6. Adam
CHAPTER 6
ADAM
We’re early. I try not to look too anxious as I stretch at the bottom of Markus’s stairs, but I’ve been here for several minutes. My hamstrings are loose enough.
Should I go up and ring the bell? Are they waiting inside for us? We didn’t discuss that when we made this date for a run and breakfast. Though, calling it a “date” is being generous. It’s a jog. Nothing more.
Never mind the way Markus’s eyes shine when he smiles at me, or the way his gaze strays over my body when he thinks I’m not looking. News Flash: when it comes to him, I’m always looking.
But Markus is new to town. He’s meeting a lot of new people. I’m just one, part of the crowd. I shouldn’t read too much into anything he says or does until he’s a bit more settled in Krause.
My body snaps to attention when a creak from above sounds, the old wooden door at the top of the stairs swinging open. And there stands Markus, smiling down at me. The happy gleam in his eyes looks a lot like the gleam in Rufus’s eyes when he spots Drusilla. The dogs bark excitedly, their tails wagging so hard their whole bodies wiggle. Markus and I just smile a little wider at each other.
This time, when we jog, I slow my pace. It was late into our run yesterday when I realized I’d been going too fast, and Markus was struggling to keep up. Won’t make that mistake again. I wouldn’t want to make our runs unpleasant for him.
Switching the route a bit, too, I turn the exercise into a newcomer’s tour of the town. Instead of heading toward the river and the high school like before, we make our way uphill and toward the highway. I point at the sign for Angie’s Angels, with the cute little painting of a dog and a cat watching a sunset together, arm in arm. “That’s my mom’s place, where she runs her animal rescue, foster, and adoption programs. Mostly, she works with dogs and cats, but she’s fostered a few rabbits, too, and a chicken once.” The animal wasn’t a chicken so much as it was a rooster with no sense of time and a bad attitude. My sisters named him Adam because they thought they were hilarious. I hated that damn bird. It’s a story I’d rather not get into with Markus. Moving on… “Figured, you know, since you’re the town vet, that’d be good info to have.”
“Definitely.” Markus nods, and sounds a lot less winded than he did yesterday. “How many animals can she house safely? And what’s her intake process?” At my confused frown, he clarifies, “I just mean, where do the animals come from?”
“Ah, well, she has room for twenty-five animals, but she’s taken in up to forty in emergency situations. Most of the animals are brought in by the sheriff. If they’re called out for cruelty or if something’s happened to an owner.”
“Damn, forty animals. That’s a big operation for one woman to manage alone.”
I laugh at the thought of my mom ever doing anything alone . “She ropes us kids in for a lot of it, and there’s a network of foster volunteers she works with.”
“That’s great. Really, truly wonderful.”
Clearly, Markus and Mom could talk for hours about this, but I’m not ready to bring a boy home with me just yet, so we keep jogging until we’re cutting through the packed parking lot of the Pump & Sip.
With my tour guide cap back on, I tell him: “This is a gas station that sells everything from bait and tackle to guns and ammo, plus they make exceptionally delicious kolaches. You haven’t officially lived in Krause until you’ve experienced one of their jalape?o and sausage klobasneks.”
“Noted,” Markus says with a smile so wide his teeth glint in the rays of the morning sun. “But this morning we’re checking out Lavern’s place, right?”
“Right!” I beam back at him.
His enthusiasm about this breakfast of ours is contagious. Enough with the town tour—I’m ready to sit down for a meal with this man, so we head to Lavern’s Diner a couple blocks away. Lavern’s sister, Agnes, greets us at the door, though she greets the dogs more than us, showering them with affection before she leads us to a table by the window with a pair of massive menus.
Before we’ve had time to peruse them, she’s back with a bowl of water for the dogs. Drusilla gulps the water too quickly and develops a case of hiccups, which thoroughly confuses Rufus. He tries to help alleviate the problem by licking her snoot. It’s adorable, and I can’t stop laughing at how cute the two of them are together.
I glance over at Markus to see if he’s watching them, too, but instead I catch him staring at me. Quickly, he lifts his menu, studiously analyzing every line, like I didn’t just catch his ogle. It gives me something new to grin about.
Mom’s been bringing my sisters and me to this diner at least once a month since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, so I don’t need to consult the menu to know what I want. But I can pretend. Using it to hide my smile, I watch Markus’s bright blue eyes scan all the available items.
