Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart) (12 page)

Dru shook her head, mystified at how he could pass a second time on something so permanent and perfect. Something that was suddenly within her grasp, if she could get herself to stop imagining every possible way this could backfire.

“I’ve got you, Dru.” He sounded so sure. “You’ll see. You can trust me again. Let’s end all of this with something good.”

 . . . 
saying good-bye the right way.

“No more kissing,” she said, taking herself to task as much as Brad. “We’re talking about building a successful partnership, not a train wreck.”

He’d rested his arms on his knees, lethally relaxed. Intense. Sad.

“Deal.” He stood and reached out his hand, expecting her to close the distance between them.

She did, but she didn’t trust herself to touch him yet.

“Friends?” he asked.

As long as they didn’t forget that this was only about being friends again, no one would get hurt, right?

“Friends.” She gave herself points for not sounding as dubious as she felt. She shook. “When do we start?”

He lifted his bag over his shoulder and with a confident smile headed up the stairs.

“Monday morning at the Dream Whip.” He paused and looked down at her. “You’ll bring me up to speed while prepping for the lunch crowd. I’ll be gone most of tomorrow driving to Savannah and back, picking up some things for my stay. In the meantime, I’ll bunk in my old room down the hall from Vivian’s. You can run back to your parents’ couch to sleep. But Vi’s probably got spies posted in the trees out front, waiting to report on your defection.”

Dru’s
friend
was being a smart ass. And he was entirely too adorable at it still for her peace of mind.

She grabbed the backpack she used for a purse and headed up the stairs, brushing past him.

“I’m up by five on Mondays,” she said, “and out the door by five thirty to meet the vendor trucks dropping off the week’s deliveries.”

She made a beeline for her bedroom at the end of the top floor, ignoring Brad’s room as she passed. It was still teeming with teenage-boy mainstays like team trophies and posters of
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit models.

“Get ready,” she challenged, “to work your fingers to the bone. I’m not putting myself through this unless Vivian can trust you to do right by the business.”

Chapter Seven

“Wow!” Sally said, the Friday night before Christmas. She and her parents had just walked into the Dream Whip.

“I know, right?” Dru laughed.

She balanced a tray on her shoulder. It was overflowing with cups and plates and wrappers and disposable salad bowls. She couldn’t get over it. The entire community of Chandlerville was swarming the restaurant after the football game. All night she’d been bussing tables and booths, turning them over. As fast as one group of people left, another claimed the open space.

Dru had never been so thrilled to be dead on her feet.

“We’ve never had a Friday night like this,” she said, “not in all the time I’ve worked here. The new promotion—”

“The one in the program from the game?” Sally held up her copy. “Officer Douglas was so right!”

“I can see that.”

Brad had been right about many things over the last few weeks. The
SEE YOU AFTER THE GAME
coupon in the football program was only his latest suggestion. His experience working food service his first year in Savannah had become a gold mine for the Whip.

He and Dru had bickered back and forth about most of his suggestions for changing things. Sometimes he’d won, sometimes she had, but they’d put the business first always, and Dru had secretly come to enjoy the friendly sparring. It had felt like old times.

And it had made Vivian’s day every time she’d caught wind of it. Dru and Brad tried to downplay the confrontations and focus their reports during their visits with his grandmother on their compromises, and how they were improving the restaurant. Meanwhile, as expected, Vi’s contacts in the community had entertained her with stories about each row.

Dru had relented about the football program ad and booked it herself. She’d held her ground with Brad for longer than she’d actually disagreed with him about running a coupon. Not because she’d thought he was wrong. It just
felt
wrong sometimes still—making decisions with him, working with him, and liking having him around more every day.

She kept reminding herself that even though he had continued to be the same great guy who’d helped out with her radKIDS, Brad planned to leave town once they’d fulfilled their commitment to Vivian.

Dru shrugged off the reminder of his grandmother’s rapidly declining condition.

She smiled at the Beaumont family.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s going to be a bit of a wait for a table. We can’t keep up with the turnover, even with me helping bus the dining room, and Brad in the kitchen flipping burgers with Willie and dropping fries like an all-star.”

“No rush.” Dan hugged his wife to his side. “We’ll catch up with folks we didn’t see at the game. It’s just a relief to be inside, warming up.”

“What a great idea”—Charlotte was a willowy older version of her knockout-gorgeous daughter, making even her team jersey and jeans look classy—“giving away hot chocolate and fries to anyone with a ticket stub from the game who orders a meal.” She held up her family’s tickets, rubbed her hands together, and shivered, as if she were still outside in the cold. “Go, Chargers!”

Dru pointed to the hot-chocolate bar she’d set up on the low counters near the front, where customers added condiments to their burgers and hot dogs. “Drink your fill. There are instant chocolate packets, hot water in the dispenser, plus marshmallows, whipped cream, and cinnamon. Coffee, too, decaf and regular. We’re trying to keep everything filled. I was making drinks for customers before bedlam descended. But now . . .”

“I could help,” Sally offered. “I can make hot chocolate and keep tables clean.”

“Me, too!” Lisa walked up with Joe and Marsha and a passel of their youngest kids.

