The Posse (4 page)

Jude was always eager to
support local businesses, so it was a no-brainer to buy a few of
the pies for her lunch crowd. One day Emmy delivered three peach
pies on a late Friday afternoon, when the dinner rush was just
getting underway. She stood for a moment in the door, watching Jude
hustle as she shouted orders over the talk and music.

The next day, she showed up
during the afternoon lull, marched straight to the bar and leveled
a determined gaze at Jude.

“You open this place up at
six AM. And how many nights do you close before midnight?”

Jude raised an eyebrow. “We
close at five in the afternoon except on Fridays and
Saturdays.”

“Okay.” Emmy nodded. “So
those two nights you close when?”

Jude shrugged. “Usually
after one in season. Not as late during off.”

“I have a proposal. Hire me
to cover your night hours.”

“I must have forgotten
putting the help wanted sign on the window,” Jude said. “I’ve never
had anyone managing here on a permanent basis except me. Why should
I change now?”

Emmy set her chin. “Because
you deserve a break now and then. Because your kids are getting to
the age where they need you around on weekends.” She took a deep
breath. “Because I need a little extra income while I’m getting
this business up and running.”

Jude held her eyes. “All
good points. I’ll think about it.”

And she did. But giving up
any control of the Tide was a hard thing. It was Daniel who gave
her the final push.

“It would be nice to go away
for a weekend or even just over night once in a while. Plus, you
know you want to help out Emmy. Give it a try. If it doesn’t work,
no harm done.”

Far from it. Emmy had taken
the job and run with it. She added dinner specials, brought in
local bands to play and streamlined their processes. From five to
eight, The Tide was still a family friendly spot with kids-eat-free
meals. But after eight, the lights dimmed, the music went up and
The Riptide became one of the hottest restaurants on the beach.

Emmy’s innovations brought
in enough revenue to more than cover her salary, and Jude never
looked back.

Now she watched her
night-time manager weave her way to the bar, a bright smile on her
face. Emmy’s red hair was up in a messy bun, and she wore her usual
green t-shirt and jeans.

“Get going, boss-lady.” She
bumped her shoulder against Jude’s. “You’ve got a quiet house and
hours of downtime. Go watch some
Burn Notice
or
Buffy
. You know I live vicariously through you.”

“Ha.” Jude pulled her
handbag out from under the counter. “Sure you do. Actually I’m
going out to dinner with Matt tonight, so no quiet for me.”

“Matt?” Emmy’s brows shot
up. “Really?” She dragged out the word.

“Yes, really.” Jude shook
her head. “Emmy, I’ve known Matt Spencer for more years than you’ve
been alive, probably. He and the rest of the posse are just keeping
their eyes on me. He knew Meggie and Joseph went back to school
today, so he’s trying to keep me from being lonely.”

“Hmm.” Emmy’s skepticism
wasn’t hard to detect. “Whatever you say, Miss Jude.” She swatted
at her boss. “Now get out of here. You’re cramping my style. And
you’ve got a date to get ready for.”

“I’m telling you, it’s not a
date!” Jude rolled her eyes as she rounded the bar. “I’ll have my
phone if you need anything. Be careful, have a good night. Make
lots of money.”

It was her typical Friday
night send-off, and Emmy waved her out the door.

The house that Daniel had
built Jude was only about five minutes from The Tide. They had
lived in the apartment above the restaurant until a few months
before Joseph was born, but Daniel was determined that their house
would be one of the first projects undertaken by the new company
he’d formed with Logan. Their friend had loved designing the house
almost as much as Daniel had enjoyed making the plans a reality. It
was simple and eminently livable, laid out on one story with lots
of windows. They’d added the pool and landscaping when the kids
were in elementary school, and for their twentieth wedding
anniversary, Daniel had installed a sound system that ran
throughout the entire house and backyard.

“So you can indulge your
love for what passed for music in the eighties,” he’d teased. Jude
had pretended to be insulted, even as she began making play lists
in her head.

Jude dropped her bag on a
chair and headed for the kitchen. She pulled a bottle of water out
of the fridge and wandered out onto the lanai.

