Sunday at the Sunflower Inn

by Jodi Thomas

Genres: Westerns; Small Town & Rural; Western Romance

Synopsis

In New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas’s tender and heartfelt new novel set in the charming small town of Honey Creek, Texas, spring is in the air—and love is blooming too, as paths cross and hearts meet between residents old and new …
Jessica Ann Mackenzie—“Jam” to everyone in Honey Creek—has fulfilled her dream of owning the best restaurant for miles around. Serving candlelit dinners to every couple in town on Valentine’s Day is a reminder of another dream, one she’s just about given up on.
Until, that very night, Sergeant Tucson Smith clambers out of the muddy river and onto her land, bringing the promise of something they’ve both been searching for.
When McCoy Mason crashes on Interstate 45, he doesn’t just bust up his Mustang, his leg, and his relationship. He also loses his prospects of a job and apartment in Houston. Honey Creek, home to his estranged grandfather, offers a temporary respite, a place to recover
before moving on again. After all, what permanent use could a town so picture-perfect have for a man like him?
At sixty-seven, Charles H. Winston III lives by order and routine. One of his most cherished rituals is a regular lunch date with three lovely ladies at the Honey Creek Café, including the very proper Miss Lilly Lambert. But it’s not too late to surprise the whole town—or
himself—by seizing a chance for a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. And there’s no better season than spring, when the warm breeze blowing in from the Brazos River brings fresh hope and second chances to those who need them most …

Release date: April 26, 2022

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

McCoy Mason leaned his crutches next to his duffel bag and sat down on the bench just outside Houston Methodist Hospital’s main exit.

If a cab came by, he might get in.

If he had any idea where he was going.

If he had enough money to get there.

Three “ifs” seemed a long shot. He decided to sit on the bench until a few of his brain cells thawed. After three weeks in the hospital, his mind had slipped to the IQ of a frog.

On the bright side, the sun was shining and the wind was low. Except for the fact he was headed nowhere, life wasn’t all bad. Maybe he was just confused, maybe mixed up and disoriented. Definitely broken. Homeless. Alone.

McCoy decided to stop thinking. He was running out of adjectives.

“I’m not lost, just nowhere to go,” he said aloud. “Not brain dead, just wounded.” He looked down at his cast. The tip of a sock covered his toes. He had a boot on the other foot, but one cowboy boot wouldn’t be much use once he got the cast off.

Maybe he could go to the beach. Then he wouldn’t need even one boot. He could just be a beach bum until his money ran out.

He almost smiled remembering what his crazy dad used to say when his mom suggested a vacation. “It don’t cost nothin’ to go nowhere.”

Maybe he should stay here and save what little money he had left.

McCoy shrugged. Nowhere seemed about as good as anywhere to go right now.

Mom must have disagreed with Dad. One night she left with all their savings and never came back from her vacation. Dad got up the next morning and went to work and never mentioned her again.

McCoy looked down at his new Wranglers. The nurse had to cut through the denim to get one pant leg over the cast. He’d considered yelling at her to cut off the plaster instead. After all, he could hop around on one leg, but he only owned one pair of jeans. But before he could put words to his thoughts, the damage was done.

Right now, the break just below his knee was the least of his troubles. One broken bone seemed no big deal, considering his other problems. He’d had a head injury everyone thought would kill him after he’d totaled his Mustang on Interstate 45. He lived, but the car died.

Breanna Bell, his fiancée, stopped coming around after three days. She’d said that staring at his bruised, broken body was too much to bear.

She should have seen it from his side of the fence.

Two days later, his new boss called and told him he’d lost the job that had brought him to Houston. A week later, his landlord texted that the apartment he’d signed a lease on was no longer available.

Last, Breanna left town, taking everything but the duffel bag with his work clothes stuffed in the bottom and the outfit he’d bought the day of the accident. Jeans, a western shirt, and a Stetson hat—his first western outfit. After all, he was in Texas now.

