sixty-three days had passed and the boy had not been found. In his gut, Lincoln knew Dayax was alive and waiting. Waiting for Lincoln to bring him home.
“I’m Tessa.” The bubbly blonde appeared table side, holding a round tray with a glass of ice water balanced in the center. “You must be new in town. I haven’t seen you before, and everyone eventually makes their way into Taylor’s.” Her broad grin and sparkling green eyes didn’t stir his senses the way Angeline’s unamused frown and blue eyes darkened with irritation had.
“I rolled in Saturday night.”
“Staying or passing through?” Tessa placed the glass of water on the table.
From the dilation of her pupils and the subtle way she inched closer to him, Lincoln got the feeling her questions were more for personal interest rather than the friendly banter the owners would typically ask their servers to provide to customers.
“A little of both. I’m doing some consulting for the Co-op for a couple of weeks.” Unless Brice’s contact in the Woelfesenat managed to get Lincoln’s active duty status reinstated sooner.
“Well.” Tessa laughed lightly. “They have a sneaky habit of keeping those they hire, so I expect to see you in here for a good, long time.”
Lincoln didn’t share Tessa’s expectation.
“Ready to order?”
“A steak, rare.”
“The Co-op steak?” She pulled a pad from her apron and slapped it on the tray hooked in her arm. “It’s an eighteen-ounce porterhouse.”
Suddenly, Lincoln remembered Lila, smirking at him and saying that he could thank her one day with a big, juicy steak.
“Make it two orders.”
“You get two sides per platter.”
Lincoln look at her and shrugged.
“Baked potato, sweet potato, steak fries, potato salad, Caesar salad, mac-and-cheese, green bean amandine, grilled asparagus—” Her words rolled into an incessant buzz.
“Surprise me,” he said, swallowing the uncomfortable feeling scaling his throat.
Tessa jotted on her pad. “We have an extensive selection of domestic and imported beers.”
Lincoln rubbed his hand along his jaw, stubbled with a day’s worth of beard. “I’ll have whatever Reed usually orders and make it two.”
She stopped scribbling and slowly lifted her gaze. Her smile flat.
“You know him, right? He said he’s in here a lot.”
“Yeah, I know him,” Tessa huffed. “It’s a small town.”
Her reaction suggested more, but Lincoln didn’t care to ask.
“He drinks Little Red Cap.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s domestic with limited distribution. We order it and a few other ales from Grimm Brothers Brewhouse in Colorado.” She tapped her pen against the pad on the tray. “Is Reed joining you later?”
“Not tonight.”
“You ordered two meals.”
“I did.” But Lincoln only planned to eat and drink one. The other he owed to Lila.
“As much as I appreciate you doing this,” Jimmy Taylor said, accepting the weekly inventory sheets Angeline handed him, “I could get one of the full-timers to handle counting the supplies.”
“I’ve been doing inventory since I was sixteen,” Angeline replied. “It would be weird to hand over the job to someone else.”
Her uncle smiled, but his eyes were filled with worry. “I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
“I don’t,” Angeline assured him. “I like working for you and Aunt Miriam.” Mostly she liked having a routine that got her out of the apartment and gave her a chance to interact with people. Since she didn’t work with a partner, songwriting was a solitary endeavor.
As pack-oriented creatures, Wahyas thrived on socialization and there was no better place for it than Taylor’s Roadhouse. At least in their human forms.
The protected forest of the Co-op’s wolf sanctuary allowed pack members to fraternize as wolves, especially during full moons. Although, when temperatures dropped below forty degrees at night, she preferred to run in the woods behind the apartment building. Afterward, she could walk straight into her toasty apartment, rather than waiting for the heater to warm her car on the drive back from the sanctuary.
“Do you like it well enough to take over the business one day?” Jimmy’s gaze fell just shy of hers.
“What about Zach and Lucy?” Angeline’s much younger cousins were Jimmy’s true heirs.
“Zach has been talking to a Dogman recruiter again.”
Icy fingers twisted Angeline’s stomach. She certainly didn’t want her cousin to end up like Tanner or Lincoln. She and Zach would have a frank discussion about the very real possibility of death and dismemberment.
“Lucy is considering transferring to a bigger college out of state.” Jimmy sighed. “The more their mama and I try to keep them close, the more they can’t want to scramble away.”
“They need time to see that the world outside Walker’s Run isn’t all they think it is.” Angeline hugged her uncle. “They’ll come home, just like I did.”
“Still.” He squeezed her tight before letting go. “You’re the one who’s put time into this place. Miriam and I would like for you to take over the restaurant when we retire.”
“I’ll consider it,” Angeline said more to alleviate her uncle’s concern than to suggest actual intent. “But I expect you to keep running this place for a long, long time.”
Relief washed over Jimmy’s face and his smile turned genuine. “Deal.”
The daily grind of actually running the restaurant took more time than Angeline cared to invest, but she didn’t mind giving Jimmy and Miriam some peace of mind while their children sowed their oats.
They walked out of the storage room into the kitchen. While one cook tended the large gas stove, the other dropped a basket of steak fries in to the fryer. Another cook and one more server would arrive shortly and stay through closing.
“Aunt Miriam,” Angeline called to the woman entering the kitchen.
As a child, Angeline didn’t think her aunt favored her mother very much. But as Miriam aged, not only had she grown to look more like her sister, she had developed some of the same mannerisms and quirks.
With Miriam, Angeline could almost imagine what it would’ve been like to have grown up with her mother. Her aunt had even encouraged Angeline’s love of music and paid for her
