LITMIR.BIZ

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for less than a week and living at the Serenity Inn, he’d figured this was better than the bar across town for a man who’d determined to sober up and live life on the straight and narrow. That was the whole point of coming home, after all, to prove he’d changed and deserved a second chance. Once he’d accomplished that and made peace with his past, well, he’d decide whether to move on yet again. He wasn’t sure he was the kind of man who’d ever put down roots.

      Thank heaven for his cousin, Mitch Franklin, who’d offered him a job starting on Monday without a moment’s hesitation. Recently remarried, Mitch claimed he needed a partner who knew construction so he could focus on his new family. He’d taken on a second family just as he’d started developing a series of dilapidated properties on Main Street in an attempt to revitalize downtown Serenity.

      Gabe had listened in astonishment to Mitch’s ambitious plans as he’d laid them out. Despite his cousin’s enthusiasm, Gabe wasn’t convinced revitalization was possible in an economy still struggling to rebound, but he was more than willing to jump in and give it a shot. Maybe there would be something cathartic about giving those old storefronts the same kind of second chance he was hoping to grab for himself.

      “You’re turning into a real regular in here,” his waitress, a middle-aged woman who’d introduced herself a few nights ago as Debbie, said. “Are you new in town?”

      “Not exactly,” he said, returning her smile but adding no details. “I’ll have—”

      “A large diet soda and a large pepperoni pizza,” she filled in before he could complete his order.

      Gabe winced. “I’m obviously in a rut.”

      “That’s okay. Most of our regulars order the same thing every time,” she said. “And I pay attention. Friendly service and a good memory get me bigger tips.”

      “I’ll remember that,” he said, then sat back and looked around the restaurant while waiting for his food.

      Suddenly he sat up a little straighter as a dark-haired woman came in with four children. Even though she looked a little harried and a whole lot weary, she was stunning with her olive complexion and high cheekbones. She was also vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t put a name to the face.

      There hadn’t been a lot of Mexican-American families in Serenity back when he’d lived here as a kid, though there had been plenty of transient farmworkers during the summer months. For a minute he cursed the way he’d blown off school way more often than he should have. Surely if he’d gone regularly, this woman would have been on his radar. If there had been declared majors in high school, his would have been girls. He’d studied them the way the academic overachievers had absorbed the information in textbooks.

      Instead, he’d been kicked out midway through his junior year for one too many fights, every one of them justified to his juvenile way of thinking. He’d eventually wised up and gotten his GED. He’d even attended college for a couple of years, but that had been later, when he’d stopped hating the world for the way it had treated his troubled single mom and started putting the pieces of his life back together.

      He watched now as the intriguing woman asked for several tables to be pushed together. He noted with disappointment when a man with two children came in to join them. So, he thought, she was married with six kids. An unfamiliar twinge of envy left him feeling vaguely unsettled. Since when had he been interested in having a family of any size? Still, he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the picture of domestic bliss they presented. The teasing and laughter seemed to settle in his heart and make it just a little lighter.

      When his waitress returned with his drink, he nodded in the woman’s direction. “Quite a family,” he commented. “I can’t imagine having six kids. They look like quite a handful.”

      Debbie laughed. “Oh, they’re a handful, all right, but they’re not all Adelia’s. That’s her brother, Elliott Cruz, who just came in with two of his. He has a baby, too, but I guess she was getting a cold, so his wife stayed home with her.”

      Gabe hid a grin. Thank heaven for chatty waitresses and a town known for gossiping. It hadn’t been so great when he was a boy and his promiscuous mother had been the talk of the town, but now he could appreciate it.

      “Where’s her husband?”

      The waitress leaned down and confided, “Sadly, not in hell where he belongs. The man cheated on her repeatedly and the whole town knew about it. She finally kicked his sorry butt to the curb. Too bad the whole town couldn’t follow suit and divorce him.” She flushed, and her expression immediately filled with guilt. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, but Adelia’s a great woman and she didn’t deserve the way Ernesto Hernandez treated her.”

      Gabe nodded. “Sounds like a real gem,” he said.

      In fact, he sounded like a lot of the men who’d passed through his mom’s life over the years. Gabe felt a sudden surge of empathy for Adelia. And he liked the fact that his waitress was firmly in her corner. He suspected the rest of the town was, too, just the way they’d always stood up for the wronged wives when his mom had been the other woman in way too many relationships.

      Funny what a few years could do to give a man a new perspective. Back then all he’d cared about was the gossip, the taunts he’d suffered at school and his mom’s tears each time the relationships inevitably ended. He’d witnessed her hope whenever a new man came into her life and then the slow realization that this time would be no different. His heart had broken almost as many times as hers.

      Still, he couldn’t help thinking about all the complications that came with a woman in Adelia’s situation. He had enough on his own plate without getting mixed up in her drama. Much as he might enjoy sitting right here and staring, it would be far better to slip away right now and avoid the powerful temptation to reach out to her. Heaven knew, he had nothing to offer a woman, not yet, anyway.

      “Darlin’, could you make that pizza of mine to go?” he asked his waitress.

      “Sure thing,” Debbie said readily.

      She brought it out within minutes. As Gabe paid the check, she grinned. “I imagine I’ll see you again tomorrow. Maybe you’ll try something different.”

      “Maybe so,” he agreed, then winked. “But don’t count on it. I’m comfortable in this rut I’m in.”

      She shook her head, then glanced pointedly in Adelia’s direction. “Seems to me that’s just when you need to shake things up.”

      Gabe followed the direction of her gaze and found the very woman in question glancing his way. His heart, which hadn’t been engaged in much more than keeping him alive these past few years, did a fascinating little stutter step.

      No way, he told himself determinedly as he headed for the door and the safety of his comfortable, if uninviting, room at the Serenity Inn. He’d never been much good at multitasking. Right now his only goal was to prove himself to Mitch and to himself. Complications were out of the question. And the beautiful Adelia Hernandez and her four kids had complication written all over them.

      * * *

      “Looks as if somebody has an admirer,” Elliott commented to Adelia. Though his tone was light, there was a frown on his face as he watched the stranger leaving Rosalina’s.

      “Hush!” Adelia said, though she was blushing. She leaned closer to her brother. “That is not the sort of thing you should be saying in front of the kids. The ink’s barely dry on my divorce papers.”

      Elliott laughed. “The kids are clear across the restaurant playing video games. You’re only flustered because you know I’m right. That guy was attracted to you, Adelia. I recognize that thunderstruck expression on a man’s face. I wore it a lot when I first met Karen. I saw it in the mirror when I shaved. It happened every time she crossed my mind.”

      Adelia smiled at the memory of her little brother falling hard for a woman no one in the family had approved of at first simply because she’d divorced a deadbeat

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