Here And Now (American Valor 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

breakfast food.
    She followed him in her truck to an old-time diner a little over a mile away, and as they waited for a table to be cleared, he chatted with the hostess like they were old friends. They were barely seated in a booth by the windows when their waitress appeared out of nowhere with a warm smile on her face.
    “Hiya, Lucky. Brought a friend today?” She placed a glass of water in front of Rachel and a large soda and paper-wrapped straw in front of Lucky.
    “This is Rachel. We work together.”
    “So you’ve brought me another third shift vampire,” said the woman with Peggy on her name tag. “I suppose you aren’t in the mood for breakfast food either.”
    Lucky leaned on the table and spoke to Rachel in a conspiratorial whisper. “Peggy knows I’m usually not in the mood for eggs and pancakes when I get off shift. So she breaks the rules and fixes me a club sandwich with French fries.”
    “I don’t break the rules so much as bend them, darlin’,” she said with a smile. “And it’s not like there’s a whole lot of extra effort that goes into making those club sandwiches for you.” Peggy then turned to Rachel. “So what’s it gonna be for you? I can get you the breakfast menu if you’d like.”
    She’d been craving a cheeseburger for the past hour or so, but she wasn’t willing to push her luck. Anything not pancakes or eggs and toast or even a bowl of cereal was a plus in her book. “I’ll just have what he’s having. Thank you.”
    With a polite nod, Peggy was off to place their order, returning only momentarily when she brought lemon slices for Rachel’s water and deposited another large Dr. Pepper in front of Lucky. With several minutes to kill before their food was ready, there was nothing left for them to do but talk. And wasn’t that the reason he asked her to breakfast in the first place? She’d promised Ethan she would apologize, but she couldn’t dive in headfirst. She needed to ease her way into it.
    “I take it you come here often?” she asked while squeezing lemon juice into her glass.
    He smiled at her question, his face more noticeably relaxed that it had been a few seconds before.
    “It started out with me and my dad meeting here every Thursday for breakfast.”
    “You meet every week? That’s nice.”
    “To be honest, it’s a way for my dad to ease his guilt.” While he talked, Lucky fiddled with the paper wrapper from his straw, twisting and untwisting it from around his index fingers. “A week before I was due to move home I got this text message saying he was moving in with his girlfriend. Which was kind of ironic seeing as the reason I was coming home to go to college was so I could spend more time with him. Try to make up for the fact I hadn’t seen him much in the past twelve years.”
    “Well, that has to stink.”
    “It’s not so bad. I have a free place to live all by myself,” Lucky said with a shrug. Then a wicked grin spread across his face and once again he leaned across the table, narrowing the distance between them and lowering his voice so only she could hear. “At least my dad and Brenda are having sex across town instead of me hearing them go at it in the next room.”
    Rachel wrinkled her nose. “Ewww.”
    “Exactly.”
    He laughed then, a warm, rich sound contagious enough that soon she was laughing along with him. Which was so very welcome because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. With Curtis. With people from work. With anyone.
    “Anyhow, that’s why my dad and I started meeting here once a week.” He paused to take a quick sip of his drink. “Then when classes started, I realized it was easier to stop here to eat when I got off work on Monday mornings than go all the way home and back to campus before my first class. Then there are times when I get off work and I know there’s nothing in the fridge at home so I’ll come here.”
    “You really do come here a lot.”
    Just then Peggy returned with two