It was quiet, and she
thought it would have been a perfect night to enjoy takeout from
her own restaurant here by the pool, along with a lovely glass of
Riesling. She could finish the book she’d been falling asleep over
for the past week. Call the kids and make sure they’d made it to
Gainesville and Savannah.

But no, instead she was
going to haul her cookies back to her bedroom, scrounge up
something decent to wear and go to a restaurant, the last place she
wanted to be on her night off. She was going to put on a big smile
and convince Matt that she was doing okay so that he could take
that info back to the rest of the posse, and maybe she’d get a
little peace.

Jude sighed and drained the
water from her bottle. Stalling just a little, she pulled her phone
out and checked messages. Sure enough, there were several: two from
Meggie, reporting the progress of her drive, and one line from
Joseph that simply said, “
We r
here
.”

She smiled, missing them
already, and texted back quickly. “Good to know. Having dinner with
U Matt. Be safe, love you. Talk soon.”

And then because she
couldn’t put it off anymore, she pushed to her feet and went back
to find something to wear, pausing only long enough to turn on her
music so that it blasted from the kitchen to the bedroom.

Florida beach dinner attire
was simple. There were few places where Jude couldn’t wear shorts,
but since it was Friday night and Matt was going to the trouble of
taking her to dinner, she found a sundress that was both pretty and
comfortable. She paired it with flat beaded sandals and some gold
hoop earrings and decided she’d done her best.

Dressing after a quick
shower, she braided her hair, spritzed on perfume and grabbed a
sweater. It was a given that the a/c would be running overtime;
Jude never went out to eat without a jacket of some kind.

David Bowie began singing
about modern love over the speakers. Jude smiled, thinking that
this was one huge benefit of having the house to herself. There
were no kids to roll their eyes or moan, “Mom, seriously?”

Dancing by the full-length
mirror that hung on her bathroom door, she came to a halt. The last
time she’d been dressed up for anything was Daniel’s funeral, over
a year ago. She frowned at her own image, at the bones jutting out
of her shoulders, the hollows in her neck. Eating had not been a
priority for the last few years, but she hadn’t realized that the
weight loss was so pronounced.

The doorbell rang, jolting
her away from the self-study. Matt stood on the brick porch, hands
in the pockets of his khakis. He wore a black shirt, open at the
neck, with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

His smile didn’t quite reach
his eyes as Jude opened the door. “Hey! Hold on, let me grab my bag
and my keys and turn off the music. I’ll be right there.”

Matt stood aside as she
locked the door and turned toward the driveway. He almost ran into
her back when she stopped suddenly.

“Oh my God, you brought the
‘Vette!” She turned around, hand to her mouth.

Matt grinned. “I wasn’t
going to make you climb into the Jeep. Besides, you all give me so
much shit about it, I figured it was about time you took a
ride.”

Jude followed him to the car
and climbed in when he held the door. She ran one hand over the
dash, smiling. Matt had bought the car after his divorce, and all
the posse had teased him mercilessly about being a stereotypical
middle-aged divorced man. He took it in stride, she’d thought, but
seeing it now, she realized he’d never had any of them take a ride
in it, never drove it around them after he first bought it.

Matt dropped into the
driver’s seat and turned the key. He backed out of the driveway,
one hand on the headrest of Jude’s seat, and she caught a whiff of
his scent, a mix of cologne and lingering sunscreen. It was both
disconcertingly familiar and jarringly foreign; she knew it as
Matt’s particular smell, and yet she was unused to it in such close
quarters. For the first time, she felt unsettled about this
evening, as Emmy’s teasing words rang in her ears.

“In the mood for some
garlic?” Matt slid a sideways grin her way, and Jude felt a little
better. This was Matty, after all. She still saw him as the earnest
little boy who came for breakfast every Saturday with his dad.

“Sounds good,” she said,
shifting in her seat. “I just hope I don’t bore you to death or
fall asleep. Daniel used to say I was pretty useless on Friday
nights. The whole week just seems to catch up with me.”

