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“Did you find the Spoon?” the clerk asked.
Easy nodded. “I did,” he told the older man.
“Decent lunch.”
Easy nodded again, although his definition of decent was obviously very different. He missed Thomas’ burgers and chili cheese fries. And the tattooed blonde who served them. She’d forgotten his steak sauce this time, but that was okay. She’d been flustered to say the least.
He set a newspaper and a hot rod magazine onto the counter. “I need a place to stay,” he told the clerk.
The man looked surprised. “You want to stay in Delay?”
Hell no, he didn’t want to stay. But he hadn’t gotten into this mess in a single day and it was clear to him that it would take more than a day to untangle it.
“Keep heading down Main Street,” the clerk said as he rung him up. “There’s a motel on the other side of town.”
“Thanks.”
He stuffed the reading material into the saddlebags and turned back toward Main Street. He parked in front of the Spoon again and held the door for a guy in overalls before heading back inside himself. He took the same stool he’d sat at before, still available because the lunch crowd had thinned out.
He took his newspaper out from underneath his arm and spread it on the counter. It didn’t take long before a pair of cowboy boots came stomping up behind him. It seemed Daisy was over her initial shock at seeing him, and she’d settled on being pissed instead.
“What is going on?” she demanded.
Easy didn’t look up from the paper. “They’re widening the road out by the bridge,” he told her, reading from the article.
She hesitated. “Is this a joke?”
“Gary Burns thinks so. Though I’m pretty sure it’s because he lives out there and doesn’t want his yard torn up.”
Daisy lunged forward. Easy didn’t flinch. If she was going to hit him, well, he deserved worse. This really wasn’t the time or place for a serious discussion, though. Her hand came down on his paper and not his head, so he supposed maybe she thought the same.
“What are you doing here?!”
“Delilah!”
Easy looked up at the guy who was apparently Daisy’s boss. “What’s going on?” the older man asked. “I don’t want trouble.” He turned to Daisy and jabbed a finger at her. “I told you when I hired you back that I don’t want-”
“I came to eat,” Easy declared. It was none of the old man’s business if he’d come to eat crow or cheeseburgers.
“You already ate.”
Easy shrugged. “Sign says ‘Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner’. So, I want dinner.” To Daisy he said, “I want meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a slice of apple pie. In five hours.”
“Five hours!” the man barked.
Easy kept his eyes on Daisy. “You’ll still be here?”
She hesitated, then nodded slightly.
Easy picked up his paper and shook out the wrinkled pages. “Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, apple pie,” he repeated. “In five hours.”
Chapter 34
Daisy was too stunned to do anything but nod. He was really going to just sit there for five hours until dinner time? The only thing she could think at that moment was Why? But she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
Doug Geer came in for his dinner before his swing shift started, and she was relieved for the distraction. She poured Doug his usual black coffee, and he ignored her in his usual way. She put in his order for chili and waited for Joe to plate it. As much as she’d rather avoid Easy, she couldn’t. Silently, she picked up his glass and refilled it with soda and placed it back down in front of him.
“Thank you, Daisy,” he said loudly then looked at Doug.
Doug shifted uncomfortably on his stool under the weight of Easy’s gaze. Easy finally had mercy on him and went back to reading his paper. When Doug finished his chili, he grunted something that sounded remarkably like thank you to Daisy, left her a dollar, and shuffled toward the door.
During the lull, he broke the lingering silence between them. “What’s in Denver?”
Daisy grabbed some napkins to fill up the dispenser on the counter and began stuffing them in. “Restaurants, movie theaters, mountains, snow,” she replied. “No assholes,” she added, watching Doug walk out the door.
“There are assholes in Denver,” Easy told her.
“Well, I’ll avoid them. I’ve learned my lesson.” He remained silent, which infuriated her for some reason. “Well, you’re not in Denver!” she snapped, just in case she hadn’t made her point.
Easy looked at her from across the counter. “No, I’m not.”
Daisy didn’t know what to say to that, either, so she grabbed a rag and started wiping down tables instead. She did her best to ignore him for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, inventing new things to take care of, like organizing drinking straws by color and rearranging ketchup bottles.