Breanna had talked him into getting hundred-dollar tickets to a rodeo the night of his crash and clothes to go with the date so he’d fit in with the crowd. But he’d never made it home to change. Now he felt like an imposter dressed up as a cowboy.

The one time he’d been awake enough to talk to Breanna on the hospital phone, she’d been mad about him standing her up. She also mentioned the moving van with all their junk would be on its way back to Georgia and she planned to ride along.

She didn’t have time to unpack and pick all his stuff out, so if he wanted anything, he could collect it the next time he was in Georgia. She’d shopped for most of the household essentials, so she considered everything more hers than his. Just before she’d hung up, his fiancée said she’d stuffed her engagement ring in the chest pocket of his work overalls.

He must have decided to go back in a coma about then because days later when he opened his eyes, he couldn’t remember much else of what she’d said.

If the hospital hadn’t saved his wallet and phone when they cut off his bloody clothes, she probably would have taken them as well. His cell was dead, but a few hundred dollars were still in his wallet.

He was in too much pain to think, so he gave up on time and dates completely. Hell, he didn’t even care what year it was. The facts he thought he knew: He was twenty-nine, single, had no kin he wanted to call. Oh, and he loved the hospital ice cream and hated the Jell-O.

Now and then, one of the nurses would wake him up and ask him what his name was. If he got that right, they’d move on to, “Do you know the date?” like it was some kind of trick question.

How could he explain that he didn’t know or care? The last construction site he’d worked on had relocated inside his brain, and the noise was blocking everything out.

As the sun started to set behind the buildings of downtown Houston, McCoy frowned, trying to recall Breanna part by part. Her hair was soft. Her breasts were rounded. Her mouth was always moving.

He smiled, remembering another one of his dad’s sayings. “Son, the right girl for you is the one who says yes. Don’t build up your hopes on more.”

Night was moving across the huge parking lot, and McCoy didn’t bother to care. He didn’t have enough money in his pocket to start over, and no one was picking him up. He’d inherited being a loner from his dad. “No sense making friends you’ll just leave behind, son.”

McCoy considered sitting on this bench until he starved to death. If he took the painkillers in his pocket, he probably wouldn’t notice hunger or cold. Three weeks ago, he’d had a smoking hot girlfriend, a new direction, and a great car. The job he’d moved halfway across the country for promised to lead him toward the future he’d always wanted. He would have been the boss of this building site. Not bad considering he wasn’t yet thirty.

Somehow one wreck washed away all of his chalkboard dreams.

The janitor who had cleaned his hospital room walked by. “Evening, Mr. Mason.” The short man grinned like they were old friends. “You finally getting out of this place, or did one of them nurses just leave you out here by accident? I swear if you stay still around this place, they think you’re a potted plant.”

McCoy smiled. “Evening, Roberto. I’m going to miss your great jokes. Most days you were the only one who talked to me other than the nurses asking questions.”

Roberto set a lunch box on the bench as he zipped a gray jacket that matched his uniform. As always, he seemed to have time to talk. “That pretty, long-legged blonde picking you up? I wouldn’t mind hanging around to see her.”

“No, she’s gone. Moved back to Georgia. She left me with a bag of old clothes and what I’m wearing.”

The janitor laughed as if he thought McCoy was joking.

“You got family around?” Roberto might be short and forty pounds overweight, but he was one of the heroes in this life. He cared. “Friends picking you up?”

“Nope. My dad lives in Alaska. He told me I’ve got a grandfather in some little town called Honey Creek. I couldn’t even find the place on a map when I looked years ago.”

“I know where that is.” Roberto smiled. “My primo lives there. Runs a garage across from the bus stop.” He pushed his chest out. “I’ve got cousins in half the towns in Texas.”

“Must be nice,” McCoy lied.

Roberto asked a few more questions and then seemed to take over McCoy’s life. “If you don’t know where to go, you should head up to meet your abuelo. He’d probably be glad to see you. He’s kin. He can’t turn you away.”

