Chapter Ten
Tiffany followed Thomas and Dakota into a cheerful-looking diner in the center of town. As one, the occupants turned to stare as the three of them wove through the crowd to an empty table. Tiffany raised her chin. She’d never let them see her fidget.
Thomas called a greeting to the room.
A few muttered replies and people got back to their conversations.
Near the back of the restaurant, Thomas found them a booth. The Formica tabletop gleamed, clean and scrubbed. Signs of wear showed on the bench but, thankfully, no food stains or leftover grime.
Dakota took his headphones off. “I’ll have a burger with everything.”
“That’s one thousand seven hundred and seventy calories in one meal, before you order a drink,” Tiffany said.
Dakota and Thomas blinked at her.
“Who cares?” Dakota’s face twisted into a sneer as he put his headphones back on.
“You just worked that out?” Thomas raised a brow.
“Yes.” Tiffany hesitated, and rechecked her addition. Five hundred and forty calories for a large order of fries, four hundred and ninety for the onion rings with the double cheeseburger topping it off at seven hundred and forty, give or take a few calories.
Thomas went back to his menu. “I don’t see the calories written on the menu.”
“They’re not.” Tiffany’s mouth watered at the picture of the burger. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten one. “What are you having?” She’d lay money on something sinful and delicious.
Thomas had a strange look on his face. “You keep all those numbers in your head?”
“Yes,” Tiffany said. “You need to know what you’re eating.”
“But you’ve never been here before.”
“I know that.” The number thing had slipped out and now she was stuck with the explanation. She kept all sorts of numbers in her head, and thanks to their conversation in the car, she had pi in there now, too. “But most burgers work out at around about the same, so I averaged them.”
Thomas lifted his brow. “You averaged them?”
“Yes.”
“So, by implication, you have a running tally of the calorie count of most burgers in your head.”
“I suppose so.” Tiffany squirmed in her seat. It infuriated her father when she did the number thing out loud. It was easier to just pretend it was all about calories.
“I think I’d prefer not to know. But what the hell.” Thomas grinned. “I think I’ll join him. You?”
“I’ll have the garden salad.” Pursing her thin mouth, the waitress jotted it down on her notepad. “With no dressing and no croutons.”
“How many calories?” Thomas leaned his elbows on the table. Challenge gleamed in his eyes. He thought he had her beat, but he’d have to do a whole lot better than that.
“Twelve per cup, so around thirty-three for the bowl. It would’ve been eleven calories per cup, but this one has carrots and tomatoes in it.”
“Right.” He shook his head.
She wished she could work out what he was thinking. “What?”
“You know the calorie count of everything you eat?”
“Sure.” Tiffany shrugged. She also knew the diner had 30 four-seater tables and 3 six-seaters tucked in the three available corners. The last corner led to the bathroom. Of the possible 138 diners, the diner was currently at about 78 percent capacity.
“And you can add them up, just like that?”
“Yes.”
He grunted and crossed his hands on the table in front of them. It brought him right onto her half of the table. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was in her space. It bothered her, though. There was too much of him. She hadn’t missed the way the waitress had eyed him up as if he were an ice cream cone, either.
“So you look at menus and count the calories?”
Tiffany rolled her eyes. And there you had it. He might have spent all that time in the truck talking about pi, but at the end of the day he was the same as everyone else. It was her fault for thinking he might possibly be different. See something different in her. But if he wanted to talk about calories with the pretty moron, so be it. “Listen, buddy.” She did some leaning of her own. “You don’t think I fit into these skinny jeans by eating a burger and fries, do you? Because I have news for you, if you think girls slip into a size two with no effort, then you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
“Really.” The devil danced in his blue eyes as he brought his face closer to hers.
Tiffany almost backed off, but didn’t want to give up that much ground.
“If you think men care as much about how you get into those jeans as how to get you out of them, then you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
Tiffany snapped back into her seat and glared at him. “You’re a pig.”
“No, I’m honest.” He smirked.
Her irritation seemed to bounce right off him as he looked around the diner with interest. “I don’t get you.”
He jerked his head back. “There’s really not that much to get.” He spread his arms out. “What you see is what you get. WYSIWYG.”
“You’re such a geek.” But it made her smile.
“I could deny it, but why bother.” He sat back in the booth and folded his arms over his chest. “But that wasn’t what I was getting at before. I was thinking it’s pretty amazing that you manage to remember all those numbers and add them up like that. That’s impressive.”
