She's Gotta Be Mine (5 page)

He added, “Just to clean it, of course.”

She shoved the dish in his hands. He had to take it or drop it. Hell, it
had
been awhile since he’d had lasagna...or anything else she might be offering.

“I better run back home and take care of the mess.”

And run she did, giving him a rear view that made his hands sweat. Forget sketching her, there were better things he could think of doing.

“The name’s Nick,” he called. “You just stop on by any time you get the itch,
ya
hear.”

What a goddamn tragedy she had baggage he had no intention of dealing with, like an ex-husband she wanted to make jealous. Otherwise, he‘d enjoy scratching her itch.

* * * * *

Standing in front of the small bathroom mirror, Bobbie uncapped her lipstick. She hadn’t run away from Nick Angel yesterday afternoon. After she’d decided he wasn’t an animal killer, that he just buried the carcasses, she’d made a tactical retreat.

Okay, so he hadn’t said he
wasn’t
a killer. But the way he’d stood with his foot propped on that shovel, chitchatting, almost flirting, he wouldn’t be doing that if he’d been about to bury the evidence of his crime. And he’d made sexual innuendoes about taking off her sweater. Wow, finally, she’d been the object of a sexual allusion. And from a man with an extraordinarily gorgeous chest.

It was a start. And today was definitely another day.

But first, BSKFFA—before serial killer full frontal assault—Bobbie had other plans. She needed to find Warren. And she wanted to find a job. Not that she really needed one. She had enough in savings. Then of course, there would be the sale of the house in San Francisco and the division of assets and...darn, she’d smeared her lipstick. That’s what thinking about Warren made her do.

She wanted to fit in. In Cottonmouth that would be most easily accomplished if she was employed.

Fifteen minutes later Bobbie wheeled her shopping cart towards
Dillings
Grocery.

Janey
Dillings
, minus the blood-stained apron, washed off the concrete sidewalk. The smell of wet cement rose like perfume in the air. Water hissed from the wall opening where the hose wasn’t properly attached. A fine mist cooled Bobbie after her walk.

“I brought your cart back. Thanks for letting me borrow it yesterday. I couldn’t have carried all that stuff.”

“Bobbie. What a sweetie.” The endearment and the delighted use of her name warmed her. “How was the lasagna?”

“Great. The meat was the best.” Another face-saving little white lie. She hadn’t tasted the lasagna, except for those few bites of sauce she stole while making it. A cook’s treat.

“Where are you off to?”

“Job hunting.” Warren hunting.

Janey
pushed her glasses up her nose. “Good luck in this div—I mean, town.”

“Thanks.” Bobbie already had a destination in mind for the first stop. A rush of cool air whooshed out of the open doors of
Dillings
Grocery as she passed, the store seeming as empty as it had yesterday. Was there a husband? Roberta would hate to pry. Bobbie was dying to know. She turned, sucked in a breath, then blurted it out. “Is there a Mr.
Dillings
I haven’t met yet?”

Janey
pointed up, water flashing momentarily across the faded stripes of the awning. “Upstairs.” She rolled her eyes. “Has a migraine,” the word stretching out to match the eye roll.

“Oh, I know all about migraines.”
Not tonight, honey, I have a headache
was not a solely female refrain.

Moving on, there was a bounce to Bobbie’s step despite the reminder of Warren. She’d asked a personal question. And gotten a personal answer. Without getting her head bitten off. Cool. Way cool. Warren would have called it snooping.

Unlike the rest of the street, the parking spaces in front of The Cooked Goose were filled, as was the small lot at the side. What on earth did a place called The Cooked Goose serve for breakfast that would attract so many customers? Probably some sort of specialty crepes.

The odor of grease assaulted her nostrils as she opened the door, and the noise level was eardrum-puncture loud. The blemished booths accommodated a primarily male population. Bleached red leather stools and yellow and gray checkerboard linoleum—which once might have been white and black— suggested a fifties motif. A young waitress with skinny legs and taped wire-rim glasses sprinted between tables, the pockets of her white apron overstuffed and the hem of her black uniform flapping in the wind tunnel created by her movement.

A woman, with yet another drooping gray bouffant much like Patsy’s, shoved an order in the roundabout sitting in the opening above the grill. Stacking plates along her arm, she headed out, the slam of stoneware echoing above the din of voices as she made her deliveries. Her eyes seemed to dart everywhere at once as she grabbed a coffee pot, sloshed the hot liquid into mugs with one hand, and slapped down a check with the other.

Bobbie edged towards the door. She’d come back another time, when things were slower, maybe
midafternoon
, between lunch and dinner. But suddenly, the bouffant lady was right in front of her.

“Park yourself, honey.” Gravel crunched in her voice. “Counter’s about the only place left, but the service is faster there. We’re kind of shorthanded today.”

“Actually...” Bobbie swallowed to cover the crack at the end of the word and almost stopped right there. But then she forced the words out. “I saw the Help Wanted sign in your window, and I’m here about the job.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Reaching in a pocket file by the register, she snatched a menu, shoved it, a pad, and a pencil into Bobbie’s hands. “Ellie, bring me an apron,” she shouted above the racket. “Don’t worry about the uniform today. Later I’ll find something in the back that’ll fit.” She nipped around for a peak at Bobbie’s denim-encased butt. “Olga was about your size.”

“You want me to start now?” Her brain froze like she’d just downed an entire ice-cream cone in one bite.

