Sugarbaby

by Crystal Green

  Sadly, most of my time was actually spent watching that phone screen, wishing. It was almost as if I’d walked by a door and gotten a look inside a room at someone who stirred my interest, only a flash of him sitting with his back to me, and he had just started to turn his head so I could see his face and . . . snap. The room had gone dark. For a moment or two, as I’d looked into that doorway, I’d thought about going all the way inside but . . .

  I hadn’t.

  Maybe that’s why the doorway came to me that day instead of me going to it.

  As I pulled into the nearly empty Angel’s Seat Café’s parking lot, heading toward the employee spots, the afternoon sun sparkled off a car that I’d never seen the likes of before. Something red, sleek, and shiny. I didn’t even know what kind it was, although I suspected it’d have a name that sounded European and sexy. It was the type of car where you’d sit in the passenger seat, drinking champagne out of a designer shoe while you roared down a curvy road lined by pounding surf. And in the driver’s seat? Yeah, it’d be a guy made of every fantasy you’d ever had.

  What was it doing here?

  Carley met me at the back gate that led to the employee patio, her rosy-tan skin even rosier. “You might be the luckiest lucky who ever lucked out, Jadyn Dandritch.”

  “Don’t tell me. I’m the proud winner of that sweet car out front.”

  “Close.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve got to go in fifteen minutes because Bret’s coming back into town, and I’m driving to the airport to get him. Since you’re taking over any stations I still have going, guess who you’ll probably be waiting on?”

  “Whoever paraded into the parking lot with that car?” That meant good tips! Hopefully.

  “They just walked in five minutes ago, so I can’t imagine they’ll be gone by the end of my shift.”

  I rested a hand on Carley’s arm. “Don’t worry about it. You know I’ll tip you out.”

  “Oh, the money will no doubt be good, but that’s not why you’ve arrived in LuckyLand, babe. And just a warning? Jackie and Juanita are in full-on matchmaking mode.”

  So that meant whoever was driving that car was cute, and the other waitress and Jackie would be encouraging me to flirt with him so I could have little single-girl fun.

  I’d tried to be more assertive in that area, but I was still working on being good at casually flirting, approaching guys before they approached me. So far, I’d found a few dates that way, though everything seemed to fizzle out after the first coffee or lunch.

  Really curious now, I went through the gate and then the back door, waving hello to Jackie and Juanita, one of the women who worked here and lived at Jackie’s in some sort of artistic estrogen community they had. Jackie took in bohemian strays, but no one asked what went on behind the closed doors of the suburban house. Shelby told me her mom didn’t show any signs of being a ladylover, yet she wouldn’t be surprised if the tenants were that way on their own time.

  Whatever they had happening there, the two of them were grinning at me here and now.

  “Why do I feel like I’m about to be put on a hook and cast out to a pond?” I said.

  Jackie answered, her big blue eyes shining. “Just take a gander and then ask again.”

  Carley pulled me by the arm to the kitchen door, then opened it a crack so I could look out.

  At first, all I saw was a nearly deserted dining room. Sometimes coffee drinkers lolled around post-lunch, sometimes they didn’t, and today was a didn’t-day. But there were two guys seated at a bench-lined table by the potbellied stove, near an angle of light that came through a front window.

  The first guy was sitting all the way in the light, and he was . . . just a guy. He had dark hair that was combed forward as if he was a throwback to One Direction’s early days—and yes, I would admit to knowing that. He actually had the entire vintage Brit Boy Band style down pat, with tight black Euro jeans and a sports jacket. His head was down as he perused the menu.

  I looked at his friend in the opposite seat.

  He was in shadow, but when he shifted forward, leaning his elbows on the planked table, I saw more of him, second by breath-stealing second.

  Thick blond hair, the kind that can’t decide just how light it wants to be, with flaxen strands mixed with the gold. It also couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to stay put or go wild, part of it combed just so, except for the errant tuft of hair in front. I barely saw a swanky tweed coat over a T-shirt before the sunlight turned through the window like it was stretching, reaching out to his face.

