Rich Cole, the patriarch, rarely came into town anymore. And if his wife, Darcy, happened to wander through, she didn’t bother with any of the places where I spent time. Not that Rich and Darcy would have any idea who I was. I’d known their sons, but that was years ago, and they wouldn’t have heard anything about me. Except that maybe I was the poor daughter of a strip club manager. I mean, I guess I wasn’t a totally anonymous person around here.
It was Levi that was making me edgy. He’d always been such a problem for me, a battle I had to fight, an enemy that never quit. And I doubted he’d softened over the years. Especially if it had taken his mommy and daddy demanding his return to get him to come home.
RJ was probably right—Cole Family Farms would be upside down in a year. Levi would have to move into my neighborhood. And then I’d be stuck with the guy forever.
All the more reason to get the hell out of this town.
By the time I walked into Rosie’s and clocked in, I wore my uncalled-for irritation like an ill-fitting jacket. It wrapped around my shoulders and squeezed at the base of my neck.
“There’s some sunshine,” Rosie whistled as she walked out of the kitchen carrying two heavy plates full of breakfast things. “We’ve been waiting for ya.”
I looked at the clock. “Am I late?” The time showed I was fifteen minutes early, but now I worried that I had written my hours down wrong.
“Nah,” Rosie assured me. “We’ve just been waiting for you all morning.”
I bent my head down so I could wave at Reggie through the order window. “Hey, Reg.”
“Hey there. The day just got a whole lot better,” he said grinning. “How you doin’, beautiful?”
I ran a hand over my long dark hair that was tied up in a ponytail at the top of my head. Maybe the makeup had been a mistake today. It felt too much for some reason. I should have stuck to my usual tinted moisturizer and mascara. Eyeliner and lipstick? Who did I think I was?
A normal person with her life put together? Ha. Hardly.
“I’m good,” I told Reggie, quickly washing my hands beneath the sink next to the order-up counter, deciding not to let his comment get to me. “Love Fridays, don’t you?”
His smile stretched. “Friday is just another day to me. But you got to spend time with your little man today?”
I nodded, unable to resist an answering grin. “Yes, I did.”
“I can see it all over your face, Ruby. You’re always glowing after time with him.”
“He is my favorite.”
Reggie tipped his head back and laughed. “As he should be.” Reaching for something I couldn’t see from my angle, he repeated, “As he should be.”
I turned around and got to work, checking ketchup bottles and salt and pepper shakers. I would take over the small dining room after Rosie finished up and I didn’t want to rush her. The people of this town loved her. Sometimes I called her Saint Rosie for all the love and affection she got. To the good old boys in this town, there wasn’t a more drool-worthy, voluptuous woman than Ms. Rosie Sinclair. She was the kind of dark-haired vixen you imagined was once a pinup model. Even in her later fifties, she still had curves for days and days.
Even now, she was leaned over a table of old men, each of them enraptured by her beauty, gazing longingly. She was entertaining them with a hilarious story about one of their cronies. Something about his John Deere and a hay bale. It was like watching a snake charmer. She could have told them to stand on their heads and belch the national anthem and they would have done it.
God, I desperately needed some of that va-va-voom.
My dating action was more like a fatal kaboom. Casualties, loss of life, tragedy all around.
“Order up!” Reggie called from behind me.
I glanced at Rosie as she stretched her arm to add drama to her story. She wasn’t going to finish any time soon.
That’s why she hired me—I didn’t chat up the customers.
“I’ll take it,” I told Reggie. “Where does it go?”
“Table twelve.” He pushed the plate forward under the heat lamps. “Oh and take this with it.” The first plate was an egg white omelet and a bowl of fresh fruit. The second, a smaller plate of bacon.
It was a strange order for this crowd. RJ wasn’t here yet, so it wasn’t for him. The rest of our clientele preferred plates that could cause heart attacks. For a town full of farmers, I didn’t even think most of them knew how to identify fruit, let alone order and eat it.
I walked the plates to the corner booth where a man facing the wall sat, away from the rest of the restaurant. Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine” played overhead and I resisted the urge to dance along. It was one of my all-time favorite songs and I couldn’t help but wiggle a little and mouth the words. Shania always put me in a good mood.
“Egg white omelet,” I said with a genuine smile, sliding it in front of him. “And it looks like a pound of bacon on the side.”