“Take those five tables in the corner.” The woman waved to the far side of the restaurant. “Write the ticket up using the item number off the menu. Make sure you get your tips off the table before Billy starts bussing. That boy’s got sticky fingers. And don’t worry about ringing stuff up, I’ll take care of it.”

With that, the bouffant lady jumped behind the register to tackle the line of men who’d appeared within the space of the five seconds it had taken the woman to bark her instructions.

Bobbie took four steps toward
her
five tables and stopped. She was an accountant, not a waitress. She’d never waited tables, not even in college for extra cash. Oh my God. The banana she’d eaten before leaving the house shot back up her throat. The fight-or-flight response drummed in her veins. Flight won. Or it would have if her limbs weren’t paralyzed.

“Hey, Mavis, can I get some more coffee?” A burly guy raised his mug.

Mavis, the woman with the gray bouffant, called back. “Dammit,
Jimbo
, can’t you see I’m busy? The new
girl’ll
help you.”

The new girl? Oh my God.
Jimbo
was looking at
her
. She’d totally blown the opportunity to flee. Her feet throbbed in her tennis shoes, her knees started to buckle, and the plastic menu fused to her sweaty palms. Where
was
the coffee? She spotted it just behind the counter.

Each step came in slow motion. She didn’t want to trip in front of all...these...men. The noise had risen to such a level that all she heard was a collective roar.

God, why was she here? She was crazy. Crazy for letting Warren look for Cookie. Crazy for quitting her job, selling her car, and moving to
podunk
Cottonmouth—which, incidentally, sounded like something you got after smoking illicit green stuff.

God, Roberta was back. Full force. And Bobbie just couldn’t let her take over.

The coffee pot was a two-ton anchor weighing her arm down, not to mention the menu, pad, and pencil. She knew she’d drop something, trip over a foot too far out in the aisle, make a fool of herself, and die of mortification. Whose idea was this anyway? She didn’t even need a job.

Roberta would have wimped out. But Bobbie would
not
be that weak woman again. Ever. She moved away from the security of the front door.

“You’re a sweet young thing.” The man called
Jimbo
beamed up at her, coffee mug now firmly on the table. Waiting. She couldn’t quite remember the whole trip from the coffee machine to his table. Amnesia. Black-out. Post-traumatic stress. Whatever. She’d made it.

“I’m forty.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that.

“Well, you don’t look a day over twenty-five. Just half a cup. My wife says too much caffeine makes me constipated, but do I look constipated to you?”

She didn’t respond, but instead hefted and carefully, oh so carefully, poured. The darn stuff had a life of its own and gushed from the spout like a geyser. It was all over the table, dripping onto the floor, spewing all over her brand-new
white
tennies
and the legs of her jeans. And would have landed smack in the crotch of
Jimbo’s
extra-large trousers, if he hadn’t sidled like a crab into the corner of his booth.

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. It came out so fast.”
Can I just die now?

She grabbed at his used napkins, dabbing ineffectually at the lake of coffee on the table.

“Hey, sweetie, don’t cry. It’s all right. It didn’t get on me, and we can have this whole mess cleaned up in a jiffy.”
Jimbo
patted her hand.

“I’m not crying.” Well, if she was, they were tears of humiliation. “But I don’t know where the washcloths are.”

“In a bin under the counter by the coffee.” He looked at the still-quavering pot in her hand. “And maybe you should put that down for now.”

“Yeah.” She smiled, her eyes watering just a tad because something noxious had gotten in them.

“Billy, get out here and clean up
Jimbo’s
table.” A gritty voice shrieked above the racket. It was the woman named Mavis. Bobbie’s face flamed. The room went silent, broken only by the slap of nylon shoes on the linoleum.

“Never worked tables before, have you?” Mavis’s voice grated in Bobbie’s ear.

“No.”

Mavis looked at
Jimbo
. “Well, at least you didn’t get his family jewels.”

“I didn’t break the coffee pot either.” Bobbie pointed to the pot on the table.

More footsteps, softer, quicker. Ellie, the skinny-legged waitress, handed her something white and starched. “Here’s your apron. Sorry it took so long.”

Still clutching the menu and her pad to her chest, Bobbie said, “I don’t think I’ll be needing that now.”

“You’ll need it to hold your pad and the menu,” Mavis snapped.

Bobbie felt as if her brain had atrophied. “But I made a mess.”

“So don’t go dropping coffee all over the customers again.”

“Sweetheart, she’s desperate. And you’re cute.” That was
Jimbo
. But Bobbie could only stare at Mavis.

“They’ve been leering at your rear assets. It’s good for business,” Mavis announced.

Bobbie’s eyebrows shot up. “My butt is good for business?”

“Yeah.” Mavis turned. “Where the hell is that little
lackwit
? Billy!”

“Having a smoke,” Ellie whispered, then disappeared.

She was being hired for her butt. That was sexist. Definitely anti-feminist. And absolutely perfect.

“Okay.” She tied the apron round her middle, stuffed the pad in the pocket, and shoved the pencil behind her ear.

“She can take my order.” That from the youngish buzz-cut at the next table.

So Bobbie started her new career. With lots of mistakes, of course. But when she brought a side of pancakes instead of toast, and when she took an order for Canadian bacon and brought back steak, no one cared. When she wrote slowly and carried plates only two at a time, men waited. Patiently. And smiled. And stared at her butt.

By the end of the morning, she’d developed a system; she had the customers point to the menu so she could get the right number. It worked. Now, she was the one who smiled and made jokes while she swished her attention-getting hips. And she was loving it.