Chapter One
IS THERE ANYTHING MORE pitiful than a man drinking alone on a Friday night?
Tucker McGee pondered that from his seat at the bar of The Mudcat Tavern. In the wake of wrapping up an ugly divorce trial and a property dispute this week, he’d wanted to unwind with his friends. But those days of regular socializing seemed to be over. Brody had been back from Portland for almost a month and they’d hung out twice—once for his welcome home party and one hurried lunch. Tucker didn’t blame his buddy for making up for lost time with his fiancée, Tyler. God knew they deserved all the happiness in the world.
But his other friends had been just as scarce. Cam was busy being half of Wishful’s power couple, saving the town alongside his fiancée, Norah Burke, the new city planner. And poor Piper was busy puking her guts up, though her first trimester was past. She and her new husband, Myles Stewart, were sticking close to home until she was more human again. Hell, even his law partner, Vivian, had tied the knot earlier this summer with her long-term beau, Darius Greeley. That left Tucker high and dry, feeling like the last single guy in Wishful, and wishing the beer in his hand was a plate of pie.
Be honest. It’s not about pie—it’s about the owner of the hand that delivers the pie. Corinne with the wounded eyes.
Tucker took another pull on his beer. When, exactly, was the right time to make a move on a woman who was busy trying to rebuild her world from the ground up? He’d been trying to figure that out for the better part of a year, which had resulted in a lot of pie and an extra six miles a week on the treadmill at the gym. No date, though. He hadn’t asked. Not because he was some kind of pansy afraid of rejection, but because he didn’t want to be the rebound guy. But biding his time hadn’t gotten him anywhere.
Irritated with himself, Tucker finished off the beer. He didn’t even like his own company tonight.
“Tucker, my darlin’, you are just the man I was looking for.”
He swiveled on his stool to find Norah cutting a swath through the Friday night crowd. Cam was nowhere to be seen. Tucker slid off the stool and gave her a hug. “And where is your other half this evening?”
“Taking advantage of the long summer hours to finish up a job for Mamie Landon. She got it into her head to turn her backyard into a Zen garden, complete with Asian-inspired pergola.”
“Better Cam than me. The heat index was over a hundred today.”
“Welcome to August in Mississippi.”
“Buy you a drink?” Tucker asked.
“I’m buying because I have a favor to ask.”
Tucker recognized the gleam in her dark eyes. She had another grandiose scheme in the works. Norah Burke never did anything small, which meant whatever she had in mind would probably be a good distraction from his lack of a love life.
“I’m intrigued. What’s the favor?”
“Drinks first.” She lifted a hand to wave at the owner of The Mudcat, who was working taps behind the bar. “Hey Adele! Can I get whatever hard cider you’ve got on tap and another of what Tucker’s having?”
“Coming right up.”
Drinks in hand, they retreated to one of the high top tables along the far wall.
“Okay, spill it. What have you got up your sleeve?”
“You do volunteer work at the women’s shelter, right?”
Not the segue he’d been expecting. “Yeah. I offer up free legal services. Divorces. Restraining orders. That kind of thing. Why?”
“Well, you know they’re really in need of a bigger place, right? They want to be able to take in more women with children, and right now the house simply isn’t big enough.”
That was true enough. The shelter was, unfortunately, bursting at the seams—a sad testament to the need for its services.
“You want to do a fundraiser,” Tucker said.
“I want to do a fundraiser,” she confirmed.
“What did you have in mind?” Please don’t say a bachelor auction. As much as he wanted some companionship right now, the kind of women who’d be bidding on him at a fundraiser like that were not a road he wanted to travel down again.
“Well, you know how Dancing With the Stars is in its bajillionth season, right? Way more popular than the showrunners ever expected it to be.”
“Yeah...”
“I want to do a local version. Dancing With Wishful.”
Tucker frowned. “How would that work?”
