Cora Walker wasn’t a stupid woman, but it was beginning to dawn on her that she was foolish at times.

Now was one of those times.

She had just caught herself fantasizing about Justin Kensington. Again.

She wondered if she’d ever get past her inane obsession with the blond-haired god. Sure, he had the kind of body that made you want to lick him like a lolly-pop, and yes, his eyes were mesmerizing in the extreme, but still. She should have more control than this, shouldn’t she?

When he walked into the diner while she was waiting for her friend Laura Kensington to arrive, she’d caught herself imagining he might walk up to her. Instead of seeing the reality—which had been him saying hello to Presley and James across the room—she’d pictured him ignoring all the greetings from friends as he walked through the room to get to her. That kind of intense, single-minded focus you saw on a man’s face in a movie when he saw the woman he wanted across a crowded room.

When he reached her, he’d put out his hand and draw her up from the table, then step into her space, standing just inside the line that said they were more than friends. He’d put one arm around her waist, letting his hand slide along her hip and around to her back. He’d press her to him, blue eyes sparkling with heat, and bend to whisper a personal hello in her ear.

She often had fantasies like this about Justin, despite the fact that he’d shown her time and again he had no interest in her other than as a friend.

Her sister was the romance novelist in the family. Somehow, Ashley always came up with these steamy, suspenseful plots filled with twists and turns that boggled Cora’s mind. If Cora was writing a romantic suspense, she’d have lame little narrations, like: in a stupidly handy turn of events, the heroine stumbled on a loaded weapon and turned to fire at her pursuer. She was a miraculously good shot for someone with no experience with a gun.

Yeah, Cora wasn’t an author for a reason. But with her fantasies about Justin, Cora could have given Ashley a run for her money.

They’d be at a party and she’d invent scenes where Justin drew her into a closet and stripped her bare, whispering for her to be quiet as he ravished her. In another, he’d dropped his beer bottle and lifted her so he could set her on a nearby table to kiss her properly.

“Properly” being with her legs and arms wrapped around him as he ground between her thighs.

She was welcomed back to the real world when Justin slid into the seat across from her.

“Hey, Cora. Meeting someone?” His dimples got her every time. He was like Robert Redford back in the ’70s when he was super hot, only modern, not wearing shirts with big collars unbuttoned halfway to his knees.

Not that she’d mind his shirt unbuttoned halfway to his knees.

She mentally slapped herself. “Laura. We’re having lunch.”

Our heroine has resorted to stating the painfully obvious in an attempt at witty repartee with the hero.

He grinned at her.

“We have lunch sometimes,” she mumbled. Lord, she couldn’t stop herself.

Gina, one of the two sisters who owned and ran Two Sisters diner came to the table giving Cora the reprieve she badly needed.

“Still waitin’ on one more?” she asked. Cora had already told her she was waiting for Laura.

“I can’t stay. Tina’s making me a sandwich to go,” Justin said, with a nod of his head toward Tina, the other sister, who could be seen through the pass-through window that led to the kitchen.

It wasn’t a surprise. When Justin first came to town, people hardly saw him. He stayed holed up in his house or office all the time. If you did see him, he wore a scowl that warned people away. Nowadays, he smiled more and he had friends, but he still worked much of the time. There was also a bit of the scowl left in him. It wasn’t always on his face, but it was there. It was almost like he carried a heaviness with him wherever he went.

“That’s a pretty necklace, Gina,” Cora said. She leaned in. The necklace was heart shaped with small gems of various colors studding the heart.

Gina blushed, a hand going to the jewelry on her neck. “Thank you. The General got it for me.”

No one had to ask who the General was. General Brophy came to town frequently nowadays, both to visit his daughter, Phoebe Joy, who was dating Shane Bishop, and to see his favorite waitress, Gina.

When Gina had moved on to a table across the room, Justin leaned in. “Do you think she calls him General in—”

Cora slapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t say it. You’re horrible!”

“What’s horrible?” Laura asked, plopping herself on the seat next to Cora.

Justin was laughing as he got up and walked away.

Laura looked to Cora. “What did I miss?”

“You don’t want to know.” She searched for another topic. “Did you hear that Ron Knight filed his lawsuit?” The whole town had known the suit was coming.

“I did.” Laura switched her seat to sit across from Cora now that Justin was gone. “I heard everyone talking about it the minute I walked through the door.”

Two Sisters Diner was not only in the center of town physically, it was the center of town gossip. Cora didn’t doubt that everyone there was talking about Mr. Knight and his lawsuit.

She sighed. “I’ll find out how he’s doing later today.” She’d started visiting him on Sundays when he’d been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. She hadn’t stopped when he started telling everyone that Caufield Furniture had made him sick by mishandling the chemicals they used at an old storage facility near his land.

Sadly, his suit against the company was upsetting a lot of people. The company was one of the major employers in the area. People had depended on it for their livelihoods for decades. Seeing it threatened wasn’t going over all that well, even if people felt for Mr. Knight and his neighbors, who’d all been diagnosed with significant illnesses.

Cora watched Justin pay for his sandwich and walk out. She knew he would be going back to the offices of the nonprofit he ran with Laura. He worked most weekends.

“Can I ask you something?” Cora asked, refocusing on Laura.

“Always.”

“Do you think a person can just decide to get over someone they’ve been hung up on for a long time?”

Laura didn’t try to pretend she didn’t know who they were talking about. “I’d like to think he’s going to wake up one of these days and see what he’s missing. I happen to think you guys would be great together.”

Laura was more than a friend of Justin’s. Justin was her former husband’s brother and they worked closely together running the nonprofit they’d started. If anyone knew Justin, it was Laura.

“I sense a but coming,” Cora said.

“But,” Laura said, with emphasis, “Justin has some issues and I don’t know when he’s going to get past those.”

“Yeah,” Cora said. She slumped down in her seat, sipping her club soda.

Laura tilted her head. “Can I ask you something now?”

“Always,” Cora said, mimicking her friend’s earlier response.

“Do you think you’ve been waiting all this time for him to notice you because you want him, or do you think maybe you’re focused on him because he’s unattainable and you know it?”

Laura’s words were soft but they cut just as if she’d put venom behind them.

Cora’s denial was immediate. “Of course not.”

Laura waited.

Cora laughed at her. “Really, it’s not. I mean, that makes no sense.”

There was no denying Laura was perceptive. She’d been taught to read other’s emotions at a high cost during her previous marriage. Still, she was wrong here.

They were interrupted briefly when Gina came to take their orders, but Laura didn’t let the subject drop. “Just think about it. It’s just that, sometimes, people who have lost people early on in their lives do things to make sure they don’t have to go through that again.”

Cora was silent but she would be lying if she said Laura’s suggestion didn’t stick with her through the rest of the meal.

Even though her gut response had been that Laura was wrong, some part of her wondered if her friend might be right. Maybe it was time for a little more soul searching instead of just pouting over the fact her crush clearly saw her as nothing more than a friend. A completely platonic, asexual friend.