Page 80 of Long Gone

He couldn’t have surprised me more than if he’d told me he was part elf. “Um…yeah, actually. My old roommate Kara liked them. She liked caramel on hers, but I don’t have any here. But I can sweeten the milk with vanilla if you like.”

Jesus, I was babbling. What the hell was wrong with me?

“Sure,” he said with a hint of a smile. “Wow me.”

I poured the frothed milk into my cup, then took a sip before setting it down with a sigh and grabbing a bottle of vanilla and a jar of sugar from the cabinet. I’d used vanilla syrup in Little Rock, but I didn’t have any here.

I dumped the coffee puck from the machine, then started to grind more beans. When it finished, I set the machine up to make a double espresso, then turned to face him. “You seem to know a lot about my life, while you’re this enigma.” I waved my hand in the air.

“I suspect you know more than you’re letting on.”

“I know you own a tavern.”

He looked amused. “Rather obvious. I thought you were a detective.”

He had a point. “The stuff I do know is obvious. I could tell you more about what I don’t know, or more accurately, what doesn’t add up.”

The expression on his face became more guarded, but he didn’t tell me to stop playing this game, so I pressed on.

“I don’t understand why you’d come to Lone County, of all places, after you got out of prison. You obviously had money if you could not only build the tavern but finish it off so nicely. You could have literally gone anywhere in the world, yet you stayed here, about a hundred miles from where you were the head of a crime organization.”

He lifted a finger from the chair arm. “I was an alleged head of a crime organization.”

I rolled my eyes. “Please. That fact is a given.”

“Alleged.”

“Okay,” I conceded. “Alleged. So why come here?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It seemed like a great business opportunity.”

I suspected there was some truth to that. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would make a stupid business decision, but I was sure it wasn’t the only reason. “Fair,” I said. “Why did you name it Scooter’s?”

He lifted his finger again. “Seems like the expresso is done.”

Frowning, I carefully poured the coffee into a cappuccino mug, then poured the milk into the stainless steel container, doctored it with a sprinkle of sugar and a generous amount of vanilla. When it was heated, I frothed it, then carefully poured it into the mug, creating a leaf with the foam at the end.

I carried it over to him and he looked down at the foam and pursed his lips in surprise. He claimed the cup and took a sip.

My body tensed as I waited for his reaction, which pissed me off. Why the fuck did I want to impress this man?

When he lowered the cup, he looked up at me with appreciation in his eyes. “Your talent is wasted here in Jackson Creek. You should have opened that coffee shop.”

“And not become a P.I.?”

He shook his head, releasing a derisive laugh. “I never said that.”

“No, the key with you is what you don’t say.”

His eyes widened, and he lifted his mug toward me in a salute.

“Why did you name your tavern Scooter’s?”

He stared down at his mug, and I didn’t think he was going to answer. I was so sure, in fact, that I grabbed my own mug and the muffin and sat at the small barely two-person table.

“After my brother,” he said softly.

“Is he still alive?”

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