“They’re sending me out on location soon, so don’t feel sorry for me.” Jaden poked her in the back. “I didn’t want to wait another six months to see you.”
“I’m glad you came.”
The hairs on the back of Jaden’s neck stood on end. The note of apprehension she heard in Mia’s voice during their phone call was back.
“Me too. It’s getting harder and harder for us to get together, it seems.”
“We both work too much.” Mia turned at the bottom of the steps. “We need to change that.”
Jaden took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Let’s do that.”
“I hurried here as soon as Lily dried my hair. I almost stopped for wine at Antonio’s, but there’s beer in the fridge.”
“Antonio’s?” She followed Mia into the kitchen.
“Only the best pizza ever.” Mia reached for the refrigerator handle and pulled it open with a backward glance. “I would have brought one home, but I figured you’d be craving breaded cauliflower. You’ve mentioned it in our last two phone calls.”
Jaden’s eyes zoned in on the carry-out boxes on the breakfast bar and her stomach grumbled. “Oh my god, you brought me Pam’s? I love you, I love you, I love you.” She popped a box lid open and the scent of fried food nearly buckled her knees, so she sat down on a stool. She popped a fried piece of breaded cauliflower into her mouth. “Heaven.” Her eyes rolled back in her head as she groaned. After swallowing, she said, “I was starving.”
“I got us the works—bacon cheeseburgers, mozzarella sticks, breaded cauliflower, and buckets of homemade ranch.” She pulled out two bottles of beer and turned, one in each hand.
“For the last hour all I’ve been thinking about is Pam’s bacon cheeseburgers.” Jaden opened the lid on the container of ranch. The little diner was an after school and weekend hangout for the kids in town. Senior year, Jaden worked as a waitress there. Without Pam, she wouldn’t have saved enough money to leave after graduation.
“It’s Alison, Pam’s daughter, running the diner now. Pam passed away last year.”
Looking up from the piece of cauliflower she’d drenched in ranch up to her fingertips, she frowned. “What happened?”
“Cancer.” Mia pressed her lips together, her gaze solemn. “It was quick. She found out she was stage four only two months before she passed. Too late for treatment.”
“I can’t even imagine walking in there and not seeing Pam.” She should have stayed in touch, and was left with a stab of regret.
“The community helped raise enough money for her to visit Prince Edward Island.”
Jaden smiled, remembering Pam’s love of Anne of Green Gables. “She always wanted to go there. It’s incredible you all did that for her.”
“Everyone loved Pam.” Mia smiled and sat a beer in front of Jaden. “She would love knowing you crave her food.”
“I don’t know how my arteries aren’t clogged—I ate dinner there every day for a year.” She popped another piece of cauliflower into her mouth; even without being saturated in ranch it was good. “This just made my day not suck.” She lifted the beer to her lips with a smile. “Well, the fried food and you. I missed your face.”
“Not as much as I missed yours.”
“We could argue about that for hours.” Jaden laughed. She swallowed a drink of beer; the cold liquid tingled on its way down. “The perfect combination.”
“Just wait until I take you to Antonio’s. You’ll crave that instead of Pam’s when you leave.”
Jaden glanced up from the burger and mozzarella sticks in one of the take-out boxes. “I doubt it.”
“It’s the best pizza I’ve ever had,” Mia insisted and sat down on the stool beside Jaden.
“Really?” Jaden couldn’t think about anything but the burger in her hands. “The best pizza ever, in the middle of nowhere Nebraska?”
“Quit being a snob.” Mia laughed and flicked her in the arm. “Antonio is an Italian. A real one.”
Jaden sniffed in answer because her mouth was full of food.
“A real one.”
She waggled her brows. “A real one? Like with an accent.”
Mia plucked a mozzarella stick from Jaden’s box and waved it at her. “No accent. Second generation from Brooklyn.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Black hair and panty-dropping green eyes.” Then she bit into the stick.
“Panty-dropping?” Jaden paused with the burger to her mouth. “That’s a big statement. I’ll need to discern this for myself.”
