Chapter One

“Where’s that order, Tiny?” Ruth bellowed from the order counter.

“Sweetie Pie just dropped the burger on the floor,” the large, red-headed fry cook grumbled. “It’s gonna be another ten minutes.”

Sweetie Pie was the newest cook to join Max’s Tavern since I’d started working there as a waitress, the fifth in as many months. And just like the others, she wasn’t working out so well.

Ruth, the manager and my co-waitress, was fit to be tied. “What’s it take to get decent help around here?”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Lula, the third waitress on Max’s staff, said in her soft voice. “She’s doin’ the best that she can.”

Ruth darted Lula a glare, but she stopped short of letting loose on her. Her uncharacteristic restraint could be put down to two things. The first was that the situation was only temporary. Lula was filling in as a favor until we found someone else to take her spot. She’d left the job months ago, and we hadn’t felt the need for a third waitress, but the tavern’s business had grown exponentially over the last few weeks, now that construction had started on the Drummond Lodge and Spa. With few other dining options around, most of the construction workers came to Max’s Tavern for both lunch and dinner. It hadn’t taken us long to realize the crowd was too big for one or two of us. We’d both been pulling doubles for two weeks. Max had finally gone behind Ruth’s back and called Lula to see if she’d lend a helping hand during the lunch shifts, which would have been great if Lula were more useful. Half the time she screwed up orders too.

Which Ruth would also have yelled at her for if not for reason number two—Lula was the girlfriend of Drum, Tennessee’s resident drug czar, Todd Bingham, and she had given birth to his baby daughter only five weeks earlier.

Truth be told, Ruth didn’t want Lula working with us at all, but Max had asked, and Lula had agreed. I suspected part of her reason for doing so was that she wanted more of a relationship with him—they’d recently discovered they were half-siblings. Though Max may have regretted making his request. Bingham had shown up in the tavern twice so far to let his displeasure over the situation be known to anyone within earshot—which had been the entire tavern since he’d bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Lula insisted she was an independent woman and no one was gonna tell her what to do. Her incarcerated mother had been controlling her for years from behind bars, but she’d finally shaken free of her hold, and she was claiming her freedom. (Her mother was supposed to have been released this spring, but last I’d heard, her parole hearing had been postponed.) Ultimately, Ruth stood behind Lula’s decision, more out of female solidarity than gratitude. Still, we all knew Lula wasn’t in it for the long haul, and Max was actively looking for someone to hire. So far, he’d come up with a big fat nothing. Little wonder given how much we’d struggled to find useful kitchen help.

I grabbed my two plates off the counter, grateful neither was a burger so Ruth couldn’t lay claim to it, and hurried them out to the table of two hungry construction workers. Both of them were fine-looking, especially the blond guy with bright blue eyes. The other man had brown hair with a beard that was a bit bushy for my taste.

Setting their plates on the table, I gave them both a friendly smile, careful not to appear too friendly. “If y’all need anything else, you be sure to let me know.”

The guy with the beard shot his companion an encouraging look that had my guard up.

I was used to all sorts of clientele at Max’s, from the friendly older people who showed up during the lunch and early dinner shifts to the rough guys in Bingham’s motley crew, and I could handle them all, but I had a weakness for cute guys. It hadn’t served me well—I had a short list of exes to prove it—and I didn’t intend to fall prey to it again.

“Uh, yeah,” the blond guy said, looking nervous. “We just got into Drum today, and I was wondering what there is to do around here at night.”

His lack of cockiness weakened my resolve. “So you’re stayin’ in town for the construction of the spa?”

“Just the excavation,” he answered, maintaining eye contact. “We’re stayin’ at the Alpine Inn across the street.”

“In that case, I offer my apologies in advance,” I said with a teasing grin.

“That bad, huh?” he asked, returning my smile.

I tilted my head and gave him an apologetic look. “Let’s just say you’ll have a whole new appreciation for Motel 6.”

His friend laughed and I started to walk away, but the blond guy called out, “You never told me about the entertainment in this town.”

I glanced back at him, shaking my head. “You’re lookin’ at it. Max’s Tavern. There’s a Braves game tonight that a good portion of the town will show up to watch.” I cocked an eyebrow. “You a Braves fan?”

“Depends,” he said with a sly grin. “Are you?”

I knew what he was asking, but it was never going to happen. I laughed. “Who isn’t?”

After I checked on my other tables, getting refills for one couple and taking another party’s dessert orders, I returned to the guys’ table.

“Can I get you anything else?” I asked before thinking it through.

“Yeah,” the blond guy said. “Your number would be great, especially if you’re free to go out with me tonight.”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “Well, both of those requests are never gonna happen. I don’t have a cell phone and I’m workin’ tonight.”

His grin spread. “I guess I know where I’ll be tonight.”

“So the check, then?” I asked.

His friend laughed. “Yeah. The check.”

I slipped my order pad out of my apron pocket and put the ticket on the table. “We prefer cash. The internet around here is a little flaky. Makes it harder to run cards.”

The blond guy snatched the ticket off the table. As he reached for his wallet, I turned away doing a quick scan of my tables, and saw Marco Roland standing a couple of tables away.

He had a cocky grin, like always, and was wearing his sheriff’s deputy uniform.

I shook my head. Marco was too good-looking for his own good, and he knew it and flaunted it. Half the women in Drum and the surrounding area had fallen for his charm, but he wasn’t a use ’em and lose ’em type of guy. He always made it very clear from the get-go that he wasn’t looking for anything more serious than a couple of dates, although dates was a generous term. Even if there were places to go on dates in Drum, I highly doubted Marco would have utilized them. Occasionally he brought women to Max’s in the evening, but I suspected most of the action transpired at his place. He had to be running out of women, though, because his “dates” had become less frequent over the last couple of months.

A playful smile lit up his eyes as I approached him, and he cast a glance toward the table behind me. “You flirtin’ for tips now?”

“Who said I was flirting?”

He leaned closer, a surprised expression on his face. “Don’t tell me you’re seriously considerin’ goin’ out with that bozo.”