  His face.

  When I was younger, I used to dream of angels, and not the kind that whisper you to sleep at night, either. These were angels who’d tumbled from the sky like fast tears, hitting the ground in bursts of fire. I’d had those dreams after my parents had died, but those dreams hadn’t been nightmares. They’d been a sort of strange comfort, the angels beautiful yet avenging as they’d risen from the ground to guard my bed, and even if they scared me a little, I’d always known they’d be there whenever I needed them.

  And that’s what he looked like. A fallen angel with eyes so clear I could see them from here, with an air about him that seemed sad for some reason. He appeared restless, maybe even a little angry, as if he carried a low fire inside of himself.

  It felt as if someone had stuffed me with cotton and it was expanding inside my chest, making me soft and giddy. The cloudy sensation spread through me, floating through my limbs, then my tummy, where it whisked and tickled.

  There was a feather-light niggle in my head, as if I had seen this guy before—and it wasn’t in any dream.

  Carley shut the door so as not to attract attention. Then she whispered below the soft Pistol Annies music Jackie had playing.

  “See?” she asked with a grin that reminded me a lot of the expressions Jackie and Juanita had on. “One of those guys is your future boyfriend.”

  Giggles from in back of us. The Greek Chorus was listening in.

  “Be serious,” I whispered. “You know I’ve got zero energy for an actual boyfriend right now.” I was still grieving, still trying to find my footing after Rex and Micah, still testing the waters. No way did I have the confidence to strut out there in front of . . . him. He was the big leagues. Rex had been Big League, too, and look what’d happened there.

  “Excuses, excuses.” Carley lowered her voice even more so Jackie and Juanita couldn’t hear. “Weren’t you the one sexting the other night?”

  “Accidentally.” She’d teased me about it for days since Diana hadn’t been able to keep her pie hole closed. “Besides, I don’t like to mix work with pleasure.”

  “You don’t seem to mix pleasure with anything.” She was at full volume now. “You’ve got the goods, babe. Use them.”

  She was serious. She thought that I, one of many pixels in Aidan Falls, had a shot with a fully formed blond god.

  Thank goodness my skin tone could hide a blush. But, come on, I’d seen handsome before. Rex and Micah were hot.

  “He’s cute,” I said. “But not for me.”

  “He’s intimidatingly cute. No, wait. ‘Cute’ is not even a word for this situation. And I say this as a girl who totally has a boyfriend she adores.”

  She let out a sigh, and it wasn’t just an excited sigh about seeing Bret again tonight. It was laced with anxiety.

  “Jitters?” I asked, seeing an opportunity to change the subject.

  Carley bit. “A little jittery. I mean, I haven’t been with Bret in ages, and there were nights when he didn’t call or text and I had to wonder . . . You know.”

  She’d wondered if he’d lost interest after their spring and summer whirlwind romance, which had been interrupted every so often by his trips out of town to gig with the band he’d joined after they’d started dating, after she’d given him the confidence to share his poetry wit
h the world. He was also working on a house refurbishment with a friend who’d hired him.

  I’d been through the same doubts with Rex. Bad direction to go.

  “Ladies,” said Jackie from behind us, “those boys must be dying of thirst by now.”

  Carley snapped out of it and gave a chipper salute just before she pointed at me and swung out the door to the dining room. I backed away so the customers wouldn’t see that I’d been standing there gaping. As the door winged back toward me, Jackie nodded toward the dining room.

  “Salt and pepper shakers won’t fill up themselves,” she said.

  Juanita giggled. Maybe they could see me blushing.

  “Are y’all going to scurry over here and spy through the door crack after I leave, just to see if the magic happens?” Which it wouldn’t.

  Juanita held up a hand. “Count me in.”

  Jackie threw a hand towel my way, and I ducked.

  “Get,” she said.