Agnes returns with a pair of waters for us humans, then pulls a pen out of her hair and clicks it into action on her pad of paper, posing, one hip angled as she waits for us to order.
Agnes and Lavern are interesting women. By all standard metrics, they are “old.” But you’d never guess that by watching them. Both women move fast, work hard, and lift more than they probably should. I was once called out here because local rancher Clayton Wilson was choking on a chicken bone. Before we could even step through the door, we watched through the picture window as Agnes administered the Heimlich maneuver so effectively, it not only dislodged the food from his airway, it pulled him right off his feet, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him. Considering the woman looks like she’s hardly half that, it was a sight to behold.
Now, she just looks impatient, so I quickly order my usual: scrambled eggs, sausage, half stack of pancakes, cottage cheese, and fruit. Markus grins wide as he listens to me order, then he asks for a Denver omelet and a slice of cherry pie.
Once Agnes has left, Markus and I glance down at the dogs, who are lying so close that their noses and paws touch. Markus chuckles at the sight, and the sound is so comforting, like hot chocolate…sipped in front of a fireplace…while cuddled under a blanket on a cold winter night. I shiver at the warm thoughts and try to tamp down the desperate sense of need the imagery evokes inside me.
Fortunately, Markus distracts me from that train of thought, still talking about the dogs. “How old is Drusilla?”
I shrug. “Roughly six months. Mom took her in when she was rescued from an overcrowded puppy mill just south of here about six weeks ago, but you’d never guess from her temperament. Very chill dog, at ease around other animals and children too. I’m shocked she hasn’t been adopted yet.”
“She’s not your dog?”
“Oh. No. I don’t have any pets. But I help Mom out with the dogs from the shelter when I can.”
“I’ve been meaning to mention… I met your mom when she brought in Elsa a couple days ago.”
I smile, remembering my conversation with Mom about her gaydar. “Yes, she was very impressed by you.”
“Well…that’s…good to hear.” Why is he being bashful? And why is his bashfulness so cute? “Your mom seems like a very nice person.”
Of course she was nice to him. She sees son-in-law potential in Markus. She did this with my sister Alice’s husband. Theirs was a mom-falls-first romance if I ever saw one. “Angie Newman is a force of nature, but she’s a force for good.”
Markus laughs, and he looks like he has follow-up questions, but Agnes picks that moment to come out of the kitchen, her arms laden with plates, aiming for our table. We wait as she sets everything down. When she asks, we assure her we’re good. She sets down a plate of chicken chunks, rice, and a little pumpkin puree for the dogs then leaves us all to our meals.
Markus’s omelet is about as big as my forearm and packed full of diced peppers, cheese, and ham, and his slice of pie is a quarter of a pie tin. My plate, too, is heaped with a little extra of everything I ordered. Agnes is always keen to keep us firefighters well-fed. “You need the calories,” she insists when we tell her it’s too much.
I watch Markus take his first bite. Surprisingly, it’s not the omelet but the pie he goes for first, and I delight in the look of pleasure on his face. The accompanying sound he makes in the back of his throat sends a shiver through me.
Turning my attention to my own food, I can’t help myself when I make similar sounds of pleasure, finding the food especially delicious today. Reaching for my water, I glance up and notice that Markus is watching me too now.
I grin and purse my lips around my straw, sucking the icy water deep and swallowing hard. Markus’s cheeks redden, and he glances away, back to his food, stuffing a big bite in his mouth. Very interesting. I’m not sure which is more fascinating: his shyness or my body’s feral reaction to his shyness.
After a moment more of the weighty silence between us, I ask, “What brought you to Krause?”
I’ve been wondering for a while. This isn’t the sort of town that people move to. Mom calls it a “Mellencamp town.” Most of us were born in this small town, we’ve lived here all our lives, and we’ll probably die here too. Apparently, Krause has a newcomers club. Chloe joined it when she moved back and told me that some of the “newcomers” had lived here for over thirty years.
Markus swallows the food he’s been chewing. “I went to vet school at A&M and completed a residency in College Station, but after that I was keen to open a practice of my own. Saw an ad for the clinic for rent here in Krause, and after doing some research realized there’s no other clinic within a twenty-mile radius, so I was keen to serve this community. Plus, the rent is cheap, and the clinic came with a free apartment, so…” He shrugs and stuffs another bite of pie in his mouth.
