Page 4 of Chasing Kaylee Kringle

Kaylee thought the whole matchmaking hoopla was a crock. Just a way to filch money from desperate people, but she’d never say that out loud. She loved Jolene and wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings. She just didn’t believe all the hype.

Setting four drinks on the bar, she hollered, “Kathleen, Bruce, Shelly, and Clint, your orders are up!”

They each approached the bar for their drinks, thanked her, and Kaylee smiled, barely meeting their eyes. She didn’t take chances. She pulled the brim of her black cap lower and went back to work.

A cheerful holiday beat erupted from the overhead speakers, and her boss, Dana, wiggled her hips and did the sprinkler, earning a laugh from Kaylee and a few nearby patrons.

“Come on, Kaylee, rock out with me!” she called gleefully, doing the mashed potato.

Dana loved dance moves from the fifties and sixties; she was no different with Christmas music. She was only thirty-six, but she’d been raised by her grandparents and grown up on their favorite music and movies. Even her style of dress was straight from a 1965 magazine cover: today she wore a pin-up-style polka-dot dress, her auburn hair styled in a stiff updo, and bright red lipstick. She was someone the men in town always stared at but never approached. Unless they were from out of town and didn’t know about the Great Wall of Dana, then she would just let them down easy. As a single mom whose marriage had been a cyclone of emotional and physical abuse, she’d told Kaylee more than once that she’d never fall for a man again. In Kaylee’s opinion, it was a smart move. It was hard to trust people these days.

“That’s the jingle bell rock!” Dana sang in between taking customer orders.

Kaylee laughed and did a little shimmy for Dana’s benefit, earning a cheer from the older woman. For someone who was trying to fly under the radar, Kaylee tended to surround herself with colorful characters.

“Hey, Kaylee!” Cal Larson, one of her regulars, called from the register counter. He was a nice man in his forties who worked a variety of jobs, including summer road construction projects and winter road plowing.

“What’s up, Cal?”

“Working for a dollar.” He scratched under his worn, dirty ball cap at the dark, shiny skin beneath as he grinned crookedly. “What’s good here?”

Cal asked the same thing every morning just to tease her, and she huffed in exasperation. “Like I’ve told you a million times, it’s all good! Now stop being a pain in the rear and order your apple fritters.”

He arched his dark brows. “Maybe I want something different today, Miss Smarty-Pants.”

Kaylee rolled her eyes. “You always say you want something different but end up with the fritters.”

“Touché. Can’t argue with that. I’ll take two.” Cal handed his money over to Dana, then added loudly, “Your employee is picking on me.”

Dana laid his change across his open palm with a huff. “Good! It’s in her job description to give the customers a bad time.”

Kaylee laughed. “Thanks, boss.”

Cal grabbed his bag of donuts off the counter and dropped a five in the tip jar. “Thanks for busting my balls, ladies.”

“Later, Cal! Be careful,” Kaylee said.

“Always, sweetheart.”

The bell on the door rang when he exited, and Dana groaned. “Remind me to throw that bell away after we close.”

“But how will we know when customers come in if it doesn’t jingle?”

Dana snorted. “With this crowd, I think we’ll notice.”

A few customers who overheard laughed. Kaylee set five more drinks up on the counter and hollered, “Paula, Jennifer, Ray, Tim, and Rick.”

As each customer stepped forward and picked up their order, they thanked her. She glanced up from another pot of foaming milk to see that there was still one unclaimed cup. She turned it to see the name and shouted, “Yo, Rick! I got your nonfat vanilla latte with extra foam. Get it while it’s hot.”

She scanned the sea of faces, but no one stepped forward.

“Come on, Rick! You’d better claim it before I start taking bids!”

More laughter from the crowd.

Suddenly, a man with mahogany hair stood up behind a couple in the corner. He stepped around them, and she got a good look at him. An oval face with high cheekbones and tan skin. His eyes were obscured by dark sunglasses. A black leather jacket stretched across broad shoulders. Kaylee’s heart pounded like ocean waves crashing against the sand until it drowned out the buzz of conversation around her. Between them was an espresso machine and a countertop, yet he was still too close.

He slid his shades up his forehead and into his hair, exposing eyes black as sin.