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He stared at me with those weird eyes of his and wiggled his nose, as though trying to determine if I had more treats to share. It was tempting to reach out and touch one of his black horns, test the sharpness with my finger, but I figured we weren’t quite there yet in our relationship.
I kept my eyes on him as I reached for the doorknob behind me, not giving him a chance to catch me off guard. One piece of candy didn’t make us friends. Yet. Once I was safely inside, I gave a silly little wave. “Good night!”
“Who are you talking to?”
I yelped and spun around. The door clanged shut behind me. Luke stood a foot away, taking up the entire hallway with his body and all the oxygen with his presence. I pressed a hand to my chest, willing my heart to slow its roll a little. “Luke! You scared me.”
He moved closer, his eyes on mine, which did nothing to help my over-zealous heartrate. His arm circled me like an embrace as he reached behind me and opened the door.
“What are you doing?” I asked breathlessly. Honestly, it was starting to get embarrassing, how I could never breathe around this man.
He didn’t answer, just peered over my shoulder into the darkness. His brow furrowed as he let the door close again. His gaze met mine. “Were you…were you talking to Goat?”
“Who else would I be talking to?”
“You’ve been gone a while.”
“It’s been five minutes.”
“It felt longer than that.”
“Oh,” I breathed. He had come looking for me, after all. Suddenly I couldn’t remember what had made me storm out here in the first place. He leaned down, his lips so close to mine. My pulse hammered with the knowledge that he was going to kiss me. Because that’s what we did now, apparently.
And then he stepped away. With no kiss at all. “We have customers, Red. Go see to your tables.”
Whiplash.
Chapter 10
Luke
“Luke.”EliCarterwavedhis hand in my face, causing me to blink. “My beer?”
“Right.” I pulled my gaze from where it had been riveted to Bethany’s popped hip and the table of men she was serving. All of them looked to be in their mid-twenties to early thirties. And all of them were just as riveted to Bethany’s curves as I was. “What can I get you?”
Eli exchanged a look with Max Darlington and then they turned to me with a smirk.
“Maybe we should put our order in with the new girl instead,” Eli said. “You seem to hear her better.”
Eli and I had been friends our whole lives. Now he was the only full-time police officer in Hart’s Ridge. He was a do-gooder to his core, but he was also a jackass and right now, he was trying to get a rise out of me. It was working, too, but fuck if I was going to give him the satisfaction of showing it.
“It’s busy,” I said. “I can barely hear anyone.” I refilled Eli’s glass with a lager from the local brewery and set it in front of him.
“Who is she, anyway?” Max asked. Unlike Eli and me, Max was a relative newcomer to Hart’s Ridge, having moved here only two years ago. But in some ways he wasn’t a newcomer at all. His family was the Harts, who founded this town two centuries ago.
“Bethany Albright. You might remember her, Eli. Her family lives down the road a bit and she was always hanging around.”
“Really?” Eli turned on his stool to study Bethany. “Oh, right. Ethan’s Bethany.”
The words sounded all kinds of wrong to my ears, despite the fact that, until recently, I had thought of her as that myself. And it wasn’t because Ethan was gay, either. It was because Ethan wasn’t me. “They’re not together.”
Maybe that came out a little more forcefully than I intended, because they both looked at me like something was hugely amusing.
“They look like they’re together,” Max observed.
I looked up to see Ethan and Bethany moving in tandem across the room. Max had a point, I had to admit. They looked totally in sync. After putting in their food orders with the kitchen, they headed toward me with their drink orders. All beers, for both of them. Simple enough, but I took my time as I shamelessly eavesdropped on their conversation.
“It’s fine,” Ethan said. “Really. We can get Luke and Jasmine to switch the schedule around so we’re always on the same shift. It’s only a week.”
