Twice Upon a Blue Moon (7 page)

“You look like you’ve seen Jesus,” he teased, leaning on the counter that separated diner from kitchen.

“Don’t let it go to your head.” Hazel brushed perspiration from her brow with her sleeve. “Are you going to stay there and gawp for the rest of the day?”

“It’s tempting,” Marco admitted with a crooked grin.

Sadie nudged him out of the way with her hip. If she noticed his blush, she hid it well.

“Two hash browns, one large, one peppered, and one pecan waffle. And I’m still waiting for that sausage and cheese wrap,” she added in a singsong, perfectly matching the cheap muzak Marco insisted on pumping through the speakers duct-taped to the rafters.

Hazel nodded, trying to find herself in the sizzling patties on the grill.

“Step aside,” Marco ordered, “and behold the master at work.” He donned his apron with a flourish and claimed the spatula from Hazel’s hands as though taking up a scepter.

Seeing his kid didn’t just put him in a good mood. It turned him into a nicer guy.

Come evening, the pendulum would swing all the way in the other direction at the thought of driving his daughter back to her mother’s. Hazel was used to the seesaw. It was why Sadie usually worked Tuesday evenings. For now, she was just glad for the break.

Hazel pushed out of the swiveling kitchen doors and slipped through the back door of the diner, gulping down breaths. The alley stank of dumpster refuse and cat piss—still preferable to the cloying, overpowering sweetness of pancakes and waffles.

It was a beautiful day outside, much nicer than the one before. Summer had finally come to the west coast. Hazel leaned against the brick wall of the diner and turned her gaze toward the sky. Puffy white clouds drifted by on a blue backdrop, like something out of a child’s coloring book.

She didn’t hear the sound of footsteps until they aborted and turned back toward the mouth of the alley.

“Hazel? Is that you?” Dylan squinted, his expression twisted as if he’d smelled bad fish. It was entirely possible.

“In all my overworked glory,” Hazel replied. She was technically supposed to be working, but Marco wouldn’t mind her taking a break. She’d covered for him all morning. “What are you doing here?” she asked, sidestepping oily, rainbow puddles to meet Dylan on the sidewalk. Standing near him was a constant reminder that she’d let herself go—the hairnet she was currently sporting and the pungent whiff of melted cheese didn’t help.

He swayed toward her, then away again, as though he couldn’t decide between kissing her and giving her space.

“Breakfast. I called to ask if it was okay, but…”

“My phone’s somewhere in my locker,” Hazel explained. She had given him her cell number when it might have been smarter to give him the diner’s. “Everything okay?”

“I think that’s my line.” Dylan smiled warmly.

“Almost didn’t recognize you without the suit,” Hazel quipped, ogling him unabashedly. Maybe it counted as objectification—maybe not—but Dylan didn’t need a tailored suit to look a million bucks.

He glanced down at himself, as if only then noticing that he’d dug out a pair of jeans from his closet instead of donning his usual Hugo Boss armor. “Yeah, I took the day off.”

“Guess you were hoping last night would turn out a little differently, huh?”

He waved a hand. “Let’s not live in the past.”

“I’m free tonight,” Hazel ventured cheekily. Sadie owed her one, anyway.

Dylan grimaced at the traffic whizzing past in a ceaseless succession of foreign cars. Marco’s hole in the wall was strategically perched on the main back road that tied LA to Newport, one of many wannabe pit stops on the scrap of urban decrepitude that had sprung up at the far edge of the city. If not for Sadie, Dylan might never have set foot inside. Hazel might never have contemplated throwing boiling hot coffee into his face.

She wouldn’t be thinking of kissing him now.

“Actually,” he started, “that’s something I wanted to talk to you about…”

Dread bloomed in the pit of Hazel’s stomach. “Tonight’s no good for you?”

“My roommate wants to meet you.”

“Come again?” She’d heard him the first time, but when deciphered, the request made no sense. Dylan’s
arrangement
was his problem. She didn’t have a stake in that and it had nothing to do with her.

He shifted his weight, as uncomfortable as Hazel felt. “I… I told him about us. About you. After I got back, we talked.
A lot
.”

Wait, there’s an
us
?

