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“Are you from around here?” Slick asked.
Tildy nodded. “We live on the north side of town. I just graduated from SDSU.”
“That’s in Brookings, right?” Slick asked.
Tildy nodded again. “You’re not from around here?”
“No. I’m from North Carolina, but I…I’ve lived all over.”
“Oh,” Tildy said. “Are you from a military family?”
“Um…”
Hawk watched Slick scowl and shift uncomfortably in her chair. “Tildy majored in finance, but she really wanted to be a teacher,” Hawk declared to defuse the situation. “Oh, wait,” he said, chagrined. “That was a secret. Sorry.”
Tildy smiled though. “It’s okay.”
“Why is it a secret?” Tex asked, pulling up a chair.
Tildy pushed her egg salad around on her plate. “I told my parents I should minor in Spanish, that it would be useful at work. I love Spanish, but I really love teaching English as a Second Language. I got away with volunteering at the community center because I got course credit. I still teach a class there, but my parents don’t approve.”
“Why not?” Slick asked.
“The only Spanish-speaking people that north siders interact with mow their lawns and clean their mansions,” Hawk concluded.
Tildy grimaced.
“Hawk!” Slick chastised.
Tildy sighed. “It’s true,” She admitted.
“What’s true?” Easy asked, coming through the door.
“That if you snooze, you lose,” Tex replied. “I ate all the egg salad.”
Easy’s eyes hardened. “You did not.”
“How much you want to bet?”
Easy smirked. “I’ll just wait until tomorrow. Slick’ll have plenty of kickass chili.”
Tex’s mouth dropped open. “How do you know about that? Why does everyone know about it but me?”
“ ‘Cause you’re going down, Cowboy,” Easy informed him, reaching for a fork.
As the youngest Ranger took a seat at the table, Slick produced another Tupperware bowl from a sack and pried off the lid. She passed it to Easy.
“Ha!” he cried triumphantly, as more egg salad was revealed.
“You and me, one-on-one tonight,” Tex challenged.
Tildy gasped.
“One-on-one?” Easy repeated, shoveling in a forkful of egg salad. “You sure? Seems to me you’ll need your girlfriend to beat me.”
“Are they going to fight?” Tildy asked Hawk, eyes wide. “Over egg salad?”
Hawk laughed. “Well, they’ll get their backs up over just about anything. But no, they wouldn’t go hand-to-hand over egg salad.” He reconsidered this. “Well, maybe Slick’s egg salad. But no, they’re going to shoot pool.”
“Oh.”
“At a little bar about six blocks from here,” Hawk continued. “Maria’s. Ever heard of it?” Tildy shook her head. Hawk wasn’t surprised. “What are you doing tonight?” he asked her.
“Hawk,” Slick admonished.
He looked away from Tildy to Slick and raised an eyebrow. Slick looked troubled. When she opened her mouth, she said, “Maria’s isn’t a place for Tildy.”
“Maria’s isn’t a place for you, babe,” said Shooter, who came in through the door and went to wash his hands in the sink.
Slick rolled her eyes at his back. “I do just fine,” she argued.
Shooter merely growled a little. At the table, he reached for a plate, but Slick moved it out of his reach.
“I can’t eat? They’re eating!” Shooter cried.
“Did you fix Tildy’s car?” Slick asked pointedly.
Shooter shook his head. “Needs a new sensor. Can’t pick one up ‘til Monday morning.” He turned to Tildy. “You okay with that?”
Tildy nodded.
“There, see,” he told his wife.
Slick made him wait just a few seconds longer, then slid the plate over. Shooter tucked into his ham and cheese enthusiastically.
“Where’s Emilio?” Slick asked.
“Sent him home,” Shooter replied around his sandwich. “Told him to fix his attitude and come back tomorrow.”
“Chris.”
“He’s acting a fool, baby. I told you. I think he’s getting mixed up with a bad crowd. Or a girl. Or something.”
“Well, don’t send him home where he’ll just get into more trouble!”
“He’ll be back tomorrow,” Shooter intoned. “It’s not like I can lock him up in the office all night. And he’s too young to come to Maria’s where I can keep an eye on him.”
“You’re not too young for Maria’s, right?” Hawk asked Tildy, double checking.
She blushed again, and he grinned. God, she was cute.
She cleared her throat nervously. “Um, no. I’m 22.”
Hawk grinned even wider, but did not fail to notice Slick staring daggers at him. He shrugged it off. He was the same age as the Cowboy, and Vegas was the same age as Tildy. Of course, Vegas was, well, Vegas, in almost every sense of the word. Abby Raines had been born and raised in that little slice of the Nevada desert surrounded by showgirls and mobsters. Rumor had it that Abby’s family was actually ‘The Family.’
Tildy was definitely not as worldly as Abby, or even Sarah, who’d had done her own growing up while spending years on the run. Hawk frowned at the woman now. He’d picked up a few co-eds before on nights that she was waiting tables. Slick had never said a word to him or seemed to care. Hell, Hawk and Tex had shared a co-ed once or twice, though that had been before Slick had known them.
