She took another sip and waved a hello.
I gestured to his apron. “You look like a busboy.”
“In that case, can I clean anything for you?”
“You can clean your dirty mind,” I said, teasing him. “Having fun?” I indicated the table with a nod.
“They were complimenting my cooking.” He leaned in very close. “According to consensus, I’m really good at scrambling things.”
They’d nailed that one. He was really good at scrambling my insides. My emotions. My girlie bits. “That’s wonderful,” I said, pretending not to care, “but we need lunch.”
“Didn’t you hear? I’ve been demoted to busboy, so you’ll have to ask your server about lunch. I don’t think busboys can take orders.”
I pulled the apron string in much the same way as the flirt did. “You’ll take my order, and you’ll like it.”
A soft, deep laugh reverberated out of him. “Yes, ma’am. Can I suggest the Santa Fe chicken with Spanish rice?”
“You can, but I’ll have the margarita chicken with fries smothered in red chile.”
“I’ll have the Santa Fe chicken,” Cookie said quickly, so falling for his ploy. He’d probably ordered too many chickens from Santa Fe and now had to hand-sell them to get rid of them. How different could chickens raised in Santa Fe be?
He flashed her a grin that was so beautiful, my heart skipped several pertinent beats. “Santa Fe chicken, it is. Would you like iced tea with that?” he asked me. When I hesitated, trying to decide between tea and an extra-large nonfat mocha macchiato with caramel sauce on the bottom and a dollop of whipped cream, he said, “It’s a yes/no question.”
I almost burst out laughing. Ever since he proposed to me on a sticky note, he’d been asking me a lot of yes/no questions to reiterate the fact that his proposal was also a yes/no question.
I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s not that black-and-white.”
“Sure it is.”
Cookie, knowing where this was headed, decided to study her menu again.
“Then my answer is yes.”
He stilled, waiting for the punch line. He knew me very well.
“Yes, I’ll have tea with my lunch and an extra-large nonfat mocha macchiato with caramel sauce on the bottom and a dollop of whipped cream after.”
Without missing a beat, he said, “Tea, it is.”
He started to turn, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You seem —” I lowered my voice. “— warmer than usual.”
“I’m always okay,” he said, mimicking what I’d said to Cookie earlier. He caught my hand in his and brought the back of it to his lips, kissing it softly. The heat from his mouth was searing.
It wasn’t until Reyes walked away that I realized the room had grown silent. Every eye was on us. Well, every female eye was on us. I glanced at Jessica and our gazes locked for an uncomfortable moment. She was jealous, and that fact didn’t make me happy. Why was she jealous when she didn’t have any claim to Reyes? Then again, jealousy was in a whole category by itself. One that sat right between instability and insecurity. But her jealously raked across my skin like fingernails.
Jealousy from Reyes was one thing, but jealousy from humans had a different taste, a different texture. It was hot and abrasive, like putting on scratchy burlap clothes right out of the dryer.
“When are you going to answer him?” Cookie asked, drawing my attention.
“When he deserves an answer,” I volleyed.
“So, saving your life countless times doesn’t warrant an answer?”
“Sure it does, but he doesn’t need to know that.”
One corner of her mouth tilted mischievously. “True.”
And that was one thing I never felt from Cookie. Jealousy. She was just as hot for Reyes as anyone, but she was never jealous of our relationship. She was happy for me, and therein lay the heart of a true friend. I’d thought Jessica was my best friend, but looking back with my 20/20 hindsight, I realized I’d felt jealousy radiate from her on several occasions in school. That should have been a clue, but I’d never been accused of being the brightest bedspread in the hotel.
“Okay, how are you going to get him over?”
“Well, since he lives right next door, I thought I’d just pound on the wall.”
“Not Reyes. Robert.”
Who was Robert again? Oh, right. “You let me worry about Uncle Bob.”
Cookie was getting nervous for the seven millionth time, so I went through my plan again from beginning to end. I loved going over it anyway. Mostly because it was brilliant, but also because if Cookie didn’t go along with it, all that brilliance would go down the drain, kind of like my self-esteem every time I ran into Jessica.
“This first date is just the primer. I’ll get him over right as your date is picking you up. He’ll be so blindsided, he won’t know how to react. What to say.” I giggled like a mental patient at that. “I’ll explain to him that you joined a dating service.”
“What?” Cookie balked. “He’ll think I’m desperate.”
“He’ll think you’re ready for a relationship.”
“A desperate one.” She fanned herself with the menu, her doubt evident in every swish.
“Cook, lots of people join dating services. It doesn’t have the stigma it used to.”
“Then what?”
“Then you’ll go on another date.”
“With the same guy?”
“Nope, a different guy.”
Fear caused panic to spike inside her. “What? Who? You said this would be quick and painless.”
“It will be. I’m not sure who date number two will be. I have only so many friends who will let me use them unscrupulously.”
Cookie groaned.
“This will work, Cook. Unless you want to do something really crazy and just ask him out yourself?”
“I couldn’t,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “What if he says no? And then it would be really awkward between us for the rest of our lives. We’d have those awkward silences that make my eyebrows sweat.”