“And at some point in that talk he decided he wanted to meet up?” Patience was not one of Hazel’s strongest suits. Dread listed dangerously into panic the more she stood there, hanging on Dylan’s every word.

“It’s your call.”

“I’d be worried if it wasn’t.”

Dylan smiled crookedly. “If you’re up for it, he suggested dinner. Tonight.”

“I’m not cooking for three,” Hazel quipped. “Not enough plates.” Plus, her apartment felt cramped enough with two people in it. With three, they’d suffocate.

“I know a place.”

She was aware that she was equivocating. Dylan would probably take no for an answer. He might even agree to another date—just for the two of them—to make it up to her. The more time they spent together the more he seemed like a genuinely decent person.

Trusting your instincts again, are you?
quipped a self-sabotaging voice at the back of her mind.
You know they’re not worth shit.

“Okay.” She let out a long breath. “Pick me up from the apartment at eight.”

Dylan had no business heaving a sigh of relief when it was Hazel who was being asked to play nice with the in-laws—or the creepy, homo-romantic roommate equivalent. And yet it felt good to know she’d lifted a weight off his shoulders. So much so that she found herself smiling when he did, pleased to have been of service.

“Still want to come in for breakfast or…?” Hazel trailed off, hitching up her shoulders.

“I just wanted to see you,” Dylan admitted sheepishly. “Breakfast was an excuse.”

Wings fluttered in the cage of Hazel’s ribs. She ignored the ticklish sensation. Just hours ago, she’d told Sadie she didn’t know what she wanted out of this
thing
with Dylan—if anything at all. It had started out as a harmless bit of fun. A dare.

She wasn’t daring herself with the squirming in her chest or the heat in her cheeks. Those were all warning signs, a five-alarm carillon she couldn’t afford to ignore.

The diner door clanged open, bell chimes swinging. The sound brought her crashing down to earth. “Okay, well… I should get back to work.”

“I won’t keep you.”

“See you tonight,” Hazel said, trying to inject enthusiasm into her voice. If nothing else, it would be a great opportunity to spend more time with Dylan—while getting grilled by his weird, not so platonic roommate. “Hey, I didn’t ask,” she called, one hand already on the diner door. “Did your car make it through the night okay?”

Dylan spun around, hands tucked into his pockets. He might have been a cutout from a Levi’s commercial. Hazel’s mouth went dry. “Yeah,” he replied. “Why?”

I’m pretty sure I dreamed of us in the back seat?
Hazel shrugged. “And you?”

He smiled ruefully and waved a hand from side to side as if to say
so-so.
“See you tonight.” With that, he turned and walked off the same way he’d come.

Hazel stepped into the cacophony of the diner, trying not to feel like she’d just agreed to leap out of a plane without a parachute.

* * * *

That forgotten bastion of quintessentially Midwestern values that was Dunby, Missouri had only ever had one diner and one bar for as long as Hazel remembered. Kids went to the former with their parents until they were old enough to sneak into the latter with their friends.

A town of barely two hundred souls had little concept of price range or competition. If the old ranchers turned wealthy paragons of the community wanted to feast, they either crossed the Mississippi and drove to Dyersburg or Union City, or stayed in their sprawling mansions and reveled in home-cooked meals prepared by their live-in staff. The poor had a similar choice, albeit between soup kitchens in the greater townships or canned soup at home.

The same rules didn’t apply to places like LA. Hazel was never more aware of this than when she stood outside a restaurant clearly above her pay grade, with a man who was clearly out of her league.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea
. She felt ill at ease in her too-tight black dress, the girdle underneath cutting her airflow even as her heart pumped faster, trying to keep pace with her racing thoughts.

Dylan pressed a hand to the small of her back. “Shall we?”

The doors slid open as if he’d whispered ‘Open Sesame’. The distinct absence of muzak struck Hazel first then the white-clad maître d’, who smiled at Dylan like an old friend. She watched them shake hands, but whatever words they exchanged flew right over her head. She was too preoccupied with taking in the chandeliers casting warm yellow beams onto wood paneled walls and white tablecloths alike.

In a pinch, she might have called it industrial espionage, though it would take a serious windfall for Marco’s to become even a pale shadow of this place.

And if it did, Marco’s first managerial decision would probably be to replace the likes of her with proper wait staff.

