Better Red

by Tara Lain

  Red sucked air to try to keep his cheeks from heating. “Uh yeah. I have a bookkeeping job tonight, and I don’t want to be late.”

  “Oh, cool.” She stepped back to her prep area.

  Chewy, the other lunchtime waiter that day, came rushing out of the kitchen. “Hey, Red, can you take my order-up to table sixteen? I gotta leave a few minutes early.”

  “Sure, Chewy. But Frank doesn’t look too busy. I don’t want to take his job.” Mom and Pop generally divided the waitstaff between order takers and servers. The servers were often new people or those who didn’t have many people skills. Red liked the system because it allowed him to be fast getting to his tables and making sure customers felt well treated. Frank’s job was to serve the meals after Chewy and Red took the orders and before they presented the bill.

  Chewy glanced around, then leaned toward Red. “This is kind of a special case. I think you’re gonna want to make sure these customers are really happy, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks.” Chewy probably meant the tip would be generous. “How soon should I look for the order?”

  “Five minutes, maybe ten.”

  “Done.” Red grinned and then trotted off to his table at the back of the rambling old building to take his next order. As he was walking back, the ding and call of “order up” made him pick up his pace. Didn’t want cold food going to Chewy’s big customer. The waitstaff shared tips, so a big one benefitted everybody.

  When he got to the window, Kimmie was staring at the food from her spot inside the kitchen. She cocked her head. “That’s quite a lunch.”

  Red nodded. “It’s Chewy’s four-top. He went off shift, so I’m serving.” But Red really looked at the order as he organized it on a big tray. “Wow. Steak and baked potatoes.”

  “Yeah and Mom’s walnut-and-bleu-cheese salads. Fancy schmancy.”

  Red chuckled. “Or as fancy as Mom and Pop’s gets. It’s not exactly foie gras.”

  “Speaking of fancy, listen to you, Mr. Gourmet Mouth.”

  He half-grinned. “I can pronounce it, but you can make it.”

  She scrunched her nose. “Force-feeding geese ain’t my idea of fun, bucko.”

  “Ew, is that what they do?”

  “Yeah, but get your food to the customer.”

  “Right.” Red grabbed the big tray and headed to table sixteen that was in the nicest room close to the big windows with a view of the trees. As he approached the table, hefting the laden tray on his shoulder, he grabbed a folding stand and opened it a few feet from the diners, and then set down the tray. He pulled the order form from his pocket and scoped the proper placement of the dishes that the waiters always noted on the paper. It was a nice, classy touch for a small-town restaurant and kept the waiters from having to say, “Who gets the mac and cheese?” But Pop had been a restaurant owner in the big city, so he knew a few tricks.

  Noting the small stick in one of the steaks, he checked who got the medium-well and walked around the table to the one woman between the two men. Careful to approach from her left, he placed the plate in front of her. “Medium-well, ma’am.”

  She looked up at him and her eyes widened, which often happened with Red, so he didn’t notice all that much. She said, “Thanks.”

  He returned to his tray and noticed both of the other steaks were rare. One, however, had french fries rather than baked potato. That went to the “big man” as Chewy had marked it. Red carried the plate to a guy who had to be three hundred if he was a pound, distributed over a fireplug body that looked more powerful than fat. The guy didn’t even pause in the intense conversation he was having with the other man. Red didn’t try to listen, but the words “wild goose chase” and “backwater hell-holes” drifted to his ears.

  To hide his frown, Red turned quickly back to his tray. They didn’t get a lot of stuck-up big-city assholes in Mom and Pop’s, and he was grateful.

  Grasping the last plate, he circled the table to the other guy’s left and deposited the steak. Without even looking up, he said, “Will there be anything else?”

  Silence.

  Red raised his eyes. All three of the people were staring at him like he’d grown an additional head on his way from the kitchen. But this was the first time he’d noticed the second man. Holy flaming shit.

