An Engagement in Seattle - Debbie Macomber [136]
“Chase will take you around himself,” Pete said again. “It wouldn’t be right for me to be introducin’ you.”
“I know.” She sighed. “Tell me about Twin Creeks, would you?”
“Ah…there’s not much to tell.”
“What about stores?”
He shrugged. “We order most everything through the catalog and on the internet.”
“There’s a grocery store.”
“Oh, sure, but it’s small.”
Well, she wasn’t expecting one with a deli and valet parking.
“What’s the population of Twin Creeks?”
Pete wasn’t one who could easily disguise his feelings, and she could see from the way his eyes darted past hers that he’d prefer to avoid answering. “We’ve had, uh, something of a population boom since the last census.”
“What’s the official total?”
“You might want to talk to Chase about that.”
“I’m asking you,” she pressed, growing impatient. “A thousand?”
“Less ’n that,” he said, drinking what remained of his coffee.
“How many less?”
“A, uh, few hundred less.”
“All right, five hundred people, then?”
“No…”
Lesley pinched her lips together. “Just tell me. I hate guessing games.”
“Forty,” Pete mumbled into the empty mug.
“Adults?” Her heart felt as if it’d stopped.
“No, that’s counting everyone, including Mrs. Davis’s cat.”
Eleven
“How many women live in Twin Creeks?” Lesley demanded.
“Including you?” Pete asked, looking decidedly uncomfortable by this time. He clutched his coffee mug with both hands and sat staring into it, as though he expected the answer to appear there.
“Of course I mean including me!”
“That makes a grand total of five then.” He continued to hold on to his mug as if it were the Holy Grail.
“You mean to tell me there’re only five women in the entire town?”
“Five women within five hundred miles, I suspect, when you get right down to it.” If his face got much closer to the mug, his nose would disappear inside it.
“Tell me about the other women,” Lesley insisted. She was pacing in her agitation. Chase had purposely withheld this information about Twin Creeks from her. Fool that she was, she hadn’t even thought to ask, assuming that when he mentioned the town there actually was one!
“There’s Thelma Davis,” Pete said enthusiastically. “She’s married to Milton and they’re both in their sixties. Thelma runs the grocery store and she loves to gossip. You’ll get along with her just fine. Gladys Thornton might be kind of a problem, though. She’s a little crabby and not the sociable sort, so most folks just leave her be.”
“Is there anyone close to my age?”
“Heather’s twelve,” Pete replied, looking up for the first time. “She lives with Thelma Davis. I never did understand the connection. Heather isn’t her granddaughter, but they’re related in some way.”
The woman closest to her in age was a twelve-year-old girl! Lesley’s heart plummeted.
“You’ll like Margaret, though. She’s a real social butterfly. The minute she hears Chase brought himself back a wife, she’ll be by to introduce herself.”
“How old is Margaret?”
“Darned if I know. In her fifties, I guess. She doesn’t like to discuss her age and tries to pretend she’s younger.”
“I…see.”
“I’d best be heading back,” Pete said, obviously eager to leave. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you mind not tellin’ Chase that I was the one who told you? We’ve been friends for a long time and I’d hate for him to take this personally. Me spillin’ the beans to you, I mean.”
“I’m not making any promises.”
Pete left as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.
An hour later, Lesley still hadn’t decided what to do, if anything. Chase had misled her, true enough, but she wasn’t convinced it mattered. She probably would’ve married him anyway.
No wonder he’d been so interested in Seattle’s history and the Mercer brides. Although more than a hundred years had passed since that time, she was doing basically the same thing as those women, moving to a