CHAPTER ONE
“UH-HUH. YES.”
Mike Valentine listened unabashedly to the half he could hear of his lunch companion’s phone conversation the first Monday in March.
“I know. Mmm-hmm.” Her tone was more flirty than not. Glancing at Mike, Kacey rolled her eyes. And then mouthed, Bo.
A guy she’d been talking to in LA for the past several months. She said she wasn’t in love with him, but she liked him a lot. He fit her life in the city. She’d never, ever bring Bo to Santa Raquel, which was where Mike lived, and where he and Kacey volunteered at a local domestic violence shelter, the Lemonade Stand. Bo was part of her Beverly Hills life. And, Mike assumed, her sexual partner.
A subject that had nothing to do with Mike.
“Okay, tomorrow night. But only if it’s just a few of us. I meant it when I told you I don’t want to go clubbing.”
While she listened, she ate a French fry. Or as much of one as she’d allow herself. Just the tip. Off Mike’s plate.
She fell for the wrong guys. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Besides, she’d told him so herself.
“No, I’m not going to change my mind...” Her tone of voice changed from playful to deadly serious.
While s
he couldn’t seem to control her propensity to date the wrong types, she was determined to make serious changes to her life and had already.
Like the drinking. She still did it. Socially. She might have been teetering on being a drunk, but she wasn’t an alcoholic. Her body didn’t have a chemical dependency on the stuff. And she hadn’t been drunk in ten months, not since she’d made up her mind to change her life. He knew...because she’d told him.
“I do want to be with you! It’s the clubbing I don’t want.” She was smiling now—not at Mike. She’d never smiled at Mike that way.
For which he was utterly thankful. That smile...it was the one reserved for the disposable men in Kacey’s life. The ones who were part of the soap opera star’s Hollywood life.
He’d take friendship with her any day. Getting her inside scoop was a whole different kind of intimacy. A more lasting one.
“No, I can’t do Thursday night. I have a class to teach Friday in Santa Raquel...”
At the Lemonade Stand.
She frowned. “Of course I can. I just don’t want to. The class is important to me, Bo.” Her lower lip got that pouty look—the one that had made her famous on The Rich and Loyal. “You know that.”
Mike lowered his gaze and ran straight into the ample cleavage showing above her skintight cotton top. It wasn’t that she was an exhibitionist, she’d just spent her life in front of a camera and was used to making the most of her assets.
That cleavage made him uncomfortable. He might value the friendship between them—and know that he wouldn’t change things for anything—but he was still a guy. A healthy guy.
In the prime of life.
Feeling like a creep when his body reacted to the eyeful he’d helped himself to, Mike glanced out the window. There wasn’t much to see. A bit of cracked asphalt, two commercial-size Dumpsters, one brown and one blue, side by side, and the chipping brick of the building next door. The old diner was...off the beaten path.
The owner was a decent chef, and left them alone—which was why Little’s Diner had become Mike and Kacey’s hangout, if you could call it that. Partway between LA and Santa Raquel—in a small inland town that had seen better days—Little’s had become the place they met when she was in LA and needed a friend fix.
He was the one who’d suggested the place. He’d found it by accident several years before when he’d needed to get out of the house but had had enough compassion for other diners not to expose them to his grotesque face. He’d been driving aimlessly on roads less traveled, and the diner’s half-broken sign had caught his attention, along with the Open sign and the lack of cars in the lot. He soon learned that the diner packed in folks during shift changes at a local manufacturing plant. After a “Wow, you look gross, man,” Lou Fancy, Little’s owner, had shrugged and shown Mike to a seat in a narrow alcove, facing away from the room.
He’d been coming back ever since.
“Of course you matter. And I want to meet your family. It’s just...”
She’d turned away from the table, but not before he’d seen her stricken expression.
“I know, you’re right,” she said next. And then, “Yes, of course. I’ll be there.”
Mike could hear the other man’s voice but couldn’t make out the words as Kacey sat forward in her seat again. She was smiling. And hung up shortly afterward.
He raised an eyebrow at her. She could talk. Or not.
He was good either way.
“His parents and little brother are in town Thursday night, just for the night. He wants me to meet them.”
He’d known that she couldn’t continue living two lives. They’d talked about it. If she wanted to work in LA and have a room in her sister’s home in Santa Raquel, she could probably pull it off. But this living two parallel lives—work, friends, social life—in both places just wasn’t healthy.