Page 1 of One More Baby for the Boss

CHAPTER 1

ALEX

“You’re new in town, aren’t you?”

Alex Hart smiled at the elderly man at her table as she poured his coffee. Today was her first day waiting tables at the Sunny Side Up Diner, and — as the man had accurately surmised — only her third in the town of Hope’s Creek. “I just moved into my apartment on Sunday,” she told him. “Loving it so far.”

The man snorted. “Don’t count on that lasting,” he said. “They call this place Hope’s Creek, but the truth is that it’s the place hope comes to die. Don’t put down roots here, or you’ll never get out.”

Alex’s smile began to feel pasted to her face. There was no risk of her putting down roots in Hope’s Creek, of course. She never stayed anywhere longer than six months. Not having a permanent home made life a constant adventure, but she was used to the people she met having opinions about it, and this man seemed like the type to have an opinion about absolutely everything.

“Do you know what you’d like to order?” she asked him.

He gave her a wry grin. “Once you’ve been here a little longer, you’ll be better at this,” he said. “All the other waitresses know my order, because I’m in here every morning.”

Well, it’s only my first day,Alex thought. She felt frustrated. Small-town people were supposed to be friendly. This man was almost certainly an exception to the rule, nothing more — but still, it was an inauspicious beginning to her job at the Sunny Side Up Diner. She’d hoped for better.

I don’t know why I bother to hope for things. My bad luck is stuck to me like gum on my shoe.

That was certainly true. Though she enjoyed her itinerant lifestyle, bad luck seemed to follow Alex everywhere. It was the reason she had never been able to hold onto a job for long — things seemed to slip right through her fingers. Sometimes she moved on because she was ready to, but often it seemed as if events were conspiring against her.

But that won’t happen here. After all, this is Hope’s Creek — a great place to start having hope for the future.Although not if this customer was to be believed.

She jotted down his order of a meat lover’s omelet and went back to the kitchen. Stacy, the other morning waitress, was also there, picking up a plate of eggs to take to one of her tables.

“You got Edgar, I see,” Stacy said. “That’s bad luck. Your very first table, and it’s Edgar.”

“He’s kind of a crank, isn’t he?”

“Absolutely. You’d better memorize that.” She nodded toward the ticket in Alex’s hand. “He’ll expect you to know his order bymemory the next time you see him. And triple-check his plate before you take it out, because if anything’s wrong with the order, he’ll give you hell.”

Alex groaned. “Tell me they’re not all like him.”

“Oh, they aren’t. He’s one of our worst.” Stacy glanced over her shoulder. “Looks like another one of your tables is being sat, though, so you’d better get back out there.”

Alex looked. The man who’d just arrived was younger than Edgar, perhaps mid-thirties, in jeans that were worn but clean and a faded T-shirt. He had dark hair and lines around his eyes. A little boy of about five or six sat across from him at the booth, scribbling vigorously on a children’s menu.

“What’s he like?” she asked Stacy anxiously. “Not another grump, is he?”

“I don’t know,” Stacy admitted. “He’s not a regular. I don’t know him at all.”

“I thought everyone knew everyone in this town. Isn’t that the reason Edgar knew that I’d just moved here?”

“Well, I know him by sight,” Stacy amended. “His name’s Elijah Trenton. He owns a couple of the ranches on the outskirts of town, and some to the south as well. But he never comes into town, and he certainly never eats at the diner. I’ve never talked to him.”

“You make him sound like a celebrity.”

“Oh, he might as well be. Everyone knows Elijah Trenton. He’s probably the richest man in this part of Texas.”

“So no pressure!”

“So he’ll probably leave you a decent tip. Or none at all.” Stacy shrugged. “Rich men can go either way. Flirt with him a little, that’ll help.”

“That won’t be hard,” Alex murmured. Elijah Trenton was seriously attractive. She might have flirted with him anyway, unprompted, just for fun.

She straightened her blond ponytail and headed over to his table. “Welcome to Sunny Side Up Diner,” she said, giving him her most winning smile. “What can I get for y’all this morning?”

“I don’t suppose you have blueberry pancakes, do you?” he asked, looking up at her. His eyes were as blue as the sky before a storm, and for a moment it took her breath away. She forgot that she was at work. She forgot that he was here with his child. She had to restrain herself from sliding into the booth next to him and putting a hand on his thigh.

---