Chapter Five
On Thursday night Chloe sat, her butt going numb and her coffee going cold, and tried not to have a panic attack.
She had picked Charlie’s Diner on Fourth Street instead of one of the popular cafés on Main for this meeting because she’d thought it would be less crowded, but she’d severely underestimated the population of Braxton, Ohio’s desire for straight black coffee and cheap pie.
Every booth was full, every stool at the counter was occupied, and there was a cluster at the front door of mostly senior citizens waiting for a table.
She’d thought she’d picked a safe time, well past lunch and before the after work crowds, but four o’clock in the afternoon was apparently right in the middle of the early-bird rush, and the seniors were not happy.
A lot of them were giving her the stink-eye, no doubt for taking up an entire booth by herself, and they weren’t being subtle about it.
The waitress wasn’t thrilled either, especially since all she’d ordered since she’d sat down was coffee. Chloe knew she’d have to order something else soon in order to keep the booth, like a slice of pie or a grilled cheese or maybe a side of beef, the way the blue hair brigade was glaring at her.
She was trying to decide between a slice of chocolate cream pie and the French dip when a shadow fell over the table. Fearing the waitress’s impatient scowl, she looked up, her apologetic smile already in place, then just stared.
Sawyer was even more beautiful in person.
“Chloe?” he said, his mouth curved in a polite smile with just a touch of flirt, his peridot eyes warm.
He was wearing dark jeans and a forest green sweater, his shoulders impossibly broad under a wool coat of dark gray.
His beard looked soft, the cheeks above it ruddy from the cold.
His dark hair was a little longer than in his photos, tousled by the wind, and the little flecks of white melting in it told her it had started snowing again.
Realizing she was staring, she cleared her throat and tried for cool. “Yes?”
“I’m Sawyer,” he said, the amusement in his voice telling her the attempt at cool had been unsuccessful. He gestured to the booth opposite her. “May I?”
“Of course. Please.” Ordering herself to chill, she folded her hands on the table and waited until he’d settled into the booth. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“No problem. I like your choice of restaurant.”
She winced. “Sorry. I didn’t realize it would be so crowded.”
His eyes crinkled as his smile deepened. “No worries,” he assured her, then glanced up at the waitress. “Hello.”
Carol, who had given Chloe nothing but scowls from the moment she’d sat down, beamed. “Hey, there, handsome. What can I getcha?”
“I’d love a cup of coffee,” he told her, cranking the wattage in his smile up a few notches. “Cream and sugar?”
“You want the fake stuff or the real deal?”
“The real deal, if you have it.”
“For you, I’ll dig it out.” She winked. “Anything else?”
“Chloe? Would you like anything?”
“I’m fine,” Chloe said, noting without surprise the return of Carol’s scowl. “Thank you.”
“We’re good for now…” Sawyer leaned forward to check the name tag pinned to Carol’s impressive bosom. “Carol. But I’m going to need a slice of pie later.”
“Then I’ll be back.” Beaming again, Carol strutted away.
“Wow.”
Sawyer lifted one dark eyebrow. “What?”
Forgetting her nerves, Chloe snorted. “You know what.”
Sawyer’s smile managed to be smug and sheepish at the same time. “A smile goes a long way.”
“I smiled at her,” Chloe grumbled. “She didn’t offer me real cream.”
“I’ll give you some of mine.”
Chloe was saved from answering by the arrival of Carol with Sawyer’s coffee in what was surely record time, and watched with amused amazement as she laid it out in front of him like a five star meal.
“Now, you let me know if you need anything else,” she told him. “And when you’re ready for that pie, just holler.”
“I’ll do that.” Sawyer smiled. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome, sugar.” With a last beaming smile—and without looking at Chloe once—Carol walked away.
Sawyer picked up the little silver pitcher of cream—artfully wrapped in a paper napkin—and poured a dollop into his cup before holding it out. “Want some?”
Chloe took it, so entertained she forgot to be jittery when her fingers brushed his. “Does this happen to you a lot?”
Sawyer took the lid off the sugar bowl and added a spoonful. “Most people are more subtle than Carol.”
“That wouldn’t be hard,” Chloe said with a snicker, and was rewarded with a flashing grin.
“Touché.” He lifted his coffee for a sip, then set his cup down again. “So. You’re a friend of Julia’s?”
Suddenly nervous again, Chloe shook her head. “I’ve never met her. But my friend Bailey is her stylist—her hair stylist—and she gave Bailey your name to give to me.”
“I see.”
