“Skylar Iverson!”
CHAPTER TWO
BEING TRAPPED IN a coffee shop for over an hour hadn’t been part of her plan. Having to abandon Portland and drive across the country wasn’t in there either. She forgot to pencil in her car stalling on the highway outside of a tiny Michigan town called Lake Holly.
For all the things going wrong in her life, at least she was somewhere warm with unlimited coffee. It could be a lot worse. Emma picked up the mug and took a careful sip trying to not smear her lipstick.
“Good morning, Miss.” A man in a winter cap with the ear muffs sewn in plopped down beside her. He opened a bag and tugged out a black box with dials on the side and started to fine-tune them.
“Hello,” Emma greeted him.
“I’ve got a…melted can of frosting with some coffee in the cup!” Nick shouted to the throngs forced to stand next to the door. He handed it to the first person he could to run back to the counter and take the next order.
Emma shifted in her seat, growing uneasy at the rising number of people and the one man to handle it all. Four of them got up, leaving a pile of soiled napkins, cups, and used sugar packets behind. Without a thought, she slipped from her chair, gathered up the mess, polished the tabletop, and deposited the trash in the bin.
“You the new waitress?” the man in the hat asked as she sat down
“Ah…no. I only thought I may as well help while I’m here.” By the time she finished, another group took over the table, scattering more sugar across it. That was the way of the restaurant—clean only existed for a millisecond of time before someone, somewhere dropped an egg.
The old man stared overlong at her.
What am I doing? No one asked me for my help. What if I made it worse?
“You’ve got somethin’ on your cheek…” he pointed to her face and Emma winced. Out of habit, she slapped her palm over her cheek. A thousand jeers railed out of her memory. Folding in on herself, Emma turned away and lowered her hand. A dot of chocolate rested on her palm. Of course. She never forgot to cover her…
The static from the man’s box crackled and an official voice said, “Officer Collins, we’ve got a report of a suspicious character out on maintenance road at mile marker thirty-seven. Do you copy?”
“Ooh, haven’t had one of those in a while,” the man in the hat said. He tossed open his notebook and hunched over it to write.
The box’s static cut out again and a person, presumably Officer Collins, responded to the request. Nick looked up from the register to the man. “Sam? What’d I say about the scanner?”
“To put it away when the sheriff’s here,” Sam said.
Nick sighed and looked heavenward before his gaze slipped over to her. His grimace lightened as if a smile was on the horizon. Diving forward, Emma brought her mug to her lips and drank. She kept drinking until the buzzing in her head left.
Trembling hands put the coffee mug down. Nick must have read that as due to jitters from the police scanner and not the heavy dose of caffeine. He leaned across the counter to whisper to her, “Don’t worry about Sam. He’s weird but harmless.”
“I ain’t weird,” Sam insisted. “Don’t you know there’s been an increase in crime ever since they tore down the old granary?”
“Really?” Emma asked.
Nick mouthed to her, “Twenty years ago.”
“No one’s paying attention, but mark my words, they’re gonna want this data one day.”
“Uh-huh, here, let me top you up.” Nick sounded more like the patient bartender with Sam and less the surly coffee slinger of before. An ear-screeching noise yanked his grumpy mask back on, and he glared in the corner. “What are you doing?”
He slammed the coffee pot to the counter and rounded on the flock huddled by the corner. “Moving this for better light,” one explained, hands clasped to a bench as he jerked his chin to the dark corner. Despite Nick’s glare, he pulled again, causing Emma’s teeth to clench. “You need better lighting in here.”
“Did a badger shit in your skull?” Nick fumed, slamming a foot onto the bench. “Don’t. Move. The furniture!” He waved a threatening finger at the four, then hauled up the hefty bench and flung it back against the wall.“And we’re out of the big mugs so stop asking!”
Grumbling under his breath about the damn youths, he rubbed off another section of the menu and wrote his same order to them, then he added ‘mistletoe latte’ and drew a big slash across the words. This mysterious latte must be quite amazing for so many people to keep pushing for it. The people who hadn’t been chased off by his growling bear act snapped pics of their orders and chatted loud enough to cover over both the vague classical music and the police scanner.
“What brings you to Lake Holly?”
“Not the latte,” Emma admitted. Oh, it wasn’t Nick who asked, but the friendly Sam. He peered from below his snowy eyebrows. “My car started clunking on the highway, then it slowed down. I pulled into the first mechanic shop I could find before something bad happened.”
Before more bad things happened.
