LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Epilogue

       Chapter One

       K it Davenport eyed the clock on the kitchen wall of the Dinner Belle Diner as she dumped handfuls of freshly chopped vegetables into the pot of stew meat already simmering on the six-burner stove. It was almost ten-thirty, and her part-time waitress, Bonnie Lennox, wasn’t scheduled to start work until eleven.

      Normally Bonnie came in when the diner opened its doors for breakfast at seven in the morning, but that day her young daughter was graduating from kindergarten, an event Kit hadn’t wanted her to miss. Unfortunately, the diner’s crusty old cook, George Ortiz, had called to say he, too, would be late that day due to a painful flare-up of the arthritis that occasionally crippled his gnarled hands and creaky knees but never his indomitable spirit.

      Handling the Dinner Belle single-handedly wasn’t a new experience for Kit. Since her mother, Dolores, had owned and operated the little diner in the small town of Belle, Montana, until her death this past December, Kit had literally grown up there. So early in the tourist season, with nearby Glacier National Park’s Logan’s Pass not yet open to vehicular traffic, the breakfast crowd, made up mostly of locals she knew on a first-name basis, had also been relatively undemanding.

      Kit had been able to take orders, fry eggs, flip pancakes, bus tables and wash dishes without a problem. But getting a head start on the lunch specials she and George had agreed upon for that Tuesday afternoon had been a bit of a challenge. Following even the simplest of her mother’s recipes involved a lot more time and mental energy than she had to spare, especially when she also had to keep an eye on her two-year-old godson, Nathan Kane.

      Though easily entertained by the constant activity going on all around him, as the morning wore on the little boy had been growing more and more unhappy with his confinement in the playpen she had set up for him in a corner by the counter.

      Taking a peek at the pans of lasagna, a Dinner Belle favorite, baking in the double oven, Kit made a mental note to start defrosting the loaves of garlic bread still in the freezer. But first she had another breakfast plate to serve up. She slid the eggs out of the cast-iron skillet, added several rashers of bacon, a scoop of hash-brown potatoes and two freshly baked biscuits, then made a beeline for the kitchen doorway.

      “Just a little longer, sweet boy,” she cooed to Nathan, shooting a smile his way as she hurried past the playpen.

      He called after her in his own special brand of gibberish, his high, young voice more aggrieved than it had been the last time she’d walked through the kitchen doorway. He also waved his favorite stuffed teddy bear at her in an attempt to draw her attention to him rather than her customers. She didn’t dare stop to acknowledge the gesture, though. That would only cause his fussiness to escalate another notch.

      “He’s such a good child,” Winifred Averill commented as Kit set the plate on the elderly woman’s table. “Shame about his momma, but that Lucy Kane always was a wild thing. Lucky for her she had you for a friend. Otherwise there’s no telling what might have happened to that little boy.”

      “Yes, ma’am, Nathan is a good child,” Kit agreed, trying not to bristle at Winifred’s judgmental tone. She was well into her eighties, had lived her entire life in the small town of Belle and hadn’t ever had a shy bone in her body. Her tendency toward plainspokenness could often be unsettling, but she had never been intentionally malicious. “And I was the lucky one to have had Lucy

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