Free Star Cookies & Comfort by Mimi Riser Page B

padded after him as though he owned the place.
    Debbie waited for a holler that never came. Cautiously, she peeked through the doorway. Laughter bubbled up in her throat.
    “What?” Harvey looked over her shoulder, then motioned for his mother to look, too. Together they stared at Bug snoozing in his recliner in front of the TV, with a ball of black and white fur curled up on his potbelly.
    “It’s just like I’ve always said,” Wanda murmured, “that old dog is all bark and no bite.”
    And his son doesn’t even bark, Debbie thought. It suddenly occurred to her that she’d never seen Harvey really angry or ill-tempered. He’d been a sweet, gentle boy, and didn’t appear to have soured any with age. Still slow and steady in his movements. Still quiet and kind and quick to blush.
    Still Harvey.
    He caught her studying him.
    “What?” he said again. “Somethin’ wrong?”
    Hardly. For the first time in a long time things were starting to look right.
    She smiled at him. “I was just thinking how much I’ve missed you.”
    “Oh. Um…yeah…same here.” He reddened under his West Texas tan and turned to help his mother take two trays of buttery rich shortbread cookies from the oven. Working with a spatula and obvious experience, he scooped Christmas stars onto platters and sprinkled their warm tops with red and green sugar crystals.
    Wanda winked at Debbie. “I’ve raised that boy right. He’ll make some girl a good husband someday.”
    “I always thought so,” Debbie said softly. Except she hadn’t realized she had until that moment. Harvey had been such a fixture in her early life, it had been easy to take him for granted. Too easy to become bored with the plain boy next door and start yearning for a handsome knight in shining armor. She hadn’t known back then how fast armor could tarnish.
    Harvey’s shoulders tensed, but he went on working, never turned, never looked at her. “If that’s what you thought, why’d you ever leave Star?”
    He said it lightly, like a joke, but underneath the tease, Debbie heard a hint of hurt. She understood. Regardless of girlish fancies and boyish bashfulness, she and Harvey had been friends from kindergarten through high school. Once upon a time, everyone in town had figured they’d end up married. But, heck, the reason they hadn’t wasn’t all her fault.
    “Maybe because someone never asked me to stay?” she suggested.
    “Well, maybe ‘someone’ didn’t want to stand in your way.” He swung round then and met her eyes. “Dang it, Debbie Dawn, you were always quicker and brighter than me. You had the looks and the talent and the dreams. You were going places. I wasn’t.”
    Wow, for him that was quite a speech, quite a show of emotion—though few besides Debbie would have noticed. Even at his most agitated, Harvey was pretty low-key, never raised his voice. He gave her a crooked grin, blushing again, embarrassed by his outburst, soft as it had been.
    It was the grin that got her, but good. It gripped her heart like a fist. Her throat constricted, and her reply came out sounding like it had been forced through a knothole.
    “Yeah, well, I didn’t get very far, did I?”
    She glanced down at her toes, then around the kitchen—anywhere to avoid looking at Harvey. She didn’t want to see any pity. Especially not his.
    At some point during their careful confrontation—when, Debbie wasn’t sure—Wanda had discreetly disappeared, leaving a saucepan of penoche on the back of the stove. Harvey moved it to the front and stirred in some butter, vanilla, and nuts. He did know how to cook. Several years ago, Aunt Ina had mentioned Harvey was in charge of the Star high school cafeteria, and doing right well for himself.
    Better’n me.
    He poured the finished penoche into a buttered pan and set it aside to cool, then gathered a fresh bunch of ingredients and began mixing up a batch of peanut butter chocolate dots—her second absolute favorite (the star