Page 8 of Snow in Texas

She sighed and looked away from his smiling face. “Do you wanna order something? And before you hand me one of those corny pickup lines, I’ve heard them all already.”

“Do they ever work?”

“Do you wanna quit holding up my line?”

“This guy bothering you, Jen?” someone behind Colin asked.

“No, Terry,” she said shooting a smile toward the man in the trucker cap three patrons back. “He was just getting ready to place his order.” Then she pegged Colin with a look of such murderous intent, he had to laugh. “So order,” she said through her teeth. The threat was implied, rather than spoken.

“Shit. You’re a demon in the sack, aren’t you?”

“If you wanna live to apologize for that statement, place your damn order.”

People were starting to stare at this point. Colin didn’t care, because the only stare drawing his attention at the moment was hers, and it was making him all kinds of excited and horny. He liked a little violence in a woman. It was really the only thing he found alluring about his brother’s wife, and it looked damn good on Miss Mystery Jenny.

“Fine,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “Be like that. I was told to get the usual, whatever that is.”

She nodded crisply and punched buttons on the register. She slid a plastic card, number thirty-two, across the counter toward him, and said, “Wait outside. Someone will bring you the food.” Then she tilted to the side and glanced around him, dismissing him. “Okay, who’s next?”

He knew when not to push, so he followed her instructions, smiling to himself as he went out on the porch and settled into a rocking chair.

His only company was an old man in overalls and a cowboy hat down on the opposite end, reading a paper and minding his own business. Perfect.

Colin leaned back in the chair, the rockers crackling over the grit left on the floorboards. The heat was different here, he reflected. Not the heavy damp hotness of home, but something drier and more finicky. Last night, in the windswept dark, he’d felt chills crawl up his arms. But now, in the middle of the day, a yellow paper sun beamed down unforgivingly, hot enough to cook eggs on the empty stretch of pavement just beyond the parking lot.

Efficient footfalls announced an employee’s approach, and he glanced up, surprised to see it was Jenny toting out his brown paper bags of food. She was wearing dark jeans to go with her denim shirt, red leather belt, red cowboy boots. She set the bags by his feet and straightened, gaze aloof. “I packed you a sandwich and potatoes, since you didn’t say.”

“Thanks.”

When she started to turn, he said. “Hey, hold up a sec,” careful to keep any sort of demand out of his voice.

She turned back with obvious reluctance, arms folding beneath her breasts in a way that highlighted their fullness.

“Why are you so pissed off at me when you don’t even know me?”

“You look at me in a way you shouldn’t.”

He grinned. “Seriously? Honey, when a woman’s built like you are, guys are gonna look.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Are you somebody’s old lady?”

There was a brief hesitation, a flicker of something in her blue eyes he couldn’t fathom. But she said, “No.”

“Girlfriend.”

“No.” More solid this time.

“Are you a groupie?”

“Okay, seriously…” She started to turn again.

“Jenny.”

She stilled, waiting, her back to him, her head tilted his direction.

“I’m just trying to–”

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