Page 1 of Wine & Dine

1

Runaway

[Dolores]

“Just go, Dolores,” my brother says to me. I stare at him, not even able to blink. Even though Denton is two years younger than I am, he looks better than I feel. Rock star. Model. Photographer. He’s lived a life while I’ve spent mine here—in Blue Ridge, Georgia.

“I can’t just leave,” I admonish, brushing back my hair. It needs a cut and a wash. In fact, I can’t remember when I last showered. Since my mother’s death, a steady stream of well-wishers have stopped by at all hours to check on me.

I’m fine.

“Dolores.” My brother sighs. It’s a crime that men age well. At forty-five, he still has sharp cheekbones, bright dark eyes, and a smile that’ll warm a room. I could hate him, but I don’t. I understand why he ran away when he was eighteen. Our father was a miserable man. Still, it isn’t lost on me that I was the one left behind to hold together the pieces of an already cracked vase. The diner. The farm. Our mother. Our grandmother. The list has been endless for twenty-seven years. And I’m tired.

“You can leave. I’m here now.”

“Until you decide to leave again,” I snap, causing Denton to flinch from his seat on a stool. He sits opposite the counter, the one I’ve been drawing circles on while we talk. He’s right about this place. The paneling is dated, and the floor looks dirty even though it’s clean. Grease permeates everything. Dolores’ Diner is run down, and so am I.

“I deserve that,” he says, lowering his voice, “but I have no intention of leaving. I finally have Mati in my life, and I’m not letting her go.”

Matilda Harrington Rathstone had been my brother’s fantasy girl his entire young life. As best friends, he gave her up to their other best friend, Chris Rathstone—Rath—when they were young, but Denton got his second chance with her.

I nod in response to my brother because I don’t know what to say. He disappeared again the day after our mother’s funeral. Although he called me, promising he would come back, I didn’t have much faith in him. When he left at eighteen, he left. To my surprise, he took my calls occasionally, but he was always busy. The road. The band. The women. He didn’t listen to me about our father’s death, our mother’s illness, or our grandmother’s declining health. All those things fell on me—the dutiful daughter.

“Look. I’m giving you my keys.” Denton slides a ring of keys across the Formica countertop. “Take the Beast and drive. Get out of town. Get away from here. Get the fuck away from Rusty.”

My head shoots up at the mention of Rusty Miller. Crusty Rusty—a member of the local motorcycle club Devil’s Edge and my lover-with-only-lover-benefits for the past ten years. I can’t even call him a friend, and he’d never allow me to call him a boyfriend. In simple terms, he’s been a sex partner to me and a few other women in the area. I cringe at that thought. I typically defend my relationship with Rusty, what little relationship I can call it, but watching my brother get the girl of his dreams leaves me questioning my own sensibility in regard to Rusty. Slowly, I’m realizing I want a little more for me.

“Can’t just go. Just drive and disappear.” I wave a hand dismissively toward the front window of the diner. I open at six a.m., but Denton showed up and locked the door, pulling the blinds and turning the sign back to CLOSED.

“Yes. You can,” he emphasized. “You can do this, and you should.”

“Where would I go?” A teeny-tiny niggling of a possibility tiptoes over my chest. Could I do this?

“California,” Denton says, his voice rising an octave, and he double taps his hands against the counter. Bah-dum-dum. “I’m giving you my keys. Car. Condo. It’s on the beach.”

Denton lowers his head to peer up at me. “Ever been to the beach, Dolores?”

I sigh. Yes, I’ve been to the beach. Bolton Lake is only a few miles from here, but somehow, I know the lake isn’t the beach he means.

“The ocean,” he clarifies as if reading my thoughts.

“Of course.” I weakly smile. “When we were kids.” I can’t say I fondly remember the experience. It was one of the few times we took a family vacation. Like so many family outings, it ended poorly. Daddy drunk. Mother a close second. Denton getting in trouble. Had Daddy started hitting him by then? I don’t recall.

“A real ocean,” Denton teases. “The Pacific.”

I chuckle. He’s so full of himself and California. My eyes roam his face. He’s going to find it difficult in this small town. Everyone will be in his business, especially when that business includes Mati, a beloved daughter of society and widow of the well-respected Chris Rathstone. Yet I see a twinkle in his eye, and a certain brightness fills his face. He looks…happy. I’m not certain I know the emotion, but if I could recognize it, I’d say Denton wears it.

“You just got back here,” I remind him. His month-long absence left everything to me again. The after-funeral effects, the diner, the farm, and our aging grandmother, Magnolia. “I can’t leave you.”

“Yes, you can,” he repeats. “In fact, it might be better for me. I need to dig in.” He spreads his hands over the scrub-worn counter and then folds his fingers like he came across something sticky.

“You don’t know the first thing about running a diner.”

“I have Hollilyn.”

“She’s ready to have a baby any day,” I shriek. My assistant manager and flirty waitress is due to have her first child in less than a month.

“Let me worry about that,” Denton remarks.