Page 10 of 5 Golden Flings

“That has to be hard.” Deliberately she didn’t ask him if he was married, just as he hadn’t asked her. She wasn’t at that point yet. “You know they miss you.”

“And I miss them. My mom is getting older. She’s still hell on wheels, but the tread on her tires is getting thin.”

“I know what you mean. My mom and stepdad are both okay, health-wise, but I still worry. I think my job is worrying. Look after this, look after that, organize, prepare, try to anticipate the future.”

She sounded whiny. Quickly she added, “I love my family, love being with them, love having my own business. Worrying is my way of getting everything organized and keeping it that way, because I don’t have any spare time.”

He looked around. “But here you are, with spare time.”

“I put it on my schedule,” she replied, drawing a quiet laugh from him. “I came out here for business, but now I’m taking the time to drive around this part of the country, see places I haven’t seen before, with no real itinerary which, I have to admit, really feels weird. I think I’m going to enjoy it, though. I mean, look how interesting just stopping for gas turned out to be.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lonnie approaching and when he was near enough to hear her she said, “Lonnie is my new boyfriend, and I’m having fries for supper for the first time since college. This is turning out to be a great trip.”

Lonnie set the plate of fries in front of her, and pulled a bottle of ketchup out of his apron pocket to thump it down on the table top. “Since I’m your new boyfriend, the fries are on the house.”

“Nope. Hand over that ticket.”

He pulled out his order book and before he had the ticket halfway torn off, Hatch had the whole thing in his hand.

Hatch tore off her ticket, looked at the one beneath it, and removed that one too before returning the order book to Lonnie, who shrugged and said, “Your order is almost ready,” before returning to the bar.

After a moment of silence Nova picked up the ketchup bottle to squirt a mound of ketchup on the plate of fries. “Don’t you think that was a little pushy?”

“No. Pushy would be dragging you outside and kissing you stupid. Paying for an order of fries is way down on the Pushy list.”

She almost laughed, because he was watching her with lazy expectation, trying to get a rise out of her. “I said alittlepushy, which means you just agreed with me.” Exhilaration filled her, fizzing like a New Year’s party. He was flirting with her; she was out of practice but not brain dead and she remembered how it went. Flirting with someone so overtly masculine felt equally dangerous and safe. He wanted to kiss her. He probably wanted a hell of a lot more, but that was up to her and she had the power to say no.

She dumped a day’s worth of salt on her fries, selected one and dragged it through the ketchup before popping it in her mouth and smiling at him, then biting the fry in half with a sharp snap of her teeth.

Lonnie returned with Hatch’s order, a thick burger and a big mound of fries. Hatch loaded his down with salt, too. Wryly, Nova noted that they seemed to be bonding over unhealthy eating habits.

“What’s your normal day like?” she asked.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Or you’d have to kill me?”

“Not going to happen. No, what I do is classified and I can’t talk about it. I personally don’t think all the secrecy is needed, but I’m not the one who makes the rules. The only time it bothers me is when someone in my family asks and I can’t tell them. I have to either lie or evade. I’d rather evade. What about you? Tell me about your normal day.”

“Ah, an example of evasion.”

He lifted his coffee cup in salute, telling her she was right on target.

“My normal day is busy. I’m usually awake at five, out the door by seven-fifteen at the latest, because traffic has become horrible. Huntsville is exploding in population. If I’m lucky I have time to scramble an egg and eat it, but mostly I grab a protein shake from the fridge and drink it on the go. I have to be at one place by seven forty-five, then on to another stop around eight, at the store by nine. There’s inventory, orders, shipments, customers, calls, emails, something like a hundred texts a day — and I’m not exaggerating. Usually one of my employees will pick up lunch for us. My route home depends on traffic patterns, whether or not I have to detour around an accident, whether or not I need to fill my gas tank. At home I make something to eat, do laundry, pay bills. During the summer I try to plant a few vegetables. I’ve learned how to do basic plumbing, and at Thanksgiving an outlet in the kitchen went out and I had to replace it but I followed a YouTube video and by golly it worked.”

There. She’d given him an info dump and she hoped a good idea of how capable she was. It was important to her that he see her as competent and not needy or clingy. He might change his mind about taking her outside and kissing her stupid. She wasn’t about to pretend to be sweet and compliant when she wasn’t.

After all, she was a woman who took advice from a dragon, not that she was going to bring up that subject. She didn’t think she’d ever tell anyone about the whimsy that had spurred her to action.

“You’ve done plumbing?” he asked, frowning. She’d noticed before that in general men seemed to be territorial about home repair.

“After the first time I needed a plumber — do you have any idea how much a plumber charges?” she asked indignantly. “Anyway, plumbing issues are never convenient. They happen at night, or on a holiday, or when you’re in a hurry. I decided to buy some basic plumbing supplies to keep on hand, the needed tools, glue, things like that. As for electrical repairs I’d never tackle anything like a short in the wiring, but changing out an outlet is nothing.”

“Anything you’d change about your life in general?” The question was casual but the expression in his eyes wasn’t. His gaze always seemed to be intent anyway, as if he was gauging, on alert, looking for anything that was out of place or could possibly be dangerous. She liked that, and despite her initial cool response to him she felt safe, both with him and because of him. She liked the color of his eyes too, a shade between green and blue with some gold thrown in.

“I’d love to have more of a family life. I’m thirty-one, and I’d kind of like having a husband underfoot, making a mess, rough-housing with kids, washing the dog. Ordinary things. If the word ‘husband’ panics you, don’t worry. My mom says I’m too picky.”

His eyebrows shot up. She kept her glee at his response hidden behind her composed expression. She’d halfway expected that comment to get to him.

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