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week Maya worked there. The other three days she was working on a screenplay. Something about evil this week, she’d said. Soon, she knew she would sell it; then she’d give up waitressing forever.
    “Then I’ll just come and spend my money here,” she’d told Ellie. “And I’ll make sure to bring all myimportant new friends with me. You’ll have it made, just you wait and see.”
    Meanwhile, they were both waiting, and waitressing, and hoping.
    Dan backed his brand-new white Explorer into a tight spot on Main Street. The California sun blazed down, bronzed people in shorts and T-shirts whizzed by him on rollerblades or simply took it easy at sidewalk cafes, and the parking meter still had half an hour left on it. It was early April and he’d seen the weather back east on TV: they’d just had another two inches of snow. Feeling that life wasn’t too bad after all, he strolled into Ellie’s Place.
    The red-haired young woman behind the coffee machine gave him a dazzling smile of welcome that seemed to spread from one pretty diamond-studded ear to the other.
    “Be right with you,” she called. “The coffee machine’s acting up again though, so if it’s caffeine you’re after, you might want to try Starbucks. It’s on the next block.”
    “Juice is fine. It’s eggs I really want, scrambled with a toasted bagel.”
    “Okay.” She wrote the order and headed toward the kitchen in the back.
    It was just a tiny storefront cafe done out like a Parisian bistro. The mirrors covering the walls were old and foggy, the bronze sconces were verdigrised, the tables were marble and the chairs cane. A scattering of fresh sawdust covered the tile floor and lace curtains hung from a brass rail halfway up the window, on which the name
Elite’s Place
was inscribed in green shadowed with gold.
    Cute, he thought. Like the waitress. She came backcarrying cutlery, napkins and a basket of fresh bread covered with a green-checked cloth, and he quickly amended that statement. You could never call a woman as tall as she was “cute.” And she was no cookie-cutter California girl either.
    She gave him another glancing smile as she set the bread in front of him and he noticed a smudge of flour on her cheek. Her eyes were the pale bluish-gray of opals, her nose was freckled and her red hair was bunched through a black baseball cap in a long curly ponytail. It was odd, but he felt he’d seen her somewhere before. He guessed it was because she looked a bit like Julia Roberts.
    “Out here on vacation?” She arranged the tablemat and cutlery and folded the green-checkered napkin. Her voice was deep and soft as melted chocolate.
    “How do you know I don’t live here?”
    She put her hands on her hips, regarding him. “It’s that East Coast pallor. It’s a dead giveaway. Most people out here have a tan, even if it’s fake.”
    Dan laughed. “You mean I’ll have to apply bronzer in order to qualify as a native?”
    Her long legs covered the distance to the counter in three strides. She picked up the glass of juice and brought it to him. “Oh, a couple of days at the beach and you’ll be fine. Better watch it though. I know it’s only April, but the sun is strong.”
    He watched her walk back to the kitchen to get the eggs. “How come you’re so pale then?”
    “That’s my grandmother’s doing. She always made me wear a hat when I was a kid, never let me sunbathe. She said with my red hair and freckles it would be like frying myself. And you know what? She was right. Now I’m older and wiser, I thank her every time I look in the mirror. No lines, no sunspots. I’m a lucky woman.”
    Ellie smiled at him again as she put the plate of eggs in front of him. Back behind the counter, she cast him a speculative glance.
    Cute, she thought, if you could call a guy that rugged “cute.” Deep blue eyes that looked as though they had seen it all; thick dark hair, a hawkish nose and blue-stubbled jaw. Lean, broad-shouldered,