The woman paused long enough to untie the waitress apron from her waist and throw it on the boardwalk. Then she threw her red cowboy hat on top of it. Then she stomped off.
Josephine bent down and scooped up the apron and the hat. “There’s money in here!” she yelled at the woman, but she just screamed “Keep it!” and kept walking.
In a doorway across the street, hidden in shadow, Cooper was watching Josephine with keen interest and a scowl on his face.
Had that cop been flirting with Josephine? He’d seemed to be acting professional and respectful, but…had he? And why should it even matter to him? It didn’t matter, not in the slightest, he reassured himself. It’s not as if he were jealous of a woman who hated his guts and was helping to hide a criminal. He just hated to see someone take advantage of Josephine; she’d been through a lot.
Josephine walked into the bar, to find…total chaos. Dozens of tables. One harried waitress, a skinny, pretty brunette with cateye glasses, who wore a red cowboy hat just like the one the waitress had hurled onto the boardwalk outside. Tables piled with dirty dishes. Angry customers, yelling and pounding their fists for attention. A chef poking his head out the order window, banging on a bell over and over again and yelling “Order up! Order up!”
Scenes from her childhood flashed through her head, scenes of dirty dishes mounding on the counters and kitchen table, garbage spilling from the can. Carefully cleaning the kitchen table without waking her father as he snored with his head in his arms, reeking of bourbon.
Unlike her childhood, though, she could fix this up easily enough.
She looked around to find a place to set down the cowboy hat, but couldn’t find an empty table, so she clapped it on top of her head, tied the waitress apron around her waist, and headed over to the window.
The chef was leaning out the order window, hand raised to bang down on the bell again, when she snatched it out of the way.
“There is one waitress here, with 20 tables,” she informed him coolly. “She is doing the best she can. So settle the hell down. Now where do these dishes go?”
The chef peered at her skeptically. “You our new waitress? That was fast. The old one just quit two minutes ago.”
“No, but I’ll serve the customers until you can get someone to cover for her. In exchange, I want one cheeseburger and a side of onion rings.”
“Will do, Hot Tomale. There’s the map of the tables.” He pointed to a laminated map with the table numbers on it, on the wall by the window. Each ticket had a table number written on it.
“Hot Tamale?”
“I give all the girls here nicknames. That’s my nickname for you. On account of your sassy mouth. Wait, maybe I should call you Sassypants. Yeah, I like that better.”
No wonder the previous waitress had quit.
“You may call me Josephine. I’ll help you out through the lunch rush,” she said. “Don’t forget the cheeseburger.”
“I’m on it, Sassypants.”
Josephine, who’d had years of practice waitressing and dealing with cooks, muttered a curse under her breath and expertly stacked the dishes on her arm and delivered them, dealing them out to the customers like cards from a deck.
In between delivering dishes, she quickly cleared off the tables in the section that she was working.
“Are you our new waitress? I’m Betsy. Watch out for Table 12, he’s a butt pincher,” the harried looking waitress told her, indicating a potbellied trucker sitting by himself and studying his menu.
“I’m only helping you guys through the lunch rush. I’m just in town for a few days.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. It’s hard to keep waitresses here; the crowd can get kind of rowdy.” Betsy rushed off before Josephine could answer.
The stream of customers was neverending. But so were the tips, which quickly filled Josephine’s apron pockets, and, she had to admit, would come in very handy. She had emptied out her bank account to buy a plane ticket here and pay for a motel room, and she only had enough money to pay for two days.
If she couldn’t find Jason by the end of those two days, she didn’t know what she’d do.
At least she’d shaken that jerk of a bounty hunter, booking a plane ticket and motel room using her middle name and her mother’s maiden name.
An outraged yelp caught her attention, and she swung around to see Betsy leap back away from Table 12. A table full of cowboys in dirty jeans and plaid button front shirts were howling with laughter.
Well, Josephine just wasn’t in the mood.
She stalked over to the table, grabbed the trucker by the front of his shirt, and yanked him to his feet.
That was one advantage of being a larger girl; she could hold her own in a fight. And growing up in a string of foster homes and flophouses, she’d been in more than a few.
Swiftly, Josephine spun him around, bending his arm up behind his back.
“Hey! I was just fooling around,” the man whined.
“So am I. This is my idea of fun. If I see you touch her again, everyone in this bar is going to watch you get your ass kicked by a girl.”
The table full of cowboys next to them was hooting and hollering now, and the whole bar was watching.
She let him up, and he turned and fled the bar, his meal half-eaten, cheeks flaming with embarrassment.
Wiping her hands on her apron, Josephine turned to see two women who’d just walked into the bar, standing and watching her. One was a tall, strikingly beautiful blonde and the other was a short, voluptuous woman with flowing, wavy black hair, who was carrying a denim baby’s diaper bag as a purse. There were pictures of twin boys in heart shaped frames on the pocket of the diaper bag.
The blonde was wearing an apron and a cowboy hat.
“Let me guess. I’m fired?” Josephine said. “Actually, I just came in here for lunch and one of your waitresses had quit, so I started helping out. I don’t really work here.”
The blonde held out her hand.