  Chapter Four

  The man wasn’t handsome—exactly. In fact, you could probably call him ugly if you really evaluated his face. His features were outsize, the eyes luminous and looked black, the lips so full the words that came to mind were obscenely sensual. But everything else on his face was lean, almost skeletal. His black hair must have been cut by some master, because it swept back from his face like it had been blown away by a gentle breeze. As Red stared, the guy threaded his fingers into that hair, dragged it back to his ear, and then let it go so it shagged around his face again. Then the man smiled. “This is lovely, thank you.”

  Holy shit, that voice. Like hot fudge. Red licked his lips. “Good.” He looked around the table with a tight smile. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need.” Trying to appear casual, he turned and hurried back toward the kitchen, but the voice level at the table increased in a flurry of stage whispers as he strode away.

  He must have looked shell-shocked because Kimmie immediately said, “What’s wrong?”

  Red glanced over his shoulder, but he couldn’t see into the far room from there. “Chewy’s customers. Wow.”

  “Wow how?”

  “They’re like big-city, rich people.”

  “Hence the steaks, right?”

  “Yeah.” He forced a smile, but it wasn’t their apparent money that bothered him. It was the way they looked at him, like they wanted to gobble him up.

  Red hurried over to two new parties, smiled, and took their orders, but he knew he had to go back to the city folks and see if they needed anything. Funny how he didn’t want to. With a sigh, he returned to the order window, then slapped on a smile and walked into the front room. The city people were eating heartily, but never seemed to stop talking. Hands waved, sometimes complete with forks.

  Inhale. “Hi. Just checking to make sure everything is satisfactory.”

  The woman looked up, her eyes glittering. She was attractive in a vampiric sort of way—black hair, darkly encircled eyes, and bright red lips. She pulled those lips back from her teeth in what might be described as a grin. “The steak’s so-so, but you’re delicious.”

  Red felt his eyes get wide, even while he tried to smile politely.

  The dark-haired man, the handsome-ugly one, said, “Come on, Cassandra. Don’t embarrass the boy.” He smiled up. Red wanted to squirm under the critical analysis. Then the dude said, “What’s your name?”

  “Red, sir.”

  The man smiled wider, and it looked genuinely friendly, but Red still shivered. The man said, “I’ll bet I could have guessed that if I’d just thought for a minute.” He glanced significantly at Red’s ponytail.

  Red looked up toward his hair like a dork. “Uh, actually the hair’s just a coincidence. Red’s short for Redmond.”

  The woman sat back in her chair. “Woo-hoo. How literate.”

  The man flicked his attention toward her like he was snapping a whip, then returned the smile to Red. “But a ready-made name for someone like an actor or a model.”

  Red said, “I’m just a waiter, sir. I hope you’re enjoying your steaks. Let me know if you need anything.” He turned, and if he could have run without people staring, he would have.

  Kimmie looked up through the order window as he got close, and he slapped on a smile. He didn’t want to explain why he was freaked by customers who might leave a substantial tip or that his freaky behavior could be messing with said tip. He grabbed a tray and loaded up the order for one of his new tables.

  Kimmie said, “Frank will be back in a second. He can take that.”

  “No problem. I’m not that busy.” That was kind of a lie, but he needed to be, or at least loo
k slammed with customers.

  Balancing the tray on his shoulder, he maneuvered toward his four-top. It was prime time and every place was full, kids crawling under tables and people’s arms waving in conversation. Even though he wasn’t usually a server, Red was thankful to be pretty sure-footed. He sidestepped a lady pitching her huge purse over the back of her chair, and reached for the folding serving stand.

  “Excuse me, Red, would you direct me to the men’s room?”

  The hot-fudge voice poured directly in his ear. Red snapped his head around. The tray overbalanced, Red frantically grabbed for it, and the whole edifice headed toward the floor. Holy shit, food and all! Noooo….

  Like some kind of Plasticman, the man’s long arm whipped out and propped the edge of the tray, while his other hand grabbed Red’s arm and pulled him back to a full upright position. A glass on the tray wobbled and tilted but, after a near miss, settled back into its position.