“I doubt that’s a rule for my relatives. My family tree is more like a fence post.”

“My cousin says the folks in Honey Creek are friendly. While you’re healing you should look him up.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“With that leg, what else you gonna do? There’s a bus that heads that way around midnight. I could drop you off at the station. It’s not far.”

To McCoy’s surprise, Roberto picked up the duffel bag. “Wait here, I’ll get my truck and take you. You’ll be in Honey Creek by dawn. You got forty-three bucks for the ride?”

McCoy hesitated, then nodded once.

Roberto stared at McCoy. “You got any better place to be?”

“Nope.” His head hurt too bad to argue. He could starve there as fast as he could here. “Maybe the bus will be warm and I can sleep. The fare is probably cheaper than a hotel.”

A few minutes later, Roberto helped him into an old Chevy pickup truck and told McCoy that his cousin would meet the bus and help him find his kin in Honey Creek.

It crossed McCoy’s mind that this could be the plot of a kidnapping movie. But what else could they do to him? Sell him into the sex trade? There couldn’t be much demand for a scraped-up fool with one working leg and no memory of what day it was. Plus, he considered he might not be that great in bed if Breanna only took three days to forget him.

On the bright side, his always-absent grandpa might let him sleep on the couch for a few nights. That had to be better than a shelter.

Long after dark, McCoy climbed into the bus heading north. He stretched out on the back seat and tried not to breathe in too deeply. The air smelled of whiskey and piss. He guessed the couple falling in love on the seat in front of him were the origin of the smells. They were deep into slapping tongues. The sight made him want to forget even thinking about sex or eating.

He had no future, no love life, no job, and no relatives except Grandpa Sadler Mason, who his dad had mentioned a few times in passing. Dad had said he didn’t remember ever having a mother, and when he was seventeen, he told his father he was leaving, and Sadler Mason simply said, “So long. The land will be here waiting if you ever want to come home.”

That one line from a grandfather he’d never met gave him a spark of hope.

McCoy closed his eyes as his head pounded, keeping time to the throbbing in his leg. It didn’t matter where in the hell he was heading. Forget the pills in his pocket. He’d take the pain. It was the only thing reminding him he was alive.

He told himself he wasn’t a quitter; he was simply tired.

If Sadler turned him away, he’d find a place to lie down and sleep off this nightmare.

Jessica Ann Mackenzie, “Jam” for short, sat near the bend in the Brazos River where hundred-year-old cottonwoods lined the shore for endless miles. Her tall, thin frame blended with the trees’ shadows making her invisible to anyone on the water or at the café looming behind her.

Not that it mattered. No one would be either place after midnight.

She’d worked late. Every couple wanted their Valentine’s dinner at her place, even if a few looked like the love had been strangled long ago.

She’d heard one couple arguing over money and another complaining about each other’s parents. The love songs playing in the background hadn’t seemed to reach the couple talking low about divorce. Jam noticed they didn’t eat much and never seemed to look directly at the other. When she’d offered to box the meal, they’d both said no at the same time. Apparently, that was all they’d agreed on.

Sometimes Jam swore romance had disappeared with knights in armor. Love stories were meant for movies and books, too flighty to survive real life.

As she’d cleaned up after all the couples left, the love songs still playing had simply made her sad.

By the time she’d prepped for the breakfast run at dawn, it was too late to bother driving the few miles to her family’s small farm, Sunflower Lane, where her hideaway home waited. She decided to stay upstairs above her café in a room she’d turned into a bedroom. With the huge number of Mackenzies, there was often a relative who needed a place to stay and Jam was often too tired even to make the short drive home.

Someday she’d remodel that farmhouse and make it hers.

But for now there was no time for “someday.” She was too busy with today.

The farm, where her clothes and books lived, was becoming more of a getaway place, and the sea captain’s old house, turned restaurant, had become her life.

