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  Witt let out a low whistle. Was that good or bad?

  Before the truck came to a stop, she launched up out of her seat to peer at the intersection through the truck’s wide front windshield. The joyous sight of two dozen people pointing and waving sent a surge of relief through her body. Hungry, excited people. Waiting for her food. There wasn’t a better sight in all the world.

  “It worked.” Witt exhaled. For all his confidence, his tone held the same relief she felt. “Customers.” He looked back over his shoulder as he pulled the truck into position, his eyes glowing as bright as the truck’s paint job. “So, Chef, you ready to feed some people?”

  She had already turned on the grill. “Am I ever. You ready, Jose?”

  Jose grinned as he started unloading condiments from the cabinet. “Yes, Chef!”

  The next two hours flew by in seconds. Witt worked the cash register, feeding her tickets with orders. Her brain slid easily into the place where cooking became everything—where the sizzle of the meat met the warming bread under her hands and she orchestrated the movement of ingredients into place. There was nothing like this, no other place or activity that seeped so deeply into her soul and made her feel larger than life, vibrant, physically tingling from excitement and purpose.

  The truck broiled from the grill heat and the strong fall sunshine. The little fans set up around the truck tried in vain to keep the air moving. She should have been miserable, hot and sweaty as she was, but Jana never noticed the heat. Only when she slid the last meal—a set of three “sliders” she’d relented and added to the menu at Witt’s insistence—across the counter, did she recognize her body’s exhaustion. It wasn’t the bad, emptied-out kind of weary, however. Instead, it was a satisfying, used-up kind of tired. The sensation of giving all she had to give in the one place she knew she was meant to be.

  Jana leaned against the back counters, her headband soaked, her chef’s coat spattered and sticking to her arms. “Wow.” She laughed, downright giddy at the thought of so many happy mouths fed. “It worked.”

  Witt slid the cash register drawer closed, practically slumping over it himself. “It did.” He was sweaty, too—and smiling and laughing, clearly as pleased with how their first “announced appearance” had gone. His eyes held a playful challenge as he asked, “We sold out of sliders, didn’t we?”

  “That was the last one,” she admitted. He’d been right; she could craft a basic trio of the smaller burgers without feeling like she’d given in to some trendy fad.

  Jana waited for him to crow, I told you so, but instead he merely offered her a warm smile and wiped his forehead with a sleeve. “I knew you could do it.”

  It proved the perfect thing to say. Suddenly the long negotiations over whether to offer the sliders melted away, and she saw a glimpse of what she had hoped to find all along: a partnership. There was a long moment where they simply looked at each other, both soaked and exuberant, each a bit stunned that the whole thing had gone as well as it had. This was the last step, the truck’s final test before they went into the full swing of daily operations next week. Blue Thorn Burgers was here. They had done it. Jana wanted to dance in the tiny truck corridor, to fling herself into a group hug with Witt and Jose, and to fall into an exhausted heap against the coolness of the refrigerator, all at once. Instead, she just stood there, alternately glancing at Witt and closing her eyes, laughing softly as she tried to get her hair back up off her neck.

  Jose, who’d been ping-ponging his glance back and forth between his two bosses, finally threw up his hands. “Is anyone gonna check the feed?”

  He grabbed the truck’s tablet from its bracket on the wall and swiped through the menu until he found the Blue Thorn Burgers social media page. “We’re up to eighty-five followers on Twitter, a hundred and twenty-six on Instagram. People have posted three videos, and there are sixty-two mentions on Facebook. And twenty-one...wait, now twenty-two five-star reviews on Yelp!”

  Witt gave a whoop worthy of a rodeo cowboy. Jose high-fived Jana with a string of Spanish exultations, and Jana felt her chest glow in gratitude. She’d worked at restaurants before, but here, now, was the first true public applause for specifically and exclusively her cooking. For her as a chef. She’d been so afraid to be “known,” to be out in the public eye for so many years, that she’d forgotten how gratifying the spotlight could feel.

