“So…” Molly didn’t have a follow-up. “Okay.”
“Bet you didn’t even know I had him in my purse.”
“What?”
“Doodle!” Clois grabbed her small bag from where it sat on the floor. “Surprise!” A tiny curly mop exploded out of Clois’s bag, springing into the air. “Doodle, give everyone a kiss!”
The dog scrambled across the table top and leaped into Molly’s lap before jumping at her chin. “Wow! No! I did not. He’s cute, yes siree.” Fur flew in the air and up her nose. “I love dogs.”
Clois beamed. “I knew you did. I could tell.”
Molly firmly pushed the dog back towards Clois. “Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”
“I can’t wait. I have so many ideas about how we can renovate the place so it doesn’t look so much like an old diner.” Clois made an itsy-bitsy-spider move with her fingers. “You know, like marble countertops. And waterfalls! Once I was in Vegas, and there was this bathroom that was a big waterfall, and the guys just peed onto the wall. It might be harder to do that in the women’s room, though.”
“Thank you so much. Thanks.” Molly stood and held the door open. “Thanks. Okay. See you. Thanks again.” Maybe if she thanked her profusely enough, Clois wouldn’t notice she was getting the hook.
“And maybe like a meat-cutting station! Like those Brazilian places have, you know? Trays of meat? I love those things. And singers. I sing, did you know that? Have you thought of starting a band to entertain here? Oh, my God, of course you have. You’re a Darling. I have to sing for you.” Clois angled her combat boot so that the door stayed open. “Can I sing for you?”
“Now?”
Nikki moved forward and pretended to trip over Clois’s boot. “Oh! Watch out. I’m so clumsy.” Deftly, she pulled the door shut and locked it against the sound of Clois singing the Star Spangled Banner on the sidewalk at the top of her lungs.
Molly and Nikki stared at each other.
“Was so gallantly streaming!” Clois’s face plastered itself against the glass. The dog appeared to be tucked somehow between her breasts, loyally yowling along.
Molly lunged at the pull for the café curtain, snapping it sharply down.
“No,” said Nikki.
“Agreed. No, no, no, over my mother’s blessed body.” Molly slid back into her chair and looked at the list. “But who?”
“Let’s start at the top.”
“Phillip, no. Cynthia, no way. Lucky might be good, and I liked Aubrey for busboy.”
Nikki nodded and scribbled.
“And Cesar. I want him,” Molly said. “He has the experience, and I loved his laugh. Seems smart.”
“Ooh, good. He’s dreamy, isn’t he?” Nikki made a check mark on a sheet. “Yum. I went on a date with him once.”
“You did? Okay, that’s fine. I won’t hire him.”
“No! You should.”
“Todd won’t mind? You said he was jealous of the way the bus driver honked at you.”
Nikki tucked her chin and kept her eyes on the paper. “Whatever. Doesn’t mean I can’t look at a hot guy, right?”
“You’re right.” Molly lightly bit the end of her pencil. She considered taking another swig of coffee to prop open her tired eyes, but decided against it. The jitters were finally wearing off. “What was the date with Cesar like?”
“Mmmm.” Nikki rubbed at her cheeks and held out her fingertips, as if checking for stray eyeliner. “You know. That perfect date where everything goes just right. He kisses you, and it’s everything you ever wanted.”
Molly remembered the feeling of Colin’s fingers just under her jawline.
“It was my typical mistake. I slept with him on the first date. Our bodies just fit.”
A yawning pit opened in Molly’s stomach. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “I thought he was amazing. And I thought he thought I was amazing. But he never called.”
“Did you call him?”
“Please. Do I look like the kind of girl who wouldn’t call a guy? Of course I did. And I texted him twice, which is one more than my normal rules allow. And nothing.”
“We are so not hiring him.”
Nikki smoothed the hair at her temples, tucking it back to make sure her curls were still captured in the rubber band. “Come on. Did you pick up on even a frisson of thrill between us?”
Molly shook her head.
“Water under the bridge. I’m happy with Todd.”
“Bullshit.” The voice came from behind them.
Molly jumped at the sound of Colin’s voice. Truth be told, every single little part of her jolted. “Lord, if McMurtrys keep sneaking into my business through the back door, I’m going to charge you in advance for the heart attack I’m planning to have.”
“Never scared a woman to death yet.”
Molly wasn’t so sure about that. He was capable of stopping a girl’s heart just by the look of him in blue. She’d seen him in his uniform before, yes. But that was when she’d merely thought he was good-looking. Now that she knew what was under that uniform, he was a walking myocardial infarction. “Yeah, well, I don’t have health insurance and I can’t afford the ambulance ride.”
“I know people at the fire department,” he said. “I’ll get you the friends-and-family discount.”
Today kept getting more surprising. “That’s a thing?”
“No,” he said.
Nikki groaned and tugged on her cardigan. “A’ight, kids. I don’t feel like watching you two flirt. I think you’re adorable and all, don’t get me wrong. But ew.”
