paying.”
“Why? It’s not a date.”
I gritted my teeth. “Fine.”
When we got inside, the elderly waitress lit up at the sight of Josh. “There’s my boy,” she crowed in a voice that sounded as if she’d smoked too many cigarettes. “How are you, Josh darlin’?”
He gave the small, stout woman a bear hug. “I’m pining away with love for you, Carol.”
She gave a raspy chuckle and swatted his bottom. “You want your usual?”
“You know I do.” He glanced over at me. “I brought a friend. She’ll probably want a menu.”
The waitress glanced over at me, her nest of overly bleached curls tilting as she studied me, then she squeezed him in a half hug. “You go pick a table and sit anywhere. I’ll get your food started.”
“You’re an angel,” he said with a grin.
I rolled my eyes and followed him to a rounded booth in the far corner of the nearly empty restaurant. When I slid in on one side, Josh slid in right next to me. I immediately scooted all the way around to the far end, putting some distance between us.
That seemed to amuse him, which only made me more irritated.
“I see why you wanted to come here. You get free food every night just because you flirt with the old ladies?”
He grinned. “Not every night, and I don’t flirt. They just love me.”
As if to prove this point, Carol showed up with two glasses of water and a coffee for Josh. She set it down in front of him, tugged his ballcap off his head in a proprietary move that surprised me, then smoothed his hair like a mother. “No hats inside, young man.”
Josh gave her a rueful smile. “Sorry.”
He looked even more boyish with his hair sticking up wildly. If it hadn’t been for the scruff on his face, he would have looked far too young.
“This one’s too charming for his own good,” Carol said affectionately, chucking Josh’s unshaved chin as if she’d been a doting mother—or grandmother.
“He only thinks he’s charming,” I pointed out. “He just expects everyone else to think it, too.”
She chuckled again, that horrible smoker’s rasp. “I like this one, Josh.”
My face colored, which made Josh grin.
“You want the same thing he’s having, honey?” she asked me.
Anything to get her away from the two of us. “Sure. Thank you.”
She put a coffee mug down in front of me and filled it, then left with another smile at Josh.
“So that’s your schtick?” I said irritably. “To be a charming freeloader?”
“First of all,” he said, lifting the coffee cup to his lips, “I pay for everything. Carol doesn’t make enough to buy me dinner on a regular basis.” He sipped it and then grimaced. “Her coffee is shit, though.”
But I noticed he still drank it. Maybe telling her would hurt her feelings.
“And second?” I prompted, opening a few sugar packets and dumping them into my cup.
“Carol works four nights a week. Her husband died three years ago and she lives in a small apartment on the bad side of town. It scares her to take the bus, so she tries to get a ride with friends. I stop in to check on her and give her a ride when she needs it.”
That was . . . unexpectedly nice of him. “So she’s a shifter, too?”
“No,” he said. “Just a lady with no one to look after her. So I do.”
I said nothing. Carol swung out of the kitchen with two massive stacks of pancakes and plopped them down in front of us, then dropped a bottle of syrup on the table. I stared at the massive stack. That was a lot of pancakes.
Josh put a hand over his heart and gave Carol a pleased look. “You make my heart melt with your delicious food.”
She chuckled again. “I’ll be back with the rest when it comes off the grill. Dig in.”
As she left, I eyed the pancake mountain, then looked over at Josh. “The . . . rest?”
He leaned in. “You ordered the same thing I get, right? Perhaps you didn’t realize that shifters eat a lot?”
I admit it hadn’t been the first thing on my mind. “So what exactly did I order?”
“Two club sandwiches, a skillet scramble, these pancakes,” he said, pointing. “And a steak.”
“A freaking steak? With all this? That’s revolting.”
“Does that mean I get to eat yours?”
“Only if you want to buy it from me,” I said, mashing my fork into the pat of butter on top of the pancake mountain. “That’s what I get for trusting a pretty face.”
“So you think I’m pretty? Marie, you flirt, you.”
“
“And more French. You know that’s sexy, right?”
“You know I just called you vile things, right?”
“That’s how you flirt.”
“I hate you.”
“More flirting.”
I ground my teeth and forced myself not to reply, since he’d practically consider it a declaration of love. Instead, I focused on swamping my pancakes with syrup, then taking a bite. Delicious. I’d be totally wound up from the sugar and coffee later, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I could sleep anyhow. I ate a few more bites in companionable silence as Josh neatly cut his pancakes into perfect triangles and ate them without a bit of syrup.
Carol stopped by with the rest of the food by the time I’d eaten three pancakes and was feeling full. Josh, meanwhile, had polished off all of his pancakes and was more than ready for the next course. While I retreated to my coffee, he dug into the sandwiches, scrambled eggs, and steak, chatting with Carol for a few minutes. He asked her how her job was going, and listened attentively when she complained about a coworker who was taking all the extra shifts. He asked about her hot water heater, which hadn’t been working properly in the last month, and volunteered to take a look at it. She turned him down with a wave of her hand. He even asked about her cat. Carol left a few minutes later, smiling.
I digested it all in silence. It was clear that Josh knew the woman well and took an interest in her life. That seemed . . . odd to me. Josh was such a love-them-and-leave-them type that I hadn’t imagined him to be the kind to chat with lonely elderly ladies.
There was another side to the incorrigible flirt. Either that, or this was all an elaborate ruse to get women to fall into his arms. Take them to a low-key diner, charm them with his relationship with an old, down-on-her-luck woman, then they’d tumble into his bed faster than the speed of light.
Even as I told myself that, it didn’t fit. What playboy was going to hang out at a diner with an old woman to talk about her cats?
“So,” I said when we were alone again. “You were going to tell me what I’m doing wrong?”
He stopped eating, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and nodded. “First, I need to know the whole thing. How many vampires have you gone out with?”
I hesitated, wondering if I should tell him everything. Well, if I couldn’t get a vampire to show up for a date, it wouldn’t matter. I had to take my chances with Josh. “I’ve gone out with three. At least, I
Josh shook his head immediately. “He’s hooked up and left for Europe. You know Ruby Sommers? Pretty little were-jaguar? Sister to Jayde?”
I didn’t, but it was clear that he knew all the “pretty little were-jaguars” in town, which made my teeth grit. “I know he’s hooked up. Anyhow, we never went out. I went out with Bert.”
He laughed. “No way. Seriously? World of Hurt Bert?”
I wasn’t going to have any teeth left if I kept grinding them. “He’s a vampire, isn’t he?”
“Only in the barest sense of the word. The man’s a loser. I can’t believe you went out with him.”
And Bert had told me that I wasn’t his type. That stung a bit more right now than it should have. “It was only one date.”
