The Christmas Cookie Collection Read online

  But she had to have answers. Had to hear her mother’s side of the story.

  Her breathing was coming out thin and reedy. Her stomach knotted. What to do? What to do?

  And that’s when she saw it.

  The Help Wanted sign in the window.

  Dear Earl,

  Raylene paused, pen in her hand, and stared down at the yellow legal notepad. Her nephew Travis’s new bride Sarah was a writer, and during the First Love Cookie Club meeting this morning, she’d suggested Raylene write a letter to Earl and tell him how she felt. It had sounded like a good idea at the time, but now that she was doing it, the words simply wouldn’t come.

  It might work for writers, but this letter-­writing nonsense wasn’t for former Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders turned bar owners. Raylene yanked out the piece of paper, crumbled it into a tight ball, and banked it off the wall above the trashcan. It dropped right in.

  “She shoots, she scores.”

  “What did you say, boss?”

  Raylene was startled to see her main bartender, Chap Hyndman, standing at the partially opened door. “Nothing,” she mumbled, stuffing the pad and pen in the desk drawer with her stack of Word Find anagram puzzles. “What did you want?”

  “There’s a lady here,” Chap said. “Asking about a job.”

  “A job?” Raylene blinked.

  “You put a Help Wanted sign in the window.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She’d forgotten about that. “Well, send her on in.”

  “Okay.” Chap nodded and moved off.

  Raylene heard him talking to someone in the hallway. A minute later, a woman appeared at the door. Raylene waved her inside. “C’mon, have a seat, shut the door behind you or that busybody bartender will eavesdrop.”

  The woman hesitated. Raylene’s eyes met hers and instant gooseflesh carpeted her arms.

  Someone just walked over your grave. It was something her grandmamma used to say. Raylene never really understood what the saying meant. How could someone walk over your grave if you weren’t dead yet?

  The woman stepped inside the office, closed the door.

  Raylene shook off the weird feeling, got to her feet, extended her hand. “Name’s Raylene Pringle,” she said.

  The woman accepted her hand. Surprisingly, she had a strong handshake. From the size of her, skinny as a tentative stray cat, Raylene was expecting a limp fish handshake. Not only was her handshake solid, but she looked Raylene squarely in the eyes.

  “My name is Shannon . . .” She paused for a fraction of a second before saying, “Nagud.”

  “Nagud? That’s a new one on me,” Raylene said. “What nationality is it?”

  The woman shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  Raylene held up both palms.

  “Nope.”

  The woman glanced around the office, sizing it up. Her gaze fell on a picture of Raylene back in the seventies in her Dallas Cowboys cheerleader uniform surrounded by several grinning football players. One of whom was Lance Dugan.

  Suddenly it occurred to her that she should never have displayed that picture. It had been up there for years, the picture that she and Lance were in together. In the office she shared with Earl. Used to share. She’d been damned insensitive. Raylene suppressed an impulse to yank it off the wall and throw it into the trash along with the wadded-up letter she could not write.

  “Have a seat.” Raylene waved at the Naugahyde couch and inspected Shannon Nagud more closely.

  She wasn’t young, but neither was she quite yet middle-­aged. Early-­ to mid-­thirties. Near the same age Raylene’s daughter would be. She was a little taller than Raylene’s five-­foot-­six, with dark brown hair and a heart-­shaped face. She had killer legs. Almost as good as Raylene’s own. A simple gray wool sheath dress clung to her skinny frame, and a single strand of pearls encircled her long, elegant neck. She moved like Grace Kelly. Above it all. Smooth and cool. Emotionally untouchable. Certainly not cocktail waitress material where big tits and a ribald sense of humor garnered the most tips. No, this one belonged in a quiet, dignified work environment. A museum curator or boutique shop owner. Somewhere serene and clean and distant.

