Still, part of what she’d said made his head sputter. Had she told him earlier her last name was Kane? As in „Kendrick Kane?’ The Alpha of Westervelt who had terrified him as a child? Wow. Angel was royalty and that would make her even more of a target to people who wanted to hurt her.
Even after they removed their souls from each other’s keeping he might have to stick around her to keep her safe. It made his blood boil even to think of her being in danger.
His wolf growled at the thought.
She whirled around to gaze at him. “I can feel your tension all the way over here.”
“Sorry. I’ll try to tone it down.” He stared her up and down. She appeared downright sultry in her waitress apron. If he could, he’d bend her over one of the tables and take her with nothing but that apron around her waist.
“Alright,” she spoke to Bob again. “I’ll get moving.” She winked at Parker. “Hope you can keep up”
Bob stared at Parker. “Do you have something going on with that hot number? Woo, good for you boy. Guess she likes the type who doesn’t have much to say.”
Bob shook his head and kept cooking. He often spoke to Parker but he never expected a response, which was good because, as it turned out, Parker couldn’t have spoken to him if he’d wanted to.
The morning went pretty smoothly. Angel would come into the kitchen, leave the orders, pick up the orders, deliver them, and if it wasn’t as smooth a transition as Nancy did no one seemed to notice or complain. Every time the door opened his day would get a little bit brighter.
He hung his towel on the rack and decided to take a five-minute break. He would have waited for Angel to take hers but truthfully they couldn’t both be off at the same time. Bob needed her help while he was out of the room.
Picking up the garbage—he might as well take it out while he got his few moments of fresh air—he moved to the rear of the restaurant and out the back door. After he quickly deposited the waste in the dumpster, he walked over to the front of the building to watch the cars go by. This was his usual routine. He’d spend his free moments imagining that he got into one of the moving automobiles and let it take him…
Where was always the question. Where would he let it take him? Unfortunately, his wolf always had one answer and it wasn’t one he could abide: home. He couldn’t go there. Not after what his father had done. Not when he knew that being there would bring out the parts of him he so desperately wanted to keep hidden deep inside where they couldn’t harm anyone.
Especially Angel.
A car door slammed and he looked momentarily at three women who approached the diner.
Most of the time he didn’t care about the patrons. They came, they went. The diner’s location next to the highway meant the majority of the patrons were mostly transitory. They had very few „regulars’ coming in at any time.
For most of his time here the lack of constant people had been part of the appeal of the strange little place he’d spent the last twenty years cleaning up. It was less likely anyone would find him or recognize him. Of course, Angel had found him. Not that she’d been looking. He shook his head. Perhaps it was time to also acknowledge that after twenty years, no one was going to be searching for him.
So maybe he could leave. He rubbed his forehead as a headache started between his eyes.
Where would he go? Angel’s face appeared in his imagination. He sighed. The truth was, he would go anywhere she wanted.
But he wasn’t sure the same could be said for her feelings, and he didn’t want to follow her around like a lost puppy she had to take care of.
He turned to go back in the diner when the scent assailed him. His nose twitched and he covered his mouth. He didn’t have a word for what he scented. No, it simply smelled…wrong.
He’d never encountered the situation before. Not like this. He moved forward trying to identify the source. Bob would be looking for him any second but for the first time in his life the old man was going to have to wait for Parker’s attention. This took precedence.
In seconds he had determined the foulness came from the three women who had exited their vehicle and were now climbing the stairs to the diner. It wasn’t a hygiene thing—no, that element of them smelled fine. This was a magic problem. He sniffed again and adjusted his thinking. It wasn’t all three of them. It was the twins. The ugly woman who walked by herself didn’t smell evil.
It was like all the badness in the world had gathered itself up and attached to two of the women entering the diner. And gods help him, they stunk from it.
The wrongness about them would be undetected by humans. Only Angel would know there was something off when they came near her Not necessarily.
His wolf spoke lowly, a growl in his voice.
Parker stopped moving. What do you mean?
We’re all different. Her wolf may not scent the evil of those two.
That wasn’t good news. His pulse pounded hard. He needed to get inside and keep her from getting near those three people right away. Instincts he couldn’t control threatened to overtake him. A very large part of him wanted to run inside and tear up the two women—hell the three of them—just to keep her safe.
But he was a rational man. He would control the beast inside of him and find a better way.
He ran quickly through the back door of the restaurant and Bob looked up.
“Short break?”
Yep, it was. He nodded and stepped out into the dining room. He spotted Angel and his fists clenched. She was currently waiting on the very patrons he didn’t want her anywhere near.
“Angel, they’re wrong.”
She raised an eyebrow but made no other outward indication she’d heard him as she smiled at the unattractive woman.
“What do you mean?”
“Magically, they smell bad, evil, or something.”
He wasn’t particularly versed on the right words for this kind of thing. He just knew what he knew. They smell wrong.
She cleared her throat and wrote something down on her pad. “They smell fine to me but I’m not going to argue with you on this subject.”
“Well, I’ll be right back with your coffee.”
She turned and moved toward him. When she reached him she grabbed his arm, pulling him with her into the kitchen. It wasn’t like they could talk in there, not with Bob cooking at the stove.
“Bob, do we have arugula salad?”
He shook his head. “Darling, I don’t even know what that is.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She walked quickly to the freezer and opened it. As she gazed inside, she spoke to Parker telepathically.
“You think they’re bad witches?”
The way she said witches made him think she’d had dealings with them before. He hadn’t, as far as he knew, except apparently he’d been cursed. Magic was a dangerous thing altogether. When he got out of this mess, he wasn’t going anywhere near it ever again if he could help it.
“I think they’re bad something.”
She smiled as she pulled three ice packs out of the freezer. “You have a real way with words, Parker.”
He leaned against the counter and watched what she did. “What are you doing?
“Nothing. I’m pretending to be busy so we can chat undisturbed.”
That was what it had looked like to him. He couldn’t imagine what she’d found so interesting in the freezer or why she grabbed the ice packs. It was a relief to know he wasn’t nuts.