Rough Tumble (17 page)

He stepped in, checked the tickets to see where he was, got his gears in and called Flora.

She answered on the second ring. “Look, give up already—”

“The diner is swamped. Can you help out?”

“I’ll be there in one minute.” The phone clicked in his ear and he returned to his work, checking tickets, doubling back over the poor girl about to lose it at the fryers and made up a couple of the first buns and was about to slide meat on them when the unmistakable sound of the metal door scraping over metal frame came from the back.

Flora rounded the back corner, snatched an apron off the rack and tied it around her waist as she stopped by the tickets. “This doesn’t make me like you anymore.”

He smiled. “That’s fine.”

She lifted a ticket pad. She was well seasoned to the routine of the diner. Flora had worked here for years. So had Gretchen. Both still helped out when Tonya was short or on a special busy night when she knew she’d be busy.

She went around the corner to the front and the back door opened again. He looked down the way and Gretchen grabbed an apron from the stack too. She met his gaze. “I’m pregnant. My legs aren’t broken, don’t give me that look.”

“I’m not giving you a look.”

“Yes you are. It’s the look Flora gave me when she said I wasn’t coming to help.”

“I’m just thinking of what I’m going to say when my brother climbs on my ass if he catches you in here.”

When she walked by, she patted his arm and then washed her hands. “Lane will be fine. This is practically exercise and most women probably don’t even know they’re carrying and are still rock climbing at this point.” She moved in by the hamburger buns. “Besides, I’ll stay mostly right here.”

“Thanks. Tonya will be glad to hear you came in.”

She looked at him. “Only because you called. I should have thought to stop through, but Tonya said she had it covered. Thanks will go to you for getting us here.”

It was probably for the best to keep it to himself exactly why he came to the diner in the first place.

Flora appeared through the swinging kitchen doors and stuffed eight new tickets on the line. “No fraternizing with the enemy. And I told you we’d be fine without you.”

“And now because I’m here, you don’t have to work as hard.” She grabbed the top to a double burger. “You can thank me anytime now.”

Carla came through with another set of tickets and breathed for a moment. “Thank god for the three of you.

They all muttered no problems.

Flora pointed at Gretchen. “I’ll thank you for being here if you get through this lunch without going weak and telling him where Tonya is.”

Gretchen flipped her wrist at him. “Get your thank you and an apology for doubting me ready, because I
ain’t
saying a thing.”

He shook his head. “I know, I know.”

Besides, he was holding out for Carla. Or maybe Lane could find out from Gretchen. And now that Gretchen was here, his odds were better at running into him. Now the trick would be getting his brother alone. He settled into a routine working around the women, keeping the grill going, adding to the fryers as he needed. With only five deep fryers, it was hard to get all the sides in addition to things like fish plates and chicken plates taking up more room.

For two hours they worked. If they talked, it was on nothing but what order number and how fast before something came off. He had no idea if his brothers were there and could only assume. He flipped another row burgers. Only ten were left and the dinner rush was slowing down.

Carla moved in by Gretchen and waved her off. “I got this. Your husband is out there asking about you.”

Gretchen shook her head. “I thought I saw an order that looked like him.”

Trent smiled and stared at the cooking burgers, realizing more and more what he lost with Tonya by acting too fast. Jumping the gun. Yes, she still could have said something, given him anything without saying exactly what the news was. She had to understand where he was coming from.

They just really needed to talk. Cover basics and expectations.

Carla moved closer to him, glanced around and leveled her gaze at him. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Tonya, but you saved my ass today. I still would have told you either way.” She wrote something down on some paper, folded it and handed it over. “Tonya’s hotel. I don’t know her room number, but last I talked to her the weather is beautiful and she’s not planning on moving too far from her beach chair. Look for her there.”

Chapter Seventeen

If it was possible to melt into a lawn chair, Tonya would be melted into one. Total and complete relaxation. Warmed from head to toe by that glorious tropical sun. Was north Florida considered tropical?

Who cared—she was on vacation! Alone and enjoying it even more than she thought possible. The birds. The waves crashing. That salty breeze. She couldn’t soak enough of it in. Except for her buzzing cell phone

With another sigh, she pulled herself away from her relaxed position and glanced at her phone. Yet another message from Trent.

Wish you’d answer my calls.

“Hey, wish you weren’t an asshole in disguise.” She deleted the message, put her phone down and resumed her position of vacation-relaxation. Stretched out on a lounge chair, pointing her toes and reaching overhead for an allover stretch then right back into the position. Drink by her hand. Warm spring sun overhead.

And another buzz.

I just want to talk
.

“Right. I can tell by the way you walked out of my house the other night that you want to talk. Or how about when I asked about your past you clammed up.”

She deleted that one too. Like the other dozen or so he’d sent over the last two days. This was her vacation. Her time. Whatever he wanted could wait until she got back home next week. By then maybe her temper toward him will have cooled off. Maybe, but not likely.

Just thinking of him set her teeth on edge. Got her fingers to curling in. No telling what she’d do if he stood in front of her.

Her phone buzzed. “Go away,” she whispered under her breath and picked it up, checking it anyway just in case there was trouble at the diner. Just her luck though, it wasn’t anyone at the diner. Which was sad on a whole new level. Horrible sad that she’d rather have someone from the diner letting her know a rock broke the front window or there was a grease fire instead of seeing another text from him.