“I wrote that when I filled out the form on your website,” Chloe explained, then frowned. “But I was kind of nervous, so maybe I wasn’t very clear.”
“I got the gist,” he assured her. “Thank you for your thoroughness in answering the screening questions, by the way. That was helpful.”
Chloe nodded and tried to quiet the frogs jumping in her belly. “Do you, um, have any questions for me?”
Sawyer nudged his coffee aside. “I’d like to talk about what you’re looking for, if you’re comfortable with that.”
Comfortable? Nothing about this was comfortable. But she’d paid two hundred and fifty dollars to have this meet and greet—well, Bailey and Gwen had—and incurred the wrath of the senior citizen population to boot, so she might as well go all in. “Sure, we can do that.”
“My first question is why.”
It took her a moment to understand what he was asking. “Why the…threesome?” she mouthed.
Amusement quirked his lips, and he nodded.
Making an effort to keep her voice casual, like they were talking about learning to make Peking duck or rebuild a carburetor, she shrugged. “It’s been on my to-do list for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“Since college, so about eight years.”
His eyebrows edged up in surprise. “That is a while. Why haven’t you done anything before now?”
“I think it started out as a fantasy,” she confessed, toying with the handle of her coffee cup. “Something that sounded exciting, but that I didn’t actually want to do, you know?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“Plus, I didn’t have anyone that I was remotely interested in doing it with,” she went on, “so it wasn’t hard to keep it in fantasyland.”
He hummed in agreement. “When did that start to change?”
“A few years ago, I guess. I still didn’t have any, you know, candidates, but it started feeling less like a fantasy and more like, I don’t know, a goal.”
“And now?” he prompted.
“Now?” she repeated.
“What made you go from maybe someday to contacting me?”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat, her cheeks heating. “I guess you could say I found some candidates.”
“Ah.” Understanding dawned in his pretty eyes, along with considerable amusement. “Well, then, at the risk of costing myself a job, why aren’t you having this conversation with them?”
“It’s a long story.” Cheeks burning, she fought not to squirm. “Let’s just say they’re not available.”
“Okay.” He watched her for a moment, assessing, then nodded. “I assume, if we move forward, you’d like me to provide the third?”
“I was hoping,” she admitted. “I’m kind of out of my element, here.”
“I have colleagues I’ve collaborated with before,” he assured her. “Do you have any specific preferences regarding body type, hair color, eye color?”
She shook her head, thought wildly—and inappropriately—of flipping through a catalog. “No, not really.”
“Okay. Tell me what you want this to look like.”
Helpless, she just stared at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
His eyes, which had cooled somewhat, softened and warmed again. “I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Overwhelmed, Chloe dragged a hand though her hair. “I think I’m in over my head, here.”
“Maybe a little,” he conceded, then surprised her by reaching over the table and taking her hand. His eyes were glowing as they stared into hers. “But that’s my fault. Let’s start over.”
Chloe took a slow breath in, and on the exhale, allowed her fingers to curl around his. “Okay.”
Knox pulled to the curb across from Charlie’s Diner and shoved the truck into park, the engine idling. “You want to run in or should I?”
“I’ll do it.” Jesse unbuckled his seatbelt. “You never ask for extra ranch dressing.”
“We have ranch at home,” Knox pointed out, laying his head back on the seat and closing his eyes. It had been a bitch of a day, and all he wanted was his patty melt, onion rings, a hot shower and as much sleep as he could get before the alarm went off in the morning.
“It’s not as good as Charlie’s,” Jesse told him. “You want ketchup?”
“We have that at home, too.”
“Just checking.” Jesse’s door opened, letting in a blast of frigid air, then shut again. “Fuck.”
“You forgot your wallet again, didn’t you?” Without opening his eyes, Knox hitched his hip off the seat to reach for his.
“No, that’s not it. Look.”
“I don’t want to look,” Knox complained, eyes still firmly shut. “I’ve been looking all day. I just want to go home and eat and shower and sleep, all preferably without looking.”
“Goddammit, Knox, open your eyes,” Jesse snapped, and the panic in his husband’s voice got through.
“What’s wrong?” Knox said, his eyes opening. Jesse was staring through the windshield, pointing, and when Knox followed his finger across the street to the front window of the diner, his heart dropped to his knees.
“What the fuck,” Jesse asked, the words bitten off with razor precision, “is Chloe doing with Sawyer?”
Knox stared at the couple in the booth, holding hands and smiling at each other as though they were the only two people in the world. “I don’t know,” he managed, and with fumbling fingers, switched off the engine. “But I’m going to fucking find out.”