In the past she’d gone out with a few good-looking guys, but the majority of them had seemed more interested in knowing how many women they could get to look at them while they were dating her than wanting to get to know her better.
It had been a while between dates—another reason for her response to Zach.
Somehow she got the impression Zach wouldn’t be like those guys.He had an intensity and confidence about him.He didn’t seem to care that people were staring at him as if they’d never seen a handsome man before—which plenty of women in the diner were doing.Or as though they’d never seen him before.Which, thinking about it, she couldn’t recall seeing him out and about in downtown Marietta.The cute cottage she rented was close to the hub of town, so she was always visiting the stores on Main Street.
“Are you new to town?”she blurted out.
“Why do you ask?”
Hmm...the old ‘answer a question with a question’ trick.If he thought she was going to fall for that, he was very much mistaken.“I’ll answer that when you answer my question first.”She picked up her soda and took a sip.
A slow smile spread across Zach’s face, highlighting his high cheekbones.Tilly was glad she was sitting, because if she’d been standing, she would’ve had to grab for the nearest table, or chair, or person to keep herself upright.
How could a person’s smile be so potent?
“Fair enough,” he countered.“I’ve been in Marietta for a month.Now you can answer my question.”
Flo arrived again.“You ready to order, Zach?”
“Yep, I’ll have a burger and fries, thanks.”
“Perfect, darlin’.That’ll be out soon.I’ll put a rush on it, seeing as Tilly’s been waiting longer than I like my customers to.”
The only reason Tilly didn’t have her food was because of Flo, but she wasn’t about to bring that up with the diner owner.Flo had given Tilly a job when she was fifteen, and she’d lasted all of two weeks.Serving food to dozens of people a day was so not her thing.The first of many jobs she’d attempted and hadn’t lasted long with.
Tilly pushed that thought away.She wasn’t that girl anymore.She’d held her current job for two years now.Didn’t matter that it was boring—nothing heart-stoppingly exciting about data entry—but it kept a roof over her head and food on her table.
It didn’t matter if it wasn’t her passion.Some things just didn’t work out the way she’d hoped they would.And that was her secret and hers alone.
“Tilly?”
Tilly looked over to Zach, not realizing she’d been stuck in her head, and hoped he hadn’t called her name more than once.“Sorry, just thinking about, uh, my form.”Totally not the case, but it would do as an excuse.“What were we talking about?Oh right, I asked if you’re new because I hadn’t seen you around before.But here we are, twice in one day.So, not new to me at all.”
She clamped her lips shut to prevent more inane words from spilling out of her.
“I don’t get out much.I tend to keep to myself.”
The way his eyes widened and he gripped his water glass suggested that he hadn’t meant to say that.
While she wanted to probe a little further, Tilly didn’t.“I hope now that you’ve ventured out, you’ll do it a bit more often.Marietta has a lot to offer and”—she pointed to the papers in front of her—“this is going to make you want to come out on Christmas Eve and see what’s going on.”
“Pretty sure I’ll be working that night.”Zach looked out the window before meeting her gaze again.“I’m a firefighter.I volunteered to work the Thanksgiving and Christmas shifts so the guys with families can spend it with them.”
“Oh, well, that’s nice of you.I’m sure they appreciate it.”
A nice guy as well as good-looking.Attributes she looked for in a prospective partner, but Zach was not that, so she could just shelve those thoughts.
He shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal.“I’m the new guy.It would be pretty rude of me to expect to get the holidays off.”
He made a good point, and one Tilly hadn’t considered.But again, he was showing that his looks didn’t give him an inflated ego, like some men.He actually cared about people other than just himself.Perhaps it came with his job as a firefighter.He put his life on the line to protect people.
“Will your family miss you?I know if I didn’t get to see my sisters on either holiday, it would feel strange.Even when my oldest sister, Chrissy, lived in Buffalo, she always tried to come home for at least one of them.”
“I don’t have a big family.”He shrugged and played with the paper straw wrapper in front of him.
The shutters came down, and Tilly addedfamilyto the list she was creating about subjects she apparently couldn’t talk to Zach about.Although she couldn’t imagine not being close to her family, she also knew that what she had with hers, other people didn’t have.
Their food arrived, saving Tilly from trying to find yet another topic for them to talk about.Her mouth watered when her chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy were placed in front of her.Today she was indulging in her favorite ‘bad’ foods, but tomorrow she’d go back to her normal diet.Not that her diet was super strict.She just didn’t like to fill her body with too much fatty or processed food.She loved a good salad for lunch and had one just about every day.
