“It’ll be just a minute.”
Jaclyn left, feeling Cole’s gaze trail after her. Who would’ve thought she’d run into him again? Especially here, now, when even pride was a luxury she couldn’t afford.
She ducked into the kitchen and quickly tallied the tab for table three, but by the time she brought it out, the man was already standing.
“We’ve been waiting for ten minutes while you were busy flirting with that guy over there,” he said loudly enough for half the restaurant to hear.
Aware of the attention he was drawing, Jaclyn flushed. “I’m sorry.” She wanted to deny that she’d been flirting with anyone, but she handed him his bill and began to gather up the plates, instead. Sometimes it was smarter to simply apologize. She didn’t want a scene, not with Cole Perrini less than ten feet away. And not while Rudy Morales, her manager, was on duty.
“I think we deserve a break here—for the wait,” he persisted. “You’ve made us late for a movie.”
Then, why didn’t he pay his bill and hurry off?
The woman who’d eaten with him lowered her eyes, a sure sign that he was making a fuss over nothing.
“I couldn’t have been longer than five minutes,” Jaclyn said. “I just ran into an old friend, that’s all.”
“Well, maybe you should visit with your friends when you’re on your break.”
“I’ve apologized,” she said. “If it’ll make you feel better, skip the tip.”
“I wasn’t planning on leaving a tip.”
Jaclyn felt anger course through her. This guy was an opportunist, and he was trying to take advantage of her. Her natural instincts prompted her to stand her ground. But the nagging worry of how she’d support her children if she lost her job kept her voice cool and polite. Rudy was already looking for any excuse to write her up.
“What if I send home a couple of pieces of pie with you? Will that help?” she asked.
“I don’t want pie. I think you should comp our meals.”
“For waiting five minutes?” Jaclyn asked. “You never even told me you were in a hurry.”
“I don’t have to give you my schedule when I sit down to eat. Now, are you going to work with me, here, or do I have to speak to your manager?”
A knot of unease lodged in Jaclyn’s belly. When she’d first started working at Joanna’s, Rudy had pursued her pretty aggressively. She’d gotten firm with her refusals, and he’d had it in for her ever since. “Fine. I’ll take it out of my tips,” she said. “Why don’t you just go ahead and leave?”
“That’s more like it,” the man replied, slinging an arm around his companion and starting for the door. “Jeez, what kind of place are you running here, anyway?”
“It’s a restaurant,” a male voice replied. “In a restaurant, you order, you eat and you pay. Then you tip, generously.”
Jaclyn looked up to see Cole Perrini towering over them all, and knew her day was about to go from bad to worse. Rudy would hear and…“This is my problem,” she said quickly. “I’ll handle it.”
“Yeah, let her handle it,” the guy said. “We were just on our way out.”
Cole smiled and lifted his hands, but he blocked their path, and a certain hardness in his eyes belied his casual stance. “That’s fine. You pay your bill before you go, and we won’t have a problem, right?”
The man’s face turned scarlet. He sputtered for a moment, looking as though he’d press the issue, but a glance at Cole’s superior size and build seemed to convince him. Throwing a twenty on the table, he grabbed his companion by the arm and stalked out, pulling her along with him.
Before Jaclyn could say anything, Rudy appeared.
“What’s goin’ on here, Jaclyn?”
Jaclyn watched the door close behind the couple, then picked up the money and the bill. “Nothing, why?”
Rudy glanced doubtfully at Cole, who smiled and shrugged.
“That guy was an old friend of mine,” he said, then made his way back to his seat.
WHAT WAS JACKIE RASMUSSEN—Jaclyn Wentworth—doing here, waiting tables?
Cole went through the motions of eating and tried to make a halfway-decent pitch for the funding to do the Sparks project, but he couldn’t concentrate. Seeing Jaclyn brought back the most painful years of his life—memories that crept in between each sentence he spoke, wove through the whole conversation like an invisible thread. For the first time in eight years, he couldn’t shut out Feld and the stifling, hot trailer he’d lived in there, the cloying smell of illness, his poor mother, pale and dwindling, his hungry brothers and absent father. And Rochelle. God, Rochelle. Just the thought of her made his throat feel as if it were closing up.
In a quick, desperate gesture, he loosened the knot of his tie and undid the top button of his shirt.
Larry glanced up at him in surprise. “Somethin’ wrong, Cole?”
“No.” Cole took a deep breath and a drink of water. He was free. Feld was history. Rochelle was on her own. His mother and father were gone…
“Would you like dessert?”
Jackie stood next to him, waiting with her pad. She’d left Feld, too, even though he never dreamed she would. He’d thought she would shackle herself to Terry and live under Burt Wentworth’s thumb forever, or at least until she and Terry inherited his land and his money. All the girls in school had wanted Terry, and the family name and bank account that stood behind him. They’d wanted everything Jackie had just walked away from—for this. Who would have thought it?
“I’ll just have a cup of coffee,” Larry said.
“I’ll have the same,” Cole added, and Jackie soon returned with two steaming cups.
“Will there be anything else?”
Cole shook his head. He couldn’t look at her anymore. When he saw her face, he saw Feld and the desert, and felt things he didn’t want to feel.
“It was good to see you again, Cole,” she said, slipping the check onto the table.
Cole wished he could say the same. “You look great, Jackie,” he said, searching for some scrap of truth to offer.
She smiled, but it was only a ghost of the smile he remembered from high school. “Thanks,” she said. “You always did have a way with the ladies.”
Cole couldn’t tell by the tone of her voice if she meant it as a compliment. But she walked away then, and he was free to pay his bill and go—and pretend he’d never seen her.
JACLYN WATCHED Cole leave and was glad to have him gone. She needed no reminders that her life had turned
