Page 9 of Last Chance Cowboy
Though he could absolutely tell Cara no, he just didn’t want to.
Because it was nice to make her smile, he didn’t make very many people smile.
And it was the only thing he could actually offer her.
He pulled his truck into its designated spot behind the bakery and growled as he put it in park. He didn’t bother to shut the engine off. All he was going to do was get out of the truck, go inside, and grab whatever thing she had put in the kitchen for him.
He dropped through the back door, and the other two employees who were there ignored him. They were used to him by now.
Though he noticed that while they were more or less ignoring him, they scampered away fairly quickly as he moved deeper into the kitchen to grab the roll that was left there. It was a caramel one. No pecans. He had told her that he didn’t like pecans. But she didn’t sell them in the case without them.
He wondered if she had left one pecan free for him. Then he thought better of it. She had better things to do than make him nut-free rolls.
He went to grab it, and then he heard the sound of a bright, high laugh.
It was early in the morning for somebody to be laughing like that, and he sure hadn’t expected to hear it.
Then he heard the sound of a man’s voice, and then his laughter. Zane frowned, picked up the plate with his roll on it, and stepped near the order-taking window so that he could see the dining room.
Cara was standing out there talking to a customer. A man. She was laughing, looking like she never did when talking to him, but then, why should she? It wasn’t like he ever gave anybody reason to laugh when he spoke to them.
The guy was probably closer to her age than Zane was, and probably didn’t have a metric ton of baggage. At least, Zane assumed, since he was talking and socializing like a normal human being, that he had less baggage than Zane. It was a pretty safe assumption to make.
Airlines had less baggage than Zane.
“Well, if you come back tomorrow, I promise I’ll have something different.” She put her hand on the guy’s shoulder.
“That’s a tempting offer. I was kind of wondering if I could get your number, though. That way, I can make sure that it isn’t sold out before I get here.”
“You can call the bakery,” Cara said cheerfully.
Zane lifted his brows and waited.
The guy persisted. “Well, I don’t want to call the bakery.” He paused, looked down, then looked up. A rehearsed move, in Zane’s opinion. The guy was trying to look bashful while being a persistent dick. “I want to call you. I thought that was a slick way to get your number.”
Cara looked flustered, and even from where he was standing, he was pretty sure he could see her blush from her cheeks all the way up to the roots of her hair.
Well, fuck, shelikedthis dumbass-rehearsed-bullshit.
“Oh well… sure. Sure. Why not?”
“Why not?” The guy laughed. “That is maybe the least enthusiastic number request acceptance I’ve ever gotten. But you know what, I’m going to take it. You seem like an interesting woman, Cara, and I would like to get to know you better.
“Thank you,” Cara said, but Zane noticed that she didn’tsay the same thing about that guy that he’d said about her. Which made Zane feel sort of pettily triumphant.
He had left his truck running. He needed to get back out to it. Instead, he watched as Cara and the guy exchanged phone numbers, and the guy left the bakery.
Zane didn’t know very many local people. He had lived here for a couple of years now, but he didn’t make a habit of going down into town. And even when he did go, he didn’t socialize.
Typically, he went in, got what he needed, and got out. If he kept a sour enough expression on his face, nobody even approached him. He had learned well. He had been making himself unapproachable for a very long time.
Without making the decision to do it, he stepped out of the kitchen and into the dining room, arms crossed. “Who was that?”
Cara turned around sharply, surprised. “Oh, my God!” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Were you hiding in the kitchen?”
“I don’t hide, Cara. I’m here like I am every day to grab my roll.”
“You don’t usually talk to me.”
