Smart Girls Think Twice by Cathie Linz

sparkly tube top to proudly display her tummy. “Do you see any stretch marks here?”
    “Don’t answer,” a guy a few seats away advised Jake. “That’s one of them trick questions women ask men. Like ‘Does this outfit make me look fat?’ Besides them plastic surgeons can do miracles these days. She could have had a dozen kids and had one of those lipo deals to remove all the evidence.”
    “No more booze for you,” Nic growled.
    “Nic, is that you?” The guy leaned closer and almost fell off his stool. “What happened to your flannel shirts and jeans?”
    “I won a makeover in one of those contests.”
    “No shit.” He moved closer. “You hardly ever come in here anymore. Not for years.”
    “Yeah, well, I decided to show off my new look. I was waiting for all the swelling to go down.”
    The guy’s eyes were just about popping. “You’re a real hot momma now.”
    Momma? The term took on a new meaning for Jake.
    Turning his back on them both, Jake poured himself a shot of tequila.
    “Are you drinking my booze?” Nic came around the bar to demand. “I should fire your ass.”
    She eyed his denim-covered butt. “A damn fine ass it is too.”
    He sidestepped her pinching fingers.
    “You sure are a jumpy one. I heard you were some kind of fearless extreme sports god or something. I guess that’s just another one of those wild rumors.”
    “Hey, Nic.” The greeting came from Sheriff Nathan. “You’re not using that con again that you own Nick’s Tavern to get free drinks, are you?”
    Nic glared at him. “Anyone tell you that your timing stinks, Sheriff?”
    “Does that mean that she’s not the owner?” Jake asked.
    Nathan just grinned. “Nic has a strange sense of humor.”
    “Yeah, I gathered that.” He had yet to completely recover from her claim that she was a guy.
    “What do her kids think of her humor?” Jake asked Nathan.
    “What is it with you and kids?” Nic said. “I’m not a breeding machine. Those days are gone. And I really do own this place. Nathan is the one with the warped sense of humor.
    The tavern was my dad’s before I inherited it. Nick Fabrizio.” She made the sign of the cross. “May he rest in peace.”
    Peace was something Jake hadn’t had much of in his life, and it didn’t look as though he was going to find much of it here in Rock Creek.
    The next day, Emma retrieved her laptop from her backpack and pulled up the file containing her notes about Skye Wright-Thornton, the owner of the Tivoli Theater she was about to interview.
    “Thank you for meeting with me—” Emma began.
    Skye interrupted her. “So you’re Sue Ellen’s smart sister.”
    Emma grimaced.
    Skye kept talking. “I’ve got a smart sister too. She’s a librarian in Serenity Falls.”
    Emma had considered becoming a librarian. There were days when she wished she had continued those studies instead of pursuing her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in sociology. Just another decision of hers that she was second-guessing these days.
    Emma used to scoff at the idea of a quarter-life crisis and thought it was just a lot of spoiled whining, but now that she was feeling some of the insecurities, she wondered if this was fate’s way of laughing at her. But those thoughts would have to take a backseat for now. At the moment her focus was on her project. She’d set up several individual interviews, beginning with Skye.
    “The revival of Rock Creek appears to have started with your renovation of the Tivoli Theater,”
    Emma said. “Did you anticipate that this would happen?”
    “No way.” Skye shook her head so vehemently her short red hair flew in various directions.
    “I don’t plan that far ahead.”
    “What made you want to renovate this theater?”
    “It called to me.”
    Emma stared at her blankly.
    “You’ve never had a place call to you? Bonded with it? Felt that special connection? No?
    Well, I did.”
    “The town is beginning to make a name for itself as a center for the