Damn him.
I couldn’t help smiling at the mental picture his words produced, and regardless of my sour mood, I chuckled as I envisioned the wolf trotting down the street with a sparkly tiara perched on her head.
Chapter 27
“YOU HUNGRY?” HOLBROOK asked, startling me out of my thoughts.
I’d been thinking about my hallucination of Samson’s face in the window of the restaurant, and was trying to figure out if I was losing my mind. My nerves were stretched thin, like too little butter spread over bread. I wasn’t sure how many more surprises I could take, and was growing tired of the emotional roller coaster I was on.
Someone stop the ride. I want to get off.
Straightening in my seat, I rubbed my forehead to warm the skin that had been resting against the window as I watched the world zip by. “Sure.”
I glanced in the side mirror to watch our Men in Black watchdogs trailing behind us as Holbrook retrieved his phone from the holder on his belt. Their expressions remained as implacable as ever as he let them know that we were stopping for food, and I was glad when he told them to station themselves in the parking lot. I didn’t think I could have maintained an appetite with the Sunshine Twins breathing down my neck.
Turning off the highway, we pulled into a Denny’s lot, but it wasn’t until I slid down out of the car that my stomach rumbled with hunger. With stern instructions for him to stay put, I left Loki in the car and let the smell of hash browns, cheeseburgers, and French fries pull me inside.
The restaurant was fairly empty, with only a couple of booths and tables occupied by the last few stragglers from the lunch rush. A young hostess wearing far too much makeup showed us to a booth next to the large picture windows overlooking the parking lot.
A guy who barely looked old enough to drive, with a face covered in acne and shaggy hair falling in his eyes, ambled over after a few minutes to take our drink orders. Still irritated from our earlier trip to The Sage Brush, I decided to treat myself to what every cranky woman needs—a large chocolate milkshake topped with a mountain of whipped cream and a plump cherry. There was a chance it would come back to haunt me later, but at that moment I just wanted a giant vat of chocolate and sugar to soothe my bruised ego.
Drumming my fingers on the table as I waited for our server to return with our drinks, I looked around the restaurant, scoping out the rest of the people escaping the cold.
A pair of white haired women sipping coffee sat across the restaurant directly beneath one of the heat vents, bundled up in woolen cardigans and snow boots despite the hot air blowing down on them. The one furthest from me wore a pale lilac sweater with pearl buttons down the front, the sight of it sending a pang of longing deep into my middle. I couldn’t help thinking of my grandmother and her fondness for the color purple.
She’d owned at least a dozen sweaters, blouses, and skirts in varying shades of purple, and whenever my grandfather had earned her ire, he would leave a milk jug filled with fragrant lavender from the garden on the kitchen table. A wistful smile touched my lips as I remembered the strong and willful woman she had been.
Inevitably though, my thoughts turned maudlin when I thought of the empty place she had left in my life. Looking down at my hands on the table, I recalled how paper thin the skin on her hands had gotten in those last months when the cancer was ravaging her body. She hadn’t been particularly old, only in her early seventies, when cancer claimed her breasts, and eventually her life. Even after all these years, her loss was a barely healed wound, raw and easily reopened.
Under the guise of rubbing my face, I wiped away the tears clinging to my eyelashes, and pushing thoughts of my grandmother from my mind, continued to check out the other occupants of the restaurant.
A woman in her early thirties sat at a table a few feet away, feeding small pieces of fried chicken to a happily babbling toddler while her other child tugged at her sleeve, asking her to look at his latest masterpiece, a scribble of blue and red crayon on his paper placemat. Despite the bags under her eyes, she inspected his drawing and enthusiastically professed it to be the great work of art he presumed it was. Beaming from ear to ear the young Picasso went back to work, wielding a bright orange crayon in his small hand.