“Oh, yeah, those are pretty awful. Anywho, it’s date number three that will be the clincher. If he doesn’t ask you out before then, we may have to hire an actor.”
“An actor?”
“Cook, we’ve already been through this. Why are you questioning everything?”
“I think I’ve been in denial. But now that it’s really happening, I feel like those people who say they can bungee jump, but when they’re actually standing on the bridge, the reality of the situation hits them in the face.”
“Yeah, never bungee jump. Reality isn’t the only thing that hits you in the face.”
“At least the bungee rope didn’t leave a scar.”
“Thank goodness. So, for date number three, we need someone good. Someone who can be sexy and a butthead at the same time. Someone —” It hit me before I even finished the thought. “I got it.”
Cookie lunged forward. “Who?”
A slow, evil grin spread across my face. “Never you mind, missy. If we get that far, you’ll know soon enough. In the meantime, I have some bargaining to do.”
A loud bout of laughter echoed around me, and I glanced toward Jessica’s table. She was with the same three friends she was always with, and it made me wonder what they did for a living. They came to lunch here together almost every day. And were often here in the evenings as well. Did none of them have families? Responsibilities? A life?
I thought back to our big blowup in high school. Jessica had said some pretty nasty things. She’d turned on me so fast, my neck hurt. As well as my heart. A fact that she seemed to revel in. When I confronted her and asked her point-blank why she didn’t want to be friends, she told me I had no redeeming qualities. What the hell did that mean?
Cookie noticed where I was looking. She patted my hand to draw me back.
“Do you think I have redeeming qualities?”
br /> She curled my fingers into hers. “You’re totally redeemable. You’re like a thirty percent–off coupon. No! A forty percent–off coupon. And I don’t say that lightly.”
“Thanks.”
Again, I felt Reyes’s heat before I saw him. He brought out our food personally, a service Jessica and her friends didn’t receive. Neither did the silver foxes, though they didn’t seem to mind. They kept winking at him, and one licked her lips suggestively. It was so wrong.
“Oh,” I said after he set our plates down, “I forgot to ask you. If you were a utensil, what would you be?”
He straightened. “Excuse me?”
“A utensil. What would you be?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, then asked suspiciously, “Why do you want to know?”
“It’s for a quiz. It’s guaranteed to let us know if we are compatible. You know, for the long haul.”
“Really?” he asked. He pulled out a chair, turned it around, and straddled it to sit with us. “You have to take a quiz to see if we’re compatible?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to recover from that last move. He was just too sexy, straddling that chair, crossing his sinewy arms over the back of it. “Yes. This stuff is important, and they have a ninety-nine percent success rate. It said so.” I dragged out my phone, brought up the online quiz, and held it out to him. “Right here. See?”
He didn’t even spare it a glance. Cookie was busy cutting into her Santa Fe chicken and fending off an inappropriate smirk.
“You can’t trust anything on the Internet.”
“Can, too,” I said, completely offended.
“So, if I posted a comment saying I was an Arabian prince from Milwaukee?”
“Yeah, but you’re a big fat liar. You don’t count. I mean, look at your dad. Pathological liar numeral uno. Lying is in your genes.”
He leaned forward. “There’s only one thing in my jeans right now.”
“Are you going to take my question seriously or not? This could be the key to our futures.”
“I have a key in my jeans pocket. You could search.”
He was completely blowing off our chance at happiness. “What are you, twelve?”
“Centuries, maybe.”
“You’re twelve centuries old?”
He winced. “You know how older women say they are twenty-nine?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m kind of doing that.”
“No, really, how old are you? Wait!” A thought hit me. Hard. Like a baseball thrown from the pitcher’s plate at Wrigley Field. “How old am I?” I hadn’t really thought of it in those terms. I was supposedly from an ancient race of beings from another universe, another plane of existence. How old was I?
“A machete,” he said, getting up and righting the chair.
“What?”
“If I were a utensil.”
“Does that count as a utensil?”
He winked at me. “It does in my world.”
“Okay, fine. I’d be a… a spork! Wait, what does that mean? I’m not sure a machete and a spork are very compatible.”
He took hold of my chin and lifted my face to his. “I have a feeling a machete and a spork can work very well together.”
Before I could argue, he bent and pressed his mouth to mine. The heat scorched at first, then penetrated my skin and spread through me like warm honey. The kiss, barely a peck, ended too soon as he rose, surprised Cookie with a quick kiss on her cheek, and went back to the kitchen, giving me a spectacular view of his ass.
Cookie gasped and touched the spot where Reyes’s lips had brushed, stars bursting from her eyes. “I want that,” she said, suddenly determined.
I looked back toward the door Reyes had disappeared through. “Well, you can’t have it. It’s mine.”
“No, not that. Not him.” She shook out of her stupor and said, “I mean, yeah, I’d take him in a heartbeat, but I want that. I want what you two have, damn it.” She set her jaw. “Let’s do this. Let’s set up that stubborn, rascally uncle of yours until he begs me to be his girl.”
“Yeah, Cookie,” I said, raising my hand for a high five, but she floundered. “Don’t leave me hangin’.”
“But what if he doesn’t ask me out?”
