Max moved around the work space, putting himself in a place to make sure Sam could hear him as he folded his burly arms over his broad chest and asked, “Have you noticed, big bro, that every time you give an excuse for not letting the girls have a dog, it changes a little?”
“I have work to do.” Sam stood still for a moment, aware that Max had a point but that he also didn’t have any say in Sam’s life. “You have heard of that, right? Work?”
Max withdrew the pencil and a tumble of his shaggy, sun-streaked hair stuck out over his tanned ear. “Hey, I’m working on this.”
“If that were true we’d have an operational lunch counter by now.” Sam didn’t mean to sound mad, but he’d reached his limit on this subject today. No dog. No matchmaking with Polly Bennett. Why couldn’t anyone get that? “You know they call it a lunch counter because people expect to come in, sit at the counter and get served a hot, quick lunch, right? Not because everyone is counting the days until this project eats your lunch and you take off again.”
“You know you sound like a grouchy old man, don’t you?” Max laughed. “Go count pills.”
“I will. And while I’m doing that, can you handle taking care of the store? I do not need to be disturbed any more today.”
“Any more? You’re saying something … or someone … has already disturbed your tightly wound little world, bro?” Max chuckled. “Good for her. If she’s as cute as they say, good for you, too. It’s about time.”
Chapter Four
Getting her supplies from the school wasn’t going to work for her flyer project. Polly had taken her wriggling little wet-nosed charge back to her house and settled him in, then headed out to try to find a place to buy more paper. When she found herself at that crossroads between the Historic and Business districts of Baconburg again, she didn’t hesitate.
A few minutes later she was strolling down the sidewalk, soaking in every small detail of the lovely old historic buildings. Nothing was going to hurry her along again today. Brass fixtures, ornate cement trimwork, even the names of the old establishments spelled out in colored tile in the entryways leading to the doors. Try as she might she could not recall any of this from her childhood. She strongly suspected that her parents preferred to do their shopping someplace shiny and sophisticated, upscale and urban. She paused just outside her destination, a sweet little throwback to an earlier time, Downtown Drug.
She blinked at the image of a black-haired, dreamy-eyed young woman reflected back at her. She could easily imagine herself in a pillbox hat and gloves, proper Miss Bennett, grammar-school teacher, strolling downtown circa 1950. How could her family have not loved this town? How could they have run so fast and so far away from it?
If Polly didn’t look just like her sister, Essie, who so clearly belonged with the Bennett family, Polly would have wondered if she had been switched at birth. All of historic Baconburg, right down to the blue-, white- and silver-painted plateglass windows of Downtown Drug put a whole new spring in Polly’s step. She crossed over the threshold of the front door and felt as if she’d walked into another time, a sweeter time, a time when people made time for one another.
She stole a moment to take in the black-and-white-tiled floors, sunny-yellow walls and shelves filled with every sort of thing a person might need. The old store still had a gleaming wooden checkout stand, with a shiny computerized scanner and cash register attached. That didn’t dampen Polly’s enthusiasm for the quaintness of the old place. She could just imagine how for so many years people in Baconburg must have come here for the things they needed—medicine, candy, school supplies and who knew what else.
“Welcome to Downtown Drug. We’ve got whatever your little heart desires.” A warm, deep masculine voice called out from somewhere unseen in the store. “If you need help finding it, I’m back here at the lunch counter.”
“A lunch counter.” Polly sighed. “This I’ve got to see!”
She wound her way back toward the friendly voice, expecting to find a nice paunchy, slightly balding middle-aged man wearing a white bib apron getting a big grill ready for the day’s business.
“Hello?” she called out. She rounded the end of a row of shelves and stopped inches from a pile of red vinyl benches and tables that must have once been booths. Beyond that a bright yellow strip of plastic, the kind she’d seen around crime scenes marked off an area filled with power tools, sawdust and chaos.
Middle-aged? Maybe if the average life expectancy was around sixty. Balding? Not even slightly. Her gaze moved from the shoulder-length waves of light brown hair topped with sun-washed blond streaks to his tanned face and two- or three-day growth of beard. He wore a chain around his neck with a cross on it, and a faded T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves to reveal bulging biceps.
He smiled. “Hey there, pretty lady. You got a question? I don’t actually work in the store, so I’m not sure where you’d find that. If you’d like, I can ask the old man.”
He raised his voice on the last two words and directed them toward the raised platform framed in black-painted wood with sliding glass-panel windows and Pharmacy lettered in gold.
In response, one of the panels slid almost closed.
The man in front of her burst out laughing. “They do get cranky when they get old, don’t they?”
“I like older people,” Polly said in the unseen man’s defense. “And I like older places. I think it’s a shame you’re tearing up this wonderful old piece of local history. Please tell me you’re not going to install one of those fast-food kiosks like they have in quick markets and all over the airport in Atlanta.”
“Atlanta! You’re …” He pointed at her and his face lit up like a kid’s at Christmas.
“I’m what?”
“From Atlanta,” he said as if that was what he had been reacting to—and fairly unconvincingly, too.
What did this construction worker in surfer dude’s clothing know about her? Should she be uneasy or flattered?
“Maybe I should talk to that old man.” She turned and skirted sideways, keenly aware of the smiling carpenter’s eyes on her. Even when she heard the squeak of a door, she did not turn toward the pharmacist’s station. Her gaze locked on the other man, she raised the piece of paper. “I have a list. I just need to get in, get out and get back to getting this little dog I found back where he belongs.”
“I thought you were keeping the dog.”
Polly gasped at the sound of Sam’s voice. The slip of paper with her supply list on it slid through her fingers, flipped in the air and fell between her feet and Sam’s cowboy boots.
“I can’t … That is … you convinced me …” Polly looked at him, her mouth open. Sam Goodacre. The guy who showed up in her driveway. Then at the school. Now … “I can’t believe we keep running into each other.”
“Welcome to life in a small town. The upside is that you tend to make a tight-knit circle of friends and associates who are always there for each other. The downside is that you have a tight-knit circle of friends and associates and they’re always there for each other, whether you want them there or not.”
She thought of her life in Atlanta where she barely knew anyone in her building, or even her church. Where her job meant she rarely worked with the same people more than a few days in a row, and even so, half the time they rarely had time to make eye contact. Of course, not everyone in the city was like that, but that had been her experience and so … “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
“Oh?” He tipped his head to one side. “I guess sometimes it is kinda nice.”
Her heart fluttered. She took a breath and held it just long enough until she noticed her head felt light. She let her