Authors: Shannon Stacey
“I was hungry.”
If there was any hint of sarcasm or hostility in his tone, she would have taken the hint and walked away. But he had simply answered the question asked of him, and she was nosy. “You came to the right place.”
“Made more sense than going to the post office.” She laughed and his expression relaxed a little. “It’s early yet, but the Patriots are looking pretty good this year.”
“I’ve heard that rumor, but I don’t really follow sports at all.”
“Oh.” He actually looked disappointed.
“Sorry.”
“No,
I’m
sorry. I’m not very good at small talk.”
Despite her curiosity, she decided to let him off the hook. “Somebody left this week’s paper by the register if you’d rather read.”
“No.” He smiled, and she was struck by how it transformed his face. He had a great smile. “I’d rather talk to you.”
She leaned back against the island where the coffeemaker sat. “What do you like to talk about, Max Crawford?”
* * *
Max wasn’t surprised the waitress—Tori, according to her name tag—knew his name. Of course she did. That was the way of a small town like Whitford. It also meant she was half-convinced he did mysterious things in his basement. The most popular theory, of course, being that he was a serial killer. The few people he’d talked to about it had yet to explain how they thought he made money from such an endeavor.
“With sports off the table,” he said, “I don’t suppose you’re into trains?”
“Trains?” He wasn’t surprised when she gave him an odd look. He got those a lot. “I don’t really know a lot about trains.”
Of course she didn’t. Not many people did. “It’s a nice day today.”
“Wow, we regressed to the weather pretty quickly.”
He liked the way her eyes crinkled up when she smiled at him. They were a warm brown color, like hot cocoa, and a little lighter than her hair. She wasn’t very tall, but she was nicely curvy and he might have considered asking her if she was in a relationship, but she was also younger than him. He couldn’t guess by how much, exactly, but the difference was noticeable to the eye, so therefore probably significant.
“How about the basics?” she asked, and he braced himself for the probing personal questions. First up would be his job, as always. “So, what do you do for a living?”
“I don’t kill people in my basement.”
She laughed, the sound loud and happy in the empty diner. “I hope you don’t take that personally. It’s just people being silly and bored and, to be honest, it drives everybody crazy not knowing what you do. I think they spread that story hoping you’ll be horrified and feel a need to spill the truth.”
“The story amuses me. Especially the holes in it, such as how I’d pay my mortgage with body parts from my basement freezer.” He lifted an eyebrow. “So why would I tell people what I do and ruin all the fun?”
“You’re my kind of guy, Max.”
Even though he knew it was just an expression and meant she appreciated his sense of humor about the issue, satisfaction that this woman liked him flooded through him and made him sit up a little straighter.
The cook called her name and she went to get his salad. Sucking chocolate frappe through his straw, he watched her walk away. Rather than a seductive sway of the hips, there was a happy, positive bounce to her step that he liked.
Maybe Tori the waitress would be a new friend, even if she didn’t like sports.
A few people came in while he was eating his salad, which made it hard to have further conversation with Tori. There was a married couple in one booth and two guys having lunch at another table, so it didn’t look as if he was going to meet a dateable woman this time.
He left a tip on the counter before going to the cash register to pay his bill. She gave him another smile as she made change. “I hope we’ll see you in here again soon.”
“I’m sure you will. I’ve decided I’d like to get out of the house more often.” He didn’t think it would be a good idea to go around advertising he was looking to meet women with the long-term goal of marriage. The gossip mill would have a field day with that.
“I totally understand,” she said. “That’s why I started working here, actually. To get out of my apartment and meet people. And I’m still here because I enjoy it.”
He’d assumed she worked there because jobs were fairly scarce in Whitford, but she made it sound as if it was something she did for the enjoyment of it rather than financial necessity. Before he could ask her about it, the cook called her name and, after wishing him a good day, she walked away.
Making a mental note to ask her about it next time he was in, which would be soon, he stepped outside. It was time for a haircut, so he left his car where it was and walked up the street to the barbershop. He usually went later in the day, but before most workdays ended, so the wait wasn’t too bad. He hoped, with it being closer to lunch hours, it wouldn’t be too full.
Katie Davis, Josh Kowalski’s fiancée, looked up from the head of hair she was trimming to smile at him when he walked in. “Hey, Max.”
“Hi.” It looked as if she was almost done with the customer in her barber chair and there was one fellow waiting, which wasn’t too bad. He sat in one of the chairs along the big window and looked at the magazines fanned across the table.
None of them interested him, so he leaned back into the curve of hard plastic and watched Katie work. He knew, from all the times she’d been in his home to watch sports, that her father had been the only barber in Whitford. After his death, Rose Davis had hired a man to run her late husband’s business, but he’d almost run it into the ground instead. Katie had worked hard to get the education and licensing she needed and then had taken it back. She’d been cutting Whitford’s hair ever since.
