Josie Day Is Coming Home by Lisa Plumley Page A

contact someone who was at sea. But for one
long minute, he left his hand on the receiver, in no hurry to embroil himself
in another battle with his forgetful aunt.
    The truth was, he worried about her. Her forgetfulness, her
grouchiness, her recklessness…. They’d all gotten worse since Ernest had died
last year. Blue Moon was only a case in point. Tallulah kept forgetting the
place wasn’t one of Ernest’s dozens of properties, hers to fritter away. It was
a family legacy— Luke’s legacy . He had to make his aunt understand that
she couldn’t keep giving it away to strangers. No matter how damn much she
liked them.
    On the other hand, it wasn’t as though Luke couldn’t handle
one pesky, long-legged redhead on his own.
    If he knew women—and, let’s face it, he did—Josie would bolt
the minute she heard the second floor mice scratching their way through
tonight’s midnight snack attack. If she did gut it out until morning, a girlie
girl like her would never survive Donovan’s Corner.
    His certainty growing, Luke glanced outside. What he saw
there confirmed his suspicions. The dearth of neon, the proliferation of pickup
trucks, the stick-in-the-mud residents…. No doubt about it. She’d bail out
before the weekend was through.
    He’d seen the Enchanté boxes Josie’s stuff was packed in.
And the Nevada plates on her heap of a car. He was dealing with Las Vegas
Barbie here. There was no way she was going to embrace small town life—no
matter how staunchly she insisted that she couldn’t wait for Ambrose to FedEx
the finished paperwork and the deed, which was supposed to happen any day now.
None of that would matter in the end. Blue Moon belonged to Luke.
    His decision made, Luke loosened his grasp on the phone.
Wrangling with his aunt could come later. For now, he’d deal with Josie on his
own. It was only a matter of time before she gave up on Blue Moon and accepted
Tallulah’s inevitable consolation prize—a different estate. All he had to do
was wait Josie out.
    That was going to be no problem. Hell, he figured as he
returned to his coffee and ordered a celebratory slice of cherry pie, it was
going to be easy.
     
    Nothing in this town was ever easy. Josie had forgotten that
about Donovan’s Corner. The stoplights were all timed funny, because no one was
ever in a hurry to get anywhere. The residents were hard to deal with, because
at least ten percent of them hadn’t bothered to turn on their hearing aids. And
if you wanted something done, you had to make nice with the one person who could
do it for you. Because unlike in the big city, there was usually only one
source for everything.
    Except beer, bait, and cigarettes, of course.
    That point was driven painfully home to Josie as she stood
at the counter of Copies 2 Go (“We Sell Lottery Tickets!”), trying to
get permission to use one of the ancient photocopiers.
    “It’s just a flyer, see?” She waved the
8-1/2-by-11 sheet she’d written, trying to make the permed-haired female clerk
behind the counter understand. “I need about fifty of them.”
    “I don’t care how many you need. Unless you have a
local address, you can’t use the copy machines.”
    “I do have a local address. I just don’t remember what
it is. It’s that big house about a half mile outside of town. You know, the old
one with the chimneys and the stonework and the gigantic yard?”
    “Have you got a utility bill?”
    “No. I’m still moving in. But—”
    “Next.” Permed Lady gestured for the customer in
line behind Josie to step forward. “How’re you doing today, Trudy?”
    “Pretty good. Is that old Xerox in the corner
free?”
    “Sure, it is. Just go on and—”
    “I’m sorry,” Josie murmured to the customer.
“But I wasn’t finished yet.” She elbowed her way forward and held out
her flyer, which advertised her new dance school. If living in Vegas had taught
her anything, it was that demand could never start being generated too