Hungry Heart: Konigsburg, Texas, Book 8

by Meg Benjamin

  “It did.” Darcy stopped herself before she said anything else. Details about the King would only lead to more questions.

  Her mother chuckled. “Glad to hear it. Most men like potato salad.”

  “I guess,” Darcy said through clenched teeth.

  “Are you enjoying yourself there in Texas?”

  Darcy blinked. That didn’t seem like the next logical question. “Yeah. I am.” Surprisingly enough. She hadn’t really thought about the whole enjoyment angle of her job before. She’d never allowed herself to get all that involved with a location. But then she’d never stayed in a job as long as she’d stayed in Konigsburg.

  “Are you going to stay?”

  Okay, now the direction of the questions was a little more obvious. “For a while. Unless something better shows up.” She ignored the slight pinch of anxiety. Chef de cuisine. Eyes on the prize, Darcy.

  Her mother sighed. “I’m not sure what I should be wishing for here—that you stay in one place or find another one.”

  “How about just wishing for me to be happy?” Darcy said slowly.

  “Oh honey,” her mom said gently, “I do that already.”

  Darcy closed her eyes. Well played, Mom. Very well played.

  Chapter Six

  Chico sighed and checked himself in the mirror one last time. He didn’t really use a mirror for much beyond shaving and combing his hair. He certainly didn’t use it with any particular concentration. Now he looked at himself with a sense of impending doom.

  He had no idea how he was supposed to dress for a date with Andy Wells. He was fairly certain most men of her acquaintance wore something besides jeans and T-shirts.

  His working clothes were out of the question unless he was planning to visit one of the more disreputable bars in town, which didn’t seem like a great first date idea. His other clothes had been chosen more for comfort than for style. He finally pulled on a knit golf shirt his mother had given him for Christmas a couple of years ago, along with his most respectable jeans. He’d never worn the shirt before, and he wasn’t exactly delighted to be wearing it now. Before their second date, he might need to actually buy some clothes.

  Second date? He shook his head. That idea sounded like getting ahead of himself in a big way.

  He headed down his front walk toward the garage next door where he parked his truck, feeling vaguely disgruntled and wondering if this date was really such a great idea. Every time he thought about Andy Wells, the contrasts between them seemed sharper. He figured they’d probably run into a lot of gawkers who’d be trying to figure out how they’d ever ended up together.

  In the vacant lot a few doors down from the Faro, the Barbecue King was closing up shop for the day. Chico owned the lot and rented it to the King five days a week. He nodded in the King’s general direction. “Sell it all out?”

  The King nodded back, pushing his black cowboy hat up on his forehead. “Everything but potato salad and coleslaw.”

  “You make that?”

  He shook his head. “Buy it from a catering place here in town. But I think I’ve got a new supplier, so I’ll have some better stuff soon. Should sell out on everything by next week.”

  Chico paused, watching him repack the interior of his food truck. The King’s portable smoker was fastened to the rear bumper—not as big as some he’d seen, but definitely large. It looked like an effective rig.

  He nodded toward the trailer. “You ever take that thing to barbecue competitions?”

  The King frowned. “I haven’t done any competitions. Never thought about it.”

  “Good publicity.”

  “Maybe. Could be, I guess.”

  “There’s one in town on July Fourth.”

  The King’s frown edged into a dry grin. “You a recruiter for the Merchants Association?”

  Chico shrugged. “Sounds like a good place to start competing—this is the first time they’ve done it. I already checked with Clem. She’s not interested.”

  The King leaned back against the side of the truck. “So you’re thinking about entering? What’s your specialty?”

  “Cabrito. Pork. I do one hell of a pork butt.”

  “You think they have a cabrito category here?”

  Chico gave him a dry grin of his own. “Likely not. This is cattle country. They probably have a pork category, though. Too many people like ribs to rule them out.”