She hadn’t meant to bring up
Daniel as a defense against any ideas Matt might have, but not
talking about him would have been unnatural. Matt didn’t seem to
mind. He lifted one shoulder.

“That’s okay. If you conk
out on me, I’ll carry you home.”

They were quiet for a moment
then, both lost in their own thoughts. Jude searched for something
else to say, annoyed that she felt she had to make small talk.

“The kids got to school
without any problem,” she heard herself say. “I bet they’re happy
to be back with their friends.”

Matt took a smooth corner.
“Meggie’s finishing this year, right? And what happens with Joseph
now? Does he lose any time with taking his classes here last
year?”

Jude nodded, pursing her
lips. “Just a little. He’ll be about a semester behind, unless he
takes summer classes next year to catch up. I didn’t want him to
take the leave, but when he insisted...well, it was good to have
him living home with me this last year. Even with Meggie coming
home every weekend, the between times would have been harder
without Joseph. But I hope he doesn’t regret it.”

“He won’t. He’s a good kid.”
Matt turned the car into a small parking lot next to a two-story
house that was flooded with lights. People stood in the side
garden, holding drinks, and a line snaked around the porch.

“Wow, this place is
hopping,” Jude said as they made their way up the steps. “Wonder
how long we’ll have to wait.” Her stomach growled on cue, and Matt
laughed.

“No wait for us. I called
ahead. I have a friend here.” He led her to the podium and gave his
name to the maitre’ d, who grinned and pointed them inside.

Just within the doors, a
hostess waited with two menus in hand. “Good evening, Mr. Spencer!
Won’t you come this way?”

They followed her down a
narrow hall to a wide room in the back. The light was dim, and
several other couples sat at tables for two. Matt held Jude’s
chair, and once again she had that sense of foreboding.

This is not a date. This is
one of my oldest friends taking me out to dinner so I don’t have to
be alone the day my kids left.

Jude scanned the menu,
trying to focus her mind on food and not the tumbling feeling in
her stomach. Her eyes caught on one entry in the appetizers column
as she remembered what Matt had told her earlier.

“Why don’t we get some of
this roasted garlic to start? It looks good.”
Ordering garlic
should make it clear that I know this isn’t a real date.

Matt glanced at her, a
furrow between his brows. He nodded and turned to the waitress who
appeared tableside.

“We’ll start with the
roasted garlic, and Jude, what do you want to drink?”

“Ahhh...” She looked at the
wine list. “Just a glass of the house white, please.”

Matt ordered a whiskey sour,
and the waitress left them alone again.

Jude glanced around, taking
in the ambience and trying to avoid seeing the other couples
nearby, who were holding hands or murmuring softly to each other.
There was no denying the romance of the place, and it made her all
the more uneasy that Matt had brought her here.

He was watching her, she
realized. Shifting in her chair, she clutched for something to say,
some safe topic of conversation.

“The bed and breakfast is
really coming along.”  There, that was a good start, bringing
up their mutual interest in the business of Crystal Cove and the
project spearheaded by her late husband.

“Yeah, I saw Logan out there
today. I guess he was checking up on stuff.”

Jude frowned. “Logan was at
the site today? That’s strange, he almost always comes by after
he’s been there, to catch me up on how it’s going.”

Matt shrugged. “Maybe he was
running behind today.”

“Maybe.”

The waitress returned with
their drinks and appetizer. The head of garlic sat in the middle of
a round red plate. The ends had been cut off before it was roasted,
and the aroma made Jude’s mouth water. She pulled off a slice of
the crisp wheat bread, captured a clove of garlic and spread it. It
was still hot and felt like heaven in her mouth.

Matt helped himself to a
piece, too, and swirled his drink before taking a swig. Jude
watched his hands, so different from Daniel’s. Matt had a perpetual
tan, and that included his hands. In the dim light, she could
barely make out the dusting of blond hairs on the backs of his
fingers.

All in all, she had to
concede, Matt was a good-looking guy. She caught a few other women
in the dining room sneaking peeks at him. He looked a good ten
years younger than he was. His athletic lifestyle and frenetic pace
kept him in shape. But Jude thought the real attraction was the
kindness in his soft blue eyes.