Travis had arrived with their parents, his blond, Southern-boy good looks turning the heads of several ladies as he walked by.

“Looks like you and Brad are a lock,” he said in his smuggest older-brother way. “I don’t like to say I told you so, but—”

“Then don’t.” Dru had forgiven him for throwing her and Brad together that first afternoon at the Y. But she’d made it clear that familial absolution was a onetime pass.

“Can we help?” Lisa asked, dragging Dru’s attention back to the girls and the need to triage the madness in the dining room. “Me and Sally, like on Saturdays? We could take care of everything out here.”

“Really?” Dru checked with both sets of parents for consent. “Really?!”

Her second
really
reeked of desperation.

The adults laughed. Both girls nodded. Dru put her troublemaking brother out of her mind and thanked her lucky stars that whatever had happened between Sally and Lisa before Thanksgiving had passed. The girls were friends again, and at the moment they were a united front of excitement.

She hugged Lisa and curled her other arm around Sally, passing the older girl her overflowing tray.

“You’ll let me help?” Lisa was sporting a Chandlerville Chargers T-shirt like most of the other kids. Ribbons in the high school’s crimson and gold colors were wrapped around her ponytail.

She’d had more rough patches at school since the radKIDS graduation. Dru had spent Thanksgiving dinner with the family, and Lisa had been withdrawn and harder than usual to talk with. But she was all smiles tonight.

“I’d love for you to help.”

Dru spotted the Star Fleet pin Lisa wore proudly near the collar of her shirt. Dru smiled. She and Lisa had bonded over being hopelessly geeky Trekkies. Dru had given her the pin as an early Christmas gift. And no matter how much Lisa wanted to fit in with other kids who might not understand, she’d refused to hide her new favorite thing, even if the pin made her stand out.

“You two are my first line of defense,” she said to the girls. “You’re in charge of helping at the hot-chocolate bar, and clearing tables and booths so customers won’t flee as soon as they walk in the door and see all this mess.”

The girls giggled. Several nearby families looked over and smiled. The night’s success, the perfect community vibe of it, kicked up another level for Dru.

Vivian had been right. Dru and Brad made a good team. A
great
team, where the Whip was concerned. And working together was helping them say good-bye to a very special lady, in precisely the way Vivian had wanted. They had found a way to become friends again through all of this. Adult friends, free of the past that had torn them apart.

She swallowed a flutter of panic at the thought of watching Brad leave her and Chandlerville behind a second time.

“Dru?” Travis asked.

She blinked back to the dining room. The girls and the adults circled around her were staring as if she’d grown two heads. All but Joe and Travis. Her foster father and brother were sporting identical worried expressions that she’d seen on their faces more than once since November. Neither had brought up Vi’s will or asked for details about Dru and Brad’s working agreement. But her family had made it clear they were keeping an eye on her.

“Sorry.” She pulled at the hem of her
WHIP IT GOOD!
staff T-shirt.

The tees had been another of Brad’s suggestions, to boost staff identity and morale. Customers had soon demanded their own. A fresh batch was on its way from the designer, to be sold at the counter. Vivian had her very own shirt, which she’d worn proudly at Harmony Grove, along with her pearls.

“You’re my dream team tonight,” Dru told the girls. “I’m needed behind the counter, giving the staff oxygen. You’re earning time and a half for hazard duty,” she said to Sally. “And Lisa, I’ve got a
WHIP IT
T-shirt waiting for you at the end of the night.” The younger girl wasn’t old enough yet to officially be paid a salary. “Plus two free shakes a week for the rest of the school year. Deal?”

“Deal!” The girls took off.

“You’re good for them.” Marsha smiled. She rested her head on Joe’s shoulder.

“Sally idolizes you,” Charlotte agreed. “She says she wants to help Lisa and the other kids in town as much as you do. She’s been talking with Kristen Hemmings and Mallory Lombard at the elementary school about doing a student internship once she gets to high school. Maybe becoming a teacher or a school counselor or a social worker one day. She’s seen the difference community leaders like you ladies can make.”

Marsha nodded in agreement, looking proud.

“Your kids are the amazing ones,” Dru said.

Sally was a gentle, encouraging spirit, despite the trauma she’d survived. Lisa was still fighting to make Chandlerville her home, no matter how many setbacks she’d faced. Dru gazed around at the warm, overcrowded restaurant.

“This town is what’s amazing.”

A shock of longing, of wishing she could bottle up tonight so she’d have this perfect moment with her always, sent her rushing toward the front counter before anyone noticed. She caught Travis watching her scoot through the hip-high swinging door that led behind the counter to the registers.

Rubbing her forehead just outside the kitchen, thinking of her and Brad and Vivian and everything that suddenly felt as if it were slipping away, not looking where she was going, she pushed through the kitchen doors and plowed into whoever was standing on the other side of them. A tray clattered to the floor as they went down. Dishes broke in a deafening crash. A strong body absorbed the impact of their fall. And just for a second, she let her head rest against the shoulder she’d been protectively pressed to.

Dazed, her thoughts clamored to the image of Marsha doing the same thing outside with Joe.

“Are you okay?” Brad asked. He held Dru closer, just the way she’d longed for him to for weeks. “I’ve got you.”