With a sigh, I switched off the lights and went out the back door, letting it creak shut behind me as I stepped out into the crisp evening air.
***
Beneath the golden-leafed branches of the maple, Jesse watched her. His eyes lingered on her hair, which was coming loose from its long braid. The way the breeze teased the strands fascinated him. She carried a box in her arms, hugging it to her chest. He could sense whatever was inside made her happy. Could see that, though her eyes were tired, she wore a small, eager smile. It made him curious. He inhaled, catching the scent. His own smile was reluctant. Cake. She was happy about cake.
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked on as she neared the dumpsters, her shoes crunching over the gravel. She crouched and opened the box. Staring into the scraggly shrubs behind it, she murmured in a soft, beckoning tone. Jesse arched a brow. A few seconds later, a skinny, flea-bitten tomcat crept out of the underbrush, his tentative nose leading him toward the open box of cake, tattered ears perked forward. Moving with care, she took one of the precut slices and set it on the ground. It sniffed at the offering once and then started eating, growling in between bites. She closed the box and watched it for a moment.
An unwelcome sense of admiration crept in. Though he suspected it wasn’t the first time, he’d never seen her do this. Normally he waited down the street from her apartment, sitting in the relative shadows of his car as she walked down the leaf-strewn sidewalk. He’d watch her climb the steps to her door and return a few minutes later with a glass of water for the plant she kept on her stoop. Beets. He’d walked up and smelled it once before she’d gotten home. He’d considered the odd choice all the way back to his car, a sort of perplexed expression on his face. He’d never liked beets. It hadn’t stopped his mother from forcing him and his siblings to eat them on a regular basis, though, pickled in her homemade vinegar brine. She’d told them they were good for the blood.
Par stood up then and turned. She stopped when she noticed him, shock registering on her face. Jesse stared back at her, unblinking. Studying. For the moment, distracted. He wondered what she was thinking. If she was happy to see him. He wondered why it mattered to him at all.
When she recovered, her cheeks reddened, and she glanced around the empty parking lot. She thought he was waiting for someone else. That it couldn’t possibly be her. Her doubt both charmed and angered him. He didn’t know many women who blushed anymore. She seemed to do it over the slightest thing. This too fascinated him. He realized he would have to speak eventually.
She took a step forward, unsure, clutching her box. “Did you forget something earlier? Nobody turned anything in. We’re closed, but I can—”
“Come with me.” He looked her over from head to toe. She still wore the coffee-stained apron. He tried on what he hoped was a charming smile.
She smiled back, and his chest began to feel uncomfortably tight.
“What?” She glanced at his car.
He cleared his throat. “Come for a ride with me.”
“Like on a date?” she asked and then reddened further. “I mean . . . I’m sure you didn’t mean that.”
Something about how ill at ease she was with their conversation amused him. He uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I want to get to know you.”
She bit her bottom lip as if afraid she’d say something embarrassing. “You left in such a hurry earlier.”
“I remembered I was late for an appointment,” he lied, staring at the white of her teeth against bare lip. Although in a sense, what he said was true. But not for much longer. This had gone on long enough. He didn’t want to think about why he’d had to leave so suddenly this morning. The bombardment of emotions. The pain in his chest that had made it hard to breathe. It’d felt like suffocating. And he’d hated it. At the thought of it even, that familiar ache began to grip his throat.
She seemed to accept this, nodding while kicking at the gravel with her toe. “Oh.”
He couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I’m sorry if I was rude.”
She looked up, giving him a small smile. “No, I understand. It happens.”
A faint breeze swept her scent over him, and his whole body stiffened. Damn, she smelled good. Natural. Nothing chemical. Just skin and the blood beneath it.
A bell tolled at the bank across the street, signaling the hour change. Seven o’clock. He’d been waiting on her for almost eight hours. “So will you come? I’ll have you home before midnight.” He placed his hand over his heart. “I promise.”
As she debated, he thought he’d give anything to hear her internal monologue. After a moment, she looked down at her feet. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
His brows lowered. He’d expected her to say yes. They always said yes. “Oh.”
“I have things,” she said. “At home. That I have to do.”
Despite the rejection, he had to smile. “Things.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Yeah.”
“Sounds urgent.”
Taking a deep breath, she looked back up. “I really am sorry.”
He could see she really was. “Another time then.”
“Another time.”
“How’s tomorrow sound?”
She gave the barest of smiles. “You’re persistent.”
“You have no idea.”
He knew she didn’t work on Mondays, so if she was going to decline, she’d have to get creative. And so would he.
Her resistance melted into hesitant intrigue. “What did you have in mind?”
He ignored the satisfaction that swept through him. “Coffee.”
One of those delicate brows rose. “Coffee?”
“You don’t like coffee?”
“Yes . . . well, no actually.” She shook her head, trying not to laugh. “It’s funny, that’s all.”
