The door of the Short Stack swings shut behind the last of the breakfast crowd, and I lean against the front counter.

That was a hell of a Tuesday morning. It felt like a Saturday rush, but I should have expected that. It’s summer in Lakewood, and summer means tourists, and tourists mean weekdays that are just as hectic as the weekends.

I wonder if the sex god I saw earlier is a tourist. Well, maybe he’s a sex god. There’s really only one way to find out.  My cheek still burns where he touched me—burns in a kind of pleasant hum. I wouldn’t mind if he came back in and tried it again. Maybe if he came back in, I wouldn’t act like such an idiot. God, what was I thinking? I lean my forehead into my fingertips.

“Did you get his number?” Sharon’s voice makes me jump. I straighten up, spinning to face her.

“Do you have to sneak up on people like that?”

She waves a hand dismissively. “I never sneak anywhere, and you know it. What are you doing up here? Fantasizing about him?”

I cross my arms over my chest. “Fantasizing about who?”

Sharon clicks her tongue and reaches up to adjust her hair. The movement reminds me of my own hair, which has to look like a total mess after the breakfast shift. I take my hair down, twisting it into a braid. There. Not quite so much pressure on my skull.

“You can’t ignore my original question.”

“I can and I will.”

Sharon narrows her eyes. “Are you telling me that you didn’t notice how attractive that guy was?”

“Are you telling me that you didn’t notice how he has a daughter?”

She shrugs. “So what?”

“So—” How about, I’m just out of a relationship, and for related reasons? “He has a daughter. He’s not interested in dating some waitress.”

“Who said anything about dating?” Sharon smiles at me, her eyes twinkling. “I think you need to get out of this rut.”

“I’m not in a rut. Conrad and I just broke up.”

There’s a small sink in the front corner, just near the counter with the cash register, and I move around to wash my hands.

“That may be,” says Sharon sagely, “but Conrad was always an asshole. Forget about him. Move on. It’s been forever.”

“It’s been two months.”

“Two months, and you’re still crying over him?”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not crying now. I was only crying this morning because—”

“That piece of shit called you up, didn’t he?”

I can’t answer her.

“You called him?” Sharon purses her lips. “Valentine. No. Focus on the here and now. Find out who that young man is.”

“I’m not interested.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

Sharon takes her turn at the sink, washing up, and then leans on the counter over her elbows. I say nothing. I’m thinking of the sexy stranger, the way his muscles rippled under his t-shirt, the way those eyes were almost intoxicatingly blue. I’m thinking of his touch on my skin. No, I’m not interested. I can’t get swept away by all that. Not now. I need time. I need to recover. I can’t just go after a man I meet at work because—

Sharon laughs out loud. “Are you giving me the silent treatment?”

I laugh, too. “Not even. I was just mentally preparing to bus the last of the tables, and then—” I step over to the doorway into the next room, scanning the tables, pretending that’s all that’s on my mind.

“You were not. You were thinking about him. And who wouldn’t be? You can admit it to me, Valentine.” She’s teasing, but my cheeks are getting red. “You can admit that he’s the finest thing ever to walk in the front door. You can admit—”

I put both my hands on my hips, and Sharon laughs. “Fine, Sharon. Fine. I will admit it. I will admit that he was hot. And yes, I enjoyed looking at him. And yes, he might have been flirting with me just a little, but that doesn’t matter because—”

The bell on the door chimes against the glass, and I turn on instinct, ready to greet whoever it is that’s coming in for an early lunch.

Only it’s not chiming because the door is just swinging open. It’s chiming because a cute toddler named Minnie has flicked it up against the glass, reaching from her dad’s arms. The door is wide open, and he’s standing in the threshold, a half-smile on his face, looking right at me.

I open my mouth to welcome him back to the Short Stack, to make some witty comment about how he’s only been gone a couple of hours and he can’t possibly be hungry, but instead what comes out is: “Welcome, hungry already?”

His smile widens, and Sharon laughs out loud, taking over. “Welcome back. Did you forget something, or are you here for lunch?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “I’m here for your message board, actually.”

“Come in, come in,” says Sharon, making a sweeping gesture toward the shabby bulletin board. He steps inside, and his daughter grins at both of us. “Are you looking for anything specific?”

“A place to rent.” He drops my gaze, turning to look at the flyers, and my stomach plummets into my shoes.

Because there is a flyer there with a place to rent. There’s exactly one flyer, and I know exactly whose place it is.

“A place to rent!” Sharon exclaims. “Well, Valentine can tell you all about that.”

He turns back, and I’m caught in his gaze. “Can she?”

I clear my throat. “It’s very rude to talk about people like they’re not in the room.”

His blue eyes are hot, hotter, the hottest. “I’m sorry about that. And—” He clears his throat. “I’m also sorry about being a d—” He stops himself just in time. Minnie has her arms wrapped around his neck, and she’s staring right at me, but I’d bet a fat bundle that if he said the word “dick” right now, it would be a toddler disaster. “I’m sorry about how I acted earlier.”

I shrug at him as awkwardly as is humanly possible. “Not a big deal. I shouldn’t have said—”

“Don’t worry about that. It’s a mistake that everyone makes.”

I don’t want to think about what I said, and before I know it, the words are spilling out of my mouth. “I was going to say that I shouldn’t have asked you how you like your eggs. You’re clearly an over easy man.” 

“Oh? Is it that obvious?”

Jesus, that smoldering grin. It wipes my mind clean of everything I was about to say. “Y-yes.” Lame. Can it get any more lame?

He laughs out loud, and Minnie does too, clapping her hand over her mouth. Sharon is leaning on the counter, hand under her chin, watching the entire thing like it’s a shitty soap opera. I’m a terrible actress, and the longer he stands here, the hotter it’s getting.

“So,” he says, and the way he says it makes me think he might ask me out on a date. I don’t know how that would work, what with his daughter, what with everything, but suddenly I’m dying for him to ask me on a date so I can prove I’m not a tongue-tied nerd with a temporary waitressing job and not much else. “Tell me about this place for rent.”