But when her eyes roam over to Vince, in his suit and tie and his undoubtedly New England businessman kind of vibe, she made a beeline for his booth.
Which kind of angered him. Why did females always find a way to single him out?
He took another sip of his coffee as she walked over to him. And he looked out of the window instead of her way as if that would make her keep it moving.
“Excuse me, sir?”
It didn’t work. Vince sat his coffee mug back on the table and looked at her. “Yes?”
“May I use your phone? Mine died.” When Vince seemed hesitant to help her even that little bit, she pressed. “I’ll stay right here in this booth. I won’t run off with it or steal your information or anything like that.”
Those ideas were the furthest from his mind. He just didn’t want to be bothered. But given the chilly reception she received when she first walked through that door, he could understand why she would say those things. And he felt bad formaking her go there. He pulled out his phone, turned it back on, and handed it to her.
He could see the relief wash over her face. “Thanks,” she said. Then she seemed to panic.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know the phone number by hard,” she said. Then she pulled out her own phone to pull up her contacts. But when she tried to turn it on, it wouldn’t power on at all. Which only heightened the frustration on her face. “Can I Google a number?”
When she looked her huge eyes up at him, and he saw just how abjectly sad they appeared, something touched him deep within. She looked like one of those throwaway kids you saw in commercials that needed somebody to love them. He was the last man on earth for the job, since he wasn’t at all certain if love was even a real construct, but that was what he saw in her.
Not that she looked like some pushover. Far from it. She had a strong, determined look about her. But it felt like a facade to him. Like a front. Because outwardly, she looked as tough as nails. But inwardly, if her eyes were to be believed, she was as sweet and gentle as a dove.
And he realized, in that very instant, that he couldn’t deny her anything. “Why not,” he said in response to her question, being careful not to show that conclusion, and he watched her intensely as she began Googling what appeared to be a place of business.
Her face had a double-sidedness to it to Vince. On the one hand, she was a very beautiful young lady. Her deep-dark brown skin was smooth and seemingly unblemished. If she wore makeup, she hid it well. Her long, natural eyelashes dipped down slightly more over her right eye than her left eye, giving her a sultry look he would bet the farm she didn’t realizeshe had, and her nose was thin and her lips were full. At first blush, she was gorgeous.
But on the other hand, she had a look that seemed so serious so often that it bordered on an ever-present look of distress. Which went far to negate a lot of her beauty. There was a quiet desperation to her. As if she knew that she, and her world, was on the verge of total collapse and she was doing all she could to hold it together. And failing miserably.
Poor kid, he thought. And it bothered him. But what bothered him more was the fact that he was bothered about some stranger he didn’t know at all!
“Jurita hey,” said Ricki when she finally found the number to the salon and phoned it. “Geraldine made it back?”
“Not yet. Where you at?”
“I’m in Connecticut. I need to get in touch with Geraldine.”
“Call her cell.”
“I tried, but it didn’t pick up. And my phone died. Can you give me her number?”
“You got to call me back in a few minutes. I got a burn victim,” she said, and hung up the phone.
A burn victim, Ricki knew, was somebody with perm in her hair too long. “All I need,” Ricki started saying, but she realized Jurita, like Laquesha, had already hung up. “Dammit!” she said with clenched teeth, unable to hide her irritation. But it wasn’t their fault she blew it and hadn’t charged her phone.
One of the truckers in the booth directly in front of Vince’s booth stood up to leave. He looked back at Ricki. “Car trouble, little lady?” he asked her.
She nodded cautiously.
“What happened to it?”
Vince could tell she didn’t even want to talk to some trucker, but that desperation was driving her more than herusual practical sense. “It died on me,” she said. “I barely made it off the interstate.”
“I do mechanics on the side. Maybe I can help. Let me take a look,” he said.
Vince gave him a hard look because he heard all the derogatory, sexual-in-nature comments he had made about the young lady. But that desperation was a bear. Although he could tell she didn’t want to do it, she handed him back his phone, told him thank you in such a pitiful way that it felt heartbreaking to Vince, and then she led the trucker toward the door.
Vince saw the trucker look back at his partner still seated in the booth and smile as if he just wrangled himself a big catch for the day. Or an easy lay. And it angered Vince. So much so that he almost got up, grabbed that young lady, and told her to stop thinking with her emotions and use her head. That prick wasn’t going to help her. He wanted to use her. Or abuse her. Or both. He almost got up.
