LITMIR.BIZ

      Molly wasn’t surprised that Abbey showed up less than five minutes before her shift was scheduled to begin, but she was pleased that her sister apparently remembered the routine from when she’d waited tables through high school. Abbey caught on to the routine quickly and managed to take orders and deliver meals with little mishap. She finished her first shift with sore feet and a pocketful of tips that, when added up, elicited a weary smile.

      Abbey worked again the next afternoon, and the day after that, and by the end of the week, Molly was actually starting to think the arrangement might work out.

      Though there hadn’t been an empty table during the midday rush, the restaurant was now mostly empty and Molly poured herself a cup of decaf and took a seat at the bar. There was a table with three men in suits who were finishing up a business meeting along with their lunches, another at which was seated a couple of older women who seemed more interested in conversation than their meals, and at a booth in the back, a young couple lingering over coffee.

      Molly was proud that her business appealed to such an eclectic group, and pleased that the additional funds she’d spent on advertising over the past twelve months was proving to be a good investment. Shea’s had once been “the little roadside bar just past the sharp curve in the highway,” now it was “that fabulous little restaurant just past the sharp curve in the highway.”

      She hadn’t taken the first sip of her coffee when her brother-in-law came in.

      “If you’re looking for your wife, she just left.”

      “I’m not,” Jason said, then walked behind the bar, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down beside her.

      It was the first time she’d seen him in the restaurant since he and Abbey separated a few months earlier, and she was as curious as she was wary about his reasons for being here now. Because he, too, didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with dumping his problems in Molly’s lap, despite having dumped her to marry her sister.

      “I have a business proposition to discuss with you.”

      Now she was really curious, but she just sipped her decaf and waited for him to explain.

      Instead of speaking, he set a cashier’s check beside her cup.

      Her eyes popped open wide as she took in the numbers.

      “Where did you get that kind of cash?”

      “My severance package from Raycroft Industries.”

      She’d read about the proposed merger of the local manufacturing plant with a multinational corporation several months earlier and had wondered how it might affect her brother-in-law, who had worked there for the past half-dozen years.

      “I’d like to buy into a partnership,” he said.

      For the amount of the check he was offering, he could buy the whole restaurant, and Molly was almost tempted to let him do so. She’d certainly feel more comfortable selling out than going into partnership with a man who had betrayed her once already. “Why?” she asked instead.

      “I have managerial experience and I think I’d enjoy working here—and working with Abbey might give both of us something to focus on other than the baby she wants so badly and can’t have.”

      Which led Molly to suspect that Abbey had decided she’d rather own the restaurant than simply work in it—and, like everything else she’d ever wanted, there was a man willing to give it to her.

      “Is this what Abbey wants?” she asked him.

      “If she had her way, we’d spend the whole amount on fertility treatments. But I think she could be convinced to agree to this.”

      Molly felt an instinctive tug of sympathy for what her sister and brother-in-law had been through, and a twinge of guilt that what they’d struggled for so desperately had happened so easily for her. And then a surge of annoyance at letting herself experience even that momentary twinge when it was Abbey and Jason together who had destroyed her own dreams.

      “Have you really thought about this, or is it an impulse?”

      “You know I don’t do anything on impulse,” Jason said.

      “Weddings in Las Vegas aside?”

      “It was one wedding, and it was because Abbey and I didn’t know how to tell you that we’d fallen in love.”

      Molly sighed, because she knew it was true and because—nine years later—she was over it, or at least she felt that she should be. Was it the depth of the hurt that made her heart still ache? Or was it something lacking inside herself that made her unable to truly forgive their betrayal?

      In either case, she knew it was time she got over her resentment and got on with her life, and maybe Jason was offering her the chance to finally do just that.

      “Speaking of weddings,” she said, “I’m going to Tesoro del Mar for Fiona and Scott’s.”

      Although Abbey was the bride’s cousin, too, she’d never been as close to Fiona as Molly was. And Fiona had never forgiven her for stealing Molly’s fiancé, holding so tightly to her grudge against Abbey that she hadn’t even wanted to invite her youngest cousin to the wedding. It was their grandmother who had insisted that she do the right thing, and while Abbey and Jason would be invited to attend the rescheduled reception in a few months, Fiona refused to extend the close circle who had been invited to the island ceremony to include them.

      “I was going to ask Karen and Sam to cover my night shifts,” Molly continued, “but if you wanted to take them instead, it would give you a chance to see if this is what you really want, before making a final decision.”

      He reached for her hand as she pushed her stool back. “Thanks, Molly. I know you don’t owe me anything, but I appreciate this opportunity.”

      “Don’t screw it up.”

      “I won’t,” he promised.