Page 27 of More Than Meets the Eye

Jack

As soon as we walked through the door, I knew it was a mistake.

Huge mistake.

Because every single person in the diner turned and stared at us.

And then they smiled.

It was like a horror movie.

“Tess! Jack!” Lorraine swooped down on us, uncharacteristically working on a Sunday. “Right this way.”

She gestured, and Tess headed for our usual table by the window. Before I could follow her, Lorraine elbowed me in the gut.

Hard.

“You didn’t think to talk to me before you told that Robin-Hood-wannabe?” she hissed.

Lorraine Packard had been the head and sometimes the only waitress at Beau’s for more than half a century. She’d also been mayor for a while but had refused to run for reelection after the flood. She was barely five feet tall in her pink orthopedic shoes, and seventy-something years old.

She’d also once made me and my friend Dave wash dishes to pay for a teen prank, and I’d been half-afraid of her ever since.

“I’m sorry! It just came out. And look what she did, after she promised to keep it a secret.”

“Serves you right!”

As we passed Emeril and Harold Peterson’s table, the twin owners of Dead End Hardware grinned at me, and one of them poked me in the leg. “Hey, Jack!”

I gritted my teeth, stopped walking, and leaned down.

“How about you hide the ring in a brand-new pink toolbox? We got some in for the ladies down at the store. She’ll go looking for a screwdriver and BAM!”

“I’d just hang around waiting until she needed a screwdriver?” I shook my head. I couldn’t engage, or I’d be here all week. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks! Please keep it to yourselves, okay?”

The other Peterson—Tess could tell them apart, but I never could—shook his head, glee mixed with sorrow on his face. “That ship has sailed, son.”

I had to dodge Mrs. Quindlen (“Bake it into a cake!”), Rick Peabody, the janitor at Dead End High, who snickered and reminded me of a particularly embarrassing memory (“Tie it to one of those racing pigs!”), and Sapphire Penn, editor of theDead End Gazette, (“Take out an ad on the front page!”) on the way to our table.

If Tess hadn’t had so much on her mind, she’d have cut her way through the “subterfuge” like a hot knife through butter. I took a moment to be grateful to Joe Bob Turner and whoever sold Eleanor the disco ball, and then I finally reached our table in time for Lorraine to glare at me and walk away.

“She says we can take the special and like it,” Tess reported, looking amused. “You’re very popular today.”

“We always take the special and like it,” I said. “What is the special? And I’m not popular.”

I had a sudden, evil epiphany about how to distract her. “Everybody just wants to know the story about you and the cake at Eleanor’s wedding.”

I almost felt guilty when I saw the look on Tess’s face.

Almost.

All’s fair in love and secret marriage proposals.

Heh.

Though if I didn’t figure out what was going on with Quark and NACOS, it would be better to wait to tie Tess’s life any closer to mine.

“Why are you scowling?”

---