“How’d you meet?” Griff asked.
“Oh, you know, the regular way—online,” she said, eyes glued to the menu. “We were both part of the same maple-syrup-aficionado group. Did you know most of the world’s maple syrup is from Quebec?”
Now she did look up, setting her menu down next to the glass of water the server had dropped off a few minutes ago with a promise to return to take their orders. “They make nearly two-thirds of the maple syrup found across the globe. You know, people always say to cut down on syrup because it’s unhealthy, but the real stuff is filled with antioxidants as well as zinc, magnesium, calcium, and potassium. When I told Meemaw, she swapped from the imitation stuff to the real thing, and I’m telling you right now, her pancakes were good before with all the butter-crisped edges, but you add on the syrup and it’s like a whole new perspective on breakfast.” She leaned in, and he couldn’t resist leaning forward, too, as she lowered her voice. “The secret is to add a few tablespoons of real syrup to the batter. It will change your life, I’m telling you.”
He was about to ask another question when the waitress stopped by and took their order. He would have sworn that Kinsey let out a relieved sigh at the interruption, and he ran through everything he’d said—mercifully few words—to see if he’d annoyed her again.
“All this chatting about syrup has me craving waffles,” she said and turned her attention to the server. “I’ll go with two of your extra-fluffy blueberry waffles with bacon and a side order of grits.”
“Do you want a few sugar packets to go with your grits?” the waitress asked.
Kinsey gasped, her palm going up to press against her heart. “No, thank you.”
Griff had no clue what that was all about. He always mixed a packet of sugar in his grits—okay, fine, he mixed in three packets.
As soon as the waitress left with their orders, he was ready to ask more about this almost fiancé of hers, but before he could say anything, she was out of her seat with an “I’ll be right back” and was headed toward the door with the restrooms sign hanging above it.
“She’s the best,” Morgan said, shooting her brother a look that dared him to disagree. “Don’t you just love her?”
Griff didn’t say anything out loud, but the answer was definitely yes.
Chapter Eight
Kinsey
Lying was like eating a pizza roll straight out of the oven—it felt satisfying for a second, but then it was like having a mouth full of piping hot lava—and Kinsey’s mouth was burning up.
Stupid Todd.
Stupid fake Todd from Moose River, Alberta.
Stupid Moose River that is actually a river in Ontario and not a town at all.
Wait a minute. Moose River was actually kinda cool with its bird sanctuary and Polar Bear Express train flag stop.
Okay, so how about stupid Kinsey Dalton for fabricating a fake almost fiancé three years ago and bringing his syrup-loving made-up butt along with her to Harbor City?
Yeah, that was definitely a yes.
Guilt at lying to Griff, who might be (totally was) a big jerk for calling her a disaster swirled around inside her. Meemaw had raised her better than that. Lying was lying, even if it was for a good reason. Most of the time, people didn’t ask for details about Todd, so it felt less like lying than just letting folks believe what they wanted to—which was what they always did anyway when it came to her.
Rationalize much?
Blocking out the annoying voice of truth in her head, Kinsey made a beeline for the bathroom but came to a dead stop in front of the large standalone pastry display case.
It was opened up, and pieces and parts were everywhere. A string of curses and a few metal-on-metal bangs came from behind the behemoth. She could relate. This same model was sitting next to the counter at the diner back home. Kinsey had done her fair share of cussing out the evil thing under her breath while working as a waitress when she was home for summer break during college.
“Is it the capacitor?” she asked, naming the number one culprit that had killed the display case’s ability to cool the contents back home.
There was something super sad about a key lime pie with formerly stiff peaks of cream turned into sad little white pools.
A guy not much older than her with a snarly expression looked around the case, giving her a quick up-and-down—lingering for a few seconds too long on her boobs—before dismissing her without a word and going back behind the machine. She peeked around at what he was working on. She couldn’t help it. Some weird inner compulsion mixed with the you-gotta-help-even-grumpy-strangers lessons Meemaw had drilled into her—second only to no white after Labor Day—drove her forward. It would be easier to turn down fresh-made country gravy or crispy fat than to keep her mouth shut when she’d lay one-hundred-to-one odds that it was the evil capacitor.
She took a step closer, not rounding the case exactly but getting as close to that as possible. “We have one just like this back home, and that capacitor is worse than sweet tea made with agave syrup. My cousin tried that once. He nearly got run out of town.”
“Look,” the man said without even glancing up. “I don’t know what you overheard your dad or brother or whoever saying, sweetheart, but you don’t know anything about this. Go on back to the land of Barbie. I’ve got this.”
Sweetheart? Land of Barbie?
Kinsey came from the home of calling everyone “sugar” or “honey” or “sweet child,” but this was different. “Sweetheart” wasn’t being used as an endearment. It was a dismissal. And anyway, Barbie had been an astronaut, a computer programmer, and more. Hell, she had the scientist Barbie still in the box on display in her room at Meemaw’s house.
She should walk away.
She should let him spend the next forty-five minutes trying out everything but the one thing that would no doubt fix it.
She— Fuck, who was she kidding?
“Really?” Two and a half decades of home training was the only thing keeping the smile on her face as she gave it one last shot. “So the compressor runs normally after you short-circuited the display?”
The man stilled. “No.”
“Then I imagine with my tiny little girl brain that you checked to see if both electricity poles are working?”
Okay, Meemaw would have shot her the look for that little bit about her brain, but a woman could only take so much before her sass outweighed her sugar.
“It’s a defective relay,” the man said, sounding way less than 100 percent sure as he looked up at her.
“So the relay electricity isn’t flowing?”