The drive to the café is about fifteen minutes, during which Shiloh fills the time with stories about the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it little town we’ll be coming into, Florelle. It’s basically a highway stopover, consisting of a few places to eat, a bar, a couple of chain hotels and gas stations, and a Starbucks.
“Murray’ll grab your ride and give you a call later, let you know how long it’ll take him to fix her up.”
“Perfect,” I murmur, still watching out the window. Something here calls to me, warms me through like the temperature. Even slightly on edge about being in a vehicle with a strange, way-too-charming tattooed man, I’m more relaxed than I have been in years.
Off in the distance, a sign forFireworks!reaches over distant treetops for a brilliant blue sky studded with clouds. Behind it, another one boasts alligator expeditions for the whole family.
I’m suddenly starving.
“How much farther?”
Even as I ask the question, the road begins to narrow and the speed limit drops, and the tiny town of Florelle comes into view.
“Oh, not much,” Shiloh answers tongue in cheek.
I shoot him an amused glance. “I see that.”
Florelle is like any of the other hundreds of pass-through interstate towns I drove by on my way south, nothing much of note but a godsend to every weary traveler. The only thing that distinguishes it from every other junction like it is the little diner-cum-drug store at the corner of the first intersection, housed in a faded lime green building with pink trim that’s seen better days.
A sign over a weathered navy awning reads “Chappy’s Eats.”
Shiloh pulls into a diagonal parking space fronting the small, pale green building with laconic male grace.
Unbuckling my seatbelt, I open the door and climb out, while on the other side of the truck Shiloh does the same. Delicious scents assail me instantly.
My mouth waters and from across the expanse of hood I shift my gaze to find Shiloh looking not at the café, but at me.
His eyes are curious.
A bit wary.
Intent.
But all he says is, “Hungry?”
I gather my hair back into a low ponytail at the nape ofmy neck and face forward, my heart beating in my stomach and my ears and my throat. “You have no idea.”
Shiloh isall charm through crawfish po’boys, fries, and tea so sweet my teeth hurt. He’s full of stories about the area, and Chappy, the hound dog the diner’s owner has always owned.
“What do you mean, ‘always owned’?” I ask, scratching the snoozing pooch behind his floppy ears. He chose our table to settle beneath and has been hanging out for the entire hour and a half that we’ve been here, snoring softly. “Maybehe’sa vampire dog?”
Shiloh snorts. “Get down to Louisiana and you Yanks think it’s allInterview with a Vampire, yeah?”
“Well…” I shrug.
The diner looks like it’s been around for at least a hundred years, so I don’t understand how Chappy could have always been here.
“There’s just always been a Chappy. Not the same Chappy, obviously?—”
Obviously.
“—but every hound owned by the people who run this place is named Chappy.”
I tip my chin. “Creative. Have you always lived around here?”
He jerks a thumb in the general direction of the road outside. “I’m actually originally from a little town outside NOLA. ‘Bout another hour down the road, a little bit bigger’n this one. But yeah. I live in NOLA now, have for some time.”
The hair on the back of my neck lifts. Fucking New Orleans.
