“I figure she told Granny, too, but I never heard anything, either. Guess they knew one beer wouldn’t hurt us,” he said. “Know what I remember the most?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “The way your kisses tasted after we’d had the beer,” he answered.

  She glanced across the table, and their eyes locked. Like so many times in the past, she knew what he was thinking, and had no doubts that he could do the same. When two people had spent as much time together as they had, ten years couldn’t erase the bond.

  * * *

  Tyler blinked and looked away. He figured that he had pushed the memory card as far as he dared, so he changed the subject to the job at hand. “So, about living here. Are you going to take the master bedroom or continue to sleep on the twin-size bed in the spare room?”

  “I’m going to use the bigger room so that I’ll have the half-bath. I don’t expect to have many overnight guests. When Mama and Daddy come out here, they bring their motor home and stay in it, and . . .” She shrugged.

  “My folks do the same, and neither of us have siblings, or nieces or nephews,” he added. “I may turn the small bedroom into an office.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s a good idea,” she said with a nod. “If I remember right, that hole patch stuff dries in about an hour.”

  “Does that mean you’ve used it before?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah! In college, we had to be sure our dorm rooms were exactly as we found them. Painted tan with no nail holes, or we wouldn’t get our deposit back. I worked really hard to patch up about a hundred nail holes,” she answered.

  Tyler would rather they talked about her past relationships. Had she found that none of them were satisfying, as he had? In college, he’d had a few fairly long-term relationships, but they never made him feel the way Monica did. Once he’d even called his girlfriend by Monica’s name. That went over like a mouse in the punch bowl at a church social, and she broke up with him.

  “It’s not going to do itself,” she sighed.

  “Cheesecake before we start?” he asked.

  “I’ll have mine after we finish for the night,” she answered. “Are you procrastinating, Tyler Magee?”

  “I hate to paint,” he admitted, “but I’m too tight to pay someone to do it for me.”

  “You are preaching to the choir. Maybe by working together, it won’t be so bad. Want me to put on some music?” she asked.

  “Long as it’s country, I’d love that.” He stood up with a groan. “If we get with it, we might get it all done by the time the weekend is over. Hey, did Dotty call and tell you that we’re going to the alumni banquet on Friday night?”

  “Oh yeah,” Monica answered. “I think they’re playing matchmaker.”

  “Think it will work?” Tyler grinned.

  “Probably not, but it will give them something to do.” Monica smiled back, and for the first time since that fatal night, the warmth reached her eyes.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Monica was a few minutes early that morning, but she had no doubt that Nana and Winnie would be wide awake and waiting for her. Four elderly gentlemen were playing dominoes around a table in the lobby, and six ladies were in rocking chairs on the other side of the big room. Their knitting needles made music as the women knitted what looked like baby caps. All of them looked up and smiled at her.

  “Good mornin’.” She raised her voice slightly so that everyone could hear her.

  “Same to you,” several of them answered.

  “Dotty and Winnie have been dressed and waiting for an hour,” one of the ladies told her as she passed by. “They’re lucky women to have a granddaughter who will take them shopping.”

  Monica patted the lady on the shoulder. “I’m lucky that they let me go with them.”

  She crossed the floor and had started down the hall when Tyler stepped out of Leona’s office. “Hey,” he said with a grin. “Do you like the blue walls as well this morning as you did last night?”

  “Even better,” Monica answered, and kept walking.

  “Seemed like we should paint some white clouds up around the top of the bedroom so it would really look like a summer sky.” He fell into step beside her. “I’m not following you. My office is this way, and I’ve got to get my briefcase. I’ve got a continuing education class in Sherman this morning.”

  “I’ve got one next week,” she told him. “They’re usually so boring, I have trouble staying awake.”

  “Yep,” he agreed, “but to keep our license, we’ve got to do them.” He stopped and opened a door with a key card. “See you this evening. You got the pizza last night. I’ll bring burgers tonight. Mustard with no onions, right? And tater tots instead of fries?”

