Page 30 of Montana Heat

Clive seated us at a table, then Patti, his girlfriend, came up behind him at the bar and waved in our direction. She also owned one of the hair salons in town, but she helped Clive out when she wasn’t busy with customers of her own.

“Hey, Jensen. And a date!” She beamed at Kenzie.

Damn it, Patti.The woman widened her eyes, gave a sheepish grin at my scowl, and retreated to the kitchen.

“Sorry about that,” I said to Kenzie.

“No problem. I take it you don’t usually eat here?” She tilted her head, waiting for my answer.

I studied the menu I pretty much already knew by heart. “I don’t like to eat in restaurants. I prefer to take food home so I don’t have to make conversation.”

She looked like she was trying to hold back a smile. “I have noticed you’re not much of a conversationalist.”

“The only time I tend to eat with other people is during family night at the ranch. We all get together and catch up, rib one another, eat good food.”

I looked up to find her studying me. “That actually sounds amazing.”

“There are parts of small-town life that are pretty amazing, City. And the food here’s great, even if I normally do takeout.”

“Thank you for making an exception for me.” She bit into herbottom lip while she looked at the menu, and I had to swallow back a groan at the sight. What I wouldn’t give to be the one doing the biting…and licking and sucking.

Fuck. Now, I had another problem.

“I’m happy to be here. Thank you for making me seem more personable to the rest of the town, rather than the grumpy mechanic.”

She smiled. “We’ll make a people person out of you yet.”

I doubted that, but I decided not to argue.

We turned back to our menus until Patti came over a few minutes later to take our orders—thankfully without mentioning my normal lack of dates.

Kenzie wasn’t shy when it came to food, which I absolutely loved. She ordered a burger with everything on it, a side of fries, coleslaw, and a chocolate milkshake.

I was glad that she had a hearty appetite. Maybe she’d meant it, that she let those comments slide and not bother her when trolls made rude remarks about her looks and her weight.

Kenzie had the kind of curves a man like me wanted to hold on to and?—

I slapped my menu down, wishing I could turn off my not-quite-clean thoughts just as quickly. “I’ll have the same.”

Patti wrote down our orders. “Coming right up. Glad to have you hanging out here for a change, Jensen.”

I nodded then turned back to Kenzie, to find her watching me with one eyebrow raised. “Really, you don’t eat in here very often?”

“Nah. By the time I’m done working for the day, I’ve generally had my fill of people.”

“Don’t you work mostly with cars or wood?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, but the one or two people I talk to for a total of five minutes really does this introvertin.”

She laughed, and damned if it wasn’t the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

“Have you lived here your whole life?”

“I was actually raised in Iowa.”

“How’d you end up in Montana?”

I didn’t like to talk about myself, but after the number of times she’d had to tell her own hard story today, I could force myself to tell mine once. “Lucas and I met when we were kids. I didn’t have the best of childhoods, so I was in the foster care system for a while.”

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