  Red gasped and stared back wide-eyed. “Holy shit. I can’t believe you did that. Thank you so much.”

  The city guy chuckled. “My pleasure.”

  Since his knees might buckle, Red set down the tray on the stand, then stood and just breathed.

  The man said, “You okay?”

  Red nodded. “Thanks to you. That would have been an incredible mess, and the bathrooms are over there.” Red pointed toward the far wall of the room.

  The guy squeezed Red’s shoulder with a strong, warm hand and walked away, still chuckling.

  Red grabbed the first plate, glanced at the order, and set it down in front of Mrs. Simpson, the postmaster. “Sorry about that, Mrs. S. I almost had a big accident.”

  She grinned at him, patting her tightly curled blonde hair. “Good thing that man was here to grab you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who is that man, Red?”

  “No idea. He’s here with two other folks. Never saw any of them before.”

  She lowered her voice. “He sure is handsome.”

  Red licked his lips but didn’t answer. He just went to get the next plate.

  For fifteen more minutes, he busied himself with other tables, but he couldn’t reasonably avoid the city people anymore. Inhaling long and deep, he pulled up his big-boy panties and headed for the front room. Yep, they were done, and for so-so steaks, they sure had cleaned them up.

  Red lit up the smile. “For dessert today, we have chocolate killer cake with a cream cheese center, apple pie, hot fudge sundae—” That thought gave him a little shiver. “—and our homemade ice cream is caramel. They’re all delicious, but of course, the killer cake is most people’s favorite.”

  “Which is your favorite?” That was the dark man. Beside him, the giant guy sat mute. He just stared at his big scarred hands.

  Red babbled, “Well, they’re all good, but personally, I love the sundae. I like ice cream, see, and it’s my favorite, hot fudge and—” Oh shit.

  The hot-fudge voice of the dark guy said, “Well then, I don’t think I can have any other dessert. I’ll have the sundae.”

  “You—you will?”

  “Oh yeah. I’ll eat it right up.”

  “You will?”

  Dark guy just smiled.

  “Yes, well, good.” Red wrote it down on his pad, even though he had a really good memory and sometimes waited to write stuff down until he was away from the table, but it gave him something to do with his hands. And his eyes.

  The giant man glanced up, his heavy brows pulled down over his eyes. “I want the chocolate killer.”

  Red forced himself not to say, “You would.”

  The woman smiled. “Black coffee and a spoon.”

  Red studiously wrote. “Would anyone else like coffee or tea?”

  The big man leaned back and glanced at Red with a smile that might be a sneer. “You don’t have any Napoleon brandy, do you?”

  Red’s head came up. “No, sir. We don’t have liquor, and I’m not old enough to serve it anyway.”

  Dark man said, “Ignore him. No coffee. It might keep me awake.”

  “Well, it’s only four thirty and we have decaf.”

  “No thanks. Just the hot fudge.” Wow, did his smile show a lot of teeth.

  Red nodded and walked away, trying not to look like he was rushing. At the window, he handed in the order, then took a check to another table, grabbed a payment, hurried back, and picked up his order for the city people. Get this damned customer fed and out of here. His steps faltered. What time is it? He hadn’t looked at his watch since he started serving those people. Jeez, he wouldn’t have thought anything could distract him that much.

  He walked over, carefully placed the desserts, equally carefully didn’t meet the eyes of the dark man, smiled into space, and left. Maybe they’d eat fast.

  Finally, he did glance at his watch. Normally, on any shift, he was one of the last to leave. He stayed behind and prepped, cleaned, and sometimes worked on the books. Not today. He’d already cleared it with Mom Grady, and he was hauling buns out of there the minute he was off his shift and that was in forty minutes. If he didn’t leave on time, he’d miss the bus and that would make him really late getting to Mark’s. His stomach flipped. At least the stress of serving the city people had helped him forget the anxiety of going to Woods Auto.

  Finally, the people started shifting around and glancing toward the register, and Red hurried over with the check. “No hurry.” He smiled and started to walk away.

