Chapter One
“Maybe this week was just a fluke,” Zack muttered on his way to table four, or was it table two? Whatever number it was wanted pancakes, which Zack had already delivered to table seven—or was that nine?—where a retired couple was now staring at them with polite confusion but were too kind to say so immediately.
“I am so sorry.” He collected the plates from the couple with a smile, hoping it appeared genuine rather than showing the anxiety currently taking up residence behind his ribs. “These belong to someone else. Let me get your oatmeal and toast.”
“Oh, don’t fuss, honey,” the woman said, which was genuinely nice of her, and made Zack feel even worse. “And we ordered omelets, not oatmeal.”
“Right. Eggs.” Crap. He cut back through the diner toward the pass-through, narrowly avoiding a collision with Jace, who sidestepped him with the practiced ease of someone who had been navigating this floor for longer than a week.
“That’s three,” Jace said, not unkindly.
“I’m aware of the count,” Zack lied.
Hash It Out was the kind of diner that looked like it had always existed, like it had simply grown out of the ground one morning fully formed, with its black-and-white tile floor and rows of vinyl stools along the counter. The booths were worn in a way that suggested affection rather than neglect.
It was a good place to work. Zack had decided that on day one, and nothing that had happened since had changed his mind, including the current morning he was having.
In under twenty minutes he’d misrouted three orders and Axel, who owned the place, was watching from behind the counter.
Your constant eagle eye is only stressing me out even more than I already am.
“Eggs are up,” Axel called out.
“Got it.” Zack grabbed the plates, double-checked the table number he’d written on his pad, triple-checked it, and delivered them to the correct people, who thanked him. A man in a flannel shirt at the counter had laughed when his coffee went to the wrong seat. A woman with two small children hadn’t bothered looking up from the chaos of her own table when Zack had quietly swapped her order out.
He’d discovered that people were mostly decent about his mistakes. That was the thing about small-town diners. Everyone was too caffeinated and too hungry to hold a grudge.
At least, Zack really hoped that was true.
He refilled two coffees, took a new order from a teenager who wanted a breakfast sandwich with no tomato and extra cheese, and wrote it down with the grim concentration of someone determined not to invent a fourth breakfast by accident.
The bell above the door chimed as he was heading back toward the pass-through.
Zack glanced back automatically.
The man who walked in was flat-out gorgeous. Not movie-star gorgeous. Worse. The kind of gorgeous that made your brain briefly forget what it had been doing.
The stranger moved like he had all the time in the world, broad shoulders stretching a gray T-shirt in ways that should probably be illegal before noon.
Zack wiped his mouth to confirm he wasn’t actually drooling.
That jawline alone had to have been carved by the gods. And the close-cropped black hair looked soft enough that Zack’s fingers itched to test the theory.
For, say, an hour. Maybe two.
The guy’s eyes made a quick sweep of the diner before he slid into the empty booth by the wall.
Zack stood frozen at the pass-through with his order pad clutched to his chest.
Do not sigh dreamily.
Do not sigh dreamily.
Then it hit him.
The stranger had sat in his section.
I have to actually talk to him.