  The King nodded. “Yeah, probably pork and sausage. Maybe chicken. Definitely brisket.” He narrowed his eyes. “So like I said, you thinking of entering?”

  Chico shrugged again. “Not on my own. This is a team thing. That’s why I was trying to get Clem to go in on it with me.”

  “Team thing.” The King raised an eyebrow.

  This was headed in an interesting direction. Chico paused, waiting to see if the King would follow through, but it looked as if that was going to be the extent of his contribution at the moment. Chico nodded. “Have a good night.”

  “You too.” The King grinned again. “We’ll talk later maybe.”

  “Maybe so.” Chico jammed his hands in his pockets and headed toward his garage, whistling a quick round of “Jolie Blonde”.

  Andy told herself for perhaps the hundredth time that she wasn’t nervous. Or anyway that she had no reason to be nervous. Chico Burnside was a perfectly ordinary—although definitely oversized—man with an interesting background and good local connections. They could find something to talk about. It wasn’t like one of them came from the moon or something.

  She watched him walk back across the dining room at the Coffee Corral carrying a couple of beers that he’d picked up from Al Brosius at the counter. Somehow even in a surprisingly mundane shirt and jeans, he still looked like an outlaw. For perhaps the hundredth time, Andy asked herself what she was doing in going out with him.

  But the answer to that was pretty clear, even to her. Her last couple of dates had been with an insurance salesman from Marble Falls and a contract lab analyst who lived in the hills outside Llano. She’d been hiding yawns after the first hour on both dates. But she’d had absolutely no impulse to yawn around Chico Burnside on the two occasions they’d been together so far.

  He set the beers on the table and slid onto the bench opposite her. “Food’s coming right up.”

  “Good. I’m hungry.”

  He drummed his fingers once on the table, lightly, staring back toward the counter. He’s nervous too.

  Something about that fact made her stiff shoulders relax. Chico Burnside, man mountain, was also worried about what they’d have to say to each other. “Heard any good acts lately?”

  He turned back toward her, smiling. “A few. There’s a kid over in Johnson City who’s just about there. He’s going to try one of the no-cover nights where we pass the bucket for donations.”

  “Do the musicians make much money that way?”

  “Not a lot. Enough to cover gas and dinner, though, with a little more besides if it’s a good crowd.”

  “Here we go, Chico.” Al Brosius appeared beside their table with a tray, lifting off her grilled chicken and Chico’s burger. He gave Andy a curious glance, then smiled. “Nice to see you again, Andy. How’s it going?”

  “Okay, Al, how about you? How’s Kent doing?”

  Al shrugged. “Made it through his first year. Likes College Station well enough, I guess.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Al nodded at them both. “Enjoy, folks. Let me know if you need anything.” He gave them one more faintly curious look, then headed back to his cash register.

  Andy frowned. She hadn’t really thought about how other people would react to seeing them together. Right now they had the dining room to themselves, but she had a feeling both Al and his wife were watching them. If the two of them were any indication, she and Chico were probably going to attract some attention. She wondered how she felt about that.

  Chico raised an eyebrow. “So you know Al?”

  “He was great t
o my grandma. She loved to come in here and have dinner. He or Carol would stay and talk with her, too. Not everybody does that—talk to old people, I mean.”

  He smiled. “In my family you’ve got no choice. Everybody talks, old people included.”

  “Most people in Konigsburg were nice. They remembered Grandma from school.”

  “Did you take care of her at the end?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I moved in so she’d have someone around in the evening, but she had a home care aide during the day. And my sister-in-law and my cousins in Dripping Springs helped out some.”

  His dark eyes were warm. “Do you miss her?”

  She nodded. “She was tired and she was ready to go. But yeah, I miss her. She was a big part of my life.”

  He moved his hand across the table, close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin, almost but not quite touching.

  “What about your family?” she murmured.

  He shrugged. “Two brothers. Three sisters. More cousins than I can count. All of them living around here. My folks are sort of in the middle of it all, but that’s what they want. They’re natural grandparents.”

