“Nothing. Sorry. I’ll be good. I’m having a simply magnificent time.” Could Edith hear the sarcasm?

“That’s my girl.”

Nope. Edith had never understood the subtleties of satire. The lady simply said what she thought.

Sheena returned to her massaging, distracted from her makeover project. “Will wonders never cease. Edith Potts must be the only person in town you can’t boss around.”

Jill scowled up at her, and Sheena smiled back, wagging her blond eyebrows, which had been plucked to the point that she looked permanently surprised.

The twit was right, of course. Jill would do anything for Edith. Eighty-three-year-old Edith Potts, retired principal of Hideaway High, could claim friendship with the majority of Hideaway’s residents as well as a few of the flocks of tourists who escaped to this tiny lakeside village every year.

For Jill, her friend epitomized courage. Since Jill often felt as if she, herself, epitomized the exact opposite, she had always been drawn to Edith’s independent, nurturing spirit. It was Edith who had found a school nurse position for Jill here in Hideaway when tragedy dictated that Jill would have to return home and be nearby for the family business.

Once again closing her eyes, Jill tried to give herself over to the relaxation Sheena had promised. “This honey and almond cream smells heavenly.”

“It’s our most popular. We mix it here ourselves.”

“I’d like a jar of that, if it’s for sale.” Still, if she came away with scars on her face from an over-eager masseuse, she would hold Edith and Noelle personally responsible.

In spite of her intentions to remain vigilant, and as if of their own volition, her muscles began to liquefy. She could feel her body merging with the soft sheets and mattress of the massage table until she wasn’t sure where the padding ended and her flesh began. What was more, she didn’t care.

Jill seldom relaxed. She had been accused of being one of the most uptight, untouchable single women in Hideaway or the surrounding area. Most of the townsfolk kept such comments out of her earshot—or so they thought—but Edith never hesitated to speak her mind, and neither did Noelle now that she was back in town.

As Jill thought about it, she had recently found herself blessed—if that could be the term for it—by associates at work who never minced words with her.

They understood the term for her condition. Thanks to recent popular television shows, who didn’t know what the letters OCD stood for? Yet they wouldn’t let her get away with the typical behavior of someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Blessed…yes. That was it. She was truly blessed by people who loved her in spite—

“You could use a good plucking.” Sheena’s soft voice interrupted Jill’s reverie.

“What?” Jill opened her eyes to see the young woman hovering over her, and wielding a pair of tweezers far too close. Now what tortures was she expected to endure for the sake of moral support?

“I want to shape your eyebrows. I can take ten years off your face with a few good jerks.”

Jill’s liquefied muscles suddenly returned to their original position. “Look, Sheena Marshall,” she said, keeping her voice low in deference to Edith, “I didn’t come here to be plucked or jerked or tweezed, I just came for a simple massage with this green stuff you smeared all over my face. Are you finished?”