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“What’s got into you?” he asked.
“I’m falling in love.”
He smiled. “Congrats.”
Then he went to his table.
* * *
It wasafter the lunch crush when they walked in.
Specifically,hewalked in.
I knew it was him immediately. If the long-ass beard didn’t give it away, then the messy gray-blond hair, the flannel shirt buttoned up to his neck (I couldn’t see due to the beard, but the way it sat on his shoulders told me this), even though it was ninety-seven degrees outside, and the sheer enormity of his frame would have.
He was with a pretty blonde lady who was maybe ten, fifteen years his junior.
Oh myGod.
I was dropping some of Lucia’s chili-chorizo fettucine on a table.
Luna was close, doing a water run.
I knew she saw him too when she said, “Oh myGod.”
He looked around the space, caught sight of me and boomed loudly, “You Raye?”
In a flash—and if you’d asked me a second before, I would have told you no way he could move that fast—Tito was standing beside me.
Then again, there were mild hints of serial killer in the big, bearded man’s affect.
“Are you Tex?” I asked.
He put his long, beefy arms out to his sides. “Who else would I be?”
Taking in all that was him, this was a pertinent question.
“You know him?” Tito asked.
I looked down at Tito. “No. But he’s a friend of Cap’s.”
Tito nodded, turned to Tex and gave him a long look, then flip-flopped back to his table.
Luna and I went to Tex.
I jerked a thumb at Luna. “This is my friend, Luna.”
He put his arm around the blonde, and even though we were standing right in front of him, he still was booming, “This is my wife, Nancy.”
“Hi, Nancy,” I greeted.
“Raye.” She smiled a dazzling, kilowatt smile at me. She turned it to Luna. “Luna.”
Tex was looking around, and still booming, he decreed, “This place is the shit. Though, your espresso machine is a bust. Two filters? Amateur. You need four.”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“He’s the barista at Indy’s bookstore,” Nancy explained. “He knows espresso machines.”
