The food was up in minutes. Steaming hot, eggs prepared to perfection. Hash browns glistening with grease and still the best Reese had ever tasted. He and Tony ate in companionable silence punctuated only by requests to pass the ketchup or more sugar for the coffee.
It was the most satisfying meal Reese had eaten in a long time. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, then sat back in the booth and rubbed his stomach with a sigh. Tony laughed.
“Better than pizza and beer,” Tony said. “Good idea.”
“Dessert? We’ve got a killer lemon meringue. It will blow your mind.” The waitress made goo-goo eyes at Tony, who returned the look with an equally soppy one of his own.
“Sold,” Reese told her.
Tony sipped some coffee, not making a secret of how he was admiring the view of the waitress walking away. “So what’s it like, coming home?”
“This hasn’t been home for a long time.” Reese hardly ever talked about growing up on a dairy farm here in Lancaster County. He tried to hardly ever think about it.
“Got it. And growing up here has nothing to do with buying this dairy. Right.” Tony gave Reese an assessing look. “Nostalgia?”
Tony didn’t know the half of it.
“I’m trying to buy that dairy because I think I can make some money off it. The same way I’ve done with every other business I bought. It has nothing to do with where or how I grew up. It’s totally a business decision.” Reese scraped up the last crispy bits of yolk-soaked hash browns and licked the fork clean. He caught Tony’s look but very carefully gave nothing away with his own expression. Tony didn’t need to know the truth. “You have another opinion?”
Tony shifted in his seat. “I know that you’ve never dealt with any place that makes food or beverages before. Not even a restaurant. There were plenty of opportunities to get into that sort of thing, but you’ve always steered away, even though restaurants can be some of the fastest things to turn over.”
“Who says I couldn’t own a restaurant, if I wanted to?”
“You looking to buy a place?” The waitress had reappeared with two plates of pie and another round of coffee. “Eddie’s trying to sell, if you’re really interested.”
Tony grinned at her, eyeing the name tag pinned to the front of her blouse. “Hi there…Gretchen. Awesome coffee, by the way.”
“Why’s he selling?” Reese ignored Tony’s batting eyelashes, though they seemed to have caught the waitress’s attention.
“He wants to retire to Florida.” Gretchen shrugged and topped off their mugs, then stood back to give Tony a contemplative look that turned into a small, interested smile after a moment. “Says it’s too cold here in the winter. He’s had this place for about thirty years.”
“Eddie Malone.” Reese nodded. “My dad knew him.”
The waitress shifted her flirtation from Tony to give Reese a curious look. “Yeah? Who’s your dad?”
“Uh…well, he passed away,” Reese told her, which wasn’t the answer to the question she’d asked but one she accepted with a nod.
“Well, Eddie’s trying to get rid of this place. If you’re really looking.”
“I’m not,” Reese said. “But thanks.”
With another shrug, she left them. Tony gave him a long look as Reese forked a bite of orgasmically tasty lemon meringue into his mouth and pretended he had no idea Tony was trying to dig out more information from him.
“I’ve worked for you for eight years,” Tony said finally. “You can’t tell me there isn’t more to this dairy acquisition than just making a profit. I’ve run the numbers for you. I’ve done the due diligence. Sure, it’s possible that with your magic touch you could make it work, but you made them a shit offer. It’s almost like you didn’t want them to take it in the first place.”
Reese chewed pie. Swallowed. He gave Tony a bland grin.
Tony frowned. “Fine, don’t tell me. Drag my ass out here to the middle of nowhere to pursue some weirdly sudden artisanal cheese fetish. It’s my job, I get it.”
“It’s your job,” Reese agreed mildly.
“I live to serve, master.”
Reese frowned. “Don’t call me that.”
“Fine. My liege?”
Tony was joking and had no idea why it made Reese a little uncomfortable. Like he’d never spoken to Tony about where he’d grown up, Reese had never told him about the sorts of games he used to play. “Cut it out.”
Tony stabbed the air between them with his fork. “You can’t hide it from me forever.”
“I’m not trying to hide anything,” Reese began, and his words cut off at the sight of Corinne coming through the diner’s double front doors.
She wore a pair of faded jeans and a stretched out T-shirt sheer enough to hint at the outline of her bra beneath. Her long, dark hair had been pulled into a messy bun, though a few tendrils had escaped to curl and stick to her neck. She looked tired.
She was beautiful enough to stop his heart.