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“We’re not starting!” Raye shouted back. “Jess isn’t here.”
“And Harlow wants a coffee, but not your special!” Luna tacked on. “She doesn’t like coconut!”
“Who doesn’t like coconut?” Tex bellowed.
“I don’t!” I yelled.
“How can you not like coconut?” Tex hollered.
“Don’t ask me, ask my taste buds!” I shouted.
I knew this sounded strange, employees yelling at each other at a place of business, and it might be relatively new, because Tex being a fixture at SC was relatively new.
But considering not a single soul at any of our tables, and there were many of them, blinked an eye, evidence suggested they’d gotten used to it quickly.
Tito, sitting at his station at the far back by the wall of windows that had a view to the parking lot, didn’t even look up from his book.
This was the power of Tex. He was a huge man with a long beard and lots of graying, blond hair. He had an enormous personality, which centered mostly around being crotchety. And he was very loud. He didn’t boom to be heard. He boomed naturally. That was how he talked.
But his coffees were so good, we’d learned people would put up with a lot to get their fix.
And we girls had learned under all that bluster and bad mood, he had a heart of pure gold.
Though, I knew it more, since I’d read the Rock Chick books, and he figured in them prominently.
“How are you doing?” I asked Willow.
“I didn’t like Trev, but I’m flipped out,” she replied.
“Understandable,” I murmured.
“Kev is totally flipped out,” she went on. “He’s the one who found him.”
Yikes.
I never thought I’d think “poor Kev,” but I was thinking, Poor Kev!
“I sense you’re starting the confab!” Tex shouted.
We all grinned at each other, and Raye, Willow and Luna took off to their tables with pitchers of water in their grips to make sure people were good so we could have our confab without pesky customers expecting us to serve because we were their servers while we had other things we were doing.
Shanti and I moved around the bar and sat at it, and we were gabbing when Jess showed.
She didn’t look happy.
“Everything okay?” I asked when she slid on a stool beside me.
“I’ve just discovered that Eric’s hunky dory with us doing our Angels gig, but he has one caveat. When people start getting their throats slit, he’s not so hip about it, and even less hip with me being anywhere near it.”
There was an age gap between Jessie and Eric, not super significant, but it was there. As such, Eric was more of a Hot Bunch, first gen guy, rather than a Hottie Squad member. He had a foot in both camps, really. He definitely seemed more evolved than most of the men did in the Rock Chick books.
Though, considering the situation, I wasn’t surprised he had his limits.
“He’s not the only one,” Shanti said under her breath, referring to Javi.
I let out a huge sigh, and thankfully, Jessie was shouting so she didn’t hear Shanti.
“I need a special, Tex!”