Beautiful Sacrifice (The Maddox Brothers, #3)(3)

The dozens of voices in the packed café bounced off the windows and came straight back to the bar where I was mixing another Cherry Coke. Kirby rounded the counter, her shoes squeaking against the orange-and-white tiled floor. Phaedra was fond of random—fun portraits, trinkets, and off-color signs. They were all eclectic, like Phaedra.

“You’re welcome,” Kirby said, tucking her shirt into her skirt.

“For the tray stand? I already said thank you.”

“I’m referring to the gaggle of hot firemen I seated in your section.”

Kirby was barely nineteen, baby fat still plumping her cheeks. She’d been dating Gunnar Mott since her sophomore year of high school, so she took extreme pleasure in trying to fix me up with every halfway decent-looking man with a job who walked through the door.

“No,” I said simply. “I’m not interested in any of them, so don’t even try your matchmaking crap. And they’re hotshots, not firemen.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes, a big one. For starters, they fight wildfires. They hike for miles with huge packs and equipment; they’re on the job seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day; they travel to wherever the fire is; and they saw through fallen timber and dig fire lines.”

Kirby stared at me, unimpressed.

“Do not say anything to them. I mean it,” I warned.

“Why not? All four of them are cute. That makes your odds fairly fantastic.”

“Because you suck at it. You don’t even care if they’re my type. You just set me up with guys, so you can date them vicariously. Remember the last time you tried to set me up with someone? I was stuck with that slimy tourist for an entire evening.”

“He was so sexy,” she said, fantasizing in front of God and everyone.

“He was boring. All he talked about was himself and the gym … and himself.”

Kirby ignored my resistance. “You’re twenty-four. There is nothing wrong with putting up with an hour of boring conversation to experience three hours of amazing sex.”

“Ew. Ew, no. Stop.” I wrinkled my nose and shook my head, involuntarily imagining dirty talk that included the words repetitions and protein. I put Taylor’s cup on a tray.

“Falyn, you’re up!” Chuck called from the kitchen.

I swung by the food window, tray in hand, seeing that table thirteen’s order was sitting on the shelf cut out of the wall separating the bar from the kitchen. The heat lamps above warmed my hands as I grabbed each plate and placed them on the tray, and then I rushed the food to the table. The author and her assistant barely noticed as I placed the beef and feta cheese salad and chicken club on the table.

“Does everything look all right?” I asked.

The author nodded her head, barely taking a breath while she chatted away. I carried the final Cherry Coke to the hotshot crew, but as I walked away, one of them grabbed my wrist. I looked over my shoulder, glaring at the man with the offending hand.

Taylor winced at my reaction. “A straw?” He loosened his grip. “Please?” he asked.

I slowly pulled one from my apron and handed it to him. Then I spun around and checked on the rest of my tables, one after another.

Don finished off his cheesecake and left a twenty on the table, as he always did, and the author left twice that. The hotshot crew’s signed receipt was merely rounded up to the next dollar.

I tried not to wad it up and stomp it into the ground. “Dicks,” I said under my breath.

The rest of the afternoon was nonstop, not unlike any other afternoon since the Urbanspoon app had decided to put The Bucksaw Café on the foodie map. As the hours passed, I served more firefighters and hotshot crews, and they all left decent tips, as did the rest of my tables, but I couldn’t shake the bitterness for Taylor, Zeke, Dalton, and Trex.

Fifty-one cents. I should hunt them down and throw the change at them.

The streetlights shone down on those walking past the diner to the two-story country-western bar four buildings down. Young women, most barely twenty-one, trotted along in groups, wearing short skirts and tall boots, as they enjoyed the summer night air—not that August had the corner on skin-baring clothes. Most locals would shed their layers for anything over forty degrees.

I flipped the sign on the door, so the word Closed faced the sidewalk, but I leaped back when a face loomed over me from the other side. It was Taylor, the hotshot crew guy and piss-poor tipper. Before my brain had time to stop my expression, I narrowed my eyes and sneered.

Taylor held out his hands, his voice muffled from the glass. “I know. Hey, I’m sorry. I was going to leave cash, but we were called out, and I forgot. I should have known better than to come into town while we were on call, but I was sick of the food at the hotel.”

I barely recognized him without the seven layers of grime. Wearing clean clothes, he could have been mistaken for someone I might actually find attractive.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, turning for the kitchen.

Taylor pounded on the glass. “Hey! Lady!”

Deliberately slow, I faced him, craning my neck. “Lady?” I nearly spit the word.

Taylor lowered his hands and then shoved them in his pockets. “Just open the door, so I can tip you. You’re making me feel bad.”

“You should!” I spun around in a huff to see Phaedra, Chuck, and Kirby behind me, all far too amused with the situation. “A little help here?”