by C. M. Marin
But this girl isn’t a regular. Never saw her before. Which makes me come to realize how careless I seem to have become when I go to Dona’s. I seriously need to remember I shouldn’t let my guard down just because I’m not wearing my cut. Could have been anyone sitting here waiting for me.
With a pancake dangling in her right hand, the girl’s holding both up in some sort of apology. And with a small smile playing on her lips, she says, “I promise I’m harmless.”
For a damn eternity, I can only blink at her, not sure about what just happened. Even without my cut, rarely does someone I don’t know joke with me. Let alone a girl. Girls either stare at me with fear gushing from their eyes, or with a glee of want screaming at me to let them take a bite.
Not this girl.
No, this girl is looking at me like I’m a stranger who crashed her breakfast. Which I am and did, but it doesn’t make her reaction less surprising.
Interesting.
When I quit my puzzled state, a corner of my mouth curls up and I cross my arms over my chest as I relax in the booth, leaning back.
“Good to know. Been a bit worried there for a second.”
“No doubt you were,” she laughs, shooting a quick glance to my body.
This time again, there’s nothing sexual in her gaze only briefly pausing on my muscles that are even tauter because of my position. I couldn’t even say if she appreciates the view.
Again, interesting.
As for me, I do appreciate my view.
She has light-brown hair barely hitting her shoulders as they frame an oval shape face with smooth skin slightly tanned, and almond-shaped eyes blessed with a gray that looks familiar for some reason, though I know I’ve never seen eyes so beautiful. Hers are twinkling with discreet touches of gold.
“It’s not that I don’t enjoy eating awesome pancakes in a peaceful silence, but would you mind telling me why you’re looking at me like you weren’t in a diner where you should expect people to be sitting at tables?”
If that’s the way I’m looking at her, I’m thankful, because my body is having a very different reaction. Can’t help it. She’s not only beautiful, she’s seriously hot in that yellow shirt only showing off a hint of the top of her breasts that, at first glance, would fit into the crook of my hand just perfectly. Or is it a dress she’s wearing? I won’t know until she stands up, but it doesn’t matter. The girl’s damn hot.
What’s even hotter is that she doesn’t use it to her advantage. This girl has nothing to do with the girls strutting into the club at every single party we throw. All of them a clone of each other. That girl is a totally different story. She’s a girl that would never glance at a guy like me twice, let alone hit on me. The kind of girls that would never get involved with bikers.
And why I’m disappointed by it, don’t ask me.
Aware that my insistent stare is likely to turn creepy anytime, I once again quit my silent appraisal.
“Found this place about two years ago and have been coming almost every Tuesday since. Always sitting at this table. Sort of claimed it,” I explain.
“I understand,” she nods. “I stopped coming here a few years ago, and that’s the table I used to sit at. Sort of claimed it, too,” she grins.
“That’s right, but your day was Saturday, not Tuesday.”
Dona sets a large coffee and a plate of eggs and bacon in front of me, but the girl who I don’t even know her name gets all her smiling attention.
“Good point,” she admits.
“Good morning, Dona. How are you doing?” I ask her even though I seem invisible to her.
“Oh, I’m good, honey, thank you.” She pats my shoulder while speaking. “I see you met Camryn.”
Camryn. Nice name. I like it.
“I didn’t have the heart to tell her that a broody young man liked to sit at the table she hadn’t been sitting at in years.”
“Broody?” Camryn repeats. “I don’t know about that. I’ve seen two smiles already. Maybe a little jumpy for a big guy with all those muscles, but not broody,” she teases, reminding me of my reaction to her presence.
Despite myself, I contemplate the option of shutting her up with my lips, and the envisioned kiss makes some part of me going wild.
Fuck, I’m pretty sure my face pales when I realize where my mind went.
I rarely kiss. I fuck plenty, not going to shit anyone on that one. If the girl pushes to get one or two kisses, I’m not being a dick about it and give her some, but you’ll never catch me making the first move.
“I’ll leave you two to decide whether you want to share your breakfast or debate which one of you has to find another table. Enjoy your meal anyway,” Dona adds as she leaves us.
I kick any thought of girly kisses out of my head.
“So, sharing our breakfast or debating? What do you think?”
Not sure why I’m asking. It’s like words are put into my mouth without needing my permission.
For the first time, hesitation plays on her face, and I’m back to hoping she won’t politely send me on my way. Sharing breakfast with girls isn’t something that happens a lot either. Maybe even never. However hot they are. Even after I fucked them. Yeah, pretty sure that sort of shit never happened.
“I think that I was here first, but given the fact that it’s been your table for the past two years, I suppose allowing you to share breakfast with me is the least I can do,” she teases again.
Even her teasing is hot. It’s a mix of hot and sweet.
She bites into her pancake like the matter is settled, and I wonder what in the fucking hell I’m doing as I grab my fork and get to my eggs that are cooling down.
“So, Camryn,” I say between bites, apparently not done making her talk so I can hear her voice. “How is it you stopped coming? This is the best place around here.”