  For no reason at all, Raylene thought of her ex-­mother-­in-­law, Kathryn Dugan. The woman who’d come into the hospital in upstate New York and written out a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, only hours after Raylene had given birth to the daughter she never got a chance to see. Back in those days, they knocked your ass out when you had a baby. “I’ve booked you a flight on Braniff to DFW for tomorrow morning,” Kathryn said. “Be on it and don’t ever contact us again.”

  For thirty-­five years Raylene had stuck to her promise. The past Christmas, though, she’d broken that vow, and she’d paid a heavy price. The familiar squeeze of shame, remorse, and disappointment rolled through her. Life didn’t give you second chances. There were no do-­overs. You screwed up when you were young, and it haunted you for the rest of your life.

  “The bartender had me fill out an application.” Shannon reached into her chic Burberry purse. It was not a knockoff. Raylene puckered her lips. How could an out-­of-­work cocktail waitress afford a Burberry purse?

  Shannon passed the application to her. “I didn’t fully fill it out.”

  Raylene raised an eyebrow. The only boxes that were filled in on the form were Shannon’s name and cell phone number. No address. No previous work experience. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  “I have to be honest with you, Mrs. Pringle.” She cleared her throat and an uncertain expression flitted over her face.

  The way she said it sent a spark of warning up Raylene’s spine. There was something decidedly unusual about this woman. For a fraction of a second, she almost told her to leave, but her curiosity got the better of her. “I’m intrigued. You’ve got five minutes to explain yourself.”

  “I didn’t fill out the address portion because I’m new in town, and I don’t yet have a residence.” Shannon paused. “I was wondering if you could suggest a place?”

  Raylene thought about the apartment upstairs over the bar. Earl had converted the space for Earl Junior to get him out of the house when he turned twenty-­one, with the idea being that E.J. would help his father run the Horny Toad. As with most expectations when it came to your kids, things hadn’t turned out the way they’d planned, but she and Earl had used the apartment as rental income for several years. After the previous tenant had left in August to go back to college, Raylene hadn’t bothered renting it out. She’d been happy to be shed of the hassle. It was hard keeping things up without Earl.

  Instead of answering Shannon’s question, Raylene asked, “Why’d you come to Twilight?”

  Shannon held her gaze with unnerving steadiness. “It seems like a fairytale town.”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “Yes.” Shannon’s gaze turned into a full-on stare. “Yes, they can.”

  Unnerved, Raylene lowered her eyes to the form. “You didn’t put anything down under previous employment.”

  “I’ve never worked as a cocktail waitress before.”

  Helen Keller could have figured that out. “Where have you worked?”

  Shannon shook her head. “Is that really important? It has no bearing on the position I’m applying for.”

  Red flags flew. There was something very fishy about Shannon Nagud. Raylene shook her head and stood up. “I’m sorry, but I need an experienced cocktail waitress.”

  Shannon got to her feet as well. “Mrs. Pringle, I’m asking you to take a chance on me. I need a job very badly. In fact, I’m desperate.”

  Raylene’s gaze went to the pearls, then dropped to the Burberry purse.

  “I know it doesn’t look that way, but . . .” She paused and her cool faltered. For one fraction of a second, she looked so utterly vulnerable that her expression to
re at Raylene’s crusty old heart.

  “I didn’t want to tell you my dark secret.”

  Empathy flooded Raylene. From one person who’d held onto a dark secret to another. She reached out and briefly touched the younger woman’s shoulder. “What is it?”

  Shannon dipped her head. “I’m so ashamed.”

  You’re not a therapist, Raylene. Show her the door. You don’t need to get mixed up in her drama. “We’ve all made mistakes we regret.”

  Shannon raised her head, that piercing stare was back. “Have you?”

  An instant lump blocked Raylene’s throat. She nodded.

  “I did a very stupid thing,” Shannon said. “I was lonely and I fell in love with the wrong guy. He turned out to be a con man. Took me for my inheritance.”

