Tall, Silent & Lethal (Pyte/Sentinel #4)(35)

When he looked up and met the waitress’s petrified gaze he was forced to bite back a few words that would have probably had the terrified woman screaming for help. Instead, he looked back down at the menu filled with food that he’d never even heard of before, never mind tasted. What the hell did humans eat these days?

“I’d like a chocolate frappe with extra ice cream, a cheeseburger with fries and coleslaw, please,” Cloe said, saving him from playing a guessing game.

“I’ll have the same, please,” he said, taking Cloe’s menu from her and handing it over to the waitress who seemed too stunned to do anything but stare at him.

“You’re going to eat?” she finally asked, sending a pleading look over her shoulder at the equally stunned waitresses cowering behind the counter.

“Yes,” he said evenly as he prayed for patience.

“O-okay,” the waitress said woodenly as she turned around and walked off, but not before she threw a cautious look over her shoulder, probably making sure that he wasn’t following her.

“You really know how to turn heads,” Cloe said, earning a glare from him. “Wanna tell me about it?”

“No,” he bit out.

“Alrighty then,” she said with a careless shrug as she opened her purse and pulled out her phone, leaving him to frown as she started typing something on the small keypad.

“What are you doing?” he found himself asking.

“Sending my contact at the agency an email and asking her if she has any job openings on the west coast,” she said, never taking her eyes off her phone.

Scowling, he plucked the phone from her hand and shoved it in his pocket. “I thought we were going to talk,” he said, ignoring the hand that she held out for the return of her phone.

“No,” she said with a sigh as she dropped her hand away when it became painfully obvious that he had no intentions of returning her phone, “I came to eat. You came to talk.”

Still wondering why she hadn’t eaten the sandwich that he’d made for her if she was so hungry, he forced himself to focus on getting her to stay without having to resort to kidnapping her. It would probably draw more unnecessary attention his way, he mused as he watched her every move. He needed to figure out a way to make her stay without her finding out that she really didn’t have a choice.

“What will it take to get you to stay?” he asked, deciding to go with bribery first. Giving her a raise or buying her something would be a hell of a lot easier than convincing her to stay, he decided as he waited for her demands.

“Nothing,” she said with a shrug, making him wonder if she was trying to play hardball and see just how much she could get out of him.

“You’re going to be difficult about this, aren’t you?” he asked, rubbing his hands down his face and wondering just how many hoops she was going to make him jump through to get her to willingly stay.

“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head as she looked around the restaurant, “I’m just not staying.”

“Why not?” he demanded, hoping to buy himself a little more time so that he could think up a better approach, one that didn’t involve chaining her to the house.

“Because this job just didn’t work out for me,” she said with a shrug, not quite meeting his eyes, he noticed.

“This job or because of what happened last night?” he demanded, having a pretty good idea that if he hadn’t f**ked up yesterday and ditched her that she would still be willing to stay and drive him out of his f**king mind.

“What happened last night?” the woman sitting behind him asked, startling him and bringing his attention to the fact that the forty-something year old woman sitting directly behind him was turned around in her seat and shamelessly eavesdropping on their entire conversation.

Before he could tell her to mind her own f**king business, Cloe beat him to it. “I forgot the safe word last night and was brutally punished for it,” she said dryly, staring at the nosy woman until she got the hint and turned back around in her seat.

“It has nothing to do with last night,” she said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail as she looked away.

“You’re lying,” he said, because he knew without a doubt that she loved her job. She loved working with his sister and she sure as hell loved driving him crazy.

“So what if I am?” she asked, sitting back when a large plate of food was placed in front of her.

“Is there anything else that I can get for you?” the waitress asked as a large plate of food was placed in front of him.

He was just about to tell her that they were fine when he looked up and realized that they had a different waitress. Frowning, he looked past their new waitress to find their old waitress standing just outside the kitchen doors with a small brown paper bag stuck to her face and two women trying to get her to calm down before she passed out.

“We’re all set,” Cloe said, following his gaze with a frown.

“Just yell if you need anything,” the new waitress said, sending him a curious look before she walked away.

“This is a very weird town,” Cloe mumbled as she grabbed a bottle of ketchup and squeezed an insane amount all over her fries.

“You have no idea,” he muttered as he took the bottle of ketchup from her and squirted the red stuff all over his fries before setting the bottle down and wondering what he was supposed to do now.