  “I haven’t changed, and thank you,” she answered.

  He grabbed a briefcase from his desk and waved as he headed down the hall in the opposite direction from where she was going.

  “I really would like to work here,” she muttered, and then realized someone was behind her.

  “That’s good news,” Gloria said. “Stop by my office today and pick up an application packet.”

  Monica started to say that she hadn’t made up her mind, but she clamped her mouth shut. “I’ll be by when I bring Nana and Winnie home from their shopping trip.”

  “Great!” Gloria nodded as she knocked on an apartment door. “That really makes me happy.”

  Monica hadn’t taken but a few more steps when Dotty and Winnie came out of her grandmother’s apartment.

  Dotty was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, cowboy boots, and her Stetson hat. Winnie looked about the same, but she had chosen tennis shoes.

  Dotty slung her tooled leather purse over her shoulder. “We heard you coming. We’re ready to go.”

  “And you both look just like ranchin’ women.” Monica grinned.

  “She tried to get me to wear my boots,” Winnie said, “but my feet would hurt at the end of the day.”

  “I can kick my boots off, and you’re going to have to bend over to untie and tie those shoes a dozen times,” Dotty shot back. “I might have sore feet, but you’re going to have an aching back.”

  “If you two argue and fuss, we’re going to McDonald’s for lunch,” Monica threatened.

  “Why would you do that to us?” Dotty asked.

  “If you act like children, then you get kid’s meals,” Monica informed them. “It’s just the way it is.”

  “You’re no fun,” Winnie replied. “Don’t you know that our bantering is what keeps us young? You should try it with Tyler. Speaking your mind is liberating.”

  “Tyler is still the same sweet guy he used to be, but he broke my heart, and all the bantering in the world won’t put it back together again. We’re neighbors and friends—if you use the word loosely.” Monica led the way out into the bright sunshine.

  “You ain’t Humpty Dumpty,” Dotty told her. “You don’t have to glue the pieces of your old heart back together, darlin’. You can have a heart transplant and get a brand new one to start all over with.”

  Monica pushed the button on her key chain fob to open the car doors. “But then I’d have to take medicine to keep from rejecting my new heart.”

  “Shotgun!” Winnie called out and hurried to get in the front passenger seat.

  “If you’re in love, that’s the medicine that works on a virtual heart transplant,” Dotty said as she got in the back seat. “You can have the front seat, Winnie. I’ve got more room back here.”

  “Spoilsport,” Winnie said.

  Monica slid in behind the wheel and started the engine. “If y’all start slapping each other over the seats, I’m taking you right back to the center, and you can wear what you have on to the banquet.”

  “Yes, Mommy,” Winnie said, laughing.

  * * *

  Tyler was one of the last people to make it to the conference center. He slipped into a desk in the back of the room and opened his briefcase. After a lengthy introduction, the instructor took his place behind the podium. He didn’t waste any time but went right into a lecture on understanding the effects of opioids prescribed for pain management in the elderly.

  Tyler tried to focus on what the man was saying, because there would be a quiz at the end of the two-hour class, and if he didn’t pass it with at least seventy-five percent, he would have to take the course over again. And more than two hundred dollars would go right down the drain.

  Visions of Monica in those cutoff bibbed overalls, with her ponytail swinging back and forth as she rolled the paint on the walls, kept flashing through his mind. He had wanted to sweep her up in his arms and kiss her until they were both breathless, but it was way too soon for that to happen—if it ever did.

  He was staring off into space and thinking about Monica when the instructor said, “The quiz for this class is on your computers. You have thirty minutes to finish it, and your grade will pop up after you hit ‘submit’.”

  Tyler remembered most of the material from when he had taken a similar class his last year in school, but he was sweating when he hit the submit button at the end of the test. When eighty percent popped up, he heaved a heavy sigh of relief. That was the lowest grade he’d ever made on a test, but he had passed, and that meant he didn’t have to retake the course.