  “That rotten shitbag,” Raylene said, wondering why she had such an impulse to rally behind this woman.

  A wry smile pulled tightly at Shannon’s mouth. “To say the least.”

  Raylene kneaded her forehead. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. “Ever done any kind of waitressing?”

  “No, but I’m a fast learner.”

  She knew she was going to regret it. Mentally, she was already calculating how much broken beer mugs were going to cost her until Shannon got the hang of balancing drinks on a tray. Her wrists did look strong. As if she played a lot of tennis or lifted dumbbells. Maybe she wouldn’t be as bad as Raylene feared.

  “You can’t expect the same salary as an experienced waitress.”

  An emotion that Raylene could not identify lit Shannon’s eyes. It wasn’t quite excitement, nor was it relief or even hope, rather it was more a nervous anticipation.

  “No, no,” Shannon said, “of course not.” Raylene low-­balled her on the salary.

  Shannon nodded. “That’s fine.”

  Hmm, she didn’t even try to bargain. Another cause for concern. Was she that desperate? The woman with the Burberry purse. “You’re on two weeks probation.”

  “I would expect that.”

  “There’s a loft apartment upstairs. With a side entrance,” Raylene said, feeling a bit bad for low-­balling her. “You’re welcome to stay there rent-­free until you can find other accommodations.”

  Shannon looked surprised. “That’s very generous of you.”

  Raylene shrugged. “It’s empty. No skin off my teeth. You’ll have to clean it yourself.”

  “Yes, surely. Thank you for this opportunity.”

  “Get settled in, and I’ll introduce you around.”

  “I’ll go get my suitcase. Thank you again, Mrs. Pringle.”

  “Thank me by doing a good job.”

  “You won’t regret hiring me,” Shannon promised, hurrying toward the door.

  “We’ll see about that,” Raylene mumbled. She was a lunatic for hiring an unproven cocktail waitress. Something just wasn’t right about Shannon Nagud.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” Shannon stared at herself in the dusty bureau mirror.

  She stood in the middle of the tiny apartment above the bar, still in heels and pearls, a bottle of Windex in one hand, and a page of newspaper in the other. Raylene had given her a plastic carrier filled with cleaning supplies and told her to “have at it.”

  She’d come here to confront her birth mother, and instead she now had a job and a place to stay in a Texas town she’d never heard of until a year ago. She squirted glass cleaner on the mirror and, using a circular motion, rubbed it with the newspaper. Shannon stared into her own tawny eyes, so similar in color to her father’s.

  Honestly, she had no idea what she was doing. But for the first time in a year, she felt as if she’d taken control of her life instead of being rocked by circumstances.

  What? You’re a cocktail waitress now? How long do you plan on staying here?

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  She was an art history major who’d given up her art gallery job in Soho to nurse her grandparents the last three years of their lives. A true trust-­fund baby who’d never really had to work a day in her life.

  When she’d walked into the bar on the pretext of looking for a job, she’d thought she would size up Raylene and then make up her mind about what to do next. Apparently, that meant rolling with the punches and accepting the job she never in a million years thought Raylene would offer. In the back of her mind was a voice that whispered, “Here’s your chance to get to know your mother.”

  Was that what she really wanted? That was the thing. At thirty-­five, she still didn’t know her own mind or what she truly wanted. She’d even studied art history at her grandmother’s suggestion. A genteel field of study fit for a Dugan. The best part had been studying in Italy. The downside had been that her grandparents had rented a villa in Florence so they could keep a close eye on her—­although she had managed a short-­lived clandestine romance with a wild-­haired French artist who taught her a great deal about the human form. She was painfully aware that she’d been raised in an ivory tower; thirty-­five, and just the last few years really feeling the sharp teeth of life.

  Shannon set the Windex on the bureau, walked across the braided rug covering the knotted pine floor, and sank down on the full-­sized bed covered with a friendly homemade quilt. It was getting dark outside, the purple blue fingers of dusk darkening to navy.