I laugh, loving the cheeky grin he gives me. “Have you had a lot of business?”
Markus nods. “Gobs. Krause loves its animals.”
“That it does.” I scratch behind Drusilla’s floppy ears. “Where’s your family?”
Markus blanches, his face draining of color, and I wonder if something terrible has happened to them. Cancer? A housefire? Swarm of killer bees? But when he opens his mouth to answer, there’s none of the doom and gloom I was anticipating. “They’re in Mineral Wells.”
“Is that the town with that massive old hotel at the center?”
He chuckles. “Yep. The Baker Hotel.”
I notice he doesn’t leave much room for a conversation about his family in that response. So I ask more about him. “Did you grow up there?”
“Yeah.” That one little word seems to convey so much with the dark bitterness of its tone, and it’s something I’d like to explore. But he quickly changes the subject back to me. “Have you always lived in Krause?”
“Yep, my mom’s family has been in Krause for three generations.”
“And your dad?”
My throat closes, and the bite I was about to swallow gets stuck. Markus looks worried as I cough and sip water until I can breathe again. My reaction to his innocuous question is embarrassing, but I’ve lived in this town my whole life, and everyone here knows the story of my dad. I’m not accustomed to the topic coming up over breakfast.
Finally, when I can speak, I say, “He’s gone.”
As far as answers go, it’s as vague as can be, and, Jesus, I make it sound like he’s dead.
“He left,” I clarify, though, it’s not much clarity at all. But I’m not ready to tell the whole story just yet. And it’s clear Markus isn’t ready to share his family stories yet either, so we turn our attention to the dogs. I remark, “I think they’re dating.”
Markus laughs again, and any residual dark emotions are burned away with the lightness of the day and the dogs curled up together at our feet.
Swallowing his final bite of pie, Markus pushes the dessert plate aside and brings his other plate closer to dig into his omelet. With his first bite, he makes those sexy groans of appreciation again, and the sound sets my imagination loose. I can picture it so clearly, down on my knees before him, my palms squeezing the globes of his ass while his fingers twist in the curls of my hair. Me, sucking him deep, while he groans and moans as he comes against the back of my throat.
My imagination has me so sex drunk I almost miss it when Markus finishes his food. Pushing this plate aside, too, he reaches for the check Agnes placed upside down on the table between us. I manage to scoop it up first.
“Let me split it with you,” Markus insists.
“Nonsense. This is your welcome-to-town breakfast.”
I dig into my pocket for my wallet and take the opportunity to adjust the erection my thoughts have brought to life. When I’m suitable for standing, I head to the counter with Markus and the dogs following.
Lavern rings us up, asking how we liked everything. We rave about the food, and the dogs give her their thanks with a couple gentle licks and big grins.
When we’ve paid, I walk out to the sidewalk, stuffing my wallet back into my sweats. Markus follows, and we stretch for a few moments before we walk back toward his clinic.
“You really didn’t need to buy my breakfast,” he insists again.
I’ve always found it charming when men try to wrestle me for the check after drinks or a night out, but with Markus, I find it downright delightful. Like, maybe he’ll literally wrestle me for the right to pay our way.
“You can pay next time.” The moment I say the words— next time —I wonder if it’s a mistake. Am I moving too fast, just assuming we’ll eat together again? Pretty bold assumption.
Markus either doesn’t sense the awkward shift in conversation, or he doesn’t care. He shrugs and says, “Sure thing.”
Too soon we’ve arrived at his clinic and the steps that lead up to his apartment. This time, he’s the one who suggests we meet again. “Same time tomorrow?”
I wince. God, I wish I could. “Can’t. I’m on shift this time tomorrow. We work a twenty-four/forty-eight schedule. My shift starts in a few hours, noon to noon. But I can meet you here on Thursday morning.”
“Great. It’s a date,” he says cheerily.
I blink at him. A date ?
Quickly, he starts to backpedal. “I just mean… We’ll meet again on that date. On Thursday.”
Markus’s awkwardness and vulnerability are incredibly charming. But he seems uncomfortable, glancing down at his dog like he’s desperate to be rescued from his rambling mouth.
Well, hey, I’m a rescuer. It’s what I do. So I come to the rescue when I say with a smile, “Sounds perfect. I’ll see you then…” For our date .