The Break-Up Psychic (9 page)

“Alright, you win.” I sigh. “But if this ends badly, I’m going to have Amber make you into a voodoo doll.”

Amber grins at both of us, reaching for her measuring tape.

The diner is packed for lunch so I have to make do and squeeze in between two roughnecks at the counter. The thing about oil workers is that no matter how hard they try, they can’t ever get their hands to look truly clean. The man on my right passes me a menu. His fingernails are rimmed black from a hard morning’s work. I smile my thank you to him but he’s uninterested, turning his attention back to his half-eaten chicken fried steak.

“How
ya
’
doin
’,
darlin
’?” asks a husky voiced old woman in a waitress’ uniform.

“Hi, good, thanks,” I say, looking up and reading her name tag. It says Peg.

“What can I get for
ya
?” she asks, pencil and paper poised in worn looking hands.

“I’d like a Coke and the turkey club on whole wheat, please.”

“Coke and a turkey club, you got it.”

As Peg moves to the kitchen window to tack up my order, I glance causally at the man on my left. He’s paunchy and a little sweaty. He reminds me a bit of Daryl
Dawg
, which does nothing for my appetite. Luanne had been no help in making me feel better about the Daryl debacle or the subsequent rescue by Sam James. Honestly, she seemed rather amused at how the night had turned out. I tell myself I’ll be returning the favor the next time she gets captured by a redneck on the dance floor. But who am I kidding? She’ll love it.

Daryl’s long lost brother to my left releases a loud, full sounding belch and I swivel my seat more fully to the right, turning my back on him. Tim would never have stepped foot in a place like this. He made it a habit to only dine in establishments that had a wine menu. I always felt so self-conscious in those places, like everyone there knew I was a phony. Before I met him, I’d never eaten at a restaurant that had real linen napkins. For better or worse he opened my eyes to another world, one where everything was always neat and orderly, even the people.

I never really fit in with that world. My hair was always a little too wild, my clothes a little too off-the-rack. I wish now that Tim had been a bastard about it. I wish he’d been cruel, pointing out the ways in which I didn’t fit into his world. It would make living through the disappointment of what happened between us easier to bear. But he wasn’t awful or unkind, at least not most of the time. There was the occasional patronizing tone when I forgot which fork went with the salad and which went with entrée. The exasperated sigh when I tripped on the sidewalk in front of people. It wasn’t him being mean, exactly. It was more like he was embarrassed by me, and it made me feel ashamed and vulnerable.

I’m relieved to hear my belching neighbor to the left heave himself off his stool. Peg places my Coke in front of me and tells him to take it easy.

“Hello, sweet thing, what’re you
havin
’ today?” she asks the new patron as he claims the empty stool at the counter.

“How you
doin
’, Peg? I’m just going with the regular, I think.”

Oh hell, no. I whip my head around at the sound of his deep voice and stare directly into the amused hazel eyes of Sam James. He’s smiling like he’s just told the world’s greatest joke, and I have a feeling I might be the punch line. Sam turns and winks at Peg as I struggle to close my mouth. How is it that he never seems to be caught off guard?

“Sure thing, handsome,” Peg says, returning his wink and offering me a knowing smile. Something tells me Peg has seen Sam surprise a lady or two in her day.

“Well, isn’t this a pleasant surprise?” Sam’s wearing a navy blue work shirt with his name embroidered in red on a white oval patch over one pocket. His thick, wavy hair is pulled away from his face into a short ponytail at the back of his head. He doesn’t share the same tired look of the other working men in the diner. If anything, he looks like he just leapt off the page of a Playgirl calendar. Even with that grease smudge on his chin.

My hand reacts before my brain can stop it, tucking a chunk of hair behind my ear. “Hey, hi, hello, nice to see you,” I stammer. What am I, a Von Trapp?

