The Dirt on Ninth Grave(16)

I glanced toward Reyes. He sat at a booth, eating a sub and reading on his phone. He was doing the same about five seconds later. Five seconds after that, he took another bite, then started reading again. Approximately five seconds later -



Francie sauntered up to him with the dessert plate we used to tempt unwitting customers into ordering just a bit more than they could safely stuff into their stomachs and asked him if he saw anything that he liked.



She was not talking about the dessert. She'd undone the top two buttons of her blouse and leaned in to give him a better view.



I so could've done that. I had fantastic boobs.



But Francie was laying it on thicker than usual, becoming more desperate. It was sad.



It was even sadder when Reyes took note, causing me to almost drop a plate of spaghetti in a customer's lap.



After a pause that had Francie and me both in breathless anticipation, he said, "I'm good for now."



Disappointment washed over Francie. Triumph rocketed through me. Triumph mixed with a sweet shot of euphoria. I rarely heard him talk. His voice was like being bathed in warm caramel. Not appealing to some. Scary appealing to me.



"What do you think of that one?" Dixie asked me, nodding toward the issuer of my future restraining order.



"Who?" I asked, all innocence and myrrh. "Oh, Reyes?"



"Mm-hm," she said, refilling my customer's iced tea.



"He seems …  nice."



A grin as wicked as my darkest fantasies spread across her face. "I think so, too."



Saucy minx. Dixie made the rounds, often gravitating toward either Garrett or Reyes, which would explain why she was making the rounds at all. She rarely waited tables.



I started taking orders, beginning with a table of thirty-somethings. All female. All dressed to the nines. All salads and lemon water. Poor things. I took the orders of two more tables and two booths. All female. All dressed to the nines. Thankfully, not all salads and lemon water.



I wound my way back to the server's station to put their orders in and ran into my oldest and dearest friend. Cookie was busy tapping in orders, too, her nails clicking on the screen. As far as rush hours went, this was a doozy. And they seemed to be getting doozier every day. I would've thought December a far cry from tourist season. Apparently not.



"Is it just me, or are there a lot of women in here?" Cookie asked, closing out her order.



I scanned the area and concurred. There were a lot of customers in general, and they all seemed exclusively focused on one customer. The tables of women. A couple of tables of men. Even a businessman sitting alone pretending not to be interested in tall, dark, and delicious. I couldn't blame any of them, but it did up the competition.



Not that I was competing. Reyes was evil. And he hated me. I would never entertain the idea of us hooking up. Of him following me to the storeroom, pressing his body into mine, pulling my skirt up and my panties down so he could bury himself inside me.



Nope. All that was more of a …  a caveat for something I most definitely did not want to happen. He was like a panther in the wild. Beautiful to look at. Far too dangerous to approach.




 

 



Cookie took off to do God knew what. I entered orders. Erin, the server who despised the fact that I dared to breathe air, and Francie, the server who pretended not to despise the fact that I dared to breathe air but who I suspected was right there with Erin, hurried past me for this or that, and the lunch crew behaved like a well-oiled machine. A well-oiled machine with one tiny clink: a loose cog named Cookie. Other than the occasional hiccup, however, we performed like a pit crew at the Indianapolis 500 despite our differences.



Cookie walked up to grab a couple of plates off the pass-out shelf.



"Do you see that?" I asked her, nodding toward Reyes.



A velvety fire licked over his skin, the undulating waves mesmerizing. That was nothing new. The fire he left on the table was. While he scanned his phone with one hand, the other rested absently beside his plate, his fingertips drawing lazily on the smooth surface. His touch left a trail of soft flames in its wake, as though he were igniting the wood beneath his hand.



No one but me seemed to notice. Still, I had to be sure we weren't all about to be burned alive. Maybe he was a pyromancer. A supernatural arsonist.



By the time Cookie turned for a look-see, her arms full of plates, he'd shifted and put his hand down. Yet the table was still on fire where it had been.



"I do indeed," she said, her tone appreciative.



"You do?" I asked, surprised.



The flames slowly died away, leaving wisps of smoke drifting heavenward.