“I’ve been working for the past few hours.” It’s not really an excuse for ignoring him, but I’d rather not lie, either. I feel my frown pinch even more. “How did you know I was working today?”
“I stopped by your house. Your mom told me you picked up a shift.” He leans in close and lowers his voice to a whisper. “I thought you were meeting Rush this morning.”
“I was. I did.” I shake my head. “I really don’t want to talk about it. Like I said, I’m working.”
It’s a brush-off and he knows it. I can see the note of rejection in his eyes. “Mel, are we okay?”
“Sure.” I tilt my head at him. “Aren’t we?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
At that same moment, Shelly, the server whose order I delivered, swoops up from her break in a cigarette-scented flourish. “Ooh, roses for me? You shouldn’t have!” She cackles, draping her arm over my shoulders. “Who’s the good-lookin’ suit, Mels?”
“This is Daniel,” I murmur, an awkward tension pulsing unnoticed by my coworker.
“I’m Melanie’s boyfriend.” Without missing a beat, Daniel’s gaze flicks to the plastic nametag pinned above her left breast. “Nice to meet you, Shelly.”
She beams at him before glancing at me and widening her eyes. “You better get those pretty roses into some water, girl. Go on, take your break. I’ll watch your tables.”
“Thanks, Shel.” I’d have preferred to keep working, but avoiding Daniel isn’t going to make things better. I take the bouquet from him and he follows me through the kitchen to the small break area near the back door of the diner. Although to call the battered card table and rickety metal chairs a “break area” is a stretch.
He takes a seat as if he intends to stay a while.
I can’t resist inhaling the sweet perfume of the flowers, no matter how inconvenient it is to be given them while I’m in the middle of the lunch rush. “I’ll go look for something to put these in.”
I return with the roses placed in a water-filled iced tea pitcher. Daniel grins up at me while I choose to remain standing.
“Do you like them?”
“They’re beautiful.”
When I don’t offer anything more, he puts his elbows on his spread knees, clasping his hands together as if in prayer. I’ve seen this pose before, when he and I stood in front of Jared Rush that first night. Now, I can’t help but consider this Daniel’s groveling stance.
“So, you did meet with Rush today, then?” he asks after a moment.
I barely nod.
“For how long?”
“Not long.”
He swallows, his hands still fused together as he glances up at me. “Did it . . . go all right?”
“Not especially, no.”
The breath he exhales carries a heavy edge. When he speaks, his voice sounds contrite, almost pleading. “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”
“No, Daniel, I’m not.” I set the roses down on the table, then step back a pace. “The only way this is going to work between us is if I do this thing with Jared Rush and we never speak of it. Not now, and not after.”
A tendon throbs hard in his jaw. “If he touches you, Melanie—”
“He hasn’t.”
“Goddamn him, if he hurts you in any way—I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you asked me to agree to pose for him.”
Daniel’s anger stutters to a halt. “W-what?”
