Waitressing the overnight shift sucked.

It meant that I always had to deal with the sloppy drunkards that wandered in off the street, eager for food just as much as a nice piece of ass to squeeze.

Waffle Shack, with its giant, glowing interstate sign, was a godsend to truckers in for the long haul. At least the out-of-towners knew when to quit ahead when you stopped playing along.

The locals thought you owed them.

When regulars started leaving larger than average tips, my pocketbook loved it, but my soul dreaded it. That meant it was only a matter of time before they expected the flirting to go a little bit… further.

After all, they were being generous.

The least you could do was let them have a little touch, right? Let ‘em have a bit of a friendly pat?

Wrong.

That’s not the kind of girl I am.

Sure, a little sexual harassment comes with the job, especially in the Deep South. But I didn’t sign up in this dump to serve platters of hash browns and grits, only to make myself the main course.

It didn’t even pay that well.

Only six weeks into this crummy job, and I already had to remind some of the older, overly friendly customers that there were strip clubs just a few exits down that offered what they wanted.

Sometimes, the customers were the least of my problems…

I was stuck on the bullshit overnight shifts because I was on probation, thanks to the shit-stain assistant manager, Clyde.

The problem was that I’d been naïve.

When Clyde started making advances not three days into the job, I’d politely warded him off. I was used to that kind of attention here, after all, and I really needed this job.

What I had failed to understand was that I was the novelty. I was the cute girl from out of town with the thick skin who could dish it out as often as I got it.

Hot plates optional.

But Clyde hadn’t taken too kindly to that. He’d taken that as playing hard to get.

His bulletproof plan was two-fold. Part one was a heaping of snide little sexual comments that were somehow supposed to make me drop on my knees in his office, giving him some of that Southern service with a smile.

The other part was automatically giving me the best shifts and days off because he liked me, and it made me owe him.

Or so he thought.

The other waitresses, much more senior than I, didn’t care for that. I couldn’t turn to them for help, because every time I happened upon them smoking outside, they were bitching about my special treatment.

It came to a head when Clyde cornered me in the cooler one lazy Sunday afternoon, eager to wet his whistle, and I gave him a piece of my goddamn mind.

Oh, he got the picture alright.

Then the lecherous fucker smacked me with probation. So now, I was working the lazy overnight shifts, scrambling for tips from the drunken fuckers and broke college students stumbling in off the street.

The saving grace was Muriel, the other overnight waitress, a career server around seventy who took a liking to me. The woman could have been my grandmother, both in age and hospitable attitude. All she was missing was the tray of warm cookies every night.

So, the money sucked, and the rest of the scheduled servers thought I was first blowing their boss, and now getting uppity about putting out – no matter what I said.

On top of that, the late-night customers weren’t used to having a younger, attractive waitress on their beck and call. So, they acted up for me.

But there was Muriel to tell them off.

At least I had her.

One of the nights that I didn’t have her, I was stuck with a real uppity bitch from the late morning crew. Chloe had it out for me from the start, and I never figured out why.

But she was one of those who thrived on the sex appeal. Freshly eighteen, she cooed and played into the drunken fuckers, getting tips that could make me weep.

She’d even intentionally sat my asshole of an ex-boyfriend in my section tonight, him and his little group of cronies.

Mark was a little older, a heavy-set guy with a protruding beer belly, premature balding, and a leering grin. When we’d dated, he’d been kind of attractive. A broad build went a long way, and he’d been better than my previous string of asshole biker boyfriends.

Until he wasn’t.

“Whatcha want?” I angrily asked as I whipped out my pen and notebook, casting a filthy look over at Chloe as she poured coffees at the countertop and watched smugly.

Bitch.

“Hiya, Sunshine,” Mark grinned stupidly. It was obvious that he’d already downed his usual six-pack of his favorite domestic piss. “I wanna get a round of coffees for the crew.”

Oh yeah.

The crew.

That’s what he called his bullshit friends. While they weren’t the brightest bulbs in the box, I didn’t know what they saw in him. Then again, I wondered what I had ever seen in the asshole, too.

It didn’t help that they were all part of a motorcycle club here in these parts – the Bayou Boys, they called themselves. I didn’t know a whole lot about ‘em – the backwater chumps in my booth were recent additions, somehow all passing initiation.

