28. Sneak Peak #2
Gray at his temples. The clean edge of his jaw. Sun-browned skin at his throat above the collar. Hands too big around a diner mug, one of them resting easy on the table while the other stays lower, nearer his side, like habit has taught it where to be.
I drag my gaze back to my order pad before my own brain can report me. My anger and awareness keep colliding, and honestly, I’d like my body to pick a side.
Behind me, Gina appears with a fresh mug before I can even turn toward the coffee station.
“Mr. Calder,” she says, setting it down with both hands like she’s presenting a religious offering. “If there's anything special I can get for you, just let me know.”
Mr. Calder.
My molars grind.
At the counter, Earl gives Trey another nod. A guy in a work jacket at stool three half-rises to offer him the sports page.
I hate that even here, where the coffee is burnt half the time and the ketchup bottles are always sticky, he still has gravity.
Trey barely glances at Gina. “Thanks.”
Then his eyes come back to me.
Not Gina. Not Earl. Me.
“Ellie.”
Just my name. Quietly and carefully, like he knows I flinch at it coming from him and yet he says it anyway.
My fingers tighten around the pad. “Yes?”
A pause …it’s brief, but loaded.
His gaze drops to my damp wrist, then lifts to the chaos behind me, where lunch rush is closing in from every direction.
“You should slow down before you break your neck.”
The nerve of him.
I smile, and there is not one warm thing in it.
“That would be tragic,” I say. “Who would bring you your coffee?” Then I pivot on my heel and walk away before he can answer.
And because I can … I make him wait a full thirty seconds for the coffee. Not enough to be noticed by anyone but me. Just enough to satisfy the ugly, childish part of me.
Then I pour it, set the mug down in front of him, and step back before I can say something that gets me fired.
He reaches for the cup, fingers curling around the handle.
“You still overfill the coffee,” he says, glancing at the dark surface near the rim.
I blink. “Excuse me?”
His gaze lifts to mine. “You used to do that at the ranch office. Every mug. Right to the top.”
The memory hits before I can stop it. Me at twenty, in cutoff shorts and old boots, carrying a chipped mug into the office because June had sent me with it. Him at the desk, not looking up until I set it down. Careful, Ellie, he’d said then, dry as dust. You trying to scald me or impress me?
I had rolled my eyes so hard it hurt and then spent the rest of that day irritated.
I yank myself back to the present.
“That was a long time ago.”
His thumb shifts once against the mug handle. “It was.”
There’s something in the way he says it ... nothing obvious, just a little too much weight for two ordinary words.
I drop the check on the table a little earlier than necessary. “Here. In case your long morning gets longer.”
One of his brows lifts. “Trying to get rid of me?”
“Yes.”
That nearly gets me another smile.
Nearly.
He studies me again with that grave, unreadable face of his, and for one stretched second the noise of the diner seems to shift around us.
Addie laughing at the counter. Rita is calling for hash browns.
Life going on, fast and ordinary, while something meaner and quieter pulls tight between me and the man in booth seven.
“You look like you’re doing all right,” he says.
Not good. Not happy. Just all right.
The words scrape.
I cross my arms before I can stop myself. “What exactly did you expect?”
His eyes narrow a fraction. Not in anger, but perhaps in thought, yet he had no response.
A small stillness comes over him, so slight no one else in the diner would catch it. But I do. Because I am apparently cursed with knowing exactly how Trey Calder goes quiet when something gets under his skin.
“Ellie,” he says again, lower this time.
A warning? A plea? I don’t know, and I resent him for making me wonder.
“Table three needs ranch,” Addie calls, sliding past me with a stack of pie plates. Her eyes flick between us once, quick and sharp. “And booth two says their fries are cold.”
“Story of my life.” I grab the check back off his table before I can think better of it. “Anything else?”
He looks at me for one long beat.
“No thanks.”
I nod once and turn away.
By the time I circle back ten minutes later, he’s finished half the coffee and all the chicken-fried steak like a man who hadn’t had time for breakfast at all. His plate is clean except for a slick of pepper gravy and two abandoned green beans.
I set the refilled mug down and reach for the cash that he set on the table.
“I’ll take that up front,” he says.
“Kind of the point, but I'll do it ... ”
I pick up the cash.
The total is $18.47.
The cash on the table is a fifty-dollar bill.
I take it up to the register and for one second I just stare at it.
I look up quickly. Trey is already on his feet, hat in hand now, broad shoulders filling the narrow space beside the booth. He should look awkward in a diner aisle. He does not.
“You forgot your change,” I say.
His gaze drops to the folder, then lifts to me again.
“Did I?”
The look he gives me is brief and unreadable, but it still throws my pulse off.
“You did.” My voice comes out sharper than I intend. “By about thirty dollars.”
Gina, of course, is pretending not to listen from three feet away.
Trey slides his hat back on with one easy motion. “Keep it.”
Every nerve in my body lights up wrong.
I know what thirty dollars is. The difference between canned soup and actual groceries for three days.
And that is exactly why it feels like a slap.
My fingers tighten around the folder. “I’m not a charity case.”
His expression changes then … just enough to roughen at the edges.
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
The question slips out before I can stop it.
For a second, the whole diner seems to hold its breath with me.
Then Trey’s gaze drops to the folder in my hand, to the white-knuckled grip I have on it, and back to my face.
“No,” he says quietly. “I don’t think I know much about you anymore.”
That should not hit as hard as it does.
Before I can answer, before I can decide whether I want to throw the money at him or set the whole stupid tip on fire, he steps back toward the door.
At the threshold, he glances over one shoulder.
And winks.
Just once. Quick. Infuriating. Like he didn’t just walk into my shift and knock every fragile thing in me half a step sideways.
Then he’s gone, letting in a blade of cool air and the jangle of the bell.
I stand there with the thirty-dollar tip in my hand and fury crawling up my throat.
Pride. Suspicion. Anger.
And, buried ugly underneath all of it, the humiliating little pulse of awareness that says he came in for me.
“Ellie?” Gina says too casually from the register. “You okay?”
I tear my eyes off the door.
No.
Not even a little.
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