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for a meal.” Thea grinned at Joanna.
    “Great minds, then.”
    “Can I ask you a question?” Thea asked tentatively.
    “Sure. I can always refuse to answer if I don’t like the question.” Steel blue eyes captured her.
    Thea cleared her throat. “How old are you? When did you become a singer? Where are you originally from? Have you any family? Have you ever—”
    A slim finger rested on Thea’s lips and she looked into twinkling eyes.
    “I thought you said a question, not twenty?” Joanna laughed softly.
    “Sorry, I guess I got carried away.” Thea could feel her face heat up and she looked away.
    “Yep, you sure did.” Joanna’s finger traced a pattern on the cotton tablecloth. “No need to be sorry.” A gentle smiled filled her face. “You know, you’re cute when you blush.”
    Thea could feel her face get hotter.
    “I’m thirty-five. I’ve been singing since I could talk. Probably before then, if you listen to my mother. I was born and raised in a suburb of New York City and both my parents are living and I have a younger brother. I’m single, never been married and never likely to be either with my track record,” Joanna answered in a lighthearted tone.
    Thea grinned. “Thanks.”
    “No problem. Now it’s your turn. I’m still waiting for why you’re named Thea.”
    Thea chuckled. “It will sound crazy but I’m kind of named after a silent movie actress who was quite famous in her time. Theda Bara. They got rid of the d and here I am.”
    “Wow. Okay, I’m going to go all nerdy on you now. Wasn’t she in the early movie version of Cleopatra?”
    Thea nodded vigorously. “Do you like…no, too many questions already unanswered.” She looked away suddenly conscious of being alone with Joanna. “I’m twenty-nine, my parents split up when I was ten. My father’s dead and my mother remarried and ironically, she lives somewhere in New York too. I’m an only child. I can’t sing to save my life. I’m single and have never married either.” Thea was surprised at her light tone, which reflected the ease with which she could talk to Joanna.
    “That gets the preliminaries out of the way at least. So what do you do for fun around here?”
    “Fun? Fun. Hmmm. Well, I…I suppose I write.” Thea looked down at her hands.
    “Write about what exactly?”
    Thea looked at the table, picked up a napkin absently, and twisted it. “Poetry and short stories. Nothing very good. I tinker at it more than anything else.”
    “In that case, would you allow me to read some of it so I can be the judge of the quality?” Joanna asked.
    Thea moved her head in neither a positive nor a negative way. She didn’t know what to say. This was all foreign to her.
    Joanna’s hand reached out and stopped her shredding the paper napkin. “Can I take that as a yes?”
    Thea felt the warmth and surprising comfort in the hand on hers and it felt right. “Yes.”
    “How about I buy lunch tomorrow and you can bring something along for me to read? What do you say?”
    Green eyes tangled with blue and a message passed between them that Thea didn’t understand—but felt it was nonthreatening in its content. “Okay. I’ll look forward to that.”
    “So will I.” Joanna grinned.
    Lucy chose that moment to deliver their meal. “Here you go, ladies. Enjoy.”
    “Thank you,” Thea said. “It smells and looks wonderful.”
    For the next hour, she chatted with Joanna as old friends did, or what she thought old friends did. She had never had a friend before. When they left the diner, it was clear to her that, no matter what happened next, she had found a friend—a good friend. In her heart, she knew that Joanna felt the same way.

 

     

     

     
    Chapter Six
     

     

     
    George Andrews sat down heavily on the worn, but comfortable sofa in what a stranger would find as a surprisingly elegant motel. He knew that with a lick of paint on the outside and a little renovation inside, it would be a fantastic place.