He didn’t. Instead, he smiled and waved his hand at the empty tabletop as if to say, “Do your worst.”
Shaking her head at the offer of a menu, she started rattling off her order, and had to resist the urge to laugh as his eyes widened more with every addition.
The waitress, however, who’d waited on Everly before, was not surprised in the least. Brows furrowed, she scribbled down the order.
“And a diet Coke, please,” Everly finished.
Unfazed, the waitress turned to Hawke. “And for you?”
“I don’t suppose you have vodka?”
“No,” she said. “But we have just about any kind of beer you’d want on draft.”
“I’ll take a pale ale,” he told her. “Whatever you have.”
“Anything to eat?”
He shook his head and nodded at Everly. “I’ll share with her.”
The waitress barked out a short laugh. “You might want to order your own, mister.”
He smiled back, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll share.”
“Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced as she closed her notepad. “Be right back with those drinks.”
Everly watched him as he scanned the restaurant, stopping at each possible exit as though committing the layout to memory. “Do you always drink so much?”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I’m sorry?”
The waitress set their drinks on the table, and Everly thanked her with a smile before taking a sip of her soda. “Alcohol,” she clarified. “Do you always drink alcohol? It’s all I’ve ever seen you drink.”
Hawke saluted her with his mug before taking a tentative sip of his beer, then a longer swallow. He set it back down on the table and wiped one corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Well, being that the only places you’ve seen me so far are at a bar and a restaurant, I’m not surprised. But no…” He appeared amused. “Alcohol is not the only thing I drink.”
Well, that didn’t work. He hadn’t been drinking the night before, and she thought he would say so and prove her earlier point. But it looked like she was going to have to be blunt. “Why did you pretend not to remember me?”
This time, her question didn’t seem to surprise him. “I wasn’t pretending. I see a lot of people every night. It took me a minute.”
He was lying. For one, she wasn’t easy to forget. And she wasn’t saying that out of some misbegotten place of ego. It was mostly because of her crazy hair and her…hearing challenges. Though she wore hearing aids that were able to pick out certain low-pitched sounds, it still sounded like it was coming through a wall of water, or a wall. She tried to speak and act as normal as possible, but she knew people still noticed. “That’s bullshit. Try again.” Leaning forward, she took another sip of soda as she waited for him to come up with a better answer to her question.
Hawke’s eyes dropped to her lips wrapped around the straw, then lower, lighting on her breasts for a half second before coming back up to her face. He tried another tactic, equally as false as the first. “Okay. I wasn’t sure if you remembered me, and I didn’t want you to feel embarrassed, so I introduced myself again. Why is that strange?”
Oh, he was smooth. “It’s not strange. It’s just more bullshit.”
He sat forward so fast she reacted instinctively, sitting back to put as much distance between them as she could. Her breath rushed from her lungs, the air between them suddenly charged.
His eyes drove into her. Apparently, he was done being vague. “What do you want from me, Everly?”
“I…” What did she want from him? Answers? Yes. His help? Definitely. But was that all?
She wasn’t sure.
Everly was saved from answering by the waitress bearing a heavy tray of food. As she set plate after plate of brisket, beans, corn, chicken, cornbread, and coleslaw on the table, her movements dispersed the waves of tension convoluting the air. Hawke gave her a tight smile and sat back, lifting his mug to his lips as he turned to gaze out the window as he waited for the waitress to leave.
It took Everly a few more seconds to recover. “Thank you,” she told the waitress, her eyes dropping to the feast in front of her. Eventually the mouthwatering smell brought her back to the here and now and her rumbling stomach.
Hawke touched her hand to get her attention. “Surely you’re not really going to eat all that?” he asked when she tore her eyes from the food.
So, she’d been right the night before. He’d figured her out already. Everly fought back a sigh. It normally took people a few times before they knew she couldn’t hear. Most of the time she had to tell them. And once they knew, it always changed things. People treated her differently. Guys made lewd remarks when they thought she wasn’t looking. Girls stopped including her. She hated it. But it was what it was. However, she didn’t want this man to see her as weak in any way, shape, or form.