“I know, right? I used to tell Dona she’d make a fortune with a chain, but she always said―”
“Where’s the pride in that when you don’t even run them yourself?” I barge in, chuckling as I say what she probably was about to say. “I suggested the same thing to Dona several times. Her answer never changed. But that doesn’t tell me why you stopped coming,” I point out.
Her smile falters visibly as a sadness dims the brightness in her eyes, and I want to find a way to take the question back even though I know it’s too late.
“My parents and I started coming every Saturday when we moved here. I was seven. They died about two years and a half ago. Today is the first time I have come back since the accident.”
“And this is the table you all used to sit at,” I understand now.
What I don’t understand is why I hate that this girl I don’t even know had to go through that.
Her smile creeps back up as she nods. “I loved sitting here because of the jukebox. My dad spent a small fortune because of that thing,” her grin expands.
“You live around here, then?”
For some weird reason, her slightly parted lips seem to hold back words like she needs to think about it.
“I live in LA,” she says at last, and her answer prompts in me a surge of disappointment that bothers me.
It’s not like I’ll see the girl again. First thing she’d do if she saw me with my cut would be walking away with polite words about how it was nice to meet me. The only reason she’s still sitting across from me is because I’m wearing plain clothes. She’d already be anywhere else by now if not.
“Are you a lucky student on vacation?” I guess.
“I’m a lucky teacher on vacation,” she retorts.
A teacher. It’d probably sound rude to let out the laugh that rings out inside my head, so I snicker to myself instead. Of course she’s a teacher.
“How long have you been a teacher?”
“I just finished my second year. I’ve been a substitute teacher during my first year, and the school I’ve been working the most at offered me a permanent job last year. What about you? What d
o you do?” she asks.
“I’m not a teacher,” I say around a mouthful and chuckle when she arches a cute brow at me. “I own a few car repair shops with friends,” I answer then.
That’s not a lie, technically. I wouldn’t even call it a skewed truth. A very summarized one, maybe.
“And do you have a name, owner of a few car repair shops? Dona called you honey, but I don’t think you and I are at this stage just yet,” she declares with an overdramatic solemnity.
Grinning, I say, “Yeah, I think Nate’s a good start.”
“Nice to meet you, Nate.”
My name has a nice sound on her reddish lips. Between melodic and sexy, even more than when she speaks any other word. My head is probably making that up, but I couldn’t say why. I just like my name in her mouth, apparently.
“Same here, Camryn.”
As crazy as it is.
Feeling eyes on me, I look up to see Dona standing near the counter. She seems to have pushed her busy diner into the background as she stares our way. Like she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, she startles when meeting my eyes, and then shuffles pointlessly before disappearing from sight, most likely heading for the kitchen.
What was that?
She doesn’t think… No, she can’t possibly have let Camryn sit here purposefully. Not if she cares about that girl like I got the feeling she does. She knows who I am, which means she knows I don’t date and knows what’s my life like. Hell, I shouldn’t even still be sitting here talking to her. If it had been another girl, I wouldn’t have even glanced her way. I’m not a dick, I would have let her sit at this table that means something to her, but I wouldn’t have stayed here asking for us to share our breakfast. Jesus, this doesn’t even make any sense. I don’t know her.
Yet I can’t stop watching her eating quietly.
Chapter 3
Camryn
“So, you basically decided to officially claim my table back.”
My gaze snaps up, and my stomach does a little flip at the deep drawl I have to admit I hoped I’d hear today.
My week was dedicated to tedious tasks such as cleaning up and going through some of my old teenage stuff. Clothes, CDs, pictures or high school books, I sorted out a lot of things. I had been procrastinating for a long while, and it was time I started to put in order everything that should have been dealt with years ago.
Something I didn’t expect was the image of a mere stranger in my mind. Nate’s face crossed it a few times through all that lonely time. Okay, his face sneaked in my mind more than a few times, and if a weird feeling followed not being able to get him out of my head, I quickly realized I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to because Tuesday morning was a great morning. Nothing special, unless you consider sharing your pancakes with a complete stranger special, but I enjoyed myself for the first time in so long that I had forgotten how good it felt to enjoy something this simple. My smile was easy, and I laughed without the sound being forced the way it was every time I felt obligated to react politely at a colleague’s joke despite dying to go back home and brood without any witnesses to judge me. Last Tuesday, I just laughed, and it felt amazing.
“Only Tuesdays,” I retort. “Today is Saturday, so, technically, you’re the one trying to claim my table.”
His perfectly white smile spreads, and I notice that one corner of his mouth curls slightly more than the other. It looks cute, but it somehow also adds to his sex appeal. And he has plenty of that.
“I thought I’d make us even,” he shrugs carelessly. “Since you had your way on my day, you owed me a Saturday.”
He sits across from me with casual moves that make it difficult to forget how inappropriate it is for me to think about how sexy he is. Wearing a tight white shirt on top of his denim jeans that are as dark as his hair and his scratchy looking stubble covering his square jaw, he appears even more broad shouldered. His hair is cut short but still has this attractive messy look to them.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m almost finished, and I can’t stay much longer. I came out here riding my bike and I have a forty-five-minute ride back home ahead of me. Or twice that, because my legs are killing me, and I must have gained a half-ton with all these pancakes.”
