In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(11)

"I'll remember that," Kate said.

She drove around to the back of the restaurant, parking her truck beside her mother's old Caddy. Fifteen years old and still running like it did when it was brand-new and transported the three of them to Jeanerette, Louisiana.

She grabbed her apron and wrapped the ties around the front. She was cleaning off a table when Hart pushed the front door open. He hung his hat on the rack and pulled out a chair.

"Mornin', Kate," he said.

"Little early for lunch, but the special is right there. What'll you have?"

"Got a minute?" he asked.

She put her order pad back in the pocket of her apron and sat down. "Case has been solved and it had nothing to do with you. I've got a friend named Cookie, and she had the good sense to write down numbers."

"Do I get the full explanation?" Hart asked.

"It'll be all over town in a matter of hours, anyway. Besides, I'm not bound to secrecy," she said. She gave him a rundown of what she knew.

"I wouldn't want to sit on that trial," he said when she finished.

"I doubt it will ever go to trial. Prescott talked first, so he'll get a deal. Spend a few years in prison but not the max."

"And the woman who killed Stephanie?" Hart asked.

"If she tells everything she knows and gets in the witness program, she might wind up in Idaho growing potatoes," Kate said.

And how is all this really affecting you down deep, Hart? Do you have feelings in your heart that you don't even want to face?

"I feel responsible. If I hadn't been in a hurry that night, she might have told me more, but I just wanted out of there," he said.

"Can't blame yourself."

"Will you have dinner with me tonight?" Hart asked.

Kate was speechless. "That was an abrupt change of subject."

"Frankly, Kate..

"'I don't give a damn'?" she finished.

"I wasn't going to be Clark Gable here. I was going to say that I'm glad it's over and the courts are sorting out the whole mess. But I really do want to go out with you"

"No, Hart, I will not. I'm still Kate Miller. You are still Hart Ducaine. You can't mix oil and water."

She shook her head at him, and then nodded at Slim and Bobby, who had just walked through the door. "Hey, guys!"

Bobby pointed to the special written on the board. "I'll have two of them with extra cheese."

"I won't just go away," Hart whispered.

She pretended she didn't hear him.





Kate threw open the door of her closet and stared at the contents. There was an impromptu backyard barbecue to celebrate Fancy's pregnancy. She flipped hangers, and finally decided on a red tank with a denim overshirt that could be removed and tied around her waist if it got too hot.

It was a lovely spring day, the second week in March, and Easter was early, so maybe the last of the cold weather had passed. She looked forward to an evening with Fancy and Sophie.

She pulled on skintight hip-slung jeans and stomped her feet down into cowboy boots. She fluffed at her hair but it still hung straight down her back. She envied women who could do that thing with their hands, and their hair would frame their faces in volumes of waves. Not Kate. She'd gotten her mother's straight dark hair and her father's light brown eyes. She'd wished for her grandmother Miller's blue eyes her whole life and had often considered blue contacts, but she didn't even need glasses, so it seemed a waste of money.

She touched up her makeup and grabbed the denim overshirt. It had clear sparkly stones set in the shape of a heart on the breast pocket. She opened her bedroom door to find her mother coming out of the bathroom, wrapped in a white bathrobe, with a towel around her head.

"I'm going to a barbecue at Fancy's house. I could be late."

"I'm watching a movie and going to bed early," Mary said.

Kate nodded and went out to her little pickup truck. She crawled inside and turned the key. Music filled the cab, and she kept time with her fingers on the steering wheel to an old Clint Black tune that let a memory of Hart at seventeen sneak into her mind.

The second song, "Somebody's Knockin'," by Terri Gibbs, brought a vivid picture of Hart to mind-only he was the grown man of today, not the teenager of yesterday. The lyrics talked about the devil wearing blue jeans, and described Hart Ducaine to a tee.

With Hart still on her mind, Kenny Rogers started singing "Lady," a song about the man being her knight in shining armor.

Kenny continued to sing about her being his lady, and she thought back about her own three magic words. Kate smiled when Kenny finished his soft ballad. She'd said that she had to have a knight in shining whatever. It would be nice to be that damsel in distress and have that knight ride up on a white horse and carry her away into happy-ever-after.

Ronnie Milsap sang about being lost in the fifties. Kate could still see her father offering his hand to her mother after a long day, and the two of them slow-dancing around the kitchen floor to the song. They had to be middle-aged by then, and still the way he looked at his wife left no doubt he loved her. That's what Kate wanted. She wanted all of the magic words. She wanted her knight in shining whatever. She wanted a forever thing. She wanted life after wife. Her mother had gotten it all, and there had to be men out there who still had it to offer.