  She took a quick bite of her chicken, moving her hand away from his a little reluctantly. “Are you the oldest?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “I’m the baby, believe it or not.”

  She grinned back. “I know you played football in high school. Did you go on to college after that?”

  He shook his head again, his smile beginning to fade. “I had some offers for football scholarships, but I wasn’t interested in school. I went into the army instead.”

  “Oh.” She watched him take a bite of hamburger. “Did you… Were you in the war?”

  He nodded. “Iraq. Two tours. I was a Ranger.”

  A Ranger. She stared down at her plate. Rangers were damned impressive. Also long-term, as a rule. “You didn’t want to make the army your career?”

  “Not so much, as it turned out. It’s a tough job, plus you run into a lot of idiots, many of them your superior officers. I got tired after a while.”

  He’d also probably seen more than his share of death and destruction. But she figured he didn’t need to talk about that if he didn’t want to. “Is that when you came back to Konigsburg?”

  He sighed. “Nope. I was with the WWE for a couple of years. Only then it was the WWF.”

  She blinked. Of all the answers he might have given, that wasn’t one she’d expected. “You were a wrestler?”

  He nodded. “They wanted a villain. I obliged. Fits my character, I guess.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say about that exactly. “That’s…surprising.”

  The corners of his mouth edged up in a dry grin. “Which? The fact that I was a wrestler or the fact that I was a villain?”

  She managed a grin of her own. “Both, sort of. Did you like it?”

  “It was okay. Got kind of boring after a while.”

  “Boring?” Being pounded by men as large as he was every night was boring? Well, maybe so.

  “Yeah. It’s sort of the same thing all the time, the same act.” He shrugged. “And I got tired of the hype after a while. The whole giving interviews in character crap.”

  “So then what did you do?”

  “Cashed in my chips.” Another dry grin. “I had a lot of chips as it turned out. Came back to Konigsburg. Met Tom Ames.”

  “You met Tom Ames. And went to work for him?”

  He sighed. “Yeah. Sort of.”

  Something about that didn’t compute, maybe the idea of the former Ranger and wrestling star settling in as a bouncer at a tavern. But asking him about it also sounded unbearably nosy. “Do you like it here?” she found herself asking instead.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You mean here as in the Coffee Corral?”

  She shook her head. “Here as in Konigsburg. You don’t find it boring being back here after all you’ve done?”

  He stared down thoughtfully at the beer bottle in his hand. “For me, boring means routine. Doing the same thing every day, every night. I don’t like that much—that kind of boredom can get to you. Make you do stupid things. But Konigsburg usually isn’t routine. It may be nuts sometimes, but it isn’t routine.” He smiled up at her again. “What about you?”

  She cut another bite of chicken. “I like Konigsburg. That’s why I’m still living here instead of Austin.”

  “Austin’s where your main office is?”

  She nodded. “That’s the regional lab. Right now I’m sort of running a Hill Country office out of my car, along with the storefront in Spicewood, but I do have to go back to Austin a couple of times a week.”

  He dragged a French fry through a puddle of ketchup on his plate. “So how did you end up in this line of work anyway?”

  “I did some industrial work out of grad school, mainly for engineering firms. Then I switched to environmental chemistry, worked for the EPA for a little while and then moved over to TCEQ.”

  She looked up to find him watching her carefully, eyes narrow. “You’ve got advanced degrees?”

  She nodded. “A masters. From UT.”

  He frowned. “I picked up some course work while I was in the army. Never finished my degree, though.”

  She understood what he was thinking all of a sudden. Maybe because she’d heard it often enough from Lew, back in the days when she was his wife. Only with Lew it was always angry. Hell, I’ve known people with a third-grade education with more sense than those over-educated pissants you work with. She flexed her hands to keep from gripping the fork. “I think folks should get education the way it works best for them. I’ve known a lot of people who got it all in one big dump like I did, but I knew others who kept picking up a piece here and there for the rest of their lives. I never thought one way was better than the other necessarily.”