  “Little worried, were you?” the lady next to him asked.

  “No, I was a whole lot worried,” he admitted.

  “There’s a bunch of us going to have lunch together. Want to join us?” she asked. “By the way, I’m Paula Garber. I work with Dr. Avery here in Sherman.”

  “Tyler Magee,” he said. “I work the day shift at Pecan Valley Retirement Center.”

  “Man, that’s the job I’d like to have. My aunt is over there, and she loves it.” She gathered up her things and headed toward the door. “Do you have to get back right now, or can you go eat with us and gripe about these classes?”

  “I’d love to go. Where should I meet y’all?” Tyler finished putting his laptop away and snapped his briefcase shut.

  “The Olive Garden. We’ll save a seat for you,” she said with a smile.

  The restaurant was only a ten-minute drive from the place where the class was held. When Tyler arrived, he parked his truck and got out, only to find that he’d pulled in right next to Paula. She waved and motioned for him to follow her. It wasn’t until they were in the lobby that he realized the seven other people were all women.

  Paula went right up to the counter and told them she had reservations for seven, but could they add another person to that party. There Tyler was in a group of women, all trying to introduce themselves at the same time, when Dotty, Winnie, and Monica walked into the restaurant.

  “Hey, Tyler!” Winnie yelled across the reception area.

  “Granny? What are y’all doing here?” He left the circle of women and went right over to hug his grandmother. “I thought you were going to have lunch at a steak house.”

  “We changed our minds. You should come sit with us,” Winnie said.

  Tyler cut his eyes around to Monica, and their eyes locked. What must she be thinking, he wondered, to see him with so many women? At least, none of them had their tongue in his mouth or their hand down the front of his pants.

  “I’d love to. Let me tell my colleagues that I won’t be eating with them,” he said, smiling.

  Monica didn’t return the smile, but she didn’t turn around and walk out of the place, either, so he counted that as a win. He thanked Paula for the invitation and explained to her that his grandmother and her friends wanted him to have lunch with them.

  “Maybe another time.” Paula nodded and handed him a business card. “And if you decide to leave Pecan Valley, give me a call. I was serious about wanting to work there. I’d even start off with night shifts to get a toe in the door.”

  “Will do,” Tyler said, “and I can sure enough vouch for the fact that it’s an amazing place to work.” He tucked the card into his shirt pocket and followed his new group of only three women to the back of the room.

  Winnie and Dotty slid into one side of the booth, leaving the other side for him and Monica. He hesitated, but only for a moment, then sat down so close to her that their shoulders and thighs were touching. The chemistry between them sent sparks dancing like lightning bugs all around them. If Dotty and his granny could have seen or felt the electricity that he felt, they would both have been out in the aisle, singing a country song about second chances at love so loud that it would have drowned out the Italian music playing over the PA system.

  “How did the shopping trip go?” His voice sounded a little hoarse in his own ears.

  “They don’t make clothes for sixty-year-old women anymore. Can’t you just see me and Dotty in skimpy dresses cut down to our belly buttons and halfway up to our butts on the side?” Winnie complained.

  Tyler’s laughter was a little forced, but then, he felt like his thigh was on fire. “So, you’ve got more shopping to do this afternoon? Y’all going to be done by dark?”

  “We don’t have a curfew,” Dotty told him, “but we’re done now.” She turned around just a little to face Winnie. “And Winnie Magee, sixty is so far in the past that you can’t even catch a glimpse of it in the rearview mirror. At that age, we would have worn those kinds of dresses. We were still wearing two-piece bathing suits to the creek when these two young’uns were born.”

  “Yep, we were.” Winnie laughed and then lowered her voice. “We finally did find something that suited us both in the last store we went into. I’m going to get double duty out of my outfit by wearing it to the Mother’s Day party at the center.”

  “Not me,” Dotty said. “I’m goin’ to bring some bling and class to the party with my blue dress. It’s going to look stunning with my crown.”

