Read Sweet Water for Free Online

had to tilt back her head to look the stranger in the face. Being five-feet-eight, she could look many men in the eye, so this stranger was taller than average. He looked like Mel Gibson, his eyes long-lashed and blue as the desert sky. The eyes held an intensity, like they could penetrate concrete, but with a fan of laugh lines at the corners, they looked friendly. Mel Gibson eyes. No doubt about it. “Uh, you have to put quarters in it,” she said.
    A slow smile eased across his mouth as he looked right back at her and dug in the pocket of his tight Levi’s. S-E-X lit up like an aura around him. He had it, that mysterious allure she had always been able to spot in a man the instant she met him. He liked who he was and was comfortable with the fit of his skin. A feeling she couldn’t describe slithered through her.
    He came up with a quarter and dropped it into the coin slot. As he made a selection she noticed his hands. Agile fingers and clean short nails. Masculine hands, but not those of a laborer. After a whirr and a series of clicks, orchestra music swelled as if Pecos Belle’s were a concert hall. Frank Sinatra broke into “All the Way.”
    “What’s on the menu?” he asked.
    “Uh, anything you want, I guess, so long as it’s a sandwich or a burger. The daily special’s all gone. We’ve got a menu you can look at. Oh, and breakfast. I serve breakfast all day. You know, bacon or sausage and eggs....and toast.”
    “Coffee?”
    She smiled, feeling like an empty headed loon. “Now that we’ve always got plenty of. Better’n Starbucks.”
    He smiled, too, and it warmed her to the soles of her running shoes. He had defined lips and perfect teeth.
    “Great,” he said. “Let’s have some. Where’s that menu?”
    She led him back to the lunch counter, his boots clump-clump-clumping on the tile floor. She plucked a menu from between a napkin holder and a sugar dispenser and handed it over. “You can have anything on it. Only takes me a few minutes to cook a fresh hamburger. We’re well-known around the area for our burgers. We use real meat.”
    He smiled again. Those intense eyes continued to bore into her. “Great. As opposed to what?”
    “That artificial stuff,” she answered, resisting the urge to straighten her clothing. “I grind it myself, out of sirloin. No fillers, no enrichers.”
    He placed his helmet and sunglasses on the counter, then removed his leather jacket, folded it and laid it on a stool. He was wearing a henley waffle-weave shirt in a color that almost matched his blue eyes. He pushed up the sleeves, showing sinewy forearms, then combed his fingers through his short brown hair that had been disheveled by his helmet. She found herself looking for a wedding band, but she didn’t see one.
    Dope , she chided herself. Just because a guy wore no wedding ring didn’t mean he wasn’t married. On the other hand, a married man didn’t usually look like a movie star and roar around an isolated part of Texas on a big Harley. She turned her back on all that animal magnetism and reached for a mug and the coffee carafe. “Which kind do you want?”
    “A burger’ll be great.”
    Jeez, was everything great with this guy? Even as sexy as he was, her earlier encounter with Woody still had her short on patience with men, especially when what she really wanted was to just go home and wallow in her misery. She set the mug on the counter in front of him and poured it full, then tapped her fingernail on the menu that listed eight different styles of hamburgers. “Which kind?”
    He scanned the menu. “Bacon cheeseburger sounds good.”
    “You got it.” She whisked back to the kitchen. Miss Competence.
    Hearing his footsteps again, she peeked through the kitchen doorway. He had gone back to the front of the flea market and was   looking out the display windows. Was someone chasing him or what? He seemed to be staring at Mr. Patel’s service station across the highway.
    Well, whatever he was