After I checked on my other tables, getting refills for one couple and taking another party’s dessert orders, I returned to the guys’ table.
“Can I get you anything else?” I asked before thinking it through.
“Yeah,” the blond guy said. “Your number would be great, especially if you’re free to go out with me tonight.”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “Well, both of those requests are never gonna happen. I don’t have a cell phone and I’m workin’ tonight.”
His grin spread. “I guess I know where I’ll be tonight.”
“So the check, then?” I asked.
His friend laughed. “Yeah. The check.”
I slipped my order pad out of my apron pocket and put the ticket on the table. “We prefer cash. The internet around here is a little flaky. Makes it harder to run cards.”
The blond guy snatched the ticket off the table. As he reached for his wallet, I turned away doing a quick scan of my tables, and saw Marco Roland standing a couple of tables away.
He had a cocky grin, like always, and was wearing his sheriff’s deputy uniform.
I shook my head. Marco was too good-looking for his own good, and he knew it and flaunted it. Half the women in Drum and the surrounding area had fallen for his charm, but he wasn’t a use ’em and lose ’em type of guy. He always made it very clear from the get-go that he wasn’t looking for anything more serious than a couple of dates, although dates was a generous term. Even if there were places to go on dates in Drum, I highly doubted Marco would have utilized them. Occasionally he brought women to Max’s in the evening, but I suspected most of the action transpired at his place. He had to be running out of women, though, because his “dates” had become less frequent over the last couple of months.
A playful smile lit up his eyes as I approached him, and he cast a glance toward the table behind me. “You flirtin’ for tips now?”
“Who said I was flirting?”
He leaned closer, a surprised expression on his face. “Don’t tell me you’re seriously considerin’ goin’ out with that bozo.”
Was I? I shrugged. “I don’t know, Marco. It’s been a long dry spell.”
Sympathy filled his eyes, and I knew we were both thinking about the man who had created that dry spell, Wyatt Drummond.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m working doubles every damn day, so the only date I’d be goin’ on would be the horizontal kind, and I’d be too damn tired to do anything but sleep.”
He laughed. “And if you fell asleep, it’s because he’s not doin’ it right.”
Rolling my eyes, I chuckled. “What are you having today? And I take it the order’s to go since you’re standin’ here.”
“I’ll take the special of the day, whatever it is. Surprise me. And I’ll be eatin’ at the bar, so just bring it over there.”
“You could have ordered at the bar, you know.”
“I know,” he said, his mischievous grin returning. “But then I’d run the risk of Lula takin’ my order and I wanted it done right.”
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you have about a 33.3 percent chance of Sweetie Pie screwin’ it up.”
“She’s not any better yet?” he asked, casting a glance over my shoulder toward the back.
“Nope,” I said with a sigh. “Apparently it’s hard to find good help these days.”
The blond man and his friend brushed past us on their way to the door, and the bearded guy tipped an imaginary hat, wearing an insulting smirk. “Deputy.”
The blond guy laughed.
“Y’all be safe out there,” Marco called after them good-naturedly, but as soon as they were out the door, he scowled.
Whatever fleeting interest I’d had in the asshole walked right out the door with him.
Marco wandered over to the bar where Max, my boss and Marco’s longtime friend, was standing at the counter, watching us.
Scooping up the ticket and cash off the flirty guy’s table, I headed to the back counter to place Marco’s order—the special was meatloaf and mashed potatoes. After I hung Marco’s ticket, I counted the bills. He’d left me a thirty percent tip along with his name—Blake—and a message: I’ll be back to see you later, beautiful.
I made a face. If the way he and his asshole friend had treated Marco hadn’t turned me off, the cheesy message would have done the trick. The rotten cherry on top was his name. It was too close to my real last name—Blakely—and I wanted as much distance from my previous life as possible.
“Finally gettin’ yourself a new boyfriend, Carly?” Lula asked as she walked over with a ticket, grinning from ear to ear. She was stupid-happy in love with Bingham, and she thought everyone else should be in love too. Especially me. She felt responsible for my breakup with Wyatt, no matter how many times I insisted she wasn’t.
“God, no,” I said with a scowl.
She waggled her eyebrows. “He’s cute.”
“He’s an asshole.”
She laughed. “You’ve gotta find someone, Carly. And you keep sayin’ there’s nothing goin’ on with Marco…”
“There’s not,” I said insistently. “We’re just friends. Best friends.”
“You can’t be friends with a guy. That’s not the way things work.”
“Well, it works that way for us.” And since I’d already had this conversation six or seven times in as many days, I left it at that. I poured a glass of water, dropped in a slice of lemon and another of lime, and took it over to Marco.
He and Max were making small talk, discussing the Braves game and their chance of making it to the World Series this year. As I approached, Max shot me a grin. “I saw that man tryin’ to pick you up.”
“Never gonna happen,” I said. “And don’t ask why.”
Max lifted his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t plannin’ to.”
“Have you got any more interviews lined up for those waitressing positions?” I asked. “Because I’d really