  “Right.” He leaned back in his chair, his eyes darker in the fading evening light. “It wasn’t easy for you, though, was it—getting a degree in science? How many women were in your classes?”

  “A few. There are more women in science now than there used to be, but you’re right—there still aren’t as many as there should be.”

  “Good for you,” he said slowly. “Good for you for following through on it.”

  Amazingly, she felt her cheeks flush. “Thanks,” she muttered.

  She blew out a breath, spearing a final piece of chicken as she did. Around Chico Burnside she still had absolutely no desire to yawn.

  Chico glanced down at Andy as they walked up Novarro. She’d been the one to suggest walking instead of using his truck, which was still parked in front of her house. She had a point—it was a nice night. Now, however, he was faced with the hand-holding problem. Shortly to be followed by the far more serious kissing problem.

  At the moment, there was also the staring problem. Given that he’d hit six-five by the time he was sixteen, he’d grown used to attracting a certain amount of attention. He figured Andy Wells probably wasn’t used to having total strangers gawk at her as she walked by. Fortunately, not many people were out on the streets this evening.

  Two families had come into the Coffee Corral as they were finishing dinner, though. A little boy Chico figured for around five stopped dead in his tracks when he saw them. He stared, mouth open, until his mother grabbed his hand and pulled him to their table. Of course, his mom had also done her share of staring before she started muttering to her husband.

  Andy’s cheeks had been noticeably pink by the time they’d left.

  The top of her head came up to his shoulder. That wasn’t unusual. He’d long ago gotten used to looking down when he talked to most people. But if he wanted to hold her hand as they walked, he’d have to reach down and take it. It wasn’t like he could just casually brush against her and take her hand in his.

  Well, hell. He’d never spent so much time thinking about how to hold a woman’s hand before. He leaned down in her direction and gripped her hand lightly.<
br />
  Andy didn’t even pause. Instead she laced her fingers in his, glancing up at the moon through the pecan tree branches. “Nice night.”

  “It is that.”

  A couple walked by across the street. The woman’s head turned sharply, watching them as they turned the corner. He didn’t think Andy noticed. He hoped so, anyway.

  “Where does your family live? I mean, I guess I’m assuming they all live around the same area, which may not be true, now that I think about it…” She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for. They live over on the west side of town. And yeah, they do all live pretty close together except for my brother Ed, who lives on his peach orchard over toward Stonewall.”

  She smiled, raising her face to the moonlight. “Fresh peaches. Nice family connection to have.”

  “Yeah, especially at this time of year. I’ll take you out to his farm stand sometime.” He said it easily, almost without thinking. And then almost stumbled on the sidewalk.

  I’ll take you out to his farm stand sometime? Making some big assumptions there, aren’t you, vato?

  Ahead of them a boy chased a soccer ball down his front yard, then stood holding it as he watched them walk by. Chico glanced his way and frowned. The boy turned and ran back toward his front porch.

  Andy’s jaw tightened a bit, but then she relaxed again. She did move a little closer as they dodged around a pecan tree that leaned out of a yard close by.

  Somewhere music was playing, maybe somebody’s radio in the backyard, the melody soft and lilting, the words too faint to be recognized. Chico felt almost like dancing for a moment, and then like catching his breath.

  He didn’t dance. He never danced. Dancing, he looked like an elephant on roller skates.

  Andy glanced up at him, smiling. “Do you recognize it?”

  “The song?” He shook his head.

  “‘The Tennessee Waltz’. My grandma had the record—Patti Page, the Singing Rage.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He blinked. He was a talent booker, for Christ’s sake. He should be able to recognize a song that had been covered by everybody from Otis Redding to Leonard Cohen. Once again, he felt that odd impulse to take Andy Wells in his arms and spin her around the front yard. He quickly kicked it away.