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the way to Angel’s Nest, and like it.
    B ritt finally allowed herself to stare fully and unabashedly at the stranger when he got up to walk out the door.
    She watched him go, panic and relief duking it out in her gut.
    Because from the moment he’d walked in, it was as if someone had dialed the universe up a notch: all of the colors were just a little brighter, and everything seemed more distinct and more beautiful, and her very blood seemed to buzz.
    She’d once gone out with a guy who drove an ancient VW van with insulated walls. She could put her hand on the side of it and feel how loud the music was inside, from how it thumped and vibrated. And when she’d opened the door to get in, the music had burst out, echoing all over the street, setting off car alarms and prompting her dad to poke his head out the door and shout, “Turn that crap down!”
    That’s a bit how she felt right now. Like a VW van secretly bursting with music.
    She knew that as she moved from diner to diner, giving and exchanging smiles, delivering plates, scooping up her tips—the machinery of the Misty Cat was well-oiled and nearly balletic—
    He’d watched her the entire time.
    She might be a little rusty at whatever this was, but she just somehow knew she hadn’t seen the last of that man.
    She was just pocketing the tip— twenty bucks !—and plucking up his bill when Casey Carson swept into the Misty Cat like a Valkyrie—which was basically how she swept in anywhere—for a to-go order. She was blonde and golden, a big-framed girl who was loud and funny and had gorgeous skin and preternatural confidence, which is how she’d successfully run the Truth and Beauty salon—where you could get anything on your body trimmed, dyed or waxed—since the age of twenty. She was almost thirty now.
    She slowed down a bit when she saw Truck Donegal eating a burger.
    Then she gave her hair a haughty flip to show she could care less.
    Kayla Benoit rushed in right behind her. She was small and slinky and brunette, a piquant blend of the best genes her American dad and Japanese mom had to offer, and she’d named her boutique after herself, which, some people in Hellcat Canyon said, was pretty much all you needed to know about Kayla Benoit. She had a lock on the local wedding and maternity business, two events that didn’t necessarily follow sequentially in Hellcat Canyon. But her heart was in the designer dresses. She didn’t move a lot of them, given their price tags. Sometimes Britt thought Kayla stocked a few just to torment her.
    When Kayla saw Truck she came to a full stop and her face went utterly expressionless.
    Then she gave her own hair a dramatic toss and pivoted away from him.
    Kayla and Casey ignored each other pointedly and entirely.
    Truck hunched his shoulders and ducked his head and applied himself to his hamburger like a wood chipper, eager to get out of there.
    And then Eden Harwood and her daughter Annalise burst through the door.
    “Grandma! Grandpa! You’ll never guess what happened!”
    Sherrie rushed toward them, wiping her hands on her apron. “What are all you girls carrying on about? You win the lottery? Did Peace and Love turn out to be a girl and have kittens?”
    “You’re so funny, Grandma!”
    Britt knew that what Sherrie was really dying to say was, You finally met your daddy? Because no one but Eden knew who Annalise’s daddy was, and Eden Harwood, who was a petite woman but stubborn as a rock and almost regal, had been closemouthed on the subject since before Annalise was born. People mostly shrugged when girls in Hellcat Canyon had babies before they got married.
    But Eden had been bound for bigger things, and bigger cities, like her brothers. Annalise had kept her in Hellcat Canyon.
    And Britt knew, even though they tried never to show it, that her silence on the subject hurt Glenn’s and Sherrie’s feelings.
    “I swear I saw—” Kayla blurted.
    While at the same time Casey said, “Let me tell you