Chapter 10
Note to self:
A flirty Theo is a dangerous Theo.
“This place reminds me of the Sit-n-Eat.” I glanced around Love Café—a greasy spoon just outside Fort Worth—it was small, about ten tables or so. The place looked like it had seen better days with its worn linoleum flooring, chipping paint, and wobbly tables, but it was clean and smelled heavenly.
“What do you think that’s about?” I nodded my head at the photos of smiling couples wallpapering the back wall, most of them dressed in wedding garb.
Theo glanced at it and tapped his menu. “Says here the owner, Jolette Love, can look at a couple and tell them if they’re meant to be together. Apparently, she has an accuracy rate of ninety-five percent.”
“That’s a weird superpower. I’d rather be invisible.”
“I think mind reading would be the best.” He took off his baseball hat, combed his hair back with his fingers and replaced the hat, this time backwards.
Because, you see, he was trying to kill me. Theo in a regular hat was handsome. Theo in a backwards hat was hot. Super-hot. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t understand it. It just was. In fact, it was his actual superpower. That one move, and he went from Clark Kent to Superman, and woo boy, did I need rescuing in the worst way.
I must have some weird backwards-hat kink. That was the only explanation.
Our server, a dark-haired woman who looked about twenty-five months pregnant, stopped by our table for our orders. We handed her our menus, and she promised our food would be out quickly.
“Who gets orange juice with a burger?” I asked.
Theo smirked. “Who asks for olives on their burger?”
I flipped my hair over my shoulder. “Someone with a sophisticated palate.”
“Sure,” he said, drawing the word out. “Is this the same person who puts ranch dressing on their pizza?”
“Excuse me? That is the only way pizza can be properly enjoyed, Mr. I Don’t Like My Food Touching on My Plate.”
“That is not the burn you think it is. There is nothing wrong with being a fastidious eater.”
“Fastidious.” I put a hand to my chest in mock astonishment. “Such a big writer word.”
“Very big. Huge. Lots more where that came from.” He gave me an exaggerated eyebrow waggle.
This felt good and right and friendly. Silly, innocent ribbing. For maybe the first time that day, my shoulders relaxed.
I laughed. “What does that even mean?”
“Just wanted to make you laugh.” He grinned, flashing straight white teeth—I remembered when he’d had the braces to make them that way. “I like when you laugh.”
My heart flopped over. Sort of like a puppy begging for belly rubs. This was the second time today one of his comments had caught me off guard.
His phone vibrated on the table, and he glanced down to see who it was. His smile morphed into a small frown. The phone stopped and started right back up again a few seconds later. He flipped it over and tried to ignore it.
I glanced from him to the phone. “You can take that if you need to.”
“You sure?”
“Go on.”
“I’ll be quick.” He slid out of the booth and wandered toward the door, phone to his ear. I watched him through the window as he paced back and forth in front of the restaurant, the hitch in his step so slight most people wouldn’t notice it.
That hitch was from the ankle-busting injury he sustained when he was hit by a car his senior year of high school. While it had ruined his chance at a baseball scholarship, that little rocking step of his had become his thing.
Ruth, Frankie’s girlfriend, said his walk was sexy. But then Ruth called everything sexy. At our last family dinner, she called the Brussels sprouts sexy.
“Oh, he’s a handsome one,” a voice said behind me. A woman around my mother’s age, her gray hair cut in a neat shoulder-length bob, smiled when I turned around. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Couldn’t help myself.”
“It’s okay.”
Her eyes lit up. “Are you here to see Jolette?”
“No, passing through on a road trip.”
“You must see her. She’s never wrong.”
I squirmed in my seat. “We’re not, um, together.”
“She was right for me. Twice.”
“Twice?”
“The first time she told me we weren’t a good match, but I ignored her. We got divorced after three years. But the second time,” she sighed dreamily, “she said we made a great couple and I listened. In fact, if you look on the wall, you’ll find a photo from our wedding.”
“So, she was right.”
“Oh, yes. We were married twenty-seven years before he passed away.” Her smile turned sad. “I miss him every day. Sometimes when I feel especially sad, I come have lunch here. It’s a bit of a drive but it makes me feel like he’s close. Silly, aren’t I?”
“Not silly at all.”
She peered out the window, a wistful smile on her face. “Thank you for listening to a sad, old woman ramble. I’ll let you get back to your young man.”
“He’s not my?—”
But she was already sliding out of her booth and walking away. Theo held the door for her with a smile, the phone still pressed to his ear, and wandered back to the table.
“August twentieth at ten,” he said. “Yes, I have the address.” Pause. “I look forward to meeting with you then. Thank you for the opportunity.”
After sliding into his seat, he pressed end and tapped away on his phone like I wasn’t sitting right in front of him.