He wondered what would happen when she married Josh and they decided to start a family. Even if Max liked change, which he didn’t, there wasn’t another barber to get used to without burning the better part of a tank of gas. Katie was the only one in town.
When it was his turn, he sat in the chair and let her snap the cape around his neck.
“You’re earlier than usual,” she said.
“I went to the diner for an early lunch. The food’s very good there.”
She laughed, looking at him in the mirror. Her blond hair was pulled through the loop of a Boston Bruins ball cap and she was wearing a Patriots sweatshirt. Some combination of New England sportswear had been her work uniform as long as he’d been in town. “You sound surprised.”
“It’s been a while since I was in there. A long while, actually. I like to cook, so I don’t eat in restaurants a lot.”
“Liz must have been surprised to see you.”
“She wasn’t there. It was...” He concentrated for a few seconds, but he didn’t even have to picture the name tag pinned to the waitress’s shirt. It just popped into his head. “Tori. Her name was Tori.”
“Huh. I could have sworn Liz had said she’d be working today. I’ll have to call her later. So, Max, going to do something wild and crazy today? Want a mohawk? Maybe some colored gel?”
The question would have startled him if he didn’t know she was teasing him. She asked him the same thing every five weeks, and he always walked out with the same cut, just a neater version. Not too short, but off his ears and neck.
As he relaxed and let Katie do her thing, he thought about the waitress at the Trailside Diner and how quickly her name had come to him. He wasn’t very good at names, as a rule, and he’d just started being able to get the librarian’s name right on the first try and without hesitation.
He’d liked talking to Tori and it was good that the diner would, assuming it usually attracted more customers as she’d claimed, become part of his routine for the foreseeable future. He could enjoy her company while trying to meet a woman he’d like to date. Or, more importantly, who would like to date him.
Chapter Two
The next day, Tori slept in until ten, but she woke up feeling antsy and not as well rested as she should have, considering she’d been in bed before two. Maybe it was the dream.
It hadn’t been a sex dream—unfortunately—but it had been sensual, nonetheless. She’d woken while it was still dark with a lingering sense of touching and intimacy and just being held. Left with a vague yearning for affection and emotion rather than steamy sex, she’d been unsettled and dozed restlessly, off and on, until her alarm went off.
She couldn’t picture the man in her dream, which ticked her off even more. If she was going to ache for a guy’s touch, she should at least get to know what the guy looked like. And she didn’t want intimacy and emotion. She wanted sex—hot, sweaty and with the least emotional involvement possible.
Shuffling to her coffeemaker without turning on the lights or opening blinds to let the sun in, she hit the button to start the brew cycle. Then, after a quick detour to the bathroom, she powered up her computer and took her cell phone off the charger.
Two missed calls from her mother. Great. The fact they were spaced two hours apart and her mom had chosen not to leave a voice mail told Tori it wasn’t an emergency, so she made a mental note to call her back later. Maybe.
She took the phone off the setting that only allowed calls from a few people through, including the diner, Gavin’s cell, her aunt’s house and Hailey Genest. She used the setting at night and when she was up against a work deadline, but also when she wasn’t in the mood to be caught in the center of her parents’ drama. Their divorce was final, but their mind games raged on and her affections were the prize. Even the fact she’d packed up and moved to Whitford to stop being their tug-of-war toy hadn’t sent a strong enough signal for them to grow the hell up and move on with their lives. So she was moving on with hers.
Once she’d filled her oversize mug with strong, black coffee, she pulled up her email and lost herself in the morning routine of deleting, sorting and flagging some to deal with later. No emergency fires to put out or drama this morning.
When her phone rang, she assumed it was her mother again and almost ignored it. But habit made her glance over and she saw the diner’s name on the screen.
It was Liz. “I hate to do this to you, but can you come in for a few hours today?”
She took a few seconds to mentally scroll through her to-do list for the day, but she knew she wouldn’t say no. Even though she was always happy to fill in, they didn’t take advantage of her and when they asked her to come in outside of her scheduled hours, it was usually for a good reason. But it was odd for Liz to need unexpected time off two days in a row. “I need to jump in the shower first.”
“Oh, not for my shift. Ava’s not feeling so hot. Paige is going to come in, but we’ve been getting a decent crowd for Friday evenings so she could probably use a hand. So if you came in about four, you could help with the dinner crowd and then you and Paige can flip for who goes home when it starts winding down.”
Paige would win. Not because she owned the diner, but because she had the most adorable baby girl on the planet waiting at home for her. Sarah Rose was six and a half months old, with the Kowalski blue eyes she got from her daddy, Mitch, and dark hair sticking out all over because it refused to be tamed by one of those palm tree ponytails on the top of her head. Attempts at cute headbands had resulted in them being flung around like slingshots, so Sarah’s hair was left alone to be a wild and crazy cloud around her face. Tori really loved that kid.