The tables were arranged in a horseshoe, three rows converging around a dance floor where couples of all ages were waltzing discreetly to the warble of a live band. The parallels to Buddy’s wedding were so strong that Hazel nearly started combing the crowd for signs of the bride and groom.

The maître d’ led them through the restaurant like wayward pups.

Hazel kept her arm linked through Dylan’s and an eye out for a single man at a table set for three. Her pulse throbbed frantically between her ears. She wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t pass out before the fateful meeting.
That would be very, very dumb. You’re a grown woman. This guy doesn’t mean anything to you
.

The problem—she was beginning to see—was that she wasn’t as indifferent to Dylan as she might have liked. Passing muster with his friends mattered.

“Mr. Parrish?” The maître d’ bent discreetly over a black-clad shoulder. “Your party is here.”

Hazel had anticipated an older man—some sort of white-haired sugar daddy who drove a BMW and dictated whom Dylan could see in his private time. It was a bit of a stretch sure, since nothing about Dylan suggested he
needed
a benefactor, but Hazel couldn’t wrap her mind around it otherwise.

She gawped as Parrish startled to his feet. He couldn’t have been older than Dylan. He stood maybe an inch shorter—though that might have been a consequence of his slouching—and wore his blond hair in riotous, short-sheared curls. Like Dylan, he knew how to fill a suit—and the resemblance didn’t end there. He had the same knowing eyes, the same penetrating stare. His dimples were like parentheses denting his improbably sharp cheeks when he grinned.

But where Dylan was gorgeous and magnetic like a dazzling sun, Parrish put Hazel in mind of Old Testament fables and a jealous God. She found herself staring at his perfect mouth with all its straight, white teeth. She imagined she could see old blood and sinew caught in the gaps around his canines.

“Dylan! Ah, and this must be Hazel.” He held out a broad, white palm. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Well, that’s good… Me, I’ve heard
nothing
about you, Mr. Parrish,” Hazel shot back, pumping his fingers in a sure grip.
You don’t scare me.

The arch reply only broadened his smile. “Ward, please. We’ll have to see about remedying that oversight, won’t we?” He released her hand without preamble.

Dylan pulled up a chair for her on Ward’s right. She sat down carefully, hoping against hope that the fraying seams of the dress would last out the night.

“So what’s good here?” Hazel quipped. “I’m guessing it’s not your first time.”

“We don’t have many of those left,” Ward countered. He alone didn’t pick up his menu. “I recommend the fennel soup, perhaps followed by the roasted sole. And a waltz, of course. Do you dance, Hazel?”

“Not if it involves choreography.”

“Ah, but with a firm hand to lead you, there should be no need.”

Hazel slanted a glance across the table at Dylan. How much did Ward know about her, exactly? “I’m not really interested in being
led
by anyone, but thanks. I think I’ll have the salmon.” She folded the menu shut. “And I’ll skip the wine.”

Dylan sucked the corners of his lips in. “So will I.”

“You’re joking,” Ward scoffed. He had a faint accent, not British but not American, either. “You’re
not
joking?” He frowned. “Well, this is a sad day. I’m glad I didn’t order champagne.”

He flagged down the nearest waiter. “Change of plans. Forget the wine. Bring me a Scotch instead.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ward had such ease with barking orders that Hazel was willing to bet money he was an only child—a
pampered
only child, at that. This was what spoiled little tyrants grew up to become. It didn’t explain why Dylan smiled so fondly in his direction whenever Ward was focused on something else.

Stockholm Syndrome is a thing.

It struck her suddenly that if she’d seen them together from the first, she wouldn’t have given Dylan the time of day for all the free dinners in the world.

“It seems I owe you an apology,” Ward announced out of the blue, training his arresting gaze on Hazel. A pair of lasers would’ve unsettled her less. “Dylan explained what happened last night. Had I known, I would’ve stayed another night in San Diego.”

“I didn’t want to put you out of your home…”

He waved a hand, dismissing the apology. “You wouldn’t have. There are
two levels to the loft, and the walls have been decently soundproofed.” Ward smiled when the waiter deposited his Scotch on the table. He tapped a finger to the edge of the tumbler, looking like a man who enjoyed drinking but knew that he needed to pace himself.

This one’s the control freak
. Which meant Dylan was what? The sidekick? The enabler?