Somehow, being alone upstairs always made her uneasy, but exhaustion let her sleep. Stories of ghosts haunting the place never seemed to die. They were as much a part of the café as the studs and tile.

The house by the water had been built over a hundred years ago by a sea captain. He’d had three wives who gave him four homely daughters. It was said all the wives died in childbirth. Then the captain gave up on marriage and hired a housekeeper to run the place until the girls were grown and he retired from the sea.

As the story goes, the housekeeper left one morning without even saying goodbye and it was almost six months before the captain came home.

He stayed, but some said he never smiled again.

The few men brave enough to come courting the captain’s daughters were turned away. As the years passed, sorrow seemed to frequent the family. Two daughters died of a fever while still in their teens, the oldest daughter drowned in the river, and the last daughter just disappeared one night. Rumor has it, she took her life, but a few believed she ran off. The captain put up her marker beside her mother’s grave and lived his remaining years alone in his huge house by the Brazos River.

There were some who said it was the moans of the dead man that whispered in the night. Jam told herself it was just the wind in the trees. The old café was hers now. No longer a home. Just a café.

Tonight, no more than thirty feet from her café, Jam felt like she was the last human alive. Not even the wind moved across the land still sleeping in winter. She’d bought the house in her twenties and spent every waking hour turning it into the best café around. Only now, after ten years, she felt she might be like the captain. She’d grow old and die here, alone.

When moving amid all the couples having candlelight dinners tonight, she tried to remember how long it had been since she’d even been kissed. Really kissed. First date kisses didn’t count and neither did drunk ones.

In her teens she’d been pretty, in college she’d usually been friends with guys she met. By twenty-five the dates were casual, then after thirty the few dates she had were “settling dates.” No passion, no chase, just men who saw her as a good, hardworking woman to settle for.

She felt lonely all the way to her bones.

No one would kiss her good night on this Valentine’s Day. No one would call her “sweetheart.”

At thirty-two she’d achieved her dream of owning the best restaurant for miles around. The Honey Creek Café was successful. Her finances were solid. The whole town seemed to be her friend. But Jam had no lover to hold her in the night.

Looking back, she’d dreamed too small. Somewhere between making bread every dawn and polishing off the accounts after dark, she’d lost herself.

Lowering her head to her knees, tears fell unchecked. No one would hear her. While building a business, she’d lost all her other goals. She’d learned to work, but she’d forgotten to live.

The river splashed against the shore as if demanding attention.

Jam often sat near the water to think, to plan, to rest, but never to cry. Tonight, she felt like she’d lost a lover she’d never taken the time to meet. She’d given up everything for one dream. The huge old house held a fine café that would never love her back.

Another splash came, louder, closer.

Jam raised her head listening in the night, trying to see across the river, but it was impossible. All she saw was the black flow of the water a few feet away.

Another splash and a shadow seemed to plop onto the bank. It landed a few feet from her with a hard thump, as bits of water sprinkled along her side.

Jam didn’t move. Her first thought was of Old Henry. The catfish locals claimed was as big as a man must have jumped onto the bank.

No, not possible.

An alligator was her next thought. She’d never heard of one this far north. “Not likely,” she mumbled as she made out two long powerful legs. Maybe she’d wished herself an imaginary date.

Then she heard cussing. That couldn’t be part of her fantasy.

No fish. Definitely a man rose from the mud.

As he stood, she noticed he was fully dressed down to his boots. Army style, not cowboy boots. T-shirt, khaki pants.

Jam knew she should be afraid, but this was too strange. This had to be more of a joke than an invasion.

The impossible sight made her smile. “You know, mister, most folks swim in trunks or even skinny-dip. You’re a bit overdressed in that uniform.”

He didn’t look at her, so she reasoned he was just a figment of her imagination. She must have had too much wine. No one crawls out of the river dressed like a soldier. The nearest fort was hundreds of miles away.

Jam decided to keep talking to the vision. “The water flows too fast around this bend to be safe, but it calms a few miles down. You must be from out of town if you think you can swim here.”

