Mary Sullivan - A Cowboy's Plan

A cook at the grill behind the long counter yelled, “Order up.”

People filled every stool at the counter and every red fake-leather booth.

Wow. Bernice was right. The place was hopping.

A waitress rushed by without looking at her. “Sit wherever you can find a seat, hon.”

That brought the attention of the people in the nearest booths to her. They stopped talking and studied her clothes.

She curled her fingers into her palms.

More people stopped talking. A hush fell over the crowd.

They watched her, some with interest, some with plain old curiosity. She couldn’t tell if there was disapproval.

No. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t work under the microscope like this, in front of so many people. Not every day. The attention stifled her. She couldn’t breathe.

Crap.

She stepped back outside.

An ache danced inside her skull.

She walked down the street, studying the businesses as she went. Barbershop. Nope.

Across the street was a hardware store, Scotty’s Hardware. How hard could it be to sell nails?

She crossed the street and stepped inside.

A middle-aged man stopped what he was doing and turned to her. Must be Scotty.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for work.”

The old guy’s eyes bugged out. “Here?” he said, his voice coming out in a thin squeak.

“Yeah.” Nuts, she didn’t know a thing about job-hunting. What was she supposed to say?

The owner stepped a little closer. He smelled like cough drops. “You ever worked in a hardware store before? You know anything about power tools and home renovations and paint and lumber?”

She shook her head.

The guy straightened a pile of brochures beside the register, all the while checking her out from the corner of his eye.

“’Fraid I can’t help you.”

Her pride caught in her throat again. “I can sweep floors.” Man, she had trouble saying that, but she’d lived through worse in her life. She could do this.

The guy looked up at her and there was maybe sympathy in his eyes. “I just don’t have work right now. Times are slow.”

“Yeah.” She turned to walk away. Where to now? It wasn’t as though the town was a hotbed of opportunities.

She opened the door but his voice stopped her.

“Listen,” he said. “C. J. Wright’s been advertising for a store clerk for a month now. Try there.”

Janey looked at him. She wasn’t imagining it. The guy really did seem sympathetic.

“Who is he?” she asked.

The guy stepped up to his window and pointed to the other side of the street and down a bit. “SweetTalk. The candy store.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Janey said, meaning it, and left.

She studied the shop while she crossed the road. Sweet Talk. Two bright lime-green signs stood out in the window.

One sign said they needed a full-time employee and one said the store was for sale.

A full-time employee. To do what? Working in a candy store wouldn’t be rocket science, right? She could count money, could pack things into bags.

She remembered coming in here on her first day in town a year ago, with Amy, passing through on her way to the Sheltering Arms for the first time. Cheryl had been dead for a month. Janey didn’t remember a whole lot from that time, other than feeling cold and dead. Or wishing she were dead.

A sign on the door told her to watch her step. Glancing down to make sure she didn’t catch one of her big boot heels, she opened the door. She’d fallen once before in a store in the city and had earned herself a goose egg on her forehead that had hurt for days.

Sweet scents of chocolate and peppermint drifted toward her and tugged at something wonderful in her memory, but Janey knew there had been nothing in her life with her parents that had felt as warm as whatever was hovering in the far reaches of her mind.

Footprints painted on the worn wooden floor caught her attention. Or paw prints, she should say. Of rabbits and kittens and deer, in pastels, all leading to different parts of the store.

She looked up and gasped.

Warm dark wood covered the walls and candy cases, contrasting against white porcelain countertops. Jewel-bright candies shone behind the spotless glass of those cases.

Three long stained-glass lamps hung from thick chains attached to the ceiling and lit the candy displays.

Big chocolate animals stood on shelves that lined the walls, each one of them decorated with icing in every conceivable color.

She smiled.

This is a happy place.

One rabbit had been “dressed” with icing in an intricately detailed, multihued vest. A deer wore a saddle of gold and silver, as if a wee elf might hop on for a ride any minute. An owl wore a finely decorated house robe and carried an icing book tucked under one arm and a chocolate candle in the other, as if he were preparing to sit for a cozy read before he headed to bed for the night.

Cellophane, gleaming and crisp, covered the animals. A huge polka-dot bow gathered the plastic above each animal’s head.

Why would anyone want to sell this store? Was he nuts?

If she owned Sweet Talk, she’d polish the wood every day, and dust the cellophane on the animals, and smile when she sold them to customers. To children.

She covered her mouth with her hands, awed by this big, whimsical treasure box of a shop.

Around and through all of it drifted sugar and spice, scents so yummy her mouth watered.

Oooooh, Cheryl would have loved it here. Her girl would have adored it. Had she ever come in with Hank and Amy? Janey hoped so.

The wonderful feeling that was haunting her, that was calling from the darkness of vague memories, burst full-blown into her consciousness.

Grandma.

She hadn’t thought about her grandmother in years. This memory came from when Janey had been even younger than Cheryl’s six years. Grandma had visited a few times and, every time, had doled out in equal portion hugs and candy, the only times Janey had ever tasted it.

Janey gazed at the wonder of the shop, that it should, after all of these years, call a long-lost part of herself into the light.

Those visits had thrilled the solemn child Janey had been, had represented the few happy memories in her poverty-challenged life, the only good memories from her childhood.

Then Grandma had died and Janey had rarely had candy again.

She’d give anything to feel that euphoria, that joy even if only for a day. The only other time she’d felt anything better had been at Cheryl’s birth.

Man, she could definitely work here.

Children would come into this store, but Janey would deal with their parents. She could make children happy without handling them.

She felt like laughing and whispered, “Who made this store? Whose idea was it?”

“My mother’s.”

Janey startled at the sound of the voice. On the other side of the counter stood a young man, taller than her, maybe six feet, his brown hair cropped soldier-short.

She’d only met him the one time a year ago, and she’d forgotten how good-looking he was, what an impact that chiseled face made.

Perhaps five years older than her, shadows painted his brown eyes. Janey knew all about shadows. Dark lashes too thick and pretty to be masculine ringed those eyes, but the square jaw framing the deep cleft in his chin was purely male.

He didn’t smile, just wiped his hands on a towel and watched her without blinking. How long had he been watching her?

Janey sensed a kindred spirit in the woman who’d started this shop. “Can I meet your mother?”

“No,” he answered and Janey’s spirits plummeted. “She’s dead.”

“Oh,” Janey breathed, “I’m sorry.”

He smoothed a long-fingered hand down the apron he wore over a short-sleeved, blue-and-white-striped shirt with a button-down collar. She didn’t know men still wore those. Not young men, anyway.