Page 11 of Some Kind of Haunted

Or when I switch to staring at his chest, not the tower on it.

“Morning,” he offers in a low voice, deep and interesting. “What can I get you?”

This man—this waiter in a diner that is also an antique store and has an affinity for foxes in swamps—is unreasonably attractive. Yet, he looks as if he has really, truly never considered that attractiveness a moment in his life. Those jeans are faded from time, not chemicals. Those boots are battered by years of use, not design. His hair is dark. There is no beanie or manicured facial hair in sight.

I have the strangest urge to touch him.

And he has the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen, like a whole wild pageant of springtime in Central Park, so bright it puts the concrete of Manhattan to shame.

This man is hot. This is not a figment of my overtired imagination. It’s not even because I’m adrift in the flatlands and desperate for something that isn’t creepy.

This is the kind of hot that transcends location.

But even as I think that, I know it can’t be true. My eyes meet his and something changes. He looks stunned, I think. It’s all green and wild—

I have a quick flash of that chiseled face in the window that I imagined. I tell myself it was a scarecrow, not him, but I remember that jawline—

And then he jerks his head back, slightly. His green eyes look arrested for a moment, then darken. It’s like he rode out a small, private earthquake.

But he looks at me like I did something to him.

It feels like a slap.

On the scale of things that have happened to upset me since arriving in Midas, Iowa, it shouldn’t even register, but it does. There’s something about this man, so rugged and beautiful and offended by me. I look down, feeling as confused as if I asked him out and was flatly, rudely refused.

My brother is oblivious, because…men.

Logan goes ahead and orders the ridiculous Meat-splosion, because of course he does. It doesn’t even sound ridiculous when he says it out loud. I decide ordering food from this gorgeous, angry man who clearly hates me on sight is overrated when I can pick off Logan’s plate and pretend I’m not doing exactly that.

I look up at the waiter with the patented Lexi Darling smile that always works. It even worked on an impressively scathing bouncer or two back in my clubbing days.

He stares back at me impassively. Or what would be impassively if I couldn’t see that darker green in his gaze.

Maybe he’s allergic to overheated brown-haired girls with bags under their eyes that no amount of expensive makeup can cover. Or maybe he saw me scuttling down an alley last night like it was trying to kill me, assuming his was that face I saw. Hard to tell.

“I know it’s not on the menu, but do you—”

“We don’t have any milk that doesn’t come directly from a cow,” he says, and there’s an edge in that low voice of his that rubs all over me. It makes me even hotter in my sweater, and I don’t like it. Especially since I was just going to ask about an egg white omelet, not the paltry dairy offerings for coffee.

But he seems to be on a roll with no intent of actually listening to me.

“And we don’t make anything but coffee, in a pot. If it sounds Italian, you’ll have to go get it at Starbucks.”

I give that some consideration. “There’s a Starbucks here?”

“Give or take a few hours in the car.” He says that in a way that suggests I should get in that car right now and drive far, far away.

I want to do something truly wild to warrant his contempt for me, but that’s as mentally questionable as sleepwalking or being haunted by clock towers, so I don’t.

“We don’t do substitutions,” he growls at me. “If you’re allergic to it, don’t eat it. We do real here. Real food, made by real people, for real customers. Either order something off the menu or don’t order.”

His name tag says Jack. Because of course, he’s a Jack.

How my brother is sitting here, witnessing this and not intervening, is beyond me.

“I don’t recall asking you for a lot of substitutions,” I say quietly. “Or any. You, in fact, did not let me finish a sentence.”

His gaze gets even darker. I swear he’s this close to a sneer. Maybe an actual curled lip.