Had it been an incidental come-on? Maybe King Roughneck hit on anything with breasts if it stood still long enough, his attention as impersonal as buckshot sprayed in the general vicinity of animate females. Or had he read something in her body language or eye contact, some chemical invitation . . . ? Read the far-too-personal truth in signals lost even to her. That she wanted him. In her body, if not her logical brain.
Kim sighed, no clue which possibility annoyed her more.
She’d slept like crap, restless to the last cell. Coffee was needed. Stat.
At the energetically named Wild Horse Diner, kitty-corner from Benji’s on Station Street, she climbed out of her rental car. The formerly silver Jetta was dusted to the finish of a cinnamon doughnut. It locked with an obedient bloop, and she carried her purse and camera bag through the open front door.
She had her pick of seats, snagging a booth at the end. When the waitress swung by, she ordered an omelet, and coffee was delivered as she was buffing her glasses on a napkin.
“Thank you. God knows I need this.”
“Sightseeing?” the young brunette asked.
“Yeah, you could say that.” Kim smiled, not feeling like soliciting yet another stranger’s opinions about Sunnyside’s casino project, nor indeed feeling as though she were somehow their representative. She’d been grilled not only by Vince, but by the motel’s front desk woman, a drugstore clerk, the gas station attendant. People had questions about the development, probably good ones, but she had zero answers. Sunnyside was as tight-lipped as . . . as . . . as some gross, chauvinistic simile a man like Vince might come up with.
Damn. There she went again, remembering him. Vince . . . Whoever. Gris . . . Grim . . . Grenier? Grossier. He’d probably forgotten her name already. Again. God help her if he actually showed up, the next morning. If he did, she’d go along for the photo ops, solely.
The company was paying her for five days’ work and travel. In truth, way more time than she needed—she’d already have hundreds of usable shots by that evening. But she’d stay the full five, and not only for the money.
She wasn’t in a rush to head home. Fortuity might be rough, the assignment not exactly a gold mine—she’d grossly underbid for it, desperate for a change of scenery, some breathing room—but at least here she didn’t have to confront the awkwardness waiting back home. Her stuff still in Ryan’s apartment, and the man himself. A man whom, on paper, she’d had no good reason to dump. But hearts weren’t made of paper, were they?
Plus, when have I ever felt sure about a guy? She slumped at the thought. Maybe she was holding out for something that wasn’t ever coming, waiting to feel that mythical lightning strike, that sizzle. What if that glittery expectation was all bull, cooked up by the same sickos who’d invented Valentine’s Day and Brazilian waxing?
She opened her camera bag and propped the Nikon against her thigh, turning it on. She cycled backward past the black night sky, the train tracks and station ghostly in the streetlight. Then came a punch in the stomach.
That man. His flash-lit face was jarring and stark.
He’d turned his head slightly, and she could see the tip of that ridiculous neck tattoo curling from behind his ear like an evil sideburn, black like all the other work he’d had done on his arms. None of it scandalized her. Sleeves were as common as eyeglasses in Portland, though Vince was no skinny hipster. His bike was no doubt the kind that came with excessive horsepower and earsplitting, look-at-me decibel levels.