It was his turn to arch a brow. “I’d probably go with hot and black, but that’s just me.”
She let the laugh out this time, and he found himself leaning toward her just so he could hear it better.
“You’ve been coming in for so long and just ordering coffee. I guess I expected something more original,” she said.
His amusement grew. “Would you rather do something else? Spelunking maybe?”
As he waited for her to laugh again, it occurred to him this was starting to feel less like a job and more like something else. It made him uneasy.
“I think spelunking is strictly second-date material,” she said in a timid way that spoke volumes about how unused to situations like this she really was.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He noticed then that when she smiled in just a certain way, a small dimple appeared at the right corner of her mouth. “Ten. I’ll meet you here.”
Clutching her box a little tighter, she studied him for so long he thought she was going to turn him down again. But finally she nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
She laughed a little. “Yes.”
“Good.”
“Fine.”
He gestured to his car with his chin. “You need a ride home?”
Her smile faltered, and he regretted the offer. Baby steps with this one.
“No,” she said. “Thank you. It’s not far.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow.” She sent him one last uncertain smile before heading toward the crosswalk.
“Oh, and Parsley?”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder, the fading sunlight catching the blue of her eyes in the most dazzling way. “Yes?”
“Wear your hair down.”
5
Good Deals & First Dates
“What in the world are you doing here on your day off, Par?” Lou looked down at me as if I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. “And looking so pretty too.”
I smoothed my skirt under the table and gave her a smile even though my anxiety was reaching epic heights. Why had I agreed to
this?
“I have a date.” I swallowed. “Coffee, I mean. I’m having coffee time with someone.”
Coffee time? I would never make it through this with my dignity intact.
Her eyes took on a knowing gleam behind her glasses, and she slid into the booth across from me. “With a fella?”
I rested my hands on the cream-colored Formica I’d cleaned so many times. I’d never sat here as a customer. “Yes. It’s nothing serious, though.”
She tapped her order pad on the table as if that was what she’d wanted to hear, her gold wedding band glinting in the morning sun. “Hot dog. What’s his name?”
I looked up at her then, my mouth opening but nothing coming out. I was waiting with butterflies on a man whose name I didn’t even know.
Lou was unperturbed. “Is it the one who comes in here asking for you all the time? The one with that dark hair?” She waggled her brows. “And those green eyes?”
“Yes.” I let out a breath and smiled. “Him.”
She made a pleased sound. “Well, it’s about time he came to his senses and got up the nerve. That boy stares at you like you’re the rapture itself.”
My laugh was quiet. She was also thinking a nice man would do me some good. Bring me out of my shell some. “It really is just coffee,” I said.
“Ain’t never just coffee, sweetie. Not between the likes of you two anyway.”
I knew she was wrong. There couldn’t really be anything between us. I’d known it when I’d said yes. But there was something about him that made me forget. Like if I stood too close to him, things didn’t seem so dire. So strained. It was . . . refreshing.
It was also unsettling.
The door jingled behind Lou, and I stopped breathing. Just as I had the two other times it’d happened since I’d gotten here. Lou glanced over her shoulder and turned back just as quick, her wink telling me all I needed to know. She slid out of the vinyl booth and stood. “That’s my cue,” she said.
I swallowed with a dry throat as he walked up to the table, bringing an energy with him that was all his own. I’d chosen the booth he always sat in. He glanced at me first and then Lou, taking his hand out of his pocket and holding it out to her. “Ma’am.”
Lou smiled as she shook with him, and I thought I detected a faint pink in her plump cheeks. I hid my smile. I wasn’t the only one he had an effect on. “Fine morning for coffee,” she told him.
He smiled, and it was so striking I had to look away. “It is,” he agreed. “Why don’t you join us?”
She swatted the air with her order pad. “Heavens no. You kids have fun. I gotta get back to work anyway.”
As I listened to them exchange pleasantries, I realized it was the first time he’d been charming. He was normally so quiet and watchful, staring with those penetrating eyes as if he saw nothing else in the room but me. It’d been that intense aura that’d drawn me in so close. Now, witnessing this other side of him, I didn’t know which one intimidated me more.
When he sat down, Lou turned to me, her expression like that of a squirrel who’d just found a good nut. “What’ll it be for you, dear?”
It was odd having her wait on me. I’d never been here when I wasn’t wearing a uniform. “Do we still have that Earl Grey tea?”
“You bet. That all?”
When I nodded, she turned back to him. “And for you?”
“I’ll have a black coffee, please,” he said.
I smiled. I could’ve told her that.
He continued, “And the waffles with bacon and eggs.”
That had me looking up, my eyes widening.
“Oh, and some home fries,” he added.
Lou wrote the order down with diligence and then walked off with a merry step, thinking how she loved a man who knew how to eat.
And then we were alone.
