The Posse (2 page)

“Are you crazy? Jude will
never agree to that.” Matt rolled his eyes.

“I don’t mean we tell her. I
mean, we all...you know...like, date her. What do all the girls
say? Court her. And whoever clicks, that’s the one.” Logan flipped
up a hand.

“You, me and Cooper?” Matt
nodded. “Okay. Hey, I got nothing to lose. It’s not like women are
beating down the door.”

“If Jude gets wind of this,
she’ll blow a gasket.” Mark crumbled his napkin, aimed for the
trash can and missed.

“I think we can keep it
quiet. Nice shot, by the way.” Cooper punched his friend in the
shoulder.

“Basketball’s not my game.
But listen, I’m serious. How are you going to keep this from her?
Take turns?”

“No.” Logan spoke
definitively. “We act natural. We do what we would anyway—check in
with her, take her to dinner, whatever. And then we see what
happens.”

“And no hard feelings,
right? No matter who she chooses. We say it right up front now,
Jude is the final word. Agreed?” Cooper laid a hand on the oak bar,
a gesture that was old as their friendship. Matt slapped his own
hand down on top, followed by Eric and Mark. Logan was last,
unfurling a fist on the pile.

“Deal,” he said. “Now let’s
break out the good stuff.”

***

The black velvet sky was giving way to
vague bands of pink as Jude climbed up the cement steps that led to
the side door of the Riptide. The restaurant sat at the edge of the
beach, ugly and unassuming in its dingy white brick glory. When she
was a little girl, Jude had thought the Tide looked as though it
had grown out of the sidewalk and gravel parking lot. The raised
porch that jutted over the sand had been added about ten years
before she was born, so it was practically brand new. Her dad had
screened it in just before her ninth birthday, and they’d had her
party there that year.

As she did every morning,
Jude took a moment, leaned against the bricks and looked out over
the beach into the waves. She wondered how many times she’d done
this, stood here at five AM and let the rare solitude wash over
her.

She’d been opening the Tide
since the summer after she turned sixteen. For the first two years,
she’d come in with her dad, riding shotgun in his old black pickup,
learning how to start the day.  When school resumed that fall,
her father had given her the option to sleep that extra hour, but
Jude had chosen to spend it with him instead. He never said it
outright, but she knew he was proud of her choice.

After graduation, she took
over opening on her own.  Her mother worried about her all
alone on the dark mornings, but Jude overheard her father saying,
“It’s the Cove, Maggie. She’ll be safe.”

Jude didn’t miss an opening
until her wedding day, and only then because her mom put her foot
down and insisted. She and Daniel spent their honeymoon in the
mountains of Gatlinburg, a wedding gift given reluctantly by his
parents, who hadn’t been able to convince their son to wait until
after college graduation to marry Jude.

She hadn’t missed opening
the Tide the day she gave birth to Meghan, because her daughter had
kindly waited to be born until eight in the evening. Joseph was
another story; he’d made his appearance at four in the morning.
Jude could still see Daniel, a full-day’s growth of beard on his
tired face, holding his son and grinning up at her.

“Hey, if you get up now, you
could still make it to the Tide for opening,” he’d teased, and
Jude, exhausted from laboring for ten hours, hadn’t even had the
strength to throw her pillow at him.

She’d taken off four weeks
after each of her children was born. And then she’d missed opening
the day her mother died, because she wouldn’t leave her dad and
Mark in that empty, hopeless hospital room where Maggie Rivers had
just drawn her last breath.

Jude had opened the Tide
hours after her father had passed, though, because she knew that
was where he needed her, and where she needed to be. She’d come the
morning after Daniel had died, too. She couldn’t stand being in
that house one more minute.

She smothered a sigh,
gripping the chilled metal of the doorknob just as she heard her
name.

“Jude!”

It was rare that anyone was
out this early, and she turned in surprise, a frown between her
eyes. It took a moment of focus to recognize the man jogging up the
sand toward her.

“Good God, Logan, what the
hell are you doing up so early? I thought you’d all be ringing in
the wee sma’s last night.”

Logan had the good grace to
look a little winded, even as he managed a grin. “We did. Around
two, I gave up the ghost and told them to turn off the lights and
lock up before they went to bed.”

“Two? And you’re up running
at five?”

He shrugged. “The body clock
won’t be turned off. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I figured I’d
get in a jog before everyone else woke up.”

Jude unlocked the door.
“I’ve got to get the grill on. Want some coffee? Or a bottle of
water?”

“How about both?”

She shot him a grin as she
flipped on lights and headed for the kitchen. Logan climbed onto a
barstool, and Jude reached into the small fridge to pull out the
water.  She slid it across the bar to Logan and then moved
through the kitchen, setting up the coffee and turning on the
grills. 

“You look like you could do
all that with your eyes closed.” Logan took a long chug on the
water before recapping it.

Jude laughed. “Some mornings
I do.”

“Do you ever think about
giving it up?”

“The mornings? Nah. Like you
said, the body clock gets me up at four every morning anyway. I’d
be awake worrying even if I turned it over to someone else.”

Logan shook his head. “Not
the mornings so much as the whole thing. Running the business.”

