The Texan's Second Chance. Allie Pleiter
far as Witt’s concerned. Has big dreams, our Witt does. He can be a bit too driven, if you ask me, but I think he’ll settle down.”
The last thing I need right now is another overdriven male, Lord. Keep me safe out here, Jana prayed as she began walking around the table setting out plates—turquoise plates. She caught Witt’s eye when she first saw them. He shrugged as if to say, I know what you said about eating off blue plates, but what are you gonna do?
“Did you like the chef’s coat?” Ellie asked, planting a big blue jug of yellow flowers in the center of the table. See? Jana wanted to say to Witt. See how yellow balances all that blue out?
“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” Jana replied. “It’s perfect. Really, just the right touch. The embroidery, the female fit, everything.”
Ellie smiled. “You’re welcome. I didn’t want to leave that task to the boys. Who knows what you might have ended up wearing if I had?”
Dinner was a rowdy, pleasant family affair straight out of Country Living magazine. Gunner and his wife, Brooke, doted over their baby boy, the whole family making guesses as to whether one-month-old “Trey”—their nickname for Gunner Buckton III—would dare to have his mother’s brown eyes instead of the family blue. Jana declined to vote when asked by Audie, Brooke’s daughter, who adoringly called her stepfather “Gunnerdad.”
“You’re gonna drive the Big Blue Bus, aren’t you?” the girl whispered as she slid onto the picnic table bench beside Jana.
“I heard that,” Witt, seated across from her, teased with mock seriousness. Well, mostly mock.
Audie rolled her big brown eyes. “The food truck.”
“The Blue Thorn Burgers food truck,” he corrected as he reached for the big bowl of coleslaw Jana had brought. “Ellie says your coleslaw is out of this world. Based on your burgers, I’m inclined to believe her.”
“Do you like to cook?” Jana asked the little girl.
“I help Grannie Buckton with the cookies and brownies sometimes. I mostly like to draw, although Aunt Ellie taught me to knit and I like that, too.”
Jana smiled. “Your aunt Ellie would teach everyone to knit if she got the chance. She taught lots of people back where we worked in Atlanta.”
Audie scooped out a big helping of the coleslaw when Witt handed her the bowl. “Did she teach you, Miss Jana?”
“I haven’t had time to learn yet. Besides, I’m not much for sitting down. I stand most of my day at work, and I like to run when I have free time.” She threw a quick glance at Witt. “I’m thinking I won’t have a lot of free time for a while.”
“You can stand while you spin with a drop spindle. Aunt Ellie taught me that, too. I can show you after dinner if you like. We use the bison fur to make the yarn you can buy at our store in town.”
Jana laughed. “I see you have your cousin Witt’s gift for public relations and persuasion.”
Audie’s cheeks turned pink. “That’s what Gunnerdad says.”
“Chef Jana’s food is really good,” Witt added. “Ellie was dead on about the coleslaw. What’s in there to give it that...” he searched for a word “...zing?”
It never got old hearing people praise her food. She gave Witt a sly smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Secret family recipe?”
“Secret Jana recipe. I don’t come from a cooking family.” She didn’t come from much family at all—divorced parents, an only child, no strong connections to aunts or uncles, no living grandparents. Yet when Jana discovered cooking through a high school class, the kitchen became the place where she felt most at home. Any kitchen where she could make her food. This whole big-family dynamic felt like a foreign country to her.
“You didn’t eat in your family?” Audie asked, eyes wide.
Jana grinned at the girl. Looking around at the crowded table heaped with food, Audie must have found the concept impossible. “I didn’t mean it that way. The people in my family cooked to feed themselves, but not much more.” She picked up a piece of cornbread and held it up. “To me, cooking is art and science. It’s a gift and an experience for people to share. I’m happiest when I make meals for people. Meals that make them smile and marvel and delight in the pleasure of great food.”
“I like food,” Audie replied. “And Cousin Witt’s right—this is really good. If I were a cabbage, I’d be happy to be in this coleslaw.”
Jana couldn’t help but smile. “Well, that’s about the best review I’ve ever had. Maybe we should post that on the side of the Big Blue Bus. ‘Our coleslaw makes cabbages happy.’” She raised an eyebrow in challenge to Witt.
His eyes slanted. “How about we just tweet that one? By the way, we’ve got a photographer scheduled on Wednesday to take some shots of you and the truck. Promo stuff. You okay with that?”
Jana tried not to stiffen. Yes, it had been years since she’d had to deal with Ronnie and his harassment, but the fear remained, and the instinct to hide, to avoid putting her face or her name out there in a public way that might draw his attention again. “I’m not one for photos. Take all you want of the food or the truck, but skip the ones of me if it’s all the same to you.”
“Nonsense. We need at least a few shots of you. The pretty woman behind the burger grill? You’re one of our best marketing hooks. We’ll need three or four shots we can use. It won’t hurt, I promise.”
Jana tried to stifle her reluctance to being anyone’s “hook” with the compliment he’d just paid her. It didn’t work. “One.”
“Two?”
“You’re the prettiest chef I’ve ever seen,” Audie offered, oblivious to the tension. “I think everyone should see your picture.”
Jana tried to sigh rather than scowl. “Thank you, Audie, but I’m not big on publicity. I’d rather let my food get all the attention.”
“So Wednesday’s okay?”
It annoyed her how much he pressed the point, but she wasn’t going to win this one. Not when surrounded by Bucktons. “Yes, Wednesday will be fine.”
Tuesday afternoon, Witt looked around at the full trash can and the truck’s empty cupboards. “I think that went pretty well.” They’d set up unannounced outside a group of office buildings at lunch hour, launching a two-hour “test run” to see how things worked.
“It could have gone better.” Jana sat with her legs dangling out of the truck’s open back door, her chef’s coat unbuttoned to reveal a bright orange T-shirt, and a big mug of coffee in her hand. She wore a bright yellow scarf like a headband in a failing attempt to control the wild curls that kept escaping her piled-up hairstyle. Jana’s hair held a troublesome fascination for him—the curls seemed to have a mind of their own, framing her face in a different way every time he looked at her. Right now they were plastered to her neck in a maze of circles that should have looked messy and sweaty but instead looked more mesmerizing than he would like to admit.
“Did you see how those guys ate your food?” Jose asked as he finished loading trash into a plastic bag. “You were a hit, Chef Jana.” While Witt had harbored some doubts about Jose as kitchen help—the kid wasn’t even six months out of high school—the boy had proven a hearty worker. He also spoke Spanish, which ended up being very useful with some of the office workers and many of the landscape workers from the park across the street. “I heard ‘delicioso’ more times than I can count.”
“The lines were too long. We need to streamline the prep process a bit.”