The playful smile that lingered on his face fades into a frown. “You came out here riding your bike?” he repeats what I just told him.
“My car decided to push me into making good on my resolution to start doing some exercise again.”
“Jesus, that’s dangerous, Camryn.”
He doesn’t even crack the ghost of a smile at my joke. At the look on his face, you would think I just said I went on a trip across the African savanna to meet a lion colony all by myself and with pieces of meat hanging all over me.
I laugh. “Shouldn’t a big guy like you not be afraid of anything?” I muse.
“It’s―”
“What’s so funny?”
Hands full with a warm plate of eggs and bacon and a coffee, Dona’s arrival interrupts Nate, whose gaze flicks to her while I answer her.
“Nate also believes it’s more dangerous to ride a bike at five miles per hour than a motorcycle at seventy-five.”
Dona looked almost as worried as Nate does now when she saw me enter her place all flushed and with my helmet in my hand.
She hums, her lips thinning. “I’m sorry, honey, but he’s right,” she unsurprisingly sides with him. “You never know what psychopath you can run into on those deserted roads where you don’t even have much service to call anyone if anything was to happen.”
She has a point, but still, their reactions are a little over the top. Besides, I wouldn’t even know who to call in such a scenario. If I had to wait for Colleen to fly out from New York, I’d be dead and buried by the time she arrived.
“Okay, let’s temper the paranoia, shall we? I’ll finish my breakfast and be just fine riding back home.”
Nate snorts at my words. “No way I can let you ride back.”
“Then I’m lucky I make my own decisions,” I challenge his authoritative tone with a raised eyebrow, not cowering under his gaze.
He groans as if he had in front of him a difficult kid throwing a tantrum. “Okay, what about I drive you back and I take a look at your car? A favor for a favor,” he suggests as Dona walks away without interfering any more in our disagreement.
“So, you driving me back home is me doing you a favor? Where’s the logic in that?”
“You’d do me a favor because I wouldn’t be sitting here in the meantime, wondering whether you made it home safely or died from overuse of your muscles. Because if you ride at five miles per hour, you definitely need to get some exercise done,” he smirks.
My rolled-up napkin flies between us to hit him right in the middle of his forehead. My chastisement only tears a laugh out of him.
“That’s not nice. True, but not nice.” I try to grimace, but the result isn’t effective through my own laughter.
Pride in his own banter is drawn all over his face while he grabs his fork and stuffs the first bite of his eggs into his mouth.
Despite me having started my pancakes way before him getting his food, we finish eating at the same time.
“When was the last time you ate?”
He grins. “I was starving.”
“Tell me that you at least cook to feed yourself, because not eating is more dangerous than riding a few miles without bodyguards. Well, someone clearly has to be doing something to keep those muscles from melting. Oh my God!”
“What? What is it?”
“Please, don’t tell me I risk having an angry girlfriend, or even worse, a wife, storming in here to try to pull every hair off my head. An angry girlfriend is more dangerous than anything else.”
The fact he might be taken didn’t even cross my mind. It should have. He’s a walking fantasy created to bring every girl to their knees. Of course a guy like him is taken, I suddenly think to myself.
A snort leaves him.
“No wife. No girlfriend. Now, where’s your bike?”
The sudden change of subject requires a short period of adaptation for my brain to catch up, but then I say, “Outside. It’s locked to a pole.”
“Key or code?”
“One two three four,” I answer, and I know what his frown means the moment it draws a deep line across his forehead and his lips twist into a thin line. “It’s easy to remember,” I shrug.
As he pushes up from the booth, he mumbles something about how he hopes I’m not using that kind of code for my home alarm.
“I don’t have one,” I say, though I don’t think he even realized I heard his mumbling through the background noise.
He swirls on his heels, eyes rounded in horror finding me before they close briefly.
“Jesus Christ,” he sighs, his jaw barely slackening.
Before I can point out to him his blatant tendency to paranoia, he commands softly, “Don’t move.”
And then he’s gone.
This guy is sort of bossy.
Tempting fate while I chuckle to myself, I stand, grab both my helmet and his, and walk to the counter where I climb on a stool near the cash register.
“Already leaving? Is Nate driving you home?”
Dona slings her dish towel over her shoulder as I set the helmets in front of me.
“Yes, and yes. He’s outside, getting my bike to put it I have no idea where. Here,” I add, handing her some bills. “That’s for both breakfasts.”
“Not sure he’ll be good with you paying for him.”
“I bet he won’t, but it’s not like I’m letting him have much of a choice. Now, just for my peace of mind, am I safe leaving with him?” I ask her, but the truth is, I’m not nervous in the least.
I couldn’t explain why, but safe is exactly how I feel around Nate.
Grinning, she takes the money. “Oh, girl, the only thing that might not be safe with a man like him is your heart.”
I smile back, but I keep to myself that no man could possibly break my heart more than it already is even if they tried hard. Mine has already been shattered into a million pieces.