Just Let Go… by Kathleen O'Reilly

concerned voice.
    “It’s not over yet.”
    “Tell me what to do. I can help.”
    “You mean that?” she asked, spinning once, noticing the lack of squeaks. Austen watched her with nonchalant eyes.
    “Don’t read anything into it. It’s better than sitting around on my ass. Besides, this way I get to leer at yours.” He wiggled his brows, and she sighed because he made it very difficult to hate him, no matter how hard she needed to.
    She spun around in her chair again, waiting for the ancient noises, but there were none. Curious, she poked her head underneath, wondering if someone had slipped in a new chair while she wasn’t looking, but it looked the same. Then she looked at Austen, a question in her eyes, but he was all “not going to say a word” and even though she had her suspicions, she chose to keep them to herself. After that, she dragged him downstairs to the jail where he proved quite helpful by convincing the town librarian, Martha Connelly, to drop larceny charges against Bo Brown, who had turned in a library book seventy-two days late.
    When she was on the phone explaining to Mayor Parson that yes, she had heard about the revised train route, and yes, she had a bulletproof plan to get the station back, Austen had the presence of mind not to laugh.
    He helped her pack up seven chocolate cream pies for the rummage sale, and unlike Mindy, Austen expressed great admiration for the mile-high meringues.
    For a man who had only last night been the very picture of poor manners, today, he had moments of heart-touching thoughtfulness, and possible chair-fixing skills.
    Austen Hart was one of those long-forgotten puzzles with a few missing pieces hidden under the couch.
    At the rummage sale prep, her mother smiled politely at him, and then promptly took Gillian out into the back half of the church.
    “Do you know what you’re doing?”
    “Have you heard about the new route,” Gillian replied, keeping her voice discreetly low. “The Trans-Texas route, the one that is not passing through Tin Cup?”
    Her mother’s mouth quivered in horror, both at the awful news, and also the realization that the town grapevine was running slow. “Is he responsible?”
    “How could that be? He was here, Momma,” Gillian patiently explained, even though yes, he was partially responsible. However, in the eyes of both Gillian and the law, it didn’t warrant a full indictment of guilt.
    “Then why is he still in town? Is this some wild hair of yours?” her mother asked, as if Gillian had wild hairs every day of the week.
    “He’s going to help us. He’s going to get the route back to the way it was.”
    Her mother shook her head. “He’s going to make you cry again, that’s what he’s going to do.”
    “Impossible. All I need is a couple of hours to see what’s the best plan of action, and then I send him on his way.” She smiled at her mother, an indication of confidence in both her superior problem-solving skills, and also Austen’s miracle-working capabilities, each highly overrated in Gillian’s mind, but the ability to achieve greatness usually started as a mental condition.
    “You aren’t going with him to Austin, are you? What about Mindy? Did you forget about the shower? The talk with Mindy?”
    Gillian shook her head. “Momma, Momma, Momma. You think I’d skip out on my best friend and my responsibilities here to go gallivanting around the state with some man in a hot car?”
    “Only that man,” her mother muttered, folding her arms across her chest.
    Gillian wrapped her mother in a quick hug. “Don’t worry about me. I’m too busy to be gallivanting anywhere.” Right then her cell rang and Gillian waved at her mother and left.
     
     
    A USTEN H ART WAS NOT the miracle worker she believed. For two hours they argued in his room at the Spotlight Inn, and they were no closer to finding a way to switch the rail route back to its original route via Tin Cup. The man had the power of negative