  Winnie tilted her chin up and looked at Dotty through her bifocals. “It’ll look even better with my black pant set. Your dress is so fancy it will fight with the crown, whereas my outfit will enhance it.”

  “We haven’t ordered yet,” Monica warned them.

  “What does that mean?” Tyler asked.

  “Mommy here”—Dotty rolled her eyes—“says if we don’t stop arguing, all we get for lunch are kids’ meals from McDonald’s.”

  Tyler’s chuckle turned into a guffaw that had the people around them staring. He unrolled his silverware and used the big green napkin to wipe the tears from his eyes. “Y’all have been at this our whole lives. I don’t see it stopping now that you are”—he cleared his throat—“sixty years old.”

  “Then they’ll be eating lots of McDonald’s and walking to Sherman,” Monica teased.

  “I ain’t walkin’ nowhere,” Dotty said. “I know how to call for a car or for the old people’s shuttle to take me where I want to go if you’re wearing your Mommy britches.”

  “Sounds to me like they’re going to gang up on you,” Tyler whispered. “If you need any help, just call me.”

  “I might do that,” Monica said.

  * * *

  Doing so was tough, but Monica forced herself to concentrate on the menu. With Tyler’s thigh and knee pressed against hers, that was no easy feat. When she finally laid the menu to the side, she noticed that both Winnie and Dotty were smiling like Cheshire cats, or maybe just old alley cats that had finally caught a house sparrow or a mouse.

  She shivered at the image of the furry critter that popped into her head. She absolutely hated mice, and in the wintertime, one or two always found a way to get into Nana’s house. That’s why she wanted one of Sheba’s kittens. By the time cold weather came around, the cat would be old enough to catch those wicked varmints.

  “Cold?” Tyler asked.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m fine.” She was practically sweating, even though the air conditioner vent was right above them.

  “I’m Leon, and I’ll be your waiter,” a tall kid said. “Can I start y’all off with a daiquiri or maybe a glass of wine?”

  “Just sweet tea,” Monica answered.

  “I’ll have an Italian margarita,” Winnie said.

  “And I want a strawberry daiquiri.” Dotty nodded. “Don’t judge me, Monica! We just found outfits for the alumni party in two hours. This is a celebration.”

  Monica threw up both palms defensively. “No judging here. I’m just glad I’m driving if you two are drinking.”

  “Sweet tea,” Tyler told the waiter and then turned to Monica. “Thanks for being their designated driver today. Where are y’all going after we finish lunch?”

  “To the grocery store,” Winnie answered for both of them. “We both need to stock up on candy and stuff to hand out to the staff and visitors.”

  “That’s sweet of you,” Tyler said.

  “They have ulterior motives,” Monica whispered. “They’re trying to buy votes for the Mother’s Day crown. Everyone that comes in their room leaves with a piece of candy or something to eat.”

  “If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then the way to that crown is through bribery,” Dotty told them.

  “And we ain’t a bit ashamed to do it, either,” Winnie added.

  “What if one of you gets the most votes and wins, and the other one is the loser?” Tyler asked.

  “We have a plan,” Winnie said, and went on to tell him their idea. “That way we share custody of the crown, and we can each wear it a week at a time.”

  Monica rolled her eyes. “I bet that works out just great.”

  Tyler just shook his head. “You might wish you’d never applied for a job at the center.”

  Monica shot a look his way. “How did you know?”

  “Gloria called me. She’s very excited,” Tyler answered.

  Their drinks came, and Dotty took a long sip of hers, then narrowed her eyes at Monica. “I bet the whole center knows by now. You should have told us first.”

  “I just made up my mind this morning, and I haven’t even picked up the application packet,” Monica defended herself.

  “Well, then we’ll tell all our friends that you were thinking about it, and we talked you into it over lunch,” Winnie said.

  “Lord, it’s worse than raisin’ kids.” Monica raised her glass in a toast. “To success in our shopping. To me making up my mind about the job offer. To having half the house painted.”