After waving toward a couple I didn’t know who’d just stepped in the front door to save my dignity, I lowered my hand and said, “I think the more important question is, do you think a machete and a spork are very compatible?”
“Charley, you have to quit taking those ridiculous quizzes.”
“No way. I have to know.”
“Fine, but why a spork?”
“Because I’m versatile. I can multitask like nobody’s business. And I like the way it sounds. It’s so… sporky.”
3
Coffee doesn’t ask silly questions.
Coffee understands.
— BUMPER STICKER
We weren’t back in the office ten minutes before the door to the front entrance opened. I’d expected Mr. Joyce, the agitated man with the issues. Instead I got Denise. My evil stepmother. Thankfully, Mr. Joyce was right behind her. He afforded me the perfect excuse not to talk to her.
Her pallor had a grayish tint to it, and her eyes were lined with the bright red only the shedding of tears could evoke. I honestly didn’t know she had the ability to cry.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked.
“I have a client.” I pointed to the man behind her to emphasize that fact.
Giving her chin a determined upward thrust, she said, “You’ve had clients for two weeks now. I just need a minute.” When I started to argue again, she pleaded with me. “Please, Charlotte.”
Mr. Joyce was holding a baseball cap, wringing it in his hands. He seemed to be growing more agitated by the second. “I really need to talk to you, Ms. Davidson.”
“See?” I pinned Denise with a chastising scowl. “Client.”
She turned on the man, her face as cold and hard as marble. It was an expression I knew all too well. “We just need a minute,” she said to him, her tone razor sharp. “Then she’s all yours.”
He backed off, raising a hand in surrender as he stepped to a chair and took a seat.
My temper flared to life, and I had to force myself to stay calm. I was twenty-seven. I no longer had to put up with my stepmother’s insults. Her revulsion. Her petty snubs. And I damned sure didn’t have to put up with her invading my business and bullying my clients. “That was not necessary,” I said to her when she turned back to me.
“I apologize,” she said, doing a one-eighty. She turned back to Mr. Joyce. “I’m sorry. I’m in a very desperate situation.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, dismissing her with a wave. He clearly had problems of his own.
With all the enthusiasm of a prisoner walking up to the hangman’s noose, I led Denise into my office and closed the door. My temper flaring must have summoned Reyes. He was in my office, waiting, incorporeally.
Then I remembered. He didn’t like Denise any more than I did. Blamed her for most of my heartache as a child. Of course, she’d caused most of it, but Reyes could be… testy when it came to my happiness or lack thereof.
“Want me to sever her spine?” he asked as I sat behind my desk.
“Can I think about it and get back to you?” I asked, teasing. Kind of.
Denise looked toward the wall he was leaning against, the one I was looking at, and naturally saw nothing. But where her usual response would be to purse her lips in disapproval, she wiped at her lapel and sat down instead.
“What do you want?” I asked her, my tone as cold as her heart.
“I’m sure you know that your father has left me.”
“At last.”
She flinched like I’d slapped her. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Are you really asking me that?”
“I love your father.” She almost came up out of her chair. “I’ve always loved your father.”
She had me there. She’d always been an attentive wife to him. Of course, attentive included her agenda, which was manipulative, conniving, and venomous. I couldn’t believe that I could dislike someone so much, but Denise had always been that splinter in my relationship with my father. She did everything in her power to keep us apart. Her jealousy was bizarre and childish. Who on earth was afraid of a father’s love for his child? It just made no sense to me. It never had.
And yet she was never that way toward my sister, Gemma. In fact, she and Gemma were fairly close. I had a feeling Dad’s leaving Denise affected Gemma much more than she was willing to admit. She knew how I felt about our stepmonster, and the fact that she couldn’t go to me when she needed support made me a very bad sibling. But the truth was, she couldn’t. I had no warm and fuzzies where Denise was concerned. She’d made sure of that from day one.
“I – I need you to talk to him. He’s been sick and, and he’s not thinking straight.”
“And what do you want me to say?”
She leveled an exasperated glare on me. “I want you to convince him to come back home where he belongs. He’s still weak. He still needs medical attention.”
“I’m sorry,” I said with a soft, humorless chuckle, “you want me to convince my father to stay with you? The bane of my existence? The woman who made my childhood a living hell? After everything you’ve put me through, you want my help? Are you insane?”
Too bad Gemma, a licensed psychiatrist, was at a conference in D.C. I’d call her and schedule an appointment for Denise ay-sap.
“What have I ever put you through?”
My temper flared again, and I bit my tongue, literally, to keep my emotions under control. When I lost control, the earth shifted beneath me. An earthquake in the middle of Albuquerque would do no one any good.
Reyes straightened as though worried I’d lose control as well. I closed my eyes and took several gulps of air. This wasn’t me. I didn’t hate people. I didn’t make them pay for their misdeeds. Too many departed had crossed through me. Too many times I’d seen what people went through, what they’d endured that made them become the people they were when they died. Until I’d walked a mile in her shoes, I could not judge Denise so completely. That would make me no better than she was. I opened my eyes to her stone face, the face that brought nothing but hurt feelings and knotted stomachaches. Maybe two miles.