  “Here you go, Redmond.”

  Red looked back and the woman held out a platinum card between her fingers.

  With a smile, Red picked up the check from the table, took the card, and then carried it to the cash register. He keyed in the bill and stuck the card in the reader. Man, he sure didn’t see a lot of that color. Even the mayor only had a gold card.

  When he carried back the credit card form to the table, he started to hand it to the woman, but Dark Man took it and scribbled on it, then handed it back. “Thank you for excellent service, Redmond.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He sat back in his chair. “Are you here every afternoon?”

  “No, sir. I work days only on Wednesday, nights most of the time, and I’m off on Saturdays and sometimes Sunday.”

  “Excellent. He flashed all those teeth. “I look forward to seeing you again.”

  “Oh.” He swallowed. “You’re staying in Ever After?”

  “A few more days.”

  “Be sure to see the covered bridge. Have a good stay.”

  When he got back to the cash register, he glanced at the credit card and stopped dead. Holy crap. Dark Man had given him a seventy-dollar tip on an eighty-dollar bill. He grinned. This was one time he kind of wished they didn’t share tips, but hell, that meant there was more for all of them.

  Damn, he needed to get going. He peered through the window at Kimmie. “Chewy was right about the tip. I’ve got to get going. See you tomorrow.”

  She said, “So you’re bookkeeping tonight?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Who for?”

  He didn’t really have a reason not to tell Kimmie. She was his best friend. “Woods Auto.”

  Her eyes got big, and she glanced around. “Are you serious? Hunky Mark?”

  “Well, it’s really for his business, but yeah.”

  “Wow.” She flashed teeth at him.

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it. He just needs help balancing his books.” He waved and trotted to his locker, pulled out his jacket, and slipped out the employees’ door.

  When he got to the front of the building, he turned toward the bus stop—and his steps stuttered. Parked at the curb was Mark’s old truck and Mark was in it.

  Red peered through the window, then opened the truck door. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” Mark wiped a hand over the back of his neck.

  “Were you, uh, waiting for me?”

  “Yeah. I figured there was no point in you wasting time on the bus. Get in. I mean,
please.”

  Red climbed in and closed the door, then clicked on his seat belt. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Sure.”

  The truck rumbled down the road, and Red faced his situation—alone in a vehicle with Mark Woods. That same spicy aroma he’d nearly passed out from in the motorcycle encircled him. Fortunately, it was a little less intense than it had been in the headgear. Fortunately for his heart rate. But now, with just the two of them in the truck, he had to figure out something to say to Mark Woods, and Red had a good idea Mark wasn’t the one to initiate the small talk.

  Red opened his mouth and out fell gab. “So you should have seen the party of city slickers we had in the restaurant this afternoon. I mean, they ordered steaks and paid with a platinum card. It was wild. There was this woman who might have been related to Maleficent, and a dude who was about as wide as he was tall and it was all muscle.” Red noticed he didn’t mention the dark guy, but he wasn’t sure what to say.

  Mark glanced at Red with a little smile. “What do you think they’re doing in Ever After? Lost?”

  “Apparently not. They said they’d be here for a few days.”

  “Think they’ll come back to Mom and Pop’s?”

  Red shrugged. “Doubt it. The woman said she didn’t like her steak all that much.” He snorted. “She and both guys sure ate everything on their plates, though.”

  “Both? Oh, I didn’t get that there were two men.”

  Red swallowed hard and didn’t even know why. “Yeah, two.”

  “Man, I don’t eat Mom and Pop’s steak very often, but I can’t imagine there’s a lot better in the city. Any city.”

  “Me either.” Of course there was one thing the woman had thought was delicious. And that made Red swallow hard again.

  Chapter Five

  When they pulled up in front of Woods Auto, Red said, “You can just let me in and get me started, then go get something to eat. You must be hungry and tired.”

  Mark glanced over with his shy smile. “No more than you.”

  “I’m the one that works in a restaurant, remember? I can grab a bite as I go.”