“Nice to see you too.” He chuckles. “When I came in and spotted you between two roughnecks, I thought I was going to have to start another bar fight.” His smile is so playful, it makes me a feel a little silly for getting so worked up.

“Yeah, you do have a tendency to sneak up on me at the worst possible moments.”

“I’d call them…opportunities,” he says, biting down on his full bottom lip.

Embarrassed, I turn my eyes down and focus instead on his forearm. His arms are incredibly strong looking. Where Tim’s were sleek and toned from yoga and P90-X, Sam’s arms are thick and muscled. Presumably this is from lifting cars off babies and stopping out-of-control trains before they run off their tracks. His hands are big and, unlike the man to my right, they’re clean and well cared for. Looking at them now, I can’t help but remember what those hands felt like on my back, steering me away from trouble and into the safety of his company. I try to remain still, but a shiver runs through me.

“So, do you come here often?” I ask, dragging my eyes back to his face and trying to fill the silence between us.

“A few times a week, when the day allows it. You?”

“Once in a while. I just work right down the street, but you know that already…”

Sam leans forward a bit, smiling at me. “I do.”

“It’s funny,” I say, trying to break up the ever present tension between us. “We work so close to each other, but we never met before a couple of weeks ago.”

“Well, we might not have met before, but I’ve seen you around,” Sam says, flashing his dimple at me.

“You have? Where?” I ask, surprised.

“Here and there. It’s a small town, Ellie. When you see a beautiful woman walking down the street, you take notice.”

My belly jumps and I place a hand over it, not sure whether I feel nervous or excited or maybe a little of both. I can’t stop the smile or the warm blush from spreading across my face. “Thank you, that’s really nice of you.”

“I don’t know about nice. Honest would’ve been the word I chose. You’ve got this pink dress, sort of a deep-pink color.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“First time I saw you, you were wearing that dress, and I mean really wearing it. You were out in the park over off Monroe Street, talking with some guy in a fancy suit.”

I remember that day. I’d planned an afternoon picnic for Tim and me, and he’d been forty-five minutes late. I was packing up when he finally arrived, the chilled wine I brought ruined from the heat of the day. We had an epic fight right there in the middle of the park.

I look away from Sam, trying to hide the hurt I feel at the memory of that day. “It was my ex. We were fighting,” I explain, embarrassed.

“I was on my bike at the stoplight, and I noticed you.”

“Well, then, you must’ve been witness to quite a sight. I’m pretty sure I was completely disheveled and sweating through my dress by then. I was so mad at him.”

“I don’t remember any of that. I just remember you, you and that dress. I thought you were about the sexiest, liveliest woman I’d seen in a long time.” Sam’s eyes drop from my face to run lazily over my body, openly undressing me at the diner’s counter.

“I wasn’t feeling very lively or sexy that day,” I say, shifting on my stool under the heat of his gaze.

“You were, and if I’d been standing out there with you instead of your no-good ex, you would’ve been disheveled for an entirely different reason.”

I try my best to ignore his suggestiveness and focus instead on his thoughts about Tim. “How do you know my ex is no good?”

“He’s messed up what he had with you, for starters. In my book, that makes him the stupidest man alive,” he says, laying his arm down on the counter. His fingers are a hairsbreadth from my skin, teasing me. “But I’m also grateful to him, in a way. Now he’s gone, and I’m here.”

I move my arm a little closer to his fingers and lower my voice. “So you take pleasure in my pain, is that it?”

“Ellie girl, I would love the opportunity to bring pleasure to you.”

I swallow. An alarming amount of saliva has flooded my mouth and my breathing is coming out quick and shallow, making me lightheaded.

“But I know you’re not ready,” he says, his eyes following the rise and fall of my chest.

“I’m not?” My brain may be foggy but my body is clearly displeased by his reluctance to ravish me here and now, right on top of my turkey club.

