She wished. “That would be just fine with me. I never have been weak and I can’t stand it. It makes me crazy.”

      In more ways than one—

      Suddenly the swinging door to the back of the store flew open and a small wrinkled man burst through carrying a plate of bacon and eggs.

      “How-do,” he said as he plopped the plate down in front of the sheriff. “I heard what you said about being weak—you have a plate of this and you’ll be as strong as an ox in two weeks’ time. I promise.”

      Dottie laughed—but the little man wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t joking. Oops. The last thing she wanted was to hurt his feelings.

      “Sam takes his breakfast serious,” Sheriff Brady said, his eyes twinkling as he held back a chuckle of his own.

      Sam crossed his wiry arms and locked eyes with her. “Eggs and bacon make a body strong. I don’t care what these reports say nowadays. It’s all that refined sugar that’ll kill you. From the looks of ya, you ain’t been eatin’ much of anythang.”

      So much for thinking she was starting to get her figure back.

      “Sam, this is Dottie Hart. She’s the one I was telling you about. Dottie, this is Sam. And those two over there are Applegate Thornton and Stanley Orr.”

      She recognized all the names from Cassie. “Glad to meet all of you gentlemen.” The two checker players nodded and grunted something she couldn’t quite make out. Sam held out his hand and she slipped hers into his and nearly fell out of the seat when he pumped it up and down so hard she felt as if it would come out of its socket. “My goodness, those eggs and bacon must work.”

      He beamed and dropped her hand, just in the nick of time.

      “I’ll have you a plate in a jiffy. Mean whilst, how ’bout some coffee?”

      “Oh, yes, please.”

      Feeling a bit more relaxed, she watched him amble away.

      “Is your arm okay?” Sheriff Brady asked, leaning across the table so that only she could hear the question.

      “Yes, thanks. But boy, he’s rather vigorous.”

      “Sam has a tendency to be violent when he shakes hands. I don’t know why, but it’s always the same.”

      Dottie started to chuckle but bit it back as Sam reappeared with a cup of coffee. She thanked him and watched as he headed toward the kitchen with the promise that he’d be back in a few minutes.

      She was about to say something more, when one of the checker players, Applegate, she thought it was, slapped his hand on the table and grunted loudly.

      “Why’d you make that move?”

      “’Cause I wanted to. It was the move to make, you old goat.”

      “I didn’t see that checker there a minute ago.”

      “You sayin’ I cheated?”

      “I’m sayin’ that that checker wasn’t there a while ago.”

      “App, I ain’t never had to beat you by cheatin’, so why should I have to do it now?”

      Not certain if she should be alarmed, or if this went on all the time, Dottie glanced from the two men back over at Sheriff Brady. He seemed not even to notice what was going on. Instead, he was eating his eggs.

      Taking her cue from him, she took a sip of her coffee and tried to ignore the men. It was a little hard when the one stood up and stormed out the door. She met Brady’s eyes over the rim of her cup and he winked. “It happens all the time.”

      Okay. So maybe she wouldn’t have breakfast here again. Or maybe there was something she could do for the two men. She noticed that the one man, Stanley, continued to sit in his seat, contentedly eating sunflower seeds and spitting the husks into a bucket. Yuck! But at least it wasn’t that tobacco stuff.

      Sam brought her eggs and bacon and a refill of coffee for her and the sheriff. “Stanley, when you ever going to quit doing that to the man?”

      “What was that?”

      “You heard me. I saw you turn up your hearin’ aid when Miss Dottie walked in.”

      Stanley frowned. His entire face dipping in a cascade of wrinkles, he punctuated the frown by spitting out another husk. “App needs his blood pressure raised once a year. Keeps him kickin’.”

      “Yeah, well, when he comes in here one day and kicks your—well, I ain’t goin’ there ’cause we have a lady in our presence, but you know what I’m talkin’ about. I ain’t gonna feel sorry for you at-tal.”

      Dottie watched Sam retreat behind the swinging doors. She was beginning to worry about the two gentlemen; she certainly couldn’t

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