LITMIR.BIZ

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Reilly wanted to answer, and just barely held his tongue. Dammit, what was wrong with everyone around here? Every time he turned around, someone was asking him a damn personal question. He wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt—they were just being friendly and trying to find something to talk about—but he felt as if he’d been prodded and poked all day for information that was none of their business, and he was heartily sick of it. Didn’t they understand? He just wanted to be left alone!

      “Nothing,” he said coolly. “That’s why I left. Now if you’ll excuse me, Dr. Michaels introduced me to some patients who need my attention. It was nice meeting you.”

      With a curt nod he turned and strode out of the solarium, leaving behind a stunned silence. Taken aback, Janey turned to Dan in confusion. “What was that all about? What did I say? I didn’t mean to offend him.”

      “Of course you didn’t,” he assured her with a comforting pat on the shoulder. “It wasn’t you, dear. Reilly’s just had a difficult afternoon.” Making a snap decision, he motioned to her to take a seat at one of the nearby tables. “Sit down, Janey. I need to tell you a few things about Dr. Jones.”

      The Lester sisters had turned their attention from their game to Oprah, who’d just come on the television in the corner, so Janey had time to talk. “If this is about his wife dying, I already know,” she said as she settled into a chair across the table from him. “Mom told me. Obviously he’s going through a rough time.”

      Dan nodded grimly. “That isn’t something a man gets over in a hurry. Trust me—I know. Peggy’s been dead eighteen years, and there are still times when I go home at the end of the day and expect to find her in the kitchen. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world when you realize she’s not there.”

      “Is that why he left L.A.?” she asked quietly. “He couldn’t stand to live there without her?”

      “I don’t know,” he admitted. “He’s a private person and never really said. And I didn’t push. I do know, though, that he was looking for a change. But change isn’t always easy, especially when you’re in a strange town where you don’t know anyone. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. He could use a friend, Janey. I know the two of you didn’t get off to a good start, but I was hoping you would do what you can to make him feel welcome. I imagine he’s pretty lonely.”

      An astute woman, Janey knew when she was being manipulated. But she was also a soft touch, and she could not only forgive Dan for tugging on her emotions, but Reilly, too, for his hostile attitude. If their situations had been reversed, and she’d not only lost a husband she’d loved with all her heart, but moved to L.A., where she knew no one, she would have been miserable, too.

      Smiling fondly at Dan, she gave in gracefully. “Okay, you can stop twisting my arm. I’ll be nice to the guy. If he hands my head to me on a platter, I guess you can stitch it back on for me.”

      Pleased, he rose to his feet with her and hugged her. “I knew I could count on you. You’re just like your mother.”

      Janey couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather be like, but Dan had it wrong. Her mother was strikingly beautiful, and Merry was her spitting image. She, on the other hand, was more like her father and Joe. Quiet and plain as apple pie, she’d accepted long ago that she would never have her mother’s or Merry’s striking beauty or outgoing personality. That just wasn’t who she was. And that was okay. She would have never been comfortable being beautiful. Happily married to Nick and eight months pregnant, Merry still drew constant male looks wherever she went. Janey couldn’t imagine that. She would have hated it.

      Convincing Dan of that, however, would have been impossible. An old family friend, he’d known her all her life and made no secret of the fact that he thought she was every bit as beautiful as the rest of the family. Returning his hug fondly, she promised, “I’ll do what I can.”

      She told herself it would be easy. She would make a point of seeking him out when he came by the nursing home for rounds, and she was bound to run into him at the hospital when she was working rescue with the volunteer fire department. There wouldn’t, however, be much time to talk during work, so she had to find another way to make him feel welcome.

      “I’ll make him a cake and take it over to the cabin,” she decided as she drove home after her shift. It was the neighborly thing to do, and her mother had an excellent chocolate cake recipe. She’d never made it before, personally, but how hard could it be? All she had to do was follow directions.

      Wednesday night was the regular meeting of her mother’s bridge club at Myrtle’s, so Janey wasn’t surprised to find the house deserted when she got home. Her mother loved bridge and seldom missed a night out with the girls. Thankfully, Janey knew where she kept her recipes. Taking time only to change out of her nurse’s uniform into jeans and a T-shirt, she hurried back downstairs and tied on an apron.

      She should have known she was in trouble when she finally found the recipe in her mother’s recipe box and discovered that it was nothing more than a list of ingredients written down in Sara’s neat hand. There were no directions, no indication of what order the ingredients were mixed or even what temperature the cake should be baked at. Frowning, Janey considered calling Sara at Myrtle’s, but she really hated to disturb the game, especially for something so minor. She’d watched her mother make the cake dozens of times over the years. Surely she could figure it out by herself. Quickly gathering all the ingredients and setting them out on the counter, she began.

      Her memory wasn’t the best, but if she remembered correctly, the sugar, chocolate, butter and vanilla were in the icing, so by process of elimination, she deduced the contents of the cake. Pleased with herself, she tossed everything into the mixing bowl and turned the mixture on high. Now all she had to do was grease and flour the sheet cake pan and she could start baking. Grinning, she could just see her mother’s face when she came in and discovered she’d actually baked a cake. She’d be shocked!

      The scent of burning chocolate hit Sara in the face the second she stepped through the front door. Surprised, she frowned. What was going on? She was sure she hadn’t left anything in the oven, and Janey didn’t usually venture into the kitchen on her own unless it was to heat up something in the microwave. Scrambled eggs was about the extent of her culinary repertoire, and with good reason. The last time she’d tried to bake something, she’d been twelve, and she’d nearly set the house on fire.

      Alarmed by the memory, Sara rushed into the kitchen to find Janey peering doubtfully into the oven. “Janey!” she sighed in relief when she saw there was no smoke filling the room as she’d half feared. “What’s going on? I smelled something burning and thought the house was on fire!”

      “I was making a cake,” she replied in disgust as she looked around in vain for the pot holders, “but I think I burned it. Don’t you put the oven on five hundred when you bake a cake?”

      “Good Lord, no, honey! Not if you want it to be edible.” Quickly grabbing the pot holders she kept on a hook next to the stove, Sara jerked open the oven door and rescued what was left of the cake. Not surprisingly, it was a pitiful sight. Shrunk to half the size of the sheet pan, it was nothing but a hard, charred glob.

      When Janey groaned at the sight of it, it was all Sara could do not to laugh. Pressing her lips tightly together, it was several long moments before she could manage to turn to her with a straight face. Even then her voice had a tendency to wobble with laughter. “Is that my chocolate cake recipe?”

      Janey nodded glumly. “Somehow it didn’t turn out like yours does. What’d I do wrong besides cook it to death?”

      From the looks of it, everything, but Sara couldn’t bring herself to say that. Not when Janey had gone to so much trouble. Pulling out a chair at the kitchen table that had been in the family longer than anyone could remember, she patted the spot next to her. “We’ll get to that. First, sit down and tell me what brought this all about. The last time you wanted to cook, you still had braces on your teeth.”

      Wincing, Janey remembered that occasion all too well. Her brothers

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