“You don’t want a rebound, remember?”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, ghostly words spoken in a loud country-western bar have come back to haunt me. “Oh, right…”

“And you know, I really think it’s for the best,” he says, leaning nearer to me. Sam raises the arm resting on the counter and reaches behind me. “I wouldn’t want to rush you into anything.”

“There’s no rush,” I whisper, my eyes fluttering downward, preparing to close.

“Would you mind?” he asks, his breath brushing my lips we’re now so close.

I part my lips, eager to feel his mouth against my own. “No, I wouldn’t…”

“Thank you,” he says softly, his lips now mere inches from me. “I love the fries here.”

He loves the what? I open my half-closed eyes and watch as he leans back and away from me, a self-assured smile on his lips. The arm that had gone around the side of me draws back and I see a golden, crinkled French fry between two of his fingers. I follow the journey of the fry to his smiling mouth and I’m half tempted to lean forward and bite off the other end. Thankfully, the roughneck on my right bumps against me as he hoists his gut off the stool, and I come to my senses.

I turn away from Sam, take a deep breath and steady my out of control hormones. Two inches and it would’ve been my tongue in his mouth instead of that French fry. Damn him and his diner innuendo. I grab a couple of fries from my plate and shove them in my mouth. Maybe if I consistently stuff my face for the rest of our conversation, I’ll avoid the urge to stick my tongue down his throat.

Peg drops a cheeseburger and fries in front of Sam. I look up at her desperately, needing her intervention if I’m going to survive the lunch hour fully clothed. She must think me pretty pitiful because she turns to Sam and fixes him with a hard stare.

“Young man, I hope you’re not bothering my customer any,” she says, waving her pad of paper at him.

Sam picks up the cheeseburger from his plate and gives Peg a smile too naughty to be nice. “You know me, Peg, always happy to make new friends.”

“Uh-huh.” She turns and raises her eyebrows at me. “Be careful of this one, sweetie. He’s two parts hound-dog if his old uncle is any indication.”

I shove my turkey club into my mouth in response. I’ve known Sam James was trouble since the moment I met him, so why have my psychic alarm bells been so frustratingly silent when he’s around? He’s too good looking, too sexy, and too dangerous; those bells should’ve made me deaf by now. I sneak a look over at him and see that he’s happily eating his cheeseburger, enjoying the lustful turmoil he’s put me in.

I can’t believe he remembers me in that pink dress. It had to be eight months ago. And why is he always popping up lately? Is it some universal sign that, hard as I might try, I’ll never be able to get away from these bad boys? No, it must be a test, a test to see if I can stick to my resolution and find my H.E.A. with a nice guy. Take Brook’s cousin for example. Oh crap…

I glance again at Sam who’s doing a better job than me of pretending to ignore the tension between us. He can’t find out about my blind date. I’ve turned him down twice now. If he finds out about my date with Ellery, he’ll probably never speak to me again, and that will greatly lessen the chance of him tearing off my clothes in the future.
No, stop it!
I push my half-eaten plate of food away, dig ten bucks out of my wallet, and drop it onto the counter.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those girls that can’t finish a plate of food,” he says, turning on his stool to face me as I stand.

“No, I just have to get back to work. My boss is gearing up for the Corn Festival and she’s making us try on our new uniforms this afternoon.”

“Will you be modeling those flavored body powders you were telling me about?” he asks, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

I push my hair behind my ear and try to shut out the image of Sam James performing a taste test on me. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Then this may be the year I finally get out to the Corn Festival,” he says, showing me his dimple as his eyes take me in.

I can’t help it. I suck in my gut and stick out my chest a bit. Let Sam James think about me covered in golden, honey-flavored body powder. I may be resolved to not fall for him in real life, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be with him in his fantasies or him with me in mine. “Glad to hear it. We’re always happy to have new customers,” I say, leaving him at the counter.

“Hey, Ellie,” Sam calls as I push open the diner’s door.

I look back at him and return the smile he’s fixed on me.

“I’ll be stopping by your booth for that taste test!”