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Chapter 6
Madison
“So, are you going to dinner with him or not?” Lorna asked after I finished telling her the content of my conversation with Alex Killarny from the night before. She was clearly very invested in that particular bit of information.
“Yes, I agreed to have dinner with him.”
Lorna clapped her hands together, almost resembling a seal. “Eee! I am so excited for you.”
“Lorna…it’s dinner. It’s not like it’s a date. I would not have agreed to a date. You know that.”
She tilted her head and gave me a funny look. “It’s dinner at his house. That he is preparing for you with his own two hands…his two very strong, nimble hands.”
I stopped the filing I was doing and looked at her incredulously.
“You know, I really should fire you.”
Lorna smiled sweetly. “Oh please. You know you’ll never find help as good as me in this town.”
I also knew that my best friend could see right through me and had some idea about what Alex still meant to me, even though all that time had passed. It was a weird thing to come to terms with, but I was starting to realize in the few days that I had been back in town that you don’t just throw away something that meant that much, even if it was a long time ago. We could be friends, and that would be fine. If he didn’t like that arrangement, then he could be on his way. It was no skin off my back.
“I think you could maybe give the guy a chance. He isn’t bad, you know. And even with all that stuff with your dad, honestly, it’s not like Ale
x could do anything about it at the time. He was as young as you were and had no control over his father.”
She was right, of course. The same thoughts had been going through my mind since Alex, and I spoke at the ranch, but I hated to give them credence. As much as I knew it was correct, I wanted so badly to have someone to blame this on, and Sean Killarny was out of reach, so Alex had seen the brunt of my anger and aggravation.
I shook it all off. “Like I said, it’s dinner and nothing more. I can do my best to be friendly with the guy, and I think it would be good to have another friend around here. There seem to be so few of them left.”
Lorna nodded. “A lot of people got out of town, but you’ve got friends left around here. You just have to go looking for them. It’s not like people are going to go wandering into the office just for a visit, not unless their cat is sick or something.”
“I guess you’re right about that.”
I could see the wheels turning in Lorna’s head as she thought up something. “Why don’t you head down to Claire’s and pick up lunch for us? That place is always full of people, and you’ll get a chance to see some folks you probably haven’t seen in years. Claire will be happy to see you, and you might just catch some good gossip while you’re there.” She looked at the clock. “It’s almost twelve. Go on and head over there. You can order me the chicken salad.”
Lorna didn’t give me much room to argue and the thought of getting out of the office for a few moments was appealing. I grabbed my purse and headed down the street to the diner, a place where I had spent many hours studying in the afternoons when I was a kid. It was the sort of local place where people crowded to get the lunch special every day, and you were bound to run into a half dozen people you knew—and that was on a slow day.
I pushed open the door and stepped instead, a feeling of nostalgia sweeping over me as I saw the same old red and dingy white linoleum flooring. It was clean because Claire would have it no other way, but the years had taken a toll on the place. I walked up to the counter and stood in line, waiting to place my order, when I saw Lillie Wheeler and Barbara Whitley sitting in a booth enjoying their lunch. They waved to me, and after I had placed my order with a high school aged girl at the counter, I went over to greet them. The two women had been good friends of my mother, and I hadn’t seen them in ages.
“Gracious me, Madison. I heard you were back in town but hadn’t had a chance to welcome you back yet,” Barbara said with a smile. “How’s the practice treating you?”
“Good,” I nodded with a smile. “It’s been keeping me busy. Lots of horses and cattle to attend to around here.”
“Oh, you’ll have your fill of that. What about small animals? My granddaughter has a chinchilla,” Lillie said. “Do you look at the small ones, too?”
I chuckled. “Well, they aren’t my particular line of expertise, but if you have any concerns, I’d be happy to look at the little thing.”
Barbara leaned forward conspiratorially. “Not that I am trying to stir something up, Madison, but let me get right to the point. How are things with that Killarny boy you dated? I heard that he was hanging around your place yesterday evening. Something going on there? You two always were the cutest couple. And I think he’s single. I think they all are, except for the oldest. Wouldn’t be a bad family to marry into.”
Barbara and Lillie knew nothing of what had transpired between my father and Sean Killarny and there was no way I’d let that bit of information make it into the gossip pool. They were sweet and caring women and wanted nothing but for me to be happy. However, they had no idea about anything between Alex and me.
I shook my head. “Alex and I are old pals. We were just catching up. It’s been years since we’ve seen or spoken to each other.”
Lillie winked at me. “It’s good to catch up with old friends. But don’t close your mind to any possibilities there. He’s a good catch, I think.”
Thankfully, someone called my name from the counter, and I said my farewells as I went to fetch the brown bag that contained my lunch. I waved to the two ladies and then headed back out and down the street to my office.
There had been no gossip to catch, other than the fact that people still thought that Alex and I could be a thing, something I was bound and determined to prove false.