“The Tide?” Jude snagged two
mugs off a shelf and filled them with steaming coffee. “Give it up?
No.”  She doctored Logan’s coffee with a sugar and a healthy
dose of cream before setting it in front of him.

She leaned her elbows on the
bar and blew into her own cup. “Funny, just before you showed up, I
was thinking about how long I’ve been pulling morning duty. Almost
thirty years, give or take. Some days I think...why? I want to stay
in bed, I just want a day to myself. But you know, it’s a part of
me. Might be a pain in the neck sometimes, but it’s who I am.”

Logan watched her sip the
coffee. Her black hair was skinned back into a pony tail, just as
it was every day, and her bright green eyes were fastened on the
dark wood of the bar top. One finger traced an ancient gouge in the
wood, but Logan knew she wasn’t seeing it. She drew in a deep
breath and set the mug on a coaster.

“So what time did my kids
leave your house?”

He drank before answering.
“Before midnight. You weren’t up when they got home?”

“They crashed here, upstairs
in the apartment. They were going to have a few friends come over,
hang out. I wanted the peace.”

Logan frowned. “I thought
they were going to be with you last night. They left you
alone?”

“Logan.” Jude covered one of
his large tanned hands with her own smaller one. “I’m telling you,
I wanted some time. If I had said I needed them, you know they
would’ve been there. They’re good kids.”

“Yeah, they are.” He turned
his hand beneath hers to grip it briefly. “You going to be okay
when they go back to school?”

She returned the hand
squeeze for just a minute before pulling loose and turning to the
large refrigerator at the back of the kitchen.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. They
need to go back. This last year, and the one before, it was tough
on them. They need to go be kids again. We’re all ready for
it.”

“Okay.” Logan drained the
last of his coffee and rounded the bar to rinse off the mug in the
huge sink. “You know where we are if you need anything. All of us.
You only have to ask.”

“I do know.” She shot him a
smile. “Now get out of here and let me get cooking. The early birds
are going to be here in a few minutes wanting their pancakes and
eggs. And you have a house full of hung over men you need to kick
out.”

“Right.” Logan grabbed the
bottle of water to take with him. “Thanks for the drinks,
Jude.”

As she watched him stride
toward the door, the muscles on his back evident through the tight
running shirt, light brown hair curling on his neck, Jude felt an
almost foreign warmth shoot down her spine, straight to her knees.
She paused for a moment to appreciate the view, and then shook her
head.

Pull it together, Jude. Here
comes the breakfast crowd.

***

Meghan stumbled down the narrow steps
from the apartment over the Riptide. She yawned as she rounded the
corner into the main dining room and plopped onto a bar stool.

Her mother was across the
room, chatting with a couple Meghan pegged as tourists. Jude had
bent one leg onto an empty chair so that she could point out
something on the simple one-laminated-page menu.

“It all looks good,” the
woman told Jude. “It’s just that my husband here wants lunch, and I
was hoping to have breakfast.”

“It’s almost eleven. Too
late for breakfast.” The man shook his head.

Jude smiled. “I know it says
we only serve breakfast until ten on weekdays, but I can whip you
up some pancakes and eggs. How does that sound?”

“That would be perfect.” The
woman shot her husband a triumphant look, and he rolled his
eyes.

“And how about one of our
special Ripper burgers for you, sir?” Jude cocked her head.

“Sounds good.” He handed her
both of the menus, and Jude moved away from the table, back to the
open kitchen.

“Hey, sleepy head,” she
greeted her daughter. “Late night?”

Meggie shrugged. “Not too
bad. I’m just stocking up on sleep before I go back to school. I’ve
got that early class every single day.”

Jude placed her hand over
her heart. “You poor child, having to get up before eight o’clock
five days a week...”

“Whatever!” Meghan’s grin
softened the words. “Do you have any coffee back there?”

“What do you think?” Jude
filled a mug for her daughter and slid it across the bar before
getting to work on her customers’ order. “Hey, Mack, would you make
up a Ripper, please? I’ll take care of the breakfast order.”

The bald man standing in
front of the griddle waved his spatula in acknowledgement and
pulled a beef patty from the fridge. Meghan’s nose wrinkled as the
smell reached her.

At her end of the stove,
Jude poured pancake batter into a pan and broke eggs into a bowl.
Her hand moved at lightening speed as she whipped them into a
yellow froth. Meghan frowned as she watched. Her mother had always
been slim, but the last two years had taken her past slender right
into skinny. The khaki shorts she always wore to work were baggier
than usual, and Meggie could see the boniness of her arms.

Neither Joseph nor Meghan
had inherited their mom’s dark hair, but they both had her eyes and
her bone structure. Meghan was used to people commenting on how
much she looked like her mother, but right now, she wouldn’t be
surprised if she had a good ten pounds on the older woman.

“Are you going to be okay,
Mom?” Meggie blurted out the words, her eyes anxious. “When Joseph
and I go back to school, I mean?”

Jude flipped a pancake and
glanced over her shoulder. Catching the worried expression, she
flung one hand over her forehead. “Oh, Meghan, after you’ve gone,
whatever shall I do?”

Meggie scowled. “Shut up,
I’m serious.”

“Sweetie, you and your
brother have gone away to college before. I’ve made it here without
you. I love you, but I think I’ll survive.”