All's Were That Ends Were - Krystal Shannan

1

Dawn

“Dawn,” Liam said, his voice low and rumbling like a diesel engine starting. “We start closing in half an hour. Turn the kitchen off.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah. What time is it?” She glanced through the kitchen pass-thru at the windows out the front of the bar, surprised to still see sunlight. She knew the days were longer in Alaska, but she’d never experienced it. She’d just gotten here today. Her brain said it was still daytime, but her watch said it was night and that she needed a shower and a break. She’d still been driving this morning before she arrived in Mystery.

“Eight-thirty.”

“Why are we closing so early?” She shouldn’t be complaining. She’d been cooking for hours and probably smelled like the grease in the fryer. So much had happened today. Her whole life had changed when that lawyer told her she’d inherited a bar in this tiny town in Alaska.

“We don’t have a bouncer. If we keep serving into the night, these jerks get drunk and rowdy. I don’t have enough arms to manage all that.”

“Let me clean up and then I’ll be out to help you.”

He smiled at her then. A real wide, white-tooth smile. He was handsome in a rugged I’ll-knock-your-teeth-out-if-you-mess-with-me sort of way. The guy was built like a tank. If he really hadn’t wanted her here, there wouldn’t have been anything she could do about it except call the police and hope he didn’t pound them into the ground too.

“You clean the kitchen. I got this side,” he said, his tone gravelly and grinding like a coffee mill full of rocks.

She turned on her heel and dove into the mess. The dishes were easy since it was mostly utensils. The food went out in baskets. Those she tossed into the enormous dishwasher. She turned off all the gas and then went for the big trash can at the end of the line.

Heaving a few times, she finally managed to get the thing out of the can. She was going to need a smaller trashcan to make that more manageable if she was the one that kept cooking. Dawn tied the bag shut and dragged it across the rubber mats to the back door.

She pushed it open and kicked down the doorstop at the bottom to keep herself from getting locked out and having to walk all the way around to the front.

She covered her eyes and squinted at the amazing view. It was nearing sunset and it was beautiful. The rolling hills and trees for as far as the eye could see. The mountain view was the opposite direction, but the colors in the sky were beginning to change.

This town was so much smaller than she was used to. The hustle and noise of Sacramento wasn’t anything like this sleepy little town. She’d looked it up before she started her journey. Mystery had just under a thousand people. A good hunk of them were miners that worked fifty miles north of the town.

There were a few small places to rent a room or a cabin, but Mystery wasn’t really a tourist stop. At least it wasn’t yet. With views like this, she was shocked there weren’t more people renting their homes out or building bed and breakfasts. Her friends back home would kill for a quiet retreat to a place like this.

She walked out further into the parking lot and turned to face the mountain range. She couldn’t imagine seeing this every day.

And yet.

She had that choice.

Lars had given her that choice. In fact, he was forcing a year of Mystery on her. His will had said she couldn’t sell the bar until she’d run it for a year. Lived here for a year. The nerve of that old man. He didn’t know her. She’d thought he was dead. Her mother had always told her that her grandfather passed away years ago.

When she’d gotten the call, it’d been a blessing. Her divorce was almost final. All she was waiting on was the email that he’d signed the papers. Then she was free.

She was going to lose the house to her cheating-almost-ex-husband. And the last place she wanted to be was back at her mother with whatever random boyfriend Hillary Mae Mikkelson had living there this week.

Her mother had never made a sacrifice once in her life for her daughter and feeling pity because Dawn had made yet another mistake in life and married a jerk, wasn’t going to change anything.

Her thumb went to the ring still on