He plucked up the menu wedged between the napkin holder and the little Tabasco bottle and fanned it open.
“What can I get for you?” she said briskly.
“Well, I think I’ve already had the something cold,” he said in a confiding, lowered voice to Britt, with a tilt of his head in the direction of Giorgio. “And I guess that would make you the something...”
He trailed off again at whatever he saw in her face.
“Well, I’ve been driving all night, and it feels like lunchtime, so I think I’ll have a beer,” he said. Sounding amused. “A Sierra Nevada. The Stout.”
“Sierra Nevada Stout.” She didn’t write it down.
“And I’ll try the hamburger. Excuse me, the Glennburger. With all of the ingredients, secret and otherwise. Medium rare.”
“Do you want cheese?” she asked.
“The cheese isn’t secret?”
“No. A bit enigmatic, maybe.”
He smiled at that, slowly, with genuine pleasure, and held her gaze a little longer than necessary. His eyes were a startling crystalline blue. She was reminded of rivers dashed into foam over rocks, and just like that, she was as breathless as if she’d dived into the icy snowmelt runoff of the Hellcat.
She mentally smacked away a surge of want as if it were a fanged predator. That kind of want hadn’t breached her defenses in a long, long time.
She steeled her gaze to impassivity.
His gaze turned quizzical and then faintly amused; then he dropped his eyes casually to the menu again. Which she was happy about, because then she could stare at him unguarded. His shirtsleeves were rolled nearly to his elbows. His forearms were tanned gold and corded and dusted in coppery hair. His fingers were long and elegant but the hands looked well used; an old pale scar traversed one. A musician, or a carpenter, maybe. A narrow streak of silver threaded up through his black hair where he’d pushed it behind his ear.
A circlet of tiny, neat black words was tattooed on his wrist: “It has been a beautiful fight.”
He closed the menu. “I’ll have cheddar on it, then. And I have another question.”
“Ask away!” she chirped.
He leaned casually back then, arms folded across his chest, and looked up at her for a moment without speaking. Then his mouth quirked wryly, as if to say,Now, we both know chirpiness isn’t your real personality.
She gave him her blankly bright waitress face.
“Why is this place called the Misty Cat Cavern?” He said this with great gravity.
His voice was a visceral pleasure: deep, almost lazy, a bow drawn at leisure across a cello string. She thought she detected something Southern in the way he took his time with the vowels. It was a little too easy to imagine how he might sound right after he opened his eyes in the morning, when his sheets were still warm and the sun still just a suggestion of light at the top of Whiplash Peak.
“Well, from what I understand, the previous owner—Earl Holloway?—was falling-down drunk when he ordered the sign over the phone about thirty years ago. Apparently the guy on the other end swore Earl had said ‘Misty Cat Cavern’ and refused to make him a new one. Earl couldn’t afford another sign. He about threw a fit but he hung it. It’s the only neon sign on the whole street.”
“What did he mean to call it?”
“The Aristocrat Tavern.”
The stranger laughed, sounding surprised and genuinely delighted.
What a great laugh. She wanted to dive into that, too.
“I’ll be back with your beer,” she said, and spun like someone fleeing.
She scribbled his order on a tag and handed it over to Giorgio.
“Did you see his sweet little butt?” Sherrie murmured happily, as she smiled warmly at a swelling tide of incoming customers. “It was as neat as two eight balls sitting in his jeans.”
Behind her, Glenn, tying on his apron, gave a short laugh and shook his head and sighed. “Sherrie. Eight balls!” Thirty years of marriage and four kids later, Glenn still thought Sherrie hung the moon, and she sailed through life on the calm sea of his unconditional admiration. She was still capable of embarrassing him, though.