“He’s very nice to look at, I promise. I’ll take you there while you’re here.” She dipped the mozzarella stick in Jaden’s ranch for the last bite.
“This Antonio sounds intriguing,” Jaden said between bites. “I love a real Italian who cooks the best pizza ever.” She swung her stool to face Mia. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here in your kitchen right now.”
“Me too. But River Bend?” Her eyes widened and panic creased her brow. “You’re not dying, are you?”
“No,” Jaden was quick to assure her. “I’m not dying.”
She cocked her head and pierced Jaden with a wary stare. “Okay, so what’s going on?”
“Honestly?” She swirled the beer around inside the bottle. “I’m worried. I got a super stressed out call from my best friend.”
Mia’s eyes widened. She wiped her fingers on a napkin and said, “You came here because I sounded stressed?”
“Not just stressed. It hasn’t been so long that I can’t tell when you’re holding something back and about to blow.” Jaden set the bottle down. “What’s going on? Cole said you’re on some festival board? How do you have time for that when you’re running an event planning business?”
She blew out a heavy sigh and dropped the napkin to the counter. “I couldn’t say no. They needed my professional help.”
Jaden lifted her brows. “You kick ass at your job, yes. But you still could have said no. Being on the board means you don’t get paid, right?”
“They wouldn’t have had the money to pay my fee.” Mia was a tiny thing, but there was nothing small about her. She was one of the most determined people Jaden knew. People expected her to take charge, which was why she’d made the perfect student body president, head of the prom committee, and captain of the cheerleading squad. Why she’d excelled in her college studies, and why she graduated with honors. Event planning was perfect for her, and she was good at it.
“So you’re busting your ass on this festival board and not getting paid. And I know you, your calendar is already booked solid with your own clients.” Jaden inhaled a deep breath and shook her head. “You’re going to give yourself a coronary and you’re only twenty-seven.”
“I probably should have said no,” Mia conceded with a sigh.
“Yes, you should have.”
“So what did you and Cole talk about?”
Jaden raised her brows. “Not much. I had heat stroke.” What she really meant was that Cole still affected her, and she was ashamed by it. “Don’t try to change the subject. We were talking about this festival that’s got you so stressed out and why you agreed to be on a board you don’t have time for.”
“I guess I am a little stressed out.”
“A little?” Jaden pursed her lips in disagreement.
“Only a little. They asked me to join because fixing events is what I do, you know?” She gestured with both hands, and Jaden knew at this point, Mia was convincing herself she’d done the right thing. “Things are a mess. The county treasurer embezzled a lot of money. It’s not good. There’s no advertising budget now, so the festival isn’t getting the coverage it has in the past and there’s so much money sunk into the event already. Thank goodness for donations or we wouldn’t even have pamphlets this year. The bands that were booked will be covered by entrance fees. I’ve pulled all the personal strings I have to get advertising space anywhere and everywhere, and as cheaply as possible.”
“That’s horrible about the embezzlement.” Jaden washed down her last bite with beer. “But still, you can’t just pick up the torch every time someone needs you. Yes, you’re an event planner, you’re good at it, they’re lucky to have you, but that doesn’t mean you should be expected to save the town. That’s just crazy talk.”
“It would be wrong of me not to help out when I’m needed.” She removed the bun from the burger then reached for the ketchup bottle.
Mia loved this town. Unlike Jaden, she had roots here, generations of family. If the town needed her, Mia would do all she could to help. It was an obligation of sorts, one Jaden didn’t share. She and Ellie had been drifters. When Jaden was twelve, Ellie’s boyfriend at the time brought them to River Bend. Jaden hadn’t thought they would stay. The town would always mean more to Mia than it ever had to Jaden.
“Did the airline find your luggage?” Mia asked around a mouthful of burger.
“Yes, thank God. I called them before I jumped in the shower. They put it on a plane back to Omaha. They’ll mail it out tomorrow, but I won’t have it until Monday. Tuesday at the latest. I’ll need clothes.”