“I can come in for four o’clock,” she told Liz. “Not a problem.”
Once she’d finished her coffee, Tori hopped in the shower and rummaged through the clean clothes basket for a Trailside Diner T-shirt. After smoothing most of the wrinkles out—she needed to set an alarm to remind her to fold her clothes, dammit—she pulled it over her head and set an alarm for three. She got some work done, but decided to head to the library before her shift.
Hailey Genest was the town’s only librarian and Tori’s best friend in town. Thanks to a little misadventure in the woods back in the spring, Hailey had fallen in love with and was engaged to Matt Barnett, the hot game warden in town.
“Oh, thank God,” Hailey said when Tori put the books she’d finished on the counter for her to check in. “Millie’s next on the waiting list for that book and she calls me twice a day.”
“It’s not even due for another week.”
“Which I tell her twice a day. So what’s new?”
“Max Crawford came in the diner yesterday.”
“No way! Why was he there?”
She shrugged. “When I asked him that, he said he was hungry.”
Hailey laughed. “Katie’s at his house a lot to watch sports and she said he’s a really nice, funny guy. Paige said he never goes in the diner, though. Weird. If he comes in again, try to find out what he does in the basement.”
“Maybe it’s a studio where he makes porn videos.”
“Alone?” Hailey looked skeptical.
“What? That makes less sense than him being a serial killer?” She tried to picture the shy guy with the slightly awkward conversational style who’d sat at the counter yesterday making porn. Maybe he was shy and awkward when it came to talking because he expressed himself in other ways. Alone. With a camera.
“Have you tried running a Google search on him?”
“Why would I do that? I’ve seen him around, but yesterday’s the first day I’ve ever spoken to him. Have
you
run a Google search on him?”
“I haven’t.” When Tori just looked at her, eyebrow raised, Hailey rolled her eyes. “Because Rose said she did and nothing came up. But, now that I think about it, she’s not the most computer savvy person in town.”
“I have to go to work now. But I’ll see you Saturday night, right?”
“Yeah. I already picked the movie and everything. Hey, can you bring those cookies you made last time? They were
amazing.
”
If she could find time to get the refrigerated cookie dough out of the tube and onto the cookie sheet. Not that she’d ever admit it. “Sure.”
The diner was quiet at four o’clock and Paige was talking to a couple of customers toward the back, so Tori went out back to the kitchen in search of her cousin, Gavin. He’d been working at the diner for several years, before Tori had moved to town. It had started out as an after-school job, but he was a great cook and Paige had given him the freedom—and ingredients—to hone his craft. The citizens of Whitford were generally okay with being his guinea pigs, but they were suspicious of any foods they couldn’t pronounce and had almost boycotted over a tofu incident. It was a meat-and-potatoes kind of town, except for the traditional all-you-can-eat fish fry on Fridays.
“Hey, Tori,” he said when he spotted her. He was several years younger than her, with the same dark hair and eyes, and had a younger brother still in high school. “You working tonight?”
“No, I thought it would be fun to roam around the place in a Trailside T-shirt on a Friday night.” She laughed and dodged the towel he snapped in her direction. “What’s the special tonight?”
“Pork tenderloin with a brown sugar and balsamic vinegar glaze.”
She winced. “I wonder how many times I’ll be asked what balsamic means.”
“I’m appeasing the masses by serving it with garlic mashed potatoes and a choice of creamed corn or the spiced, chunky applesauce they loved last time I made it.”
“They did like that applesauce. I ate more of it than I should have myself.”
Paige kept a tally sheet next to the register and they made a checkmark on it whenever somebody ordered Gavin’s special. Over the years, there were more and more checkmarks, and fewer wasted ingredients. He was saving for culinary school, or at least for a move to a city with more restaurant opportunities, and Paige’s support of him over the years was one of the reasons Tori rarely hesitated when the diner needed her, even if it set her back on her graphic design work a little.
Speaking of the boss, Paige walked through the swinging door. “Tori, thanks so much for coming in. I hope it picks up a little or I’m going to feel like an idiot.”
“It’s fine either way. I swear.”
Tori loved her boss. Paige had been passing through Whitford, her car broke down and—long story short—she’d bought the closed-up diner, reopened it and made it her own. When Mitch Kowalski had returned to town to help his brother with the lodge, Paige had made
him
her own, too.
At five, just enough people started rolling in for dinner so neither of them had to stand around doing nothing, although Tori wouldn’t call it busy. It would be a long night, but at least Gavin’s pork tenderloin was going over well.