“Don’t run off on my account. I’m here on business.” Colin set down the thin metal box he was holding and flipped the top. “Official, restaurant-type business.”
“If that’s some kind of kinky fantasy you two have going, I’m so out of here. See you at eight, Molly?”
Molly nodded. “Thanks for today. We’ll make the phone calls tomorrow.”
Nikki nodded and was gone.
“What’s your real plan here?”
“I told you.” He took out a pen and clicked it open. He jabbed at the paper now clipped to the box. “Official.”
“This isn’t about me walking away from you this morning?”
“If you mean about you running away from my house in the middle of the night to catch a ride with some would-be slasher, no. This isn’t about that or the fact that you ran away from me on the street like you were scared of me.” A crease formed between his eyebrows. “Jesus. You weren’t, were you?”
Molly bit her bottom lip.
She was terrified, but probably not in the way he meant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Colin hadn’t even thought about the possibility. “You were scared of me?”
“No,” she said. But her eyes weren’t convincing, darting up and to the left, like she was searching there for the answer. If he knew one thing, he knew when people were lying. And Molly was. He just didn’t know why.
“Talk to me.”
“You’re overreacting.” Her tone was curt, and her gaze was now clear. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
She was making her voice light, Colin could tell. And her body language was obvious and readable, too. She wanted to cross her arms, and she kept almost doing it, then shaking them out and letting them hang at her sides. She didn’t want to be seen as defensive. She wanted to come across as open. The way she kept trying to square her hips but failed, turning sideways again and again, was textbook.
“Just a quick inspection, it’s not a big deal.”
Her control over her body language went out the window. Crossing her arms tightly, she frowned. “You’re not Code Compliance. That’s June. I talked to her on the phone last week. We had an appointment today, and she was going to walk me through anything that I needed to fix.”
He nodded. “She’s out.”
“I’ll wait, then.”
“She’s giving birth.”
> “How long can that take?”
“To twins.”
“Are you making this up?”
“Yes.” Colin wanted to taste those lips that had intoxicated him so badly last night. “I’m making up a story that could easily be fact-checked about an employee whose water broke at her desk yesterday.”
“Oh, God, you’re serious.”
He shrugged, and tried to push down the feeling of disappointment that was so strong he could almost taste it, yellow and bitter, at the back of his tongue. “I’m Code Compliance until we hire a temp. June’s taking four months off.”
“Shit.”
“Oh, come on. Am I really that bad? Was it something I did last night? Molly, you’ve got to tell me.”
She kept her lips shut and shook her head.
“Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head harder.
“Because you’re freaking me out. I did have to come here today, yes. It’s one of the million things I have to get done, but no matter how much I had to do, I would have come to see you. I screwed something up last night and I’d do anything to figure out what it was. All I can think is that I did the wrong thing, either physically, which makes me feel sick, or verbally, and I don’t know which is worse.”
Molly slumped, sticking her hands into her black apron. “I swear. It was me. All me.”
“The old it’s-me-not-you line?”
She didn’t meet his eyes, and reached for a rag from a pile of clean ones. She wetted it under the sink and then sprayed cleaner on it. “It’s not a line.”
Colin clicked his pen again. “Okay.” Damn, his feelings hadn’t been this hurt since he was sixteen and Sally Williams told her best friend who told his best friend that he kissed like a fish flopping to death on a deck. He’d worked on his kissing since then. A lot. And last night, he’d kissed Molly. The way their mouths had met had made him feel, at those moments, like she was the best kisser in the whole world and that he wasn’t that bad, either, but maybe his tongue still flopped like a moray eel. “Let’s get this done.”
Molly nodded, her lips pulled in tight.
As if she was scared he might try to kiss her again.
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. He knew when he was being rejected, even if he didn’t know why. “You’re going to use the wood stove your uncle put in, right? Let’s check the flue first, and I’ll check the chimney outside before I leave.”
She looked miserable. “Okay. Do you want some coffee? I can make some more. We finally broke the coffee machine in earlier.”
Her expression didn’t make him feel any better. “No thanks.” He pointed with the pen to the industrial sink. “Where’s your hand-washing sink?”
“That’s it.”
“It’s too close to the dishwasher.”
“What?”
“Ware-washing sinks have to be separated from hand-washing sinks by a six-inch-high metal splashguard or twenty-four-inch separation.” He flipped the pages in front of him and jabbed at the line he needed. “See? Right here.”
Molly just nodded. “I’ll get it fixed.”
They went over everything, step by step. He had to admit, she’d done a great job, the sink notwithstanding. Every time he questioned something, she had an answer, and better than that, a reason. New on-demand hot-water heater. New hand dryers in the bathroom. New gutters on the roof, and two new industrial disposals, both in the kitchen and at the coffee station in front. The food-prep area had been gutted, ripped apart, cleaned to within an inch of its very old life, and put back together. Stainless steel shone from every surface. The corner where Hugh Darling had put his foot through the dry rot and needed the fire department to come pull him out had been ripped out and rebuilt. The whole place smelled of sawdust and epoxy and stainless-steel polish. She didn’t have the treated wood in stock yet to run the wood-fired stove to prove its safety, but she still had time for that. The regular stove worked, as did the grill. She must have spent hundreds of hours in here already. She mentioned two local contractors, one electrician, and a plumber – all of them trusted in the community – and he couldn’t fault her on a damn thing.