  Rolling my eyes, I picked up the towel, went to deposit it in the hamper, then washed up. I decided to stall ever so slightly as I put on my apron, then came back to grab some salt and pepper to take to the dining area. As I backed up to push open the door with my rear, Jackie and Juanita finger waved at me, and I smiled with all the sarcasm I could muster.

  Then I emerged.

  The music was so subdued that I could hear Carley taking drink orders as I headed for the tables by the opposite wall. Craft beer on tap for both gentlemen. But of course. And when she left to fill their order, I could hear the air in the room—and it wasn’t because of the slowly turning ceiling fans.

  As I reached for the shakers at station one, I heard a voice, and dammit all if it wasn’t as deep and hot as sin.

  “So what is there to do around here?”

  I knew, even without looking, that it was the blond. Couldn’t it have been the one whose face had been buried in the menu? Him, I could handle.

  With professional politeness, I stopped what I was doing and smiled yet again, trying not to let that gorgeous, somewhat intense gaze throw me.

  I got myself together enough to say, “What is it you like to do?”

  The blond glanced at his friend, who paused, lowering his head again. It was a strange moment until the friend looked up and turned to me on the bench. Had he been trying to avoid me for some reason?

  “We’re here for a vacation of sorts,” Boy Band said. His smile was pleasant, the type that you trade with waitresses and maids and anyone else who serves you. Just by that smile, I could tell he had money, although I felt in my bones the car didn’t belong to him. He didn’t have that much money.

  But his civil smile was enough to remind me of who I was—someone who took care of people. The thought made me tired, even if I’d loved Uncle Joseph, wanted the best for him, and I’d known that I could give it better than anyone else, especially my own second cousin Delroy.

  “Well,” I said, sticking my hands in my apron pockets. I wasn’t sure what else to do with them. “You’ve got Hill Country to see, and it’s a pretty drive all around. You could go wine tasting on the trail—the area is getting more and more known for that—or go riding for a day . . .”

  The blond raised a cool eyebrow at his friend. “Riding. Didn’t I tell you, Simmons?”

  Simmons closed his eyes briefly, as if . . . I wasn’t sure why, but it seemed he was reacting to something he didn’t agree with here. Probably because he was hoping I’d recommend a high-end lounge where he could order five-hundred-dollar bottles of scotch.

  I continued. “There’re some good stables I can refer you to. We do that for visitors all the time. Also, if you have no place to stay, we’ve got a list of B and Bs from the Chamber of Commerce.”

  Simmons held up his hand to stop me. “We’ve got the housing covered.”

  “Housing?” I asked. What a weird way to put it.

  Just as Simmons started to respond, the blond broke in. “What he means is that our accommodations are all lined up. How about the night life here?”

  “Night life?” I laughed. “If you’re up for a silent movie, there’s one playing at the Ritz. Or you can grab a beer that’ll put more hair on your chest than you ever needed at the Lonesome Star bar.”

  And there I was, talking about hair on chests. Great, now I couldn’t stop thinking about what was under the blond’s tweed coat and T-shirt.

  “Is the bar a dive?” he asked with a gleam in his eyes that seemed . . . well, was “up for trouble” the right phrase?

  Still unsure, I nodded in answer. It was hard not to stare at him, so I kept looking at his friend, who had a hard time making eye contact with me.

  “Would you mind getting us some of those brochures?” Boy Band asked, turning back around.

  As I went to fetch them, Carley bustled into the room with their beers. Convenient timing. She couldn’t have been spying behind the door with Juanita or anything, could she? Then she took their food orders, and by the time she was done, I was ready to drop off the brochures and get back to filling those shakers.

  I handed the paperwork to Simmons, and he thanked me, diving into the one about the wine trail right away. When I glanced at the blond before I went on my merry way, I noticed something unexpected—a scar on his neck, the tissue white and tangled, just like those webs we weave. And his eyes . . . lashes. Long, dark lashes that had no business on a blond, much less a guy.

