“She already knows my order. And she’ll remember yours until the end of time, unless you change it. It’s part of her magic.”
“Hey you two.” Cam stopped by their table, his fingers laced with Norah’s.
“It’s jumping in here this morning. Do y’all mind if we join you?” she asked.
In answer, Mitch scooted over, repressing a soft sigh of relief. Much as he wanted Tess all to himself, it would be easier to maintain their cover as just friends with company there to distract the conversation. After a moment’s hesitation, Tess did the same.
Cam slid in beside her. “What are y’all up to?”
“Breakfast before a proper tour of town,” Mitch explained.
Norah clasped her hands in glee. “Oh, I hope you’re doing a walking tour. It’s the best way to see downtown and the weather’s so nice.”
Mitch grinned at her. “You just want me to show off your handiwork.”
She grinned back. “True story. It was damned good handiwork.”
“And none of us have forgotten it, Wonder Woman.” Cam snagged his wife’s hand and leaned across the table to kiss it.
Tess didn’t quite manage to hide her wistful look. Mitch vowed to shower her with easy affection at the earliest opportunity. He wondered how long it would be before they could come clean and just be together publicly.
Cam caught Mama Pearl’s eye and signaled for coffee, but it wasn’t the diner’s proprietress who came over with the coffee pot, it was Delia Watson, with the rest of the Casserole Patrol in tow.
“Good morning, y’all,” she said cheerily.
“Are you moonlighting as a waitress now, Miss Delia?” Mitch asked.
“Oh, Pearl’s got her hands full for the moment, and I can pour coffee as well as anybody else.”
Meaning she’d absconded with the coffee pot to try to get a leg up on the morning’s gossip, and Mama Pearl was secure enough in her position as Queen of Gossip to let her.
“Morning Miss Betty, Miss Maudie Bell,” Cam murmured, turning over his coffee cup and watching as Miss Delia filled it with only a little splash.
“Well, are you going to introduce us to your new friend, young man?” Miss Maudie Bell demanded, with a significant look from Mitch to Tess.
Miss Betty whacked her on the arm. “You’d know who it was already if you’d come out with us last week. That there is Trey Peyton’s daughter, Tess.”
Tess’s mouth dropped open. “I feel certain I’d remember having met you.”
“Oh no, dear, we haven’t been formally introduced,” Miss Delia cooed. “We ran into Mitch the other night after he dropped you off at the hotel.”
As if that explained everything. Which, to the Casserole Patrol, it did.
Rather than launching into proper introductions, Miss Delia turned to Cam and Norah and beamed. “Now when are you two lovebirds gonna give us an excuse to start knitting those baby booties?”
Across the table, Tess choked a little on her coffee.
“Yes!” Miss Maudie Bell exclaimed. “You know we’ve gotta know what color yarn to buy.”
Miss Betty scoffed. “I already finished my blanket. I’m just waiting for a nursery to put it in.” She fixed Norah with an expectant look.
“They might appreciate a chance to just enjoy being married for a while before they start adding babies to the mix,” Tess pointed out. “Statistically, marriages that wait to have children last longer.”
The Casserole Patrol blinked at her as if that was the most radical suggestion they’d ever heard.
Before one of them said something like, “Why, dear?”, which would no doubt be followed up by a very stiff and polite explanation of how other people’s reproductive choices were no business of theirs, Mitch intervened. “Miss Maudie Bell, how are things going with Chester?”
That query sufficiently derailed the questioning, and when Mama Pearl arrived a few minutes later with a tray full of food—including Cam and Norah’s usuals—the trio of nosy blue hairs headed across the diner to bug Ben Rawlings, the fire chief, about when exactly he was going to organize a fireman’s calendar.