“What’s happening on August twentieth?”
“A thing I have to go to.” He didn’t look up.
“And this thing is…?”
He set his phone down and scratched the back of his neck. “It’s for an article I’m working on.”
“What’s the article about?”
“Sports.”
“What sport?”
His eyes crinkled in the corners in amusement. “All of them.”
“A sports article about all the sports written by a sportswriter. Wow. You are the worst liar.”
He smirked. “Am I, though?”
“Theo Goodnight, do you have a secret?”
“Maybe.”
I leaned forward, propped up on my elbows. “Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“What if the secret is about you?”
Somehow despite an entire table between us, it felt like he was inches away. His eyes sparkled with sly humor. I couldn’t honestly say I’d seen this side of Theo, at least not directed toward me. It was potent stuff, powerful, and kind of…sneaky.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you flirting with me, so I’ll stop asking about this article?”
He grinned and opened his mouth to speak, but our burgers arrived just then.
“Here you go.” An older, round woman grinned at us; her hair was dyed an unnatural shade of red that matched her lipstick. Based on the height of her hair, she subscribed to the “bigger the hair, closer to God” theory. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
“I think we’re good.” I picked up a fry and stuffed it in my mouth.
“Thanks,” Theo said.
The woman did not move. In fact, I’d say she took a step closer and waited. Every now and then she’d make a little humming noise in the back of her throat.
“Did you need something?” I asked.
“Oh, no.” She pulled a chair over from a neighboring table and sat. “Y’all keep eating. I’m trying to get a read on you two.”
“A read?” Theo asked, his burger halfway to his mouth.
She nodded, her hair moving as one helmet-like unit. “Of course. It’s what I do. I’m Jolette.”
“The lady with the superpower?” I asked.
She barked out a laugh. “I’ve never called it a superpower, but I do have a gift. I see you looking at me like I’m one donut short of a dozen but I’m not ever wrong.”
Theo took a swig of his orange juice. “The menu said you had an accuracy rate of ninety-five percent.”
“Pssht.” She waved a hand, fingertips painted the same red as her hair. “I can’t go claiming a hundred percent, my lawyer said. Might get me in trouble.” She leaned in as though to tell us a secret. “My lawyer’s my cousin, Big Mike. I pay him in pancakes. Works out real well for us.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. Although I wasn’t sure if that was exactly true. This woman was weird.
Jolette cracked her knuckles. “Now the two of you are awful cute together and I think?—”
Choking on a bite of my hamburger, I held up my hand.
“I think she’s trying to say we aren’t a couple,” Theo said, his voice dry.
“Is that so?” Jolette inspected us with shrewd brown eyes.
After chugging half my water, I waved a hand toward Theo. “What he said.”
She didn’t speak. I looked at Theo and shrugged. His eyes crinkled in the corners like he found this amusing. I raised my eyebrows; he winked. My mouth dropped open.
“Nope. You two are meant to be.” She stood abruptly. The chair scraped the floor as she put it away. “Make sure you send me a photo when you get hitched.”
Then she was gone.
“You winked,” I accused. “You don’t wink. You’re the least winky person I know.”
He frowned. “I wink.”
“Winking is very flirty behavior.” I stabbed a finger at him. “You are not flirty and yet, you’ve been flirty twice this meal alone. Do you have a brain tumor I don’t know about?”
He was especially not flirty with me. He couldn’t do things like that. It would go very badly for my heart.
His eyes widened before narrowing into some unreadable expression. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Alicia, trust me. I know how to flirt.”
I swallowed, my face growing warm. “But you don’t flirt with me. That’s not how our relationship works.”
His expression shifted into a scowl. “Enlighten me. How does our relationship work?”
“Oh, don’t act all offended. You know we’re friends, not the flirty kind of friends”—I might not want it to be true but over the years, Theo had made it apparent that he felt it—“you’re basically another one of my brothers.”
His scowl turned into a fierce frown. Again, something he’d never leveled at me before. What was happening?
“I’m going to the bathroom.” Theo tossed his napkin on the table and slid out of the bench. Instead of storming off, he turned away and hesitated. His shoulders rose and fell with a slow breath. When he turned around, he’d arranged his face into something more friendly.
Bracing a hand on the table, he leaned close. “I’m beginning to think you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
My breath caught at the low, gravelly sound of his voice.
He shifted closer, his mouth stopping an inch from my ear. His warm breath on my skin sent a zing of awareness through me. “And I am definitely not your brother.”
Then he walked away. I willed myself not to turn around and watch him. I fanned my face with my hand, wondering at this strange turn of events. Maybe the Theo I thought I knew was that teenage boy I made a fool of myself over.
But based on my racing heart, I think I might like this Theo even more.
Damn it.