“Cheyenne Larkin. I’m one of the managers. Betsy just called to tell me about Emily quitting. Fired, are you kidding? You are soooo hired,” she said. “What days are you available? I’ll start making up your schedule right now.”
“Oh, no, I’m just in town for a few days.”
The blonde’s face fell. “Damn,” she said to her friend. “She would have been awesome.”
Her friend nodded, and stuck her hand out in introduction. “Carlotta Mancini. That was the best show I’ve seen in days. Too bad you’re not sticking around.”
“Mancini? I think your husband helped save me from that horse outside. I thought that thing was going to kill me.”
Carlotta threw her head back and laughed. “A city girl, I take it?”
“It’s that obvious? Listen, I tell you what,” Josephine said. “Let’s see, today’s Wednesday…I can promise to work here until Friday. Dinner shift works best for me. After that, I honestly don’t know how long I’ll be in town.”
“I’ll take what I can get. Early dinner shift starts at 4:30 and lasts till about midnight. Late dinner shift is 6:30 to 2:30 a.m. If you end up staying longer, you can call in any day you want to work. I guarantee you we can use you. Can you bartend?”
“In a pinch. I’m not good with fancy frou-frou drinks though.”
Cheyenne hooted with laughter and gestured at the room full of rowdy cowboys. “Honey, if our customers ordered a frou-frou drink, they’d be laughed out of the bar and down the street. Welcome to Dry Gulch saloon! Now get your ass over to Table 18 before they blow a gasket.” And she hurried behind the bar to help out the bartender.
“Rum and coke! And make it Bacardi, not that cheap crap! I can taste the difference!” Carlotta yelled after Cheyenne. “I’m sitting in Josephine’s section. I want to see her beat someone else up.”
Josephine stifled a laugh.
Well, working here would slow her down a little in her search for her brother, but she could look for him during the day and work at ni
ght. And if she earned enough in tips every night, she could keep paying for the motel until she found Jason.
During one of her brief breaks, she called the motel to let them know that she was still coming.
The restaurant was so busy that she didn’t finish with the lunch shift until well after 8 p.m., but at least she got a free lunch and dinner out of it, as well as a bulging pocket full of ones, fives, and tens.
“You were a lifesaver today,” Cheyenne told her as she grabbed her suitcase from the kitchen where she’d stashed it. “When you work the midnight shift, I’ll make sure someone gives you a ride back to your motel.”
The room that she’d rented was actually a small cabin, at the end of the Crooked Mile. She had to walk down the boardwalk through the center of town to get to it, but lamp posts lit her way until she got to the end of the boardwalk.
Then the boardwalk ended and she could see the Crooked Creek Motel sign glowing up ahead, a lone beacon lighting the darkness.
And it was dark, indeed. In Bitter Valley, streetlights cast a sickly white glow over the city streets until the sun came up, and security lights glared their broad beams down from businesses and warehouses.
Here there was true, honest night, illuminated only by the ivory orb of the moon. Instead of screeching tires and shouted cursed and blaring TVs and gunshots, the night’s soundtrack was a chorus of birds hooting and cooing, and insects creaking in chorus.
Somehow, she found the stillness soothing.
The Crooked Creek Motel was actually a scattering of several dozen cabins, and hers was located far back from the road. Little yellow lanterns along the walkway lit her way.
She was so tired that she barely noticed her surroundings as she trudged back to her cabin, and fished out the key that she’d been told would be left in the mailbox to the left of her door.
She walked in to darkness, fumbling for the light switch, and then she heard it. Floorboards creaking as somebody stealthily moved towards her. Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach.
Somebody was in her room.
Chapter Three
“Back the hell off, creep!” Josephine lunged at the figure moving through the dark, who turned out to be surprisingly strong and muscular. Still, she put considerable weight behind her full frontal assault. The intruder grabbed her, and she fell forward, on top of him.
Seconds later, she found herself rolling on the bed, clawing for his face.
“Whoa, Josephine, calm down! It’s me – Cooper!”
Josephine froze where she lay. Headlights from a passing car streamed through the window, lighting up his face.
She was lying on the bed, tangled up with Cooper Thomas.
Trapped underneath him, she could smell his cologne and his masculine, earthy scent. He was half on top of her, and she could feel the outline of his sculpted muscles. His wavy black hair was tousled from their wrestling match, but he wasn’t even breathing hard.
He was wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans, and he was pressed up so close against her that she could feel the muscular curve of his thighs. She felt a flush of heat wash over her, the same flush she’d felt the first time she’d seen him walk through the door of her ruined kitchen. And she felt terrible about it; this man wanted to slap handcuffs on her baby brother and drag him off to jail. How could she be attracted to him?
Because he was smoking hot and very charming.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded irritably.
“I came here for a little vacation. A little sight-seeing. What are YOU doing here?” He grinned.
“Specifically, Cooper, what are you doing in my room?”
“Your room? This room is booked by a Lee Mason. Is that your name? I stopped by the front desk and paid for the room, by the way.”
“How did you find me?” She squirmed uselessly beneath him, a thick lock of hair falling over her face.