All I knew is that I didn’t want any part of any club that willingly took these stupid strays in.

“Coffees, right up,” I muttered.

Of course, I felt the firm slap of his hand against my ass when I turned to walk away.

Just suck it up, I groaned.

You’ll only encourage him…

I moved for the coffee machine, only to realize that Chloe hadn’t bothered refilling it when it started getting low. Great. That meant five minutes waiting on it while Mark and his crew watched, open to heckle me at every opportunity.

“Ohhh, sorry about that,” Chloe smirked over her shoulder while taking an order.

Yeah. Sure you are.

I didn’t even notice the burly fellow wander into the diner, taking his seat two booths over from my ex-boyfriend.

One of the crew piped up: “Honey, we’re thirsty, tired men. You gon’ hurry up with that there coffee anytime soon?”

“Waitin’ on the machine, darling,” I sarcastically quipped.

Another one snipped up.

“You gonna get our orders, or what?”

We all knew that they liked their drinks before they ordered, but I played along. Wandering back to their table reluctantly, I pulled out my notepad and began transcribing.

Mark grinned up in a leer, dropping the menu down onto the ground.

“You getting that?”

I resisted a sigh, carefully bending down so that I wouldn’t show my ass to them. Didn’t stop him from giving another solid smack, and I almost banged my head under the table on the way up.

“Are you done?” I asked, hand on my hip.

The crew burst into laughter, and I just shook my head. Animals. They’re all a bunch of fucking animals here.

Mark snatched the menu back, looking over the large, glossy, laminated sheet. “Yeah, I’ll take the All-American Platter, extra bacon, extra cheese on the hash…”

After I was done taking their orders and poured them coffee, I went ahead and updated the cook on the new itinerary.

I liked him.

Geoff was a friendly kid. No older than twenty-two, the high school dropout was a savant when it came to running a kitchen alone. He might lack in book smarts, but behind a grill, he was the best I’d ever seen. I imagined him running his own restaurant one day, knocking the critics dead with crazy recipes cooked to perfection.

That might be his future, but at the moment, he was covered in bacon grease and taking a second to read the annoyance on my face.

“Mark again, huh?”

I nodded bitterly.

“Don’t let ‘em get to ya, Kate,” he smiled sympathetically, simultaneously snapping open waffle grids and flipping eggs. “They’re real assholes. You did good by dropping that sack of shit.”

“Yeah, I like to tell myself that,” I sighed. “But he’s never gonna leave me alone. His bullshit crew knows everyone in this town. I can’t get a job in a fifteen-minute radius of Lafayette without him showing up two days later.”

Geoff wiped his hands clean on his perpetually stained apron front. “You deserve better than what you got. If it were me–”

Chloe’s shrill voice called out.

“Customer! Booth!”

Great. Not only did I miss someone walking in, but now the entire restaurant was going to blame me for not serving him… let alone it being her fucking turn.

“Be right back,” I groaned.

While he started slathering more bacon on the flat griddle, I walked back behind the countertop and out to the restaurant lobby, grumbling all the while.

“You as bad a server as you are a lay, sweetheart?” Mark sneered from off to the side, and his booth roared with laughter.

I tried to ignore them. They were going to make me miserable and leave me high and dry when it came time for the tip. If I was going to make a living, I needed to impress some real customers…

And the man who made himself at home in a corner booth certainly looked real.

Real big… anyway… The menu he held up did nothing to hide his massive arms and tall frame.

I tugged my greasy notebook and a pen from my apron pocket, walking over to greet him.

“Welcome to Waffle Shack,” I cheerily started. “My name’s Kate and I’ll be serving you tonight. What can I–”

The menu lowered as the stranger lifted his gaze, and the surprise hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water.

I could say that the years had been kind to Grizz, but that wouldn’t be doing justice.

The years had worshipped him, carving his strong, thick frame into something a Greek sculptor might have captured in marble. Broad shoulders, massive tree trunk arms, a thick beard, and a chiseled face bearing those same, piercing pale blue eyes gazed up quietly at me.

One glance from those eyes, in that body, and my panties didn’t stand a fucking chance. I could already feel my body react, betraying any hope that I might be able to hold myself together.

He wasn’t supposed to be here… He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere.

“…Kate?”