“Same kind of format as the show, with some minor modifications. The Babylon is hosting the competition in its ballroom. There will be—well, I don’t know how many performances since I haven’t nailed down all the dancers yet—but maybe four or five shows. One a week. We’ll sell tickets to those. The whole thing will be streamed live online, and people will be able to vote for their favorites each week, just like on the actual show. There will be some built-in revenue on the site, via ad space and the like. And there will be a panel of three judges, like on the show, too.”
“People tune in to watch Dancing With the Stars because there are pro dancers and famous people.”
“People will tune in to watch this because we’ll be pairing beloved town figures with the town’s best dancers. That’s where you come in. I want you to be one of our pro dancers.”
“Oh really?”
“Tyler and Brody already agreed. Piper begged off because growing a human is hard. But she offered up the names of a couple of other people I should ask. You’ve been in court all week, so I haven’t made it to you until now. Think about it, Tucker. You nobly gave up your role as Phil in White Christmas to get Brody and Tyler back together. Now’s your chance to show off those happy feet of yours for all to see.”
A spark of inspiration flared in his brain. “And who would my partner be?”
“To be determined. I wanted to have all my pros lined up before I started asking local businesses to sponsor someone, so I know how many I need. Cam volunteered to sponsor himself on behalf of the nursery, so he’s dancing with Tyler.”
“And you have the double whammy of him being an elected official.” Tucker nodded. “People will tune in to see City Councilman Pretty Boy. What about you, Miss City Planner?”
Norah laughed. “Please. I know my limitations. I nearly broke your feet when you tried to dance with me last year. Surely you’ve learned your lesson.”
As it was an undeniable truth that Norah possessed not a shred of natural rhythm, Tucker was privately relieved. And that potentially left the door open to a crazy plan. He did love a crazy plan. “What about Mama Pearl?”
Norah clapped her hands in glee. “Dinner Belles is the center of everything in this town. If you can talk her into dancing, the public would love it!”
“Oh, so I’m on recruiter duty now, am I?”
“You’re the one who brought it up. Besides, you’re a smooth talker, Tucker. If anyone can do it, you can.”
He was, and Norah was falling right into his hands. “You could do it, too. I’m reasonably sure no one has actually said no to you about anything since you moved to town.”
“True, but I’ll be busy sweet talking everyone else. Can I count on you? To dance and to work on Mama Pearl?”
Tucker loved to dance, loved to perform, and it would give him yet another legitimate excuse to drop into the diner. And if he could get Mama Pearl on board, it just might give him the opportunity to break this stalemate he’d been in with her sad-eyed waitress. He lifted a hand in salute. “I’m your man, General Burke.”
* * *
“Only twenty more minutes and we are done! Girl, give me a high five.”
Corinne Dawson slapped Malika Hobbs’s uplifted hand before returning to her patient charts. The next twenty minutes were all that stood between them and the completion of the clinical hours required for their nursing program. With finals finished, this was the last requirement for graduation. Thank God. The last two semesters of juggling online classes, clinical hours, and her job as a waitress at Dinner Belles had meant little sleep and even less time with her son. But the end was in sight.
“We should totally go out for drinks to celebrate. Or ice cream. A big ass banana split,” Malika continued. “And then a three hour nap.”
The idea of that nap almost made Corinne whimper. “I wish. I’ve still got a shift at the diner when I leave here.” Another eight hours on her feet after eight here at the hospital. She’d forgotten what it was like not to operate past the threshold of permanent exhaustion.
The younger woman stuck out her lip in a pout. “With clinicals done, when am I going to see you?”
It gave Corinne warm fuzzies that her classmate still wanted to see her. She hadn’t exactly been welcomed back to Wishful with open arms when she’d come slinking home, a divorced single mom, eighteen months before. Friends had been hard to come by.
“You could both apply for jobs here at the hospital.” Rosemary Newsome reached past them both to pluck a chart out of the rack.
Corinne looked at the charge nurse. “I didn’t think they were hiring.”
“They weren’t. But they will be. It’s a good gig. Hard work, but part of the job perks is that the hospital will pay for you to continue your education. You come in as LPNs, you can work your way up. Two years working here for every year of schooling.”