  Thank You, she prayed silently, her hand falling to cover her thumping heart. Thank You.

  She opened her eyes to see Witt staring at her. The gratitude, the jubilant satisfaction that sparkled within her, was there in his eyes, as well. After all, he had as much at stake today as she did. “Thank you,” she said, thinking the pair of common words entirely insufficient.

  “My pleasure,” he said. He held her eyes for one long moment more before sending a smirk Jose’s way. “Hang on tight. I’m thinking it only goes up from here.”

  Chapter Five

  Boring. The word gaped out like a sinkhole in the center of Jana’s phone screen Tuesday morning. Of all the criticisms she thought she could stomach, this was the one that cut deepest. Boring. Could internet food critic “Spatula Dave” have said anything worse? They hadn’t even invited any critics or bloggers this weekend just to avoid this kind of thing. She sank down onto the truck floor with her back against the counter. The coffee beside her tasted sharp and sour where five minutes ago she’d found the blend particularly smooth.

  She scrolled through the other comments from Dave’s followers, several of whom had visited the truck during its weekend operations. There were compliments scattered among the responses from people who disagreed with his assessment. And Dave didn’t hate everything—he thought the coleslaw was particularly well-done. She noted, with an extra-sharp sense of annoyance, that he found the slider trio “a near miss.” Witt would surely note that the most positive comment about a burger was given to the sliders. Her own creations? They hadn’t fared nearly as well. The “I’m all alone here” feeling that had been fading now roared right back up with this setback.

  Jana told herself to put the phone down, to stop hurting her heart by scrolling and re-scrolling across the article as if she were grabbing a hot pan over and over. It’s one person’s opinion, she told herself. Yeah, one person who has an audience of—she made herself scroll down to where the blog’s fifteen-thousand-member following was listed—too many.

  They’d done a bustling business their first official weekend, and there had been plenty of positive comments from satisfied customers on various restaurant review sites. Until this morning, Jana had felt she was riding on a wave of success.

  A knock came on the back of the truck and Witt shook off his umbrella as he came in the back of the truck. One glance at her face must have told him all he needed to know. “So you saw.”

  Jana set the phone down on the floor beside her. “Hard not to.” Maybe scanning the internet for mentions of the truck every morning wasn’t such a good idea.

  “It isn’t all...bad.” He hesitated before the final word. “He gave the truck three out of five stars.” His tone was a last-ditch kind of hopeful, as if he knew his words wouldn’t make up for what she’d read. “He liked the coleslaw.”

  “He liked the sliders...sort of.” Jana tried to keep the edge out of her voice, but her comment still sounded like a pouty toddler’s. Rejection—her Achilles’ heel since Ronnie’s torrent of put-downs and degradations—stung worse than anything.

  Witt slid down to sit with his back against the opposite wall. “We’ll get other great reviews, you’ll see.”

  Jana hated to be so obvious in her need for reassurance. “I suppose.”

  “Hard to keep perspective at the moment, I get that.”

  She looked up into his eyes, still brilliant blue in the gray light coming through the truck windows. “Boring. I think I could take any criticism but boring. I would have been happier if he’d hated them. At least then I’d know I’d evoked a passionate response.”

  Witt laughed softly. “Jana Powers, believe me when I tell you, you are anything but boring. You’re the opposite of boring. There isn’t a single thing about you or your cooking that’s boring.”

  She gave him a “nice try” look and swallowed more coffee.

  “He’s an idiot. Probably eats chicken nuggets and cold cereal on his days off. He’s probably one of those guys who feels like he’s not a real food critic if he doesn’t hate something. And that’s just it—he’s not a real food critic. He’s one guy with a cell phone and—”

  “And fifteen thousand people who read what he thinks,” she finished for him. “That’s fifteen thousand people who aren’t going to risk their money on a boring burger.”

