She couldn’t picture the man in her dream, which ticked her off even more. If she was going to ache for a guy’s touch, she should at least get to know what the guy looked like. And she didn’t want intimacy and emotion. She wanted sex—hot, sweaty and with the least emotional involvement possible.
Shuffling to her coffeemaker without turning on the lights or opening blinds to let the sun in, she hit the button to start the brew cycle. Then, after a quick detour to the bathroom, she powered up her computer and took her cell phone off the charger.
Two missed calls from her mother. Great. The fact they were spaced two hours apart and her mom had chosen not to leave a voice mail told Tori it wasn’t an emergency, so she made a mental note to call her back later. Maybe.
She took the phone off the setting that only allowed calls from a few people through, including the diner, Gavin’s cell, her aunt’s house and Hailey Genest. She used the setting at night and when she was up against a work deadline, but also when she wasn’t in the mood to be caught in the center of her parents’ drama. Their divorce was final, but their mind games raged on and her affections were the prize. Even the fact she’d packed up and moved to Whitford to stop being their tug-of-war toy hadn’t sent a strong enough signal for them to grow the hell up and move on with their lives. So she was moving on with hers.
Once she’d filled her oversize mug with strong, black coffee, she pulled up her email and lost herself in the morning routine of deleting, sorting and flagging some to deal with later. No emergency fires to put out or drama this morning.
When her phone rang, she assumed it was her mother again and almost ignored it. But habit made her glance over and she saw the diner’s name on the screen.
It was Liz. “I hate to do this to you, but can you come in for a few hours today?”
She took a few seconds to mentally scroll through her to-do list for the day, but she knew she wouldn’t say no. Even though she was always happy to fill in, they didn’t take advantage of her and when they asked her to come in outside of her scheduled hours, it was usually for a good reason. But it was odd for Liz to need unexpected time off two days in a row. “I need to jump in the shower first.”
“Oh, not for my shift. Ava’s not feeling so hot. Paige is going to come in, but we’ve been getting a decent crowd for Friday evenings so she could probably use a hand. So if you came in about four, you could help with the dinner crowd and then you and Paige can flip for who goes home when it starts winding down.”
Paige would win. Not because she owned the diner, but because she had the most adorable baby girl on the planet waiting at home for her. Sarah Rose was six and a half months old, with the Kowalski blue eyes she got from her daddy, Mitch, and dark hair sticking out all over because it refused to be tamed by one of those palm tree ponytails on the top of her head. Attempts at cute headbands had resulted in them being flung around like slingshots, so Sarah’s hair was left alone to be a wild and crazy cloud around her face. Tori really loved that kid.
“I can come in for four o’clock,” she told Liz. “Not a problem.”
Once she’d finished her coffee, Tori hopped in the shower and rummaged through the clean clothes basket for a Trailside Diner T-shirt. After smoothing most of the wrinkles out—she needed to set an alarm to remind her to fold her clothes, dammit—she pulled it over her head and set an alarm for three. She got some work done, but decided to head to the library before her shift.
Hailey Genest was the town’s only librarian and Tori’s best friend in town. Thanks to a little misadventure in the woods back in the spring, Hailey had fallen in love with and was engaged to Matt Barnett, the hot game warden in town.
“Oh, thank God,” Hailey said when Tori put the books she’d finished on the counter for her to check in. “Millie’s next on the waiting list for that book and she calls me twice a day.”
“It’s not even due for another week.”
“Which I tell her twice a day. So what’s new?”
“Max Crawford came in the diner yesterday.”
“No way! Why was he there?”
She shrugged. “When I asked him that, he said he was hungry.”
Hailey laughed. “Katie’s at his house a lot to watch sports and she said he’s a really nice, funny guy. Paige said he never goes in the diner, though. Weird. If he comes in again, try to find out what he does in the basement.”
“Maybe it’s a studio where he makes porn videos.”
“Alone?” Hailey looked skeptical.
“What? That makes less sense than him being a serial killer?” She tried to picture the shy guy with the slightly awkward conversational style who’d sat at the counter yesterday making porn. Maybe he was shy and awkward when it came to talking because he expressed himself in other ways. Alone. With a camera.
“Have you tried running a Google search on him?”