I stared at him. The sunlight streaming through the Windex-streaked glass backlit him in such a way I found it hard to hold his gaze. He was so beautiful. “What happened to just coffee?” I asked.
He shrugged his leather jacket off. “I woke up with an appetite this morning.”
I blushed and pulled a menu across the table, opening it just to have something to focus on besides him. “You never order anything but coffee.”
“What can I say? I’m hungry.”
I knew without looking that his eyes were on me. I flipped a laminated page with a half-smile. “Obviously.”
“Aren’t you?”
Looking up, I called upon my nerve, even as my face grew warm. “Are we still talking about waffles?”
His eyes caught the pink in my cheeks, and he laughed. It was a low, quiet sound I felt all the way down to my toes. “I want you to make me a deal.”
I tucked my hair behind my ears. I wasn’t used to wearing it down. “What kind of deal?”
“I want you to meet me for coffee here every day this week.”
My heart skipped a beat, but I shook my head. “I work—”
“Before work, after work, during, I don’t care—but it has to be every day.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Why?”
“So when you go for a ride with me Saturday you won’t be getting into a car with a stranger.”
A thrill, both terrifying and exhilarating, went through me. “And if I agree?”
“Cake.”
I laughed again, this time in bewilderment. “What?”
He leaned back, relaxing his arm across the top of the booth. “I’ll give you cake.”
“Cake?”
“You were happy about it last night.”
I thought back to the parking lot and my box. I’d never opened it in front of him. “How did you know?”
His smile was mysterious. “I have a great sense of smell.”
With some horror, I then thought back to my uniform and hair that’d spent eight sweaty hours in a greasy diner. “Oh.”
“So what do you say?”
Sliding my hands across the menu’s cover, I mulled over his proposition, still reeling from his abrupt change in personality. Going from the charged and oddly tense interactions we’d had when I’d been his waitress, to the teasing, lighthearted exchange we were having now was almost overwhelming. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but this hadn’t been it. I was both heart-flutteringly hopeful and wary.
“Every day?” I asked.
He nodded. “Every day.”
I’d never been on one date aside from today’s, let alone a week’s worth. I looked up at him. “I don’t even know your name.”
“I’ll throw that in too.”
I laughed again. “You’re bargaining with your name?”
“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it. Cake and a name for six dates.”
Pretending to think on it for a moment, I said, “I do like cake.”
This time it was he who laughed, and the sound made me bolder somehow. He studied me from across the table as if we were brokering a high-stakes deal. “You can even pick the flavor,” he said.
Despite the reality of my life, I was giddy inside. And maybe . . . it was possible after a week I’d know. I’d know for sure he wasn’t working for Tom. I’d know for sure if I needed to pack up and leave town. I glanced at his hair, so clean, and his spotless clothes. He didn’t look like Tom’s kind. Not even close.
I prayed he wasn’t. Just this once.
Swallowing that familiar dread, I smiled. “It’s a deal.”
A distinct note of satisfaction wafted across the telepathic link to me, and I was momentarily startled. It was the first time I’d picked up anything tangible from him.
His expression halted as if he’d noticed my reaction, but Lou reappeared at the table then with a food-laden tray and beaming smile.
“Hope you kids are hungry.” She set a heavy plate in front of him and then one in front of me. “I told Desi to add a little extra love.”
Blushing, I looked down at the golden waffles and fluffy eggs, thinking our imposing
short-order cook, Desi, with her heavy brows and heavier shoulders, didn’t know much about love, but she did know how to make magic on the griddle. As the glorious smells reached my nose, making my stomach yearn, I glanced up at Lou. “I just ordered tea.”
She placed a bowl of butter pods and a syrup dispenser on the table. “I know.”
I looked down at the food again. It was the most I’d had for breakfast in . . . a long time. Yet I grew awkward, wondering who would pay for it. Technically this was a date, but not a normal one. Maybe I could ask her to take it out of my paycheck. Later.
Lou set down a glass of orange juice along with my tea. As if reading my mind, she said, “And it’s on the house.”
“No,” he said, watching me take it all in. “It’s on me.”
“Aren’t you just a gentleman.” Lou’s eyes sparkled, and I knew then that it’d been a test to see if he would offer. She was looking out for me. Seeing if he was worthy. And, going by her exuberant thoughts, he’d passed.
“I’m an old-fashioned guy, I guess.” His face was the picture of politeness.
“Nothing wrong with that.” She glanced over at me with a wink. “Not at all.”
“Thanks, Lou.” I vowed to scold her later for her transparency.
She stared at the two of us a moment and then seemed to realize we were waiting on her. Holding her now empty tray against her chest, she asked, “Will there be anything else then?”
He glanced at me. “I think we’re good here.”
That he’d just referred to us as a “we” was enough to give me heart palpitations.
First Fruits Page 4