A means of furthering her education without going deeper into debt? With that kind of option, she could afford to finally move out of her mom’s house, get her own place and start paying off all the debts she’d accrued trying to get back on her feet since the divorce. “Where do I pick up an application?” Corinne asked.
“The posting will go up in a few weeks. You can swing by HR then, put in an application. They’ll have it online, but better to have your face seen. We’re old school around here. Then the board will interview candidates,” Rosemary said.
“The hospital board?” Corinne asked.
“That’d be the one.”
Damn it. Of the nine board members, Corinne knew at least three of them would turn her application down on the spot. She’d been back long enough to know nobody had forgotten high school and no one cared about giving her a chance to make up for her less than sterling behavior. But maybe it didn’t have to be a unanimous decision. She’d just have to make sure she was the best candidate for the job.
“I’m going to go check on Mr. Lennox in 104,” Malika announced.
As her friend hustled down the hall, Corinne turned to Rosemary. “I know clinical hours are over, but is there any chance I can continue volunteering?”
The older woman blinked. “You need to be studying for your NCLEX exam.”
“And I am. But I’m serious about going for that job.” She needed it to make a better life for her son. “It seems like going above and beyond would help set me apart from the crowd.”
“Your work should speak for itself. You’ve done a good job here, Corinne.”
She’d worked her tail off. But Corinne had her doubts about whether it would be enough. In all likelihood, she’d end up having to leave Wishful to start a new life for her and Kurt. As difficult as coming home had been, going somewhere entirely new was a mountain she wasn’t sure she had it in her to climb.
One step at a time, she reminded herself. It had been the mantra echoing through her head for a long time now. It had gotten her away from Lance, found her a job, gotten her back in school. It would get her a little bit further.
At the end of their shift, she and Malika walked out to the parking lot together.
“Oh! Oh! Final grades are posted!” Malika furiously punched at her smartphone. “Thank you, baby Jesus, I passed.”
“Could I borrow your phone to check?” Corinne held up her dumb phone. She hadn’t been able to afford anything with a data plan.
Malika handed over the iPhone. Nerves danced in Corinne’s belly as she logged into her own account on the student portal and scrolled to check her grades. Her breath wooshed out.
“All A’s.” She’d been terrified with all the extra hours she was pulling at the diner that she’d tank her classes.
“Damn, girl! You kickin’ my ass. Making my A’s and B’s look shabby.”
Corinne handed the phone back. “The important thing is we’re both officially graduating!”
The pair of them executed a little happy dance, ending with a hip bump and a tight hug.
“Come by the diner to see me, now, you hear?” Corinne ordered. “I’ll be there until I finish my test and find something else. We can get in some more study sessions for the NCLEX.”
“I will. See you on the flip side.”
With a wave, Malika slid into her little Nissan and headed out. Corinne took a long look at Wilton Memorial Hospital before climbing into her ancient Toyota and pointing toward downtown Wishful.
The town green was edging more toward brown in the late summer heat. Rather than parking behind the diner as usual, she took a space across from City Hall. She felt foolish as she made her way up the path to the huge fountain that was the town’s pride and joy. Over a hundred and fifty years old, the fountain was central to Wishful’s identity. People came from far and wide to toss a coin into the basin and make a wish. Fed by nearby Hope Springs, local legend had it that most of them came true—though not always the way the wisher expected.
Corinne had never been one for wishes. But under the circumstances, she didn’t think it could possibly hurt. Standing at the edge, she dug in her purse for a coin. The biggest one in the handful she pulled out was a nickel.
Well, nobody ever said denomination counted.
Holding the coin tight, she pressed her fist over her heart. I wish for the chance to be seen as who I am now, not who I used to be. Please don’t let my past mistakes negatively impact my son.
She tossed the nickel. It flipped end-over-end, flying through the air to ping off the central stone pedestal, before dropping into the water with a splash.
Well, that was that. She’d finished her LPN classes with a 4.0. She’d finished her clinical hours. And she’d made a wish of the Universe. The only thing left to do was study her butt off for her certification exam. With one last look at the fountain, she turned toward the diner with a bit more of a spring in her step.
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