  From downstairs, the jukebox played Christmas carols. Maybe the truth was that she didn’t want to be alone for the holidays. Grandfather was gone. Her father was spending the entire month of December in Aspen with his new girlfriend, who was six years younger than Shannon. Her friends all had their own families. She had nowhere to be and no one to be with.

  Maybe she should stay here until Christmas Day and drop the bombshell on Raylene then.

  That’s a bit cruel, don’t you think?

  What was cruel was Raylene running out on her when she was a baby.

  Shannon blew out her breath, leaned back, and stared at the ceiling. After that mess with Peter, she’d found it difficult to make a decision and stick with it, terrified that she would make another huge mistake.

  She remembered then what Raylene had said to her, recalled the haunted look in her eyes. We’ve all made mistakes we regret. Had she been talking about abandoning her child?

  A knock sounded on the door.

  “Come in,” she said, sitting up.

  Raylene stepped inside. She wore blue jeans and cowboy boots and had her gray hair pulled into a ponytail. She glanced around the room. “Doesn’t take you long to clean up.”

  “I’m a hard worker,” Shannon said, lifting her chin proudly. She’d hired on to be a cocktail waitress, and that’s what she was going to do.

  Raylene tilted her head, studied Shannon for a long moment. “Come on downstairs,” she said. “Chap made a pot of stew for the bar menu. Might as well go meet everyone.”

  Nate had just tossed a handful of pistachios in his mouth and was busy chewing when through the side window he caught sight of a gorgeous pair of legs descending the outside stairs. His throat worked, but for a moment, he couldn’t swallow. All he could do was stare. By the time the owner of those spectacular legs appeared in profile in the window, he was already a goner.

  He swiveled his head, eyes beaded on the front door. It creaked open, and Raylene sauntered in. A slender brunette in a gray dress and matching high-­heeled shoes that looked like they came from Paris or Rome, followed her.

  Holy smokes! Who was this?

  She wasn’t young, but neither was she old. Just the right age. Maybe three or four years younger than he was. Although with all he’d seen and done, Nate felt a lot older than his thirty-­eight years.

  The bar was quieter than usual, although a rowdy college-­aged crowd was in the back room playing pool. The wide-screen TV was turned to the football game, and several
regulars sat at the bar eating stew and watching the Cowboys and the Dolphins seesaw back and forth across the gridiron. An older ­couple sat at a table near the empty dance floor, holding hands over their drinks and gazing into each other’s eyes.

  Nate liked the Horny Toad. It was family owned and operated, a hangout for locals. Few tourists ventured in, so the prices were lower than the flashier bars near the Lake Twilight marina. He also came here because it was better than drinking alone in his cabin. He allowed himself only one drink a night. He’d almost gotten into serious trouble with alcohol when he’d first returned from Afghanistan, trying to drown the terrible memories. He didn’t want to go down that road again. Since moving to Twilight, he’d been able to stick to his one-­drink policy, and the nightmares had faded. The town turned out to be just the tonic his ragged soul needed. This afternoon, he’d even ordered a beer instead of his usual whiskey. He took a big swallow to wash down the pistachios.

  Raylene guided the woman behind the bar, and Nate had to quell an impulse to stand up to acknowledge her presence.

  “Fellas,” Raylene addressed the men at the bar. “I want you to meet Shannon. She’s our new cocktail waitress. I trust you’ll all take it easy on her while she learns the ropes. She narrowed her gaze at one patron who was notorious for pinching waitresses on the fanny. “I’m talking to you, Snake.”

  “Who, me?” Snake asked, trying to look innocent.

  “If he grabs your ass,” Raylene said to Shannon, “haul off and slap the fire out of him.”

  Snake reached up and rubbed his cheek as if he’d already been slapped.

  “Have a seat,” Raylene told Shannon. “And I’ll get us some stew.”