  I found that pulse-pounding gaze on my nametag, and a slow smile came over his lips, bringing out a subtle dimple.

  “Thanks, Jadyn,” he said, not seeming to mind that he had what I thought must be a burn mark on him, or that he’d just given me a look that nearly made me wilt.

  Thing was, I’d never heard my name come at me like that before—as if he’d picked it off the ground where he’d found it, brushed it off with care, then given it back to me.

  I only nodded and walked away, a whir of sensations pulling at me. There was attraction trying to haul me back to that table like a magnet. There was that vague sense of familiarity, too, but I couldn’t hang on to it. Why did I think I’d seen him before?

  While I filled the shakers, letting the boys chat among themselves, the familiarity kept at me until a name finally emerged from all the confusion.

  Reeves.

  The name hung on me, hooking me back to the kitchen, where I shoved the salt and pepper where they belonged and reached for my phone in my apron. Jackie eyed me while she prepared carne guisada and chalupas and Juanita kept looking up from an iPad that she used for inventory. Carley had already left to pick up Bret from the county airport, so that left two for the inquisition.

  “So?” asked Juanita.

  “As if you don’t know.”

  “Maybe I was watching . . . a little.” Juanita exchanged an amused glance with Jackie.

  “I’ve seen him before,” I said. “The blond.”

  “That’s surely a face you don’t forget,” said Jackie.

  I took out my phone and accessed the Internet. I typed in “Reeves” then “Simmons” and “blond,” just for good measure.

  A bunch of links for people on Facebook and Twitter appeared, and I scrolled past them until I got to something that made me stop cold.

  “Noah Reeves,” I murmured.

  Everything but the sound of kitchen sizzle and steam had gone quiet.

  I hit the link, and a picture came up of a blond man in a business suit with his head down as he walked a city street. He was surrounded by other suits, including his friend Simmons, who was at his side, seeming as if he would lay anyone out if they came too close to Noah Reeves.

  Now they were sitting in my café’s dining room.

  My breath went shallow as I read on, realizing the exact reason Noah Reeves had seemed so familiar to me. He’d been on the news during the summer, a flash in the cycle
of constantly revolving stories that assaulted us day by day, disappearing after another story took its place.

  Noah Reeves, the twenty-six-year-old billionaire who’d dropped out of sight suddenly. No one had known where he’d gone, but they’d hazarded a million guesses as to why he’d disappeared from public—his father had passed away, and some had speculated that Nathaniel Reeves had been so ashamed of losing most of his fortunes to a business rival that he’d given up on life and drank himself to death. Noah’s mother had been hospitalized for “exhaustion,” and his two younger brothers and two uncles were forcing him out of the board of directors for The Reeves Group, a conglomerate that dealt with everything from real estate to tech.

  As I looked through more articles, I saw that there were vicious rumors about Noah Reeves being hospitalized, too, and the family was hiding that fact from the public.

  I put the phone in my pocket very slowly, feeling as if the blood were draining out of my face.

  “Jade?” Juanita asked, walking over to me.

  I held up a hand, resting the other one on my belly, which was swirling. So was my head.

  “Maybe he’s just a doppelgänger,” I said. “And he borrowed Noah Reeves’s best buddy to go out to a late lunch.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  I wasn’t even sure, so I shook myself out of it. I didn’t say another word, even as the reality of what was going on hit me from all sides. Billionaire? Disappeared? Here?

  No way.

  Jackie slid the plates on the counter, all business now that it came to her food. “Well, whatever is dogging you, get over it, sister, because that doppelgänger needs his food.”

  Of course he did. He needed to be taken care of just like anybody else, even if he was a real live news story right here in little Aidan Falls.

  I made myself calm down as I went for the plates. Even so, my hands were shaking. Shoot. Maybe Noah Reeves and his friend Simmons had heard about the great craft beer here or the organic Tex-Mex or . . .

  Juanita put a hand on my back. “You need me to take out the food?”