“I’ll take you shopping.” Mia’s eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together. “We have a couple new boutiques in town, and I know the women who own them. You’ll love everything.”
“I just need a couple of things to get me through the weekend.” Mia’s idea of shopping and Jaden’s were very different. Jaden had nice things, enough to fill a small closet—Mia had four times as much, and a small bedroom she’d converted into a closet.
“Right, just a few things.”
“River Bend boutiques.” Jaden shook her head and polished off another cauliflower. She had a feeling this shopping trip would cost her a paycheck. “Unexpected, yet definitely convenient.”
“See, there’s lots of good things about River Bend. You should move back for the ranch and me.”
“Maybe you should move to Seattle.” Jaden sent her a hopeful look, though it was pointless. Mia was as much a part of River Bend as River Bend was a piece of Nebraska. She would live in this town forever, have babies here, raise a bunch of little Mini-Mia’s and live happily ever after. If she didn’t work herself to death, or die of a heart attack induced by stress and not enough sleep.
Mia crinkled her nose. “It rains too much in Seattle.”
“But you won’t croak from heat exhaustion in Seattle.”
“You’re barely in Seattle. You might as well move back here.”
Jaden closed the lid on the take-out box. “River Bend and I never hit it off.”
Not entirely true. Jaden and her mom had never hit it off in River Bend.
“Oh, you.” Mia rolled her eyes with an exasperated smile. “I brought my camera and laptop. Maybe I’ll go around town during the festival and write a few pieces for my blog.”
“Really?” Mia’s voice rose an octave. “You have no idea how excited everyone will be—Jaden Miller, host of The Road to Bliss, covering our little town!”
“Mia, I’m talking about my personal blog, not me calling in the television network to send out a film crew,” Jaden clarified. She had no control over which locations were filmed.
“I know! But your blog is still a big deal, even if it’s not your TV show. You have a zillion followers!” Mia reached over to take her hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “We’re all very proud of you, you know.”
Jaden’s lips puckered with amusement. “If you say so.”
Mia sent her a stern gaze. “I do.”
Jaden doubted anyone in town besides Mia cared much about what she’d done since graduating almost ten years ago.
“You’re a celebrity.”
Jaden’s lips turned up into a warm smile. Mia had always been her best cheerleader. “Not yet, but maybe one day.”
Fame hadn’t been her goal when she set out to chronicle every step that took her further from her past, and fame still wasn’t a necessity. But now that she had the TV show, and a chance to put her own mark on the world, she’d jumped in with both feet. Her career was now the most important thing in her life, her only constant. This life she’d made for herself, the person she’d become, was because she’d gotten it for herself, all on her own, hundreds of miles from Ellie.
Jaden wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Let’s just keep the blog thing between us. The whole town doesn’t need to know I’m walking around and taking pictures that I might post on my website.”
She’d tried so hard to be invisible when she lived here, and now she was offering to walk around with a flashing camera, drawing attention. Only for Mia.
Mia squinted, her lips pursed—Jaden knew that plotting look, and was wary.
“You know, I won’t be able to take much time off of work with the festival going on, and I have a wedding tomorrow. The bride is a nervous wreck times ten. She’s a mess. Every small thing makes her cry, and since I’m the event planner, she clings to my arms and leaves bruises.”
With a laugh, Jaden rounded the breakfast bar to the kitchen sink. “I can entertain myself.” She turned on the water and washed her hands. “I’d like to track Hillary down, too.”
“She’d love that. I didn’t call her yet. You should surprise her.”
Drying her hands on the hand towel beside the sink, she turned. “How’s she doing?”
“Great. She opened her own bakery, and I think she’s busier than she expected. Turns out in kolache country, everyone would rather buy them than bake them.” Mia laughed and stepped around Jaden to the sink to wash her hands. “She grumbles a lot. She never was a morning person, but she loves every minute of it. She finally hired someone to man the cash register, but she could use more help in the kitchen. You think I’m a control freak—she gets anxiety at the thought of someone else kneading the dough.”