He reached down and brushed the lock of hair back with his fingers, and a sizzling shock of electricity shot through her. She felt her nipples tighten and harden; worse, her chest was pressed up against his, so he could feel it to.
Then again, given the thick, hard swelling she felt pressing up against her thigh, he was obviously turned on too.
He was turned on? By her?
He was staring into her eyes, lips slightly parted. He was rock hard. It seemed impossible to deny, but she had to face the facts. He’d been flirting with her since the minute he met her, and he was only doing it try to get her to spill the beans on her brother.
“I asked you a question,” she said, wriggling underneath him.
“Darlin’, when you move like that, it makes it very hard for me to formulate rational thought.”
“Then get off me.”
“Actually, I’m pretty comfortable. I like it here. But you can get up if you want to. I’d never hold a lady against her will.” He shifted position, sliding onto his side, but as he did he kept his pelvis pressed against her and one leg slung over her legs.
“Why should I get up? This is my bed.” She wasn’t staying there because it felt so good to be pressed up against him, feeling the outline of his thick erection through his jeans and breathing in his scent; she was staying there because it was her bed, and damned if she’d let him kick her out of it.
“Is it really, now? I paid for it.”
“I reserved the room!”
“Under a fake name. I can be Lee Mason just as well as you can.”
“You’re not Lee Mason either!”
“So? We’re both a couple of frauds, then. But I’m the fraud who paid for the room, which makes it more mine than yours.” He looked down at her and winked. “But I don’t mind sharing.”
She lay there, breathing hard, furious and incredibly turned on.
“First thing in the morning, I’m going to go book another room,” she snapped.
“You do realize it’s the height of tourist season? All the rooms here are booked. There’s some rooms at a couple of the fancier hotels in town; can you afford $500 a night?”
“Screw you,” Josephine snarled, rolling away from him and turning her back on him.
“I’ll take that as a no.” The smug tone in his voice made her want to smack him. At the same time, she had a shameful urge to rip his clothes off and trace kisses down his flat, hard stomach. She’d stop at the navel, swirling her tongue, dipping it in, and then she’d work her way lower, lower…
His voice jerked her back to reality. “You know, we’re both looking for the same thing. Your brother.”
Josephine lay perfectly still. How had he known why she was here? Did he know why her brother was here? If so, he might very well know more than she did.
But clearly, if he knew where her brother was, he already would have taken him into custody.
She rolled back to face him. “What, exactly, are you proposing?”
He studied her thoughtfully. “There’s no reason we can’t room together. And frankly, you don’t have any choice. I’m not leaving, and there’s nowhere else for you to go. And you flew here, so you couldn’t even sleep in your car. Besides, this way we can both keep an eye on each other.”
Josephine struggled to find a way to argue with him, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t afford a room anywhere else in town. She couldn’t even really afford this one. And not only that, she needed to know what he knew. He’d never knowingly give her any information, but she could snoop and spy just as well as he could.
“By the way, to save you some time, your brother hasn’t booked any hotel or motel room under his name. I suspect he’s lying low. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Josephine sat up, spearing him with a glare. “If I knew where my brother was, do you think I’d be spending money I don’t have on a hotel room? I am telling you, yet again, that I haven’t spoken to him since he took off.”
Well, that was 99 percent true. He’d called and left a message on her voicemail, telling her that he was going
to be gone for a while, and not to worry. He’d found a solution to all of their problems.
She still didn’t know what that meant. What solution? How could he solve their problems when he was on the run from the law?
And Josephine’s main problem was that she was broke. Unless Jason was planning on robbing a bank while he was on the lam, she didn’t see how he could fix that. And he knew she’d never accept money he’d obtained illegally – God knows she’d turned his money down often enough in the past – so that wouldn’t help either.
“I’m going to go take a shower. I worked in a restaurant all day and I smell like French fries and beer.”
“I saw that. Nice little gig you got there.” He sat up, smiling at her. “And when you manhandled that jerk who was hassling the other waitress? That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
She stared at him. “No, Cooper, it’s not at all creepy that you’re stalking me and watching my every move. Not in the slightest.”
“Well, there’s one way to get me off your back. Tell me where your brother is.”
She threw her head back laughed. “Clearly you do not know me very well, Cooper Thomas.”
He winked. “Better than you think, darling. And by the way, I think you like that I’m watching you. I know I enjoy the view.”
“Oh, please.” She was getting more than a little fed up with his flirtatious banter. He was only after one thing, and unfortunately, it wasn’t her virtue. “Save it for someone who’s a little more gullible than I am.”
“Save what?”
“You enjoy the view? Yeah, right.”
He raised an eye brow at her. “Why wouldn’t I? I like looking at you. If things were different, I’d like to do a lot more than look. Of course I’d take you out to dinner first. I’m not a complete jerk.”
“Cooper, put a sock in it. I’m not exactly a fashion model. And I’m not stupid. You don’t want me; you want to know where my brother is.”
“Who says I can’t want both?” He trailed a finger down the inside of her arm, slowly, and she stifled a gasp. She could feel herself going wet with arousal, and her nipples were so hard it was almost painful.
Curvy Girls: The Big Girl and the Bounty Hunter Page 2