“Anyone can add up numbers.” This subject made her uncomfortable. The number thing was her secret.
“Not that fast.” He seemed sincere with blue eyes staring back at her, clear and readable.
She looked a little closer. Maybe he was for real. “I bet you can.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m the shit when it comes to math, but I can’t total a whole bunch of numbers in my head that quickly. I don’t think I could remember all those calories, either.”
Tiffany pursed her lips. He didn’t seem to be packing any sort of hidden meaning. “For real?”
“Yeah. And I made the dean’s list for math at college.” He gave her one of his grins.
Those lips needed a permit for concealed weapons. Even now, her answering smile wanted to break free. She didn’t quite know what to say. All her life people had told her she was pretty. A childhood of modeling and beauty pageants had made sure she knew that. This was better, though. Being smart was something nobody, not even Ryan, said about her.
The waitress brought their cutlery and set it down in a wire tray of condiments. Ketchup, mustard, fry sauce, salt and pepper. Ketchup in the wrong place.
Thomas leaned over and swapped the mustard and ketchup bottles so the bottles ranged neatly from tallest to shortest. Looked like she wasn’t the only person who liked things to be organized correctly. The condiments looked so much better this way.
“I was thinking,” he said, unwrapping his cutlery and placing the fork on one side of his plastic place mat and the knife on the other. “We should team up.”
“Team up?”
“As in we both have a common purpose, which is to find Luke.”
She got where he was headed with this, but needed to hear him spell out the details. Riding with Thomas might solve most of her problems. “Okay.”
“Driving the Miura doesn’t seem to be the best plan, given what’s happened.” He didn’t know how far she still had to go. Still, she was listening and she nodded for him to continue. “You gotta admit, you’ll be far more comfortable in my truck.”
His easy smile didn’t fool her. Tension radiated from the stiff line of his shoulders. He had nearly as much invested in finding Luke as she did. Teaming up made sense, and she hadn’t given much thought to what she would do when the Miura was repaired. This breakdown had already cut into her schedule. Another mishap and Thomas Hunter might not be there to rescue her. It seemed a logical solution. Except, and this was a kicker, he was a stranger.
“Look”—he leaned forward on his forearms—“I know you don’t know me, and the following thing looked bad. I told you I had to find Luke, and I do. My company is going under without that survey. I’ve put my heart and soul, not to mention my life savings, into my company succeeding. You know where Luke is, or at least Dakota does, and I have the means to get you there.”
She aligned the condiment tray in the center of the table as she chewed it over. He seemed a straight-up sort of guy, and only God and the mechanic knew how long she’d be stuck there waiting for the car. “I have to wait for the Miura to be repaired.”
“Then I’ll wait with you,” he said. “I’m sure I can rent a trailer from somewhere. I spotted one behind the repair shop. We load the Miura on the trailer and tow it to wherever it is we’re going.”
“Okay.” That did sound reasonable. She had a much better chance of delivering the Miura in mint condition if they towed it. A small voice whispered that maybe spending so much time with Thomas Hunter wasn’t the best idea. Already, she was starting to like him a bit too much. Add the niceness of him, the way he made her feel comfortable around him, and the hot geek thing together, and you might have trouble. “But no weird shit.”
“Like?” Up went an eyebrow.
Heat crawled up her cheeks.
“You mean like hitting on you?” His eyes twinkled at her. “I—”
Straightening in his seat, he locked his gaze on something behind her.
“What is it?” Tiffany peered through the lettering of the daily special on the window into the street. A woman marched a lagging set of children behind her and disappeared into the pharmacy.
Thomas nodded to a little way down on the opposite side of the street. “Over there.”
It looked like a dress shop to her. Not the sort of dress shop she was going to spend any time in. Two men stood in front of the dress shop. Just two guys dressed in jeans and tees like everybody else. One of them smoked while the other thumbed a smartphone. “What am I looking at?”
“Those two guys.” Thomas frowned and stared harder. “Do you know them?”
“Those two?” They looked the same as any of the other people who milled around the town. “What about them?”
“Nothing.” Thomas shrugged. “I need those one thousand six hundred and sixty calories.”
“One thousand seven hundred and seventy,” Tiffany said, still looking out the window. All she saw was two men hanging out.
“Do we have a deal?” One huge hand stretched across the table toward her. “Until we find Luke, and then you never have to see me again. Unless you want to.”
Tiffany slid her hand into his, hoping like hell she was doing the right thing. She had that niggling feeling that she was agreeing to a whole lot more. “Deal.”