  “And...” Witt scrolled down through his own phone, lips moving slightly as he counted something. “Fifteen of the twenty-two people who left a comment saying they’d come to the truck themselves argued that they liked what they ate. Two more say they are at least going to try us out.”

  “That’s not a rave,” she muttered.

  “No, that’s a conversation. The more comments, the higher up on the internet food chain this blog goes. People are talking about us, Jana, and that’s what matters. If I read all these comments about an interesting new place to eat, I’d want to come try it out for myself and see which side I’m on.”

  She gave him a dark look. Why was Witt trying to put a positive spin on this? There wasn’t any way to make this easier to swallow. “You wouldn’t be more inclined to come over if Spatula Dave had boasted we fed him the best burger he’d had in years?”

  “Stop. What if Spatula Dave has emotional baggage here? What if his grandfather was killed in a buffalo stampede? Or someone else’s bad burger landed him in the ER with food poisoning?”

  He was being purposefully melodramatic, and while his theory started the smallest part of a smile deep down inside, the grin couldn’t find its way to her face. “If he hated burgers, he wouldn’t be Spatula Dave.”

  Witt got up. “Lots of foods are cooked with spatulas. Pancakes, for example.”

  “We are not adding pancakes to the menu.”

  He extended a hand. “I’m not talking about the truck here. I’m talking about breakfast. What did you eat for breakfast?”

  She didn’t see the relevance. “Yogurt.”

  “Ick. Never liked the stuff. I declare the need for a corporate meeting over pancakes. It’s raining, so there’s no point in going out to the park today. Jose has a doctor’s appointment, so we’re going to breakfast. No is not an option.”

  She looked up at him. What enabled him to slough this off so easily? “If he’d made some crack about the truck being too blue, you wouldn’t be in the mood for pancakes.” Spatula Dave had trashed her cooking. She had no choice but to take it personally.

  Witt narrowed one eye. “Clearly, you haven’t read AustinDine.” He scrolled through his phone. “‘No points for subtlety. The truck is a shocking blue that may even glow in the dark.’”

  Ouch. “No,” she admitted as she tried not to laugh at his wince, “I hadn’t seen that one.” So she wasn’t the only one to suffer a few online dings right where it hurt the most. “For what it’s worth, I’ve changed my mind about the blue. I think the color works. It’s loud, but it works.”

  Witt’s eyebrow rose. “Didn’t expect that from you.”

  “I’ve never met a family with a signature color before. It took a little getting used to.” She motioned to his eyes. “Does everybody have them? The Buckton blue eyes, I mean.”

  He shrugged. “Pretty much. Obviously, people who marry into the family don’t, but it seems to be a stubborn gene. Even Bucktons who marry brown-eyed folks still get the blue eyes in their children. I think the genetic line knows better than to try to go rogue on this family.”

  Suddenly, she was curious. “Is it weird? Ellie said she didn’t like having something that let everyone know who she was before she told them. Have you heard ‘Oh, you must be a Buckton’ your whole life?”

  “I never really thought about it that way, but I suppose so.” He shifted against the counter, running a hand through his brownish hair. “It’s not quite the same back home since Star Beef’s operation doesn’t have the same history as the Blue Thorn. But I look a lot like my dad, and most people know who the Bucktons are, both in my hometown and in Martins Gap, so I guess I’ve never known what it’s like to be anonymous.”

  They were so different. Maybe that’s why he took so easily to publicity—he’d been public, thanks to his family, every day of his life. Part of her move from Atlanta had been to start over with none of the baggage of her previous life. To be, in some ways, anonymous. “Haven’t you ever wanted to just go somewhere where no one knows who you are?”

  Witt shook his head and laughed softly. “That’s more Gunner’s thing. At least, it used to be. He and his dad used to butt heads all the time, and as soon as he was old enough, he left Blue Thorn behind, and started over fresh. He chose to be a rebel, and he excelled at it—until he came back, that is, to take it all over when his father died. I have to say, I admire the guy for turning his life around the way he did.” His eyes grew distant, with just enough of a flinch to let Jana know this was a tender subject. “No, I’ve always been proud to be a Buckton. I think that’s part of my problem, actually. Hard to take pride in a long family history when someone comes in and hijacks it for themselves.”