Then, at exactly six o’clock, Max Crawford walked through the door. From behind the big coffee machine, she watched him look around the restaurant as he had yesterday.
For some reason, seeing him caused a low hum of anticipation through her body, which she scoffed at. Must have been the porn studio discussion and her dream. It had been a while since she’d treated herself to a fling with a guy, so maybe it was time to dress herself up and drive into the city for a night out.
When he took a seat at the counter, Tori shoved sex out of her mind and went to greet her customer.
* * *
Max had often heard Laundromats were a good place to meet women. He wasn’t sure why, since he wasn’t one to speak to strangers while folding his underwear, so he didn’t imagine women would be any more comfortable doing so. But he’d tried it anyway, using a comforter that didn’t fit in his washing machine as an excuse to spend time in the town’s only Laundromat.
After spending ninety minutes listening to the life story of a man who was newly divorced, Max had decided the rumor of Laundromats being a good place to meet women was probably started by a Laundromat owner.
So he was back at the diner, perusing the menu and working up the courage to talk to the woman sitting farther down the counter. She looked vaguely familiar to him, and he’d finally placed her as the woman who owned the secondhand store near the bank. He’d seen her on the sidewalk sometimes, setting up sale racks, but he’d never spoken to her. And even if he’d ever known her name, he wouldn’t have remembered it.
She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Granted, that didn’t mean much, but it’s not as if he was going to open with
your place or mine?
Casual conversation would give him plenty of opportunity to clarify her relationship status before it came time to make a decision on asking her out or not.
He’d left two empty stools between them. It seemed enough to respect her personal space, but not so far away they couldn’t have a conversation if she was so inclined. Assuming he worked up the nerve to speak to her.
“Do you know what you want, Max?”
He looked up at Tori, who had her order pad and pen at the ready. Just seeing her friendly smile relaxed him. “What do you recommend?”
“Gavin made pork tenderloin for the special tonight, with a brown sugar and balsamic vinegar glaze. Served with garlic mashed potatoes and your choice of creamed corn or a spiced, chunky applesauce.”
He noticed she hadn’t actually answered the question he asked. “He made it, but do you recommend it?”
“Absolutely. I taste-tested it myself when I got here so I could give my honest opinion. It’s delicious.”
“Then I’ll try it. With the applesauce, please. And decaf to drink, if it’s fresh.”
“Paige just started brewing a fresh pot, so I’ll grab you a cup as soon as it’s done.”
When Tori walked away, Max snuck a look down the counter. The secondhand store woman had dark hair cut into one of those smooth cuts that ended just below her chin. She was around his age and she was reading. It was a magazine, but that still counted. He also took note that her bill was on the edge of the counter, along with some cash, which meant she’d probably be leaving very soon.
He cleared his throat and turned his head, making sure his voice would project to her. “The weather’s nice today.”
She glanced sideways at him and then, apparently realizing he was talking to her, gave him a brief smile. “Yes, it is.”
“It’ll start getting cold soon.”
“Every year.”
She turned her attention back to the magazine she’d been reading, but he wasn’t ready to give up. “Do you follow any sports?”
“No, I don’t. Sorry,” she said, glancing at him again, this time without the smile. Then she turned the page of the magazine and lifted it so there could be no missing the fact she was reading.
Even Max could take that hint. Stifling a sigh, he tried to not think about how quickly he’d been shot down. He wasn’t sure what the average time was, but he felt like a guy should get more than three lines.
Tori set a mug of decaf in front of him and he could tell by the kindness on her face, she’d witnessed his lame attempt to talk to the woman. He felt his cheeks heat, so he focused his attention on unwrapping his silverware and setting it on his napkin. “Here you go, Max. It shouldn’t take too long for your supper to come up.”
“Thank you.”
He took his time fixing his coffee because it gave him something to occupy his attention until the secondhand shop lady left. As he sipped it, he heard two female voices coming from a booth behind him, talking in the kind of hushed voices that meant they didn’t want to be overheard.
“Muriel says his car is always in the driveway. He doesn’t go to work anywhere.”
“Maybe he does one of those work-from-home things I saw on the internet.”
“It’s just weird if you ask me.”
Max purposely tuned them out, taking the menu out of the holder to read the dessert offerings printed on the back. He probably wouldn’t have anything, but it gave him something to focus on.
It seemed like forever before Tori brought him his meal. It looked delicious, and he told her so while she refilled his coffee cup.
“Gavin’s a great cook,” she said. “I’m not sure where he gets it from, but I hope he gets to work in a fancy restaurant someday.”
“Does that mean you can’t cook?”
She laughed. “I can keep myself fed well enough, but I don’t have the skill or patience to put together meals like Gavin does. Seems like a lot of time investment for something you’re just going to eat.”