I pressed my lips together to hide my smile. Everybody knew that Blake Upchurch was a womanizing manwhore that had been given too much power too soon.
To be clear, any other twenty-eight-year-old man could handle as much power as the local chief of police wielded in a town of this size, but not Blake. He was one of those guys that thought his high school days of playing starting wide receiver on the football team still entitled him to free drinks whenever he was off duty. But Dolly Farrow had been chasing him since high school. So, good for her.
“Anything else?”
Feeling guilty for having spilled Dolly’s secrets, I busied myself with finding him a menu. “Not that I’ve heard. You know nothing exciting ever happens here.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’ll have you know, I disagree. I’m exciting,” he argued effectively. “That happens every single day.”
RJ was in his late sixties, still lean and muscled from a lifetime of hard labor and leathery from the same amount of time spent beneath the harsh sun. He was one of those old guys you would assume lived on a fixed income and ate dog food to save money. But I knew for a fact that he was one of the wealthiest farmers in Western Nebraska.
He’d worked as hard as humanly possible to build an agriculture empire out here in the middle of nowhere. And instead of going the way of suits and smarminess, he’d stayed true to his roots and his business.
His dedication to his farm was partly because he knew nobody would ever work as hard as him. He’d told me as much over nine years of coffee at this counter. But I also knew he was an extremely paranoid man. He didn’t trust anybody in this town to run his business.
I thought that made him savvy.
I didn’t trust these people either.
It was only in the last several years, after a stroke, that he’d let his son take the reins. Mark Thrush was as diligent and badass as his dad. RJ didn’t like letting go of the company he’d spent his life turning into a gold mine, but he was proud of his son.
Another fact I knew from countless cups of coffee.
Grinning at him, I pulled out my order pad. “It’s true. You’re the most exciting thing in my day at least.”
He winked at me.
“Okay Mr. Exciting, what are you having today?”
He stared at the menu with hard eyes. “Aw, hell, it’s Monday, let’s get a little wild. I’ll have the Denver omelet, double order of bacon, and hash browns on the side.”
“Slow down there, slugger. Are you sure that’s on the approved list of foods?”
He leaned forward with a steely look glinting in his brown eyes. “I said it’s Monday, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want Mark coming down here to chew my ass.”
Since the stroke, RJ’s kids had been all over him about eating healthier. He was muscled and lean, but the man ate like Garfield the Cat.
And I suspected that Mark had installed a bacon breathalyzer in his car. If I ever gave in and let RJ order what he wanted, Mark and his wife Sherry would haul down here to scold me for spoiling their dad. Then they would pull the, “You don’t want him to have another stroke, do you, Ruby? Or worse?” card and I would crumble.
I played a hard ass, but I was a softy when it came to this old man.
RJ’s teeth ground together, but he relented. “Fine do the omelet with the damn egg whites. Will that make you happy?”
“One order of hash browns,” I countered. “And no bacon.”
His jaw moved back and forth as he worked his teeth against each other. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I hated that sound. But I stayed quiet. “Can I at least have the Canadian variety?”
Nodding curtly, I filled out his order ticket and slid it through the kitchen window to Reggie, one of Rosie’s day-shift chefs.
“How’s that boy of yours, Ruby?” RJ asked as I moved down the counter to swipe the glass of the pie display. When I first started working here eleven years ago, everything was inexplicably sticky. The tables, the vinyl on the booths and stools, the countertops, the floors, the bathrooms. Everything. When I became a full-time waitress, I decided this establishment was better than being sticky. I’d spent the last seven years turning this place around, scrubbing it until it gleamed.
I might be stuck in this nowhere town at this nowhere job, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take pride in my work.
“He’s good,” I answered quietly. I didn’t like to air my business in public anywhere in this town. I didn’t need anything misheard and then repeated all over the place. Hell, I didn’t need anything rightly heard and then spread all over town. I’d been the subject of town gossip my entire life. It wasn’t a spotlight I wanted to willingly walk underneath.
“He being good to you?”
