Mary Sullivan - Rodeo Baby

She returned with their drinks.

“Has anyone ever mentioned that your name matches your eyes?” They were gorgeous.

“Nope. Not once. That’s a new one.” She slapped cream and sugar onto the table in front of him.

His jaw hardened. She had no right to treat him badly. It was just mild harmless flirtation. “ You’ve got a lot of attitude.” He didn’t like sarcasm. Didn’t like people treating him badly. Back home—

Well, he wasn’t back home, was he?

“Let me speak to the manager,” he ordered.

“That would be me.”

“Okay, then. Is the owner in?”

She tapped one red-tipped fingernail against her chin. “Let me think. Yes. That would also be me.”

Chelsea giggled.

Good Lord. Two against one. “You don’t know much about business and good customer service, do you?”

He’d meant to put her in her place, but she turned to the customers in the large room and called out, “Does anyone have trouble with how I run my business?”

One and all shook their heads no.

Damn. He hadn’t meant to draw attention.

“Do I give good customer service or not?”

“Good service, Vy,” the old guy two tables down yelled. “Love the mashed potatoes. What did you say you put in them?”

“Garlic, Lester. That’s why they’re called garlic mashed potatoes.”

“Makes sense.” Lester nodded. “Like ’em. Refill my coffee when you get a minute?”

“Sure thing. I’ll get right on it as soon as I can get away from this table.”

Heat in Sam’s cheeks burned. His daughter watched him with a mocking smile. The townspeople watched him curiously. Great. He’d wanted to avoid drawing attention to himself, but here he was center stage because of this bad-tempered woman.

She presented her back to him and walked away.

“All I did was be nice to her,” he mumbled while he doctored his coffee.

“You gave her your fake, cheesy grin, Dad. You were flirting with her badly.”

He pinned his daughter with a hard glare. “What do you know about flirting?”

She rolled her eyes. Sick of the action, he pulled out of his pocket a small change purse he’d picked up at a souvenir shop on the way. “You rolled your eyes. Pay up.”

“Daaad.”

“Pay up.” He held out the purse. “Now.”

She took a quarter out of her pink knapsack and dropped it into the change purse.

“It’s getting heavy,” he remarked.

“You’re mean to take money away from your daughter. I’m only thirteen years old!”

“Thirteen going on twenty. Your mother gave you all kinds of money before we left. I give you a good allowance. You ain’t starving, kid.”

“Aren’t. It’s aren’t starving. Just because we’re in this tiny town doesn’t mean you have to speak like the locals.”

Sam grinned, but didn’t apologize. “What was wrong with my flirting with the waitress?”

“Owner.”

“Owner,” he conceded.

“You’re coming on way too strong. It makes you sound corny. Maybe you forget how to do it right because you’re getting old.”

He bristled. “Since when is thirty-nine old?”

She shrugged.

A minute later, he said, “There’s nothing wrong with flirting. It’s what men and women do when they’re attracted to each other.”

“I know, but don’t be so artificial about it.” She mimicked him with a false voice, “‘Your violet eyes match your name,’” and, worse, with a fake smile. She looked like a politician.

“Her eyes do match her name.” Defensiveness made him petulant.

“Yeah, and that’s so obvious. Everybody must say that to her. You have to notice different things and say more original stuff.”

“Like what?”

“She’s funny. She makes me laugh.”

“At my expense. I’m not about to compliment her on her sense of humor when I’m the butt of her jokes.” He liked her legs, especially her calves.

“So should I have said, ‘Great calves, lady’? Yeah, that would have gone over real well.”

Chelsea peered around the edge of the booth to look at Violet’s legs as she stood chatting with customers at another table. The girl turned back to him with wide eyes. “Her calves are kind of big. You think they’re great?”

“Sure. They’re shapely.”

The thoughtful frown on Chelsea’s forehead intrigued him.

“There’s nothing wrong with a woman being shapely.”

She nodded, still thoughtful.

“I wasn’t kidding, Chelsea. You are perfect the way you are. Your mom stressed too much about being thin.”

“So, like, didn’t you like her that thin?”

“I wouldn’t have minded if she worried about it less. It was always on her mind. She ate like a bird.”

“Not really, Dad. Lots of birds eat half their body weight every day.”

He smiled slowly because Chelsea was smiling, too. When she was small, they seemed to have this ability to read each other’s minds and get each other’s jokes before they’d even been delivered. “Can you imagine your mom eating half her body weight?”

She laughed then sobered. “She used to binge and purge.”

Sam’s lips thinned. “Purge. You mean...”

Chelsea sighed. “Yeah. Didn’t you know? Mom used to get rid of her food after dinner all the time.”

He’d known, of course—she was painfully thin—but had hoped Chelsea had remained ignorant. It seemed she’d been aware all along.

Kids always did seem to know everything you tried to hide from them.

He wanted his daughter to have healthy behavior.

“Chelsea, promise me something?”

She made a noncommittal sound, which he took as permission to continue. “Never do that. Okay? Never. Enjoy your food and your life. Nothing is worth that kind of behavior. It didn’t buy your mother more love or more respect. Okay?”

“Yeah.” She stared at the fry in her hand. “Okay.”

“Eat up.” He picked up his burger.

On her way along to another customer, Violet slapped a bowl of ketchup onto their table.

What was her problem?

He was a paying customer like everyone else in the diner and deserved as much respect, but she’d taken an instant dislike to him.

Or maybe it was you trying to get her into trouble with her manager, Sam, who just happened to be her .

Starving, he bit into his burger and instantly sat up straight.

“This is good.” He wiped juice from his chin. “Excellent.”

“Yeah. It’s the best burger I’ve had since we left home.”

“No fooling.” It was the best he’d had in years.

“The fries are good, too,” Chelsea said.

He bit into one, twice fried so they were crispy. Vinegar and pepper sharpened the side dish of coleslaw.

Maybe eating here wouldn’t be so bad, after all, if the rest of the meals lived up to their corny names.

For the first time since leaving home, he felt in harmony with his daughter. He’d missed that amazing feeling.

A craving arose in him to relax with her and have fun like he used to do, to tease her and hug her and call her goofy pet names.

He didn’t want to be this uptight guy he’d become since Tiffany’s betrayal.

On impulse, he blurted, “Let’s share dessert?”

She brightened a little. “Okay.”

They argued for a good five minutes about what they would share.

“I’m too full to eat a whole dessert,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“So we have to come to an agreement. We do that by negotiation.”

“Dad, I hate when you teach me. Why can’t we just talk?”

“I thought we were just talking.”

“No, you’re lecturing and I’m—”

They were interrupted by Violet plopping a plate in the middle of the table with small portions of four desserts and two forks.