You know, I can see you lift your phone, look at my messages and choose to ignore them.

She started and glanced across the beach. Same two kids playing together in the sand to her right. Pack of college looking boys just down the sand playing volleyball. She started to scan the beach then stopped.

No. No, he wouldn’t. He wasn’t here. Or would he? She bit her lip, so very tempted to wave her middle finger around, but decided against it. He could be jacking with her to get her to respond and then she’d look like an idiot on the beach. She returned to the position on the thick padded chair and worked on forgetting about him as she focused on the white sand for as far as she could see to the left and right of her.

Kids screeched nearby, skipping up to the breaking surf and then full out running back to the sand when the cold water touched their toes. A man ran by. Boats sailed out in the far distance. She smiled at it all. Just happy. Light. Why hadn’t she ever done this before?

Yeah, it would be good with Flora and Gretchen here. They would no doubt have a blast, but at the same time, she couldn’t ignore how great this was, just for her. She closed her eyes against the bright sun and savored the heat filling her from outside in.

A shadow moved over her and she cracked an eye, expecting to see clouds or that beach worker who’d made her cough up thirty bucks for using the chair for the day.

It was neither.

It was
him
. Trent. Standing over her. She started, nearly falling off her chair. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you on my last message I was watching.”

She dusted her hands, unsure why. She was on a chair, not sitting in the sand. Still, she felt sticky and a little bit itchy. “That’s creepy.”

He walked around to the other half of the lounge chair pairs and sat. “Now that you say that, I guess it is. I was trying to get a response out of you before walking over to judge your mood.”

She sipped from her fruit drink and glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. “My silence should have been your answer.”

“It was, but it was a long drive to have just walked away.”

“You shouldn’t have come. I didn’t ask you here.”

“I know. And I know I shouldn’t have walked out on you the other night.”

If it wasn’t connected, her mouth probably would have fallen off her face. “The great Trent Iverson is admitting he’s wrong?”

“I’m admitting that our argument wasn’t worth throwing away our entire relationship.”

“So instead we should have…?”

He shrugged. “Talked more. Taken more of a chance for me to explain why you should have told me instead of demanding it out of you.”

She sat up and faced him. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you came all this way, are doing all this and that you don’t realize how wrong you were that I kept Gretchen’s pregnancy a secret?”

“You could have told me something. You could have told me it was about Gretchen. You could have told me it was a girl issue with Flora. You could have told me anything and you didn’t. You just left me in the dark.”

“Unbelievable.” She stuffed her lotion, sunblock, book and phone in her bag and stood, slipping her flip-flops on. She stared down at him and just shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

He shrugged. “It’s true. When I imagine someone I like enough to go for the whole long term and to see where it goes, I don’t expect to have secrets between us.”

“And yet you haven’t told me about your past. You make no sense, Trent.”

He shook his head. “That’s in the past. It’s not a part of my life anymore. It’s not a part of things we do together.”

“Because it’s you. That’s why. If it was me with the secret past, you’d have a problem with it.”

“Not true. Before I knew about your past, I didn’t have an issue with it.”

She shook her head. “That’s not the same thing! If I had just told you we broke up and left it at that, that wouldn’t have been enough for you.”

“I’d like to think it would have been, but if not, that’s different. Your past changed us. My past changes nothing.”

“Your past affected me! You—” She took a breath and started away. “I’m not doing this. This is my vacation and I’m not letting you ruin it.”

“Don’t go.” He patted the bench. “Sit down please? I just want to talk.”

She sighed. “I don’t know why I’m doing this. You talk fine. You don’t listen is the trouble.”

“I’m listening.”

She looked over at him and just stared. Yeah right. She’d seen him with his brothers enough. And really, that ticked her off a good bit. How often had she watched him tell his brothers how it goes and how things are and then walk off? Countless times. Why in God’s name had she expected to be treated better? Crazy thinking, that was the problem. And his good body. And that smile. Not to mention the way his eyes crinkled at the corners. And when he wasn’t being bossy, how he would just soften. Touch her just the right way. Spend time working in the diner when he got nothing out of it but a free cheeseburger that he could afford to buy.

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “This is never going to work.”

He reached across the narrow space between the chairs and rubbed her arm. “Just talk. We were working fine. For more than a year we were fine.”

“As friends. When you had no claim on me.”

“Claim?”

“As something that’s yours.”

“Even as just my friend, I still like to have thought of you as something important to me. Something I would have…claimed, I supposed as you say.”

She shook her head and sighed, trying to figure out a way to find the words. “No. We were friends. Best friends I would have told people. You would have done anything I asked and same for me. But as a couple? That boundary isn’t there. You don’t ask me to do anything. You demand it.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have demanded you tell me.”

Why did this have to hurt so bad? “It’s not just that night, Trent. It was everything. I was dating you, and you saw me as something to own that you could do what you wanted with.”

He frowned. “That’s not true.”

“Yes it is. It took me a while to see it. We weren’t a couple. I was Trent’s girl in your mind, and that’s not enough for me.”

“I want you. I want what we had, and I’ll try to do better.”

Oh my lord. What a lame line. She could tell by his pinched brows and the way he tapped his thumbs he didn’t have one clue what she meant. “How? What’s going to change?”

“I won’t call you as much.”

She rolled her eyes and got back up, continued walking off even as he called after her.

“Tonya, wait.” He caught up to her and cupped her elbow. “Wait, please? I’m trying.”