It all looked great.
And both of them were acting like someone had died.
“Front-door lock?”
“Double strength, per code,” she said. “Not that someone couldn’t just smash a pane of glass and turn the locks, though.”
“Locks are made to keep honest people out.” He checked off the right box. “Capacity sign?”
“Fire Administration is having a hard time figuring out how many people should be allowed in here. They said they’d talk about it at their next meeting and get back to me. The grand opening is in a week. I hate to ask this, but…” She trailed off and tugged at the lobe of her right ear.
He’d had his tongue right there last night. Nibbling on that lobe had made her giggle and then groan. “Go ahead.”
“Do you know anyone over there? Could you find out when they’ll make that decision? Because I keep worrying that we fill up to capacity and that I’ll need to hire a bouncer.” She smiled, obviously kidding, but Colin pictured himself in that role. Standing at the door, counting heads, making sure she – the café – stayed safe.
“Yeah. I’ll make a couple of calls.”
She met his eyes for the first time in the last hour. “Thank you.”
You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my life. You’re the kind of woman I could fall in love with. Instead, Colin just said, “Can I have the copy of your filled-out T-seventy-eight? That’s the last thing I need before your final inspection.”
Molly set down the stack of napkins next to the cash register. “What?”
“T-seventy-eight. Your copy, the section of it you didn’t mail.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“That should have been the first thing June gave you in your packet.”
“I didn’t get any packet.”
Impossible. “No, you have it somewhere. It’s with the guide you’ve been using to get everything up to code. Should be the last page – it’s perforated. Maybe you didn’t read it all the way through?”
Her hackles went up – he could almost see them rise. This was now officially the most awkward inspection in the history of the world. “If I had a guide, I would have read it cover to cover. I have no guide. I have no packet.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, he simply didn’t understand. “What have you been referring to, then? When you’ve been doing all this?”
“The internet. And the California Health and Safety Code. I bought it online.”
“Well, hell. That T-seventy-eight should have been mailed to the state two weeks before the opening.”
“You’re kidding me right now.”
“I wish I was.”
“Why didn’t June give it to me? She never mentioned it.”
Colin leaned against the counter, rubbing his forehead. A headache was coming from his lack of sleep, and if he didn’t get an aspirin or two within the next five minutes, it was going to be a doozy. “Two aliens in her belly. Last week she forgot how to make an egg sandwich and put yoghurt in with her eggs instead of mayonnaise. She lost her car keys three times, and every time they ended up being in the pocket she’d already checked. Look, what about this? You meet me at my office.” He had aspirin, a big department-issued industrial-sized bottle, in his top drawer. He could down three with a Coke and maybe start to feel better before he went home to the bed that was still gloriously unmade. “I’ve got T-seventy-eights there. You can fill one out, and I’ll scan and email it to a guy I know at the state.”
She jutted out her chin, and something about the obvious tough-guy routine she was putting on made his heart ache. “Can you call your person at the fire department, too?”
“Yes.” He would do whatever she wanted, whatever it took to bring light back into her eyes. He just had no idea what that was. “Do you want to ride over there
with me?” She would say no.
And she did. “No, thanks.”
What he hadn’t predicted was the way she would look at him when she said it. Like she wanted something she couldn’t – would never – ask for.
The sheer, open want in her eyes matched how he felt.
And as he shoved the keys into the ignition of the patrol car, he decided he’d give his left arm – he’d cut it off himself with a blunt kitchen knife – to be able to give her whatever that was.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Her sister. She needed to talk to her sister, if only for a moment. To get her bearings.
Molly raced into the bar. Norma, in her normal blue muumuu, was sitting on the floor, laying out tarot cards in front of the jukebox.
“Hey, honey! Before you ask, I’m not drunk! Not yet, anyway. But I need to know exactly what kind of music the building wants to hear today, and I realized this would be a great way to do it.”
“Where’s my sister?”
Norma flapped a hand. “Maybe upstairs in the apartment?”
“Thanks.”
“I wouldn’t go up there if I were you.”
Molly froze. “Why?”
“She and Nate had that look in their eyes. Again.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. Lovemaking is a sweet, sweet thing, and we can’t hope to stop what the universe has put into motion.” Norma tucked a card into her back pocket, as if she were hiding it from herself, and peered at Molly. “Looks like you got some yourself, am I right?”
Molly gave a small squeak she couldn’t quite contain.
“Oh, honey. I’m glad. You’ve got to get you some more of that.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” Norma’s face was open and accepting. “Making love is just hanging out with another celestial being at the elemental level. And by elemental I mean naked as the day you were born. And by hanging out I mean fucking –”
“Oh, my God. I know what you mean.”
“So why do you look so panicked?”
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