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Fletcher was composed enough to roll his eyes at me while Dad only gave an exasperated shake of his head. But then Dad’s gaze snapped to a woman approaching the table. She was Hispanic, curvy, with black hair broken up with streaks of gray. Her smile crinkled her eyes as she approached. “Some of my favorite guys!” I swore her eyes lingered a little longer on my dad, and he grinned back at her.
“Can’t beat the service here,” he said.
She pretended to flip her hair back, even though it was up in a ponytail. “You’re just happy I ignore the two-refill limit for you, Gray.”
Dad happily lifted his full coffee cup. If this sugar fest continued, I might gag. “I’ll take a coffee—black,” I told her. “And a burger with fries.”
Dad gave me a look.
“Please,” I said, putting on my most charming grin.
“Of course, baby,” she said, jotting it down in a notebook. I glanced out the window to check on my motorcycle. I bet the green paint caught the light just perfect this time of day.
But then I noticed someone touching the leather seat. Someone with bright red curls and far too colorful of clothes.
“The fuck?” I muttered, annoyance making my pulse speed up. “Excuse me,” I said before getting out of the booth to go outside and yell at Della. Didn’t her parents ever tell her to look with her eyes and not her hands?
When I pushed past the customers paying for their meal at the register and got to the parking lot, Della was already walking back across the street to the insurance office where she worked.
As I jogged toward my bike, I called out at her, “Don’t you know better than to lay hands on a vintage Harley?”
She turned in the middle of the dead Main Street, completely unbothered, and waved at me. “Just left you a note,” she called, then she turned and walked the rest of the way to the front door. And maybe I spent a little too long looking at her ass in that fluttery skirt, but wasn’t that my whole point? Look, don’t touch?
I reached my bike just as the mirrored glass door closed behind her and saw a hot-pink sticky note on the seat with something written in the same curly handwriting from the other day.
24X more people die riding motorcycles than cars. WEAR A HELMET. – Della
My eyebrows rose at the note. Seriously? Now that I had her number, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and fired off a text.
Hayes: Looks like someone cares about me. How sweet.
I looked at the building where she worked, even though I couldn’t see her inside. And soon a text came back.
Della: Don’t flatter yourself. Just trying to avoid the extra paperwork when your family files a claim.
I smirked at her message, then pocketed my phone and went back inside.
8
DELLA
Hayes rode that damn motorcycle to the diner—without a helmet—every day that week. Of course, I couldn’t ignore it when my office window overlooked Main Street and the diner. Especially since his motorcycle was so loud, it was like an alarm alerting me to his presence.
So every day, I walked a sticky note across the street with a fact about motorcycle accidents—each tidbit gnarlier than the one before it.
It was fun to rib him—to see the annoyed look on his face when he picked up the note and shoved it in his pocket. But even though Hayes and I teased each other, I’d hate to see him hurt. He was as much family as anyone else in Cottonwood Falls.
Although, my concern seemed to do no good. Until Friday.
I stared out the window in disbelief as he drove up to the diner and parked. Saying a quick “Be right back” to my boss, I scurried across the street to eyeball the thing sitting atop the black leather seat of his motorcycle.
I grinned at the red and black helmet.
That’s when I noticed a yellow sticky note on the side, but it didn’t have a message on the front. I plucked it from the helmet, turning it over to read Hayes’s messy scrawl.
Happy now?
I grinned, knowing he was watching me. I’d won. Basking in my glory, I looked back at the helmet and saw what the sticky note had been covering—a sticker of a middle finger.