  Jana could see how deep that wound ran. To be that loyal, and then to be supplanted by a brother-in-law like Cole? Grayson Buckton should be ashamed of himself for discarding his son’s fidelity the way he had. She’d never met Mary and Cole, but she’d have a hard time making peace with the way they’d ousted Witt. That was probably unfair of her, but looking at the shadow that fell over Witt’s eyes when he talked about Star Beef or anything touching on his departure, Jana couldn’t help it.

  “Let’s go get some pancakes,” she said. “I heal better on a full stomach.”

  * * *

  Witt should have known taking Jana to a restaurant would be an interesting experience. She took in every detail, analyzed everything from the menu paper to the syrup containers. He had the feeling there would never be anything close to a “normal meal out” with her, ever.

  “They need better syrup,” she said as she tried a third flavor of syrup on her buckwheat pancakes. “The pancakes are really good, but they’re messing them up with lackluster syrup.”

  Lackluster? To him it was just breakfast. “I’ve always liked their pancakes here.” Earlier he’d had the notion to have her over to grill a pair of steaks one weekend, but he was suddenly wondering if his pride could take a blow if his efforts at the barbecue fell under the same scrutiny she was currently giving her breakfast.

  “Oh, they are good.” Jana continued analyzing. “The texture’s just right, and all that. Which is why the syrup shoots them in the foot.”

  “Can you shoot a pancake in the foot?” he teased.

  She gave him one of her looks. He was getting to know her different glares, gaining a sense of which meant very funny and which meant back off. He never wanted to say anything to actually offend her, but when he aimed a zinger just right, she was fun to tease—it brought out a lighter, softer side of her that almost never came out when she was cooking. When Jana was cooking, she was like a comet shooting through the kitchen; bright and fiery, leaving a long trail of sparkles wherever she went.

  “Feel better about Spatula Dave?” he dared to ask.

  Jana sat back. “Yeah. I suppose everyone can’t love us right away.”

  “But everyone will love us eventually,” he replied, dousing his pancakes with another wave of “lackluster” syrup.

  “Everyone, huh?”

  “World domination through bison burgers. That’s my plan, and I’m sticking to it.”

  Witt was glad to see her laugh. “And what, exactly, does world domination look like for Blue Thorn Burgers? Because I know you have it all planned out. In excruciating detail, I expect.”

  Now, there was a question to get a man up in the morning. He’d talked in vague terms about future expansion, not wanting to overwhelm her when they were just getting started, but a part of him had been waiting for her to ask this. Witt took the first syrup pitcher and placed it squarely between them. “We start with one truck. Get it just right, generate some excitement and a loyal following.

  “Then,” he went on as he picked up the second syrup pitcher, “when the lines get too long...”

  She raised an eyebrow at that particular sticking point, but said nothing.

  “When they get too long, we add another truck. Only that’s tricky, because we’d need another Jana to run it. We’ve got to start looking long before we need her because the chef is the key to everything.”

  Witt watched her eyes glow at the compliment. It wasn’t false praise—he really did feel Jana’s personality and expertise were absolutely essential to Blue Thorn Burgers’s success. “Hire another female chef?” she asked carefully.

  “It’d be my preference.” He paused just a moment before adding, “I think we’re on to something special here. I really just want the chef who will do exactly what you’re doing. I’d be okay if it were a guy, but somehow I think it might have to be a woman behind the counter to keep going what we’ve got.”

  He watched her take in all he’d just said, then picked up a third pitcher. “When those lines get too long, we add a third truck.”

  “Three trucks?”

  “I like to think big.” Witt caught her eye one more time before picking up the napkin container and placing it at the end of the little line of syrup pitchers. “Then, we go hard walls. A true brick-and-mortar restaurant.”