He slung his head, splashing water over her.

She couldn’t make out his face as he began to strip off his clothes. The lines of his body were sketched against the moonlight. She decided he looked as good as she could have possibly conjured up. Wide shoulders. Slim hips. Muscles pretty much everywhere. “You real, mister?”

As he poured water out of his boot, he turned toward her, “Are you? I’m guessing not many people sleep in cottonwoods.”

“Nope,” she answered without hesitation. “I haven’t been real for a long time.” When she’d been in her early twenties, she’d always fallen in love with men who walked away like she was no more important than the half of sandwich they’d left on their plate. If she wasn’t real then, she doubted she’d be now.

The mud man just stared at her. It had to be almost fifty degrees, but he didn’t even look like he was cold as he stood in front of her. His clothes were knotted in one hand and his boots in the other.

When she didn’t say anything, he finally added, “I was fishing and flipped my boat after a water moccasin crawled in with me. I grew up in this valley, but I’ve been gone a dozen years, and apparently I’ve forgotten all I ever knew about fishing.”

He sounded angry, not at her but maybe at the world. Jam wished she’d brought out a flashlight so she could see him better and, if needed, to use as a weapon. “What’s your name?”

“What do you care?”

“I own this land you flopped up on.”

His words were no more friendly than hers. “You want me to jump back in? It seems I’m in hostile territory.”

He reminded her of a wild animal. Powerful. Primeval. Ready for battle. She had no doubt he’d dive back in the water if she ordered him off her property.

“No. You can stay. I’ve got towels in the kitchen. You can borrow a few. I might get arrested for letting you walk back to town naked.” Jam couldn’t resist looking, just to make sure he was totally naked.

He didn’t seem to notice or care. “Thanks. I’m Sergeant Tucson Smith, by the way. My younger brother is getting sworn in as sheriff tomorrow. If you want to file charges on me for trespassing, call him.”

She relaxed a bit. Her mud monster was becoming human.

“I know your brother. I’m proud to call Pecos a friend. I’m Jessica Ann Mackenzie. Everyone calls me Jam.” She didn’t say more. They knew one another’s families. That was enough of an introduction.

Jam headed to the house. He followed.

As they reached the porch light’s glow, she looked back. Mud man had Pecos Smith’s coloring, brown eyes and hair, but this older brother was twice the deputy’s weight and looked solid as a tree trunk. Even naked, he marched like a soldier.

“Where are you staying, Sergeant Smith?”

“Nowhere. Pecos said I could borrow the mayor’s boat if I wanted to fish, but to tell the truth, I didn’t even bother to buy bait. I just wanted to drift on the water for a while. I figured I’d just sleep out here, but I’m guessing my gear and the mayor’s boat are both at the bottom of the river.”

She opened the back door, reached in, and handed him a towel that barely went halfway around his waist. “Drop your things in the washer under the stairs. You can shower upstairs while you wait for your uniform. I can at least offer that to our new sheriff’s brother. He may be young, but most folks in this county look up to him.”

“Good to hear,” Tucson said as he walked into the shadows of the stairs.

It crossed her mind that he could have gone to the farm where he grew up, but Pecos never talked about his parents. Maybe they’d moved years ago or didn’t speak to their sons.

She heard Tucson follow orders. He dropped his clothes in one of the café’s washers. “It won’t take long,” she said.

The only answer was the sound of the washer lid dropping.

Jam forced herself not to look at him as she turned on the prep table’s light in the big kitchen. “You hungry? I could scramble you up some eggs and make toast.”

Halfway up the stairs, he turned. “I don’t want to be a bother. I’ll be on my way as soon as my clothes are ready. I got a rental car up the road a few miles. I can sleep in it. Come morning I’ll buy something to wear to the ceremony.”

She nodded and added, “Shower is the second door on the left. I’ll watch your clothes. How many?”

He was on the landing. “How many what?”

“Eggs. I’ll have them ready by the time you . . .