With a hard swallow, he skirted past the group of cameras and got into the first taxi.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
“You didn’t happen to pick up an angel about an hour ago?”
The driver shook his head sadly. “Sorry, no. My shift just started.”
Johnny blew out a breath, just as his manager slid into the backseat beside him, sending Johnny a wry look. “Take me into town. I’ll go from there.”
*
Hope stared at her reflection in the break room mirror.
Her waitressing shift had already started and she could hear the breakfast rush din through the door. She needed to get out there and start taking orders, but her legs were made of cement. How had she managed to go home, shower and give Wyatt some lame reassurances that she was fine? The whole morning was a blur. She’d always thought a broken heart would be contained to the chest. It wasn’t. The split ran all the way down to the tips of her toes.
Worse, she couldn’t seem to banish this…unsettled feeling.
Was she restless because she couldn’t reconcile the Johnny she fell in love with last night…with the kind of man who’d change his mind so easily? Or was her uncertainty simply another awful side effect of heartbreak?
A knock on the door made Hope turn. “Sorry, I’m coming—”
“Hope, you have to get out here,” called the other waitress, Becky.
“I know.” Hope tightened the strings of her apron and headed for the door. “Sorry, Becky. I’ll skip my break today and give you an extra-long one—”
“Hope!” Becky squealed, opening the door and dragging her out by the elbow. “Look at the television.”
“Why—”
Hope’s mouth smacked shut when she saw the scene playing out on the ancient Panasonic television, which had been mounted above the diner counter no later than the eighties. A shirtless Johnny Scott, his hair in fifty directions, approaching a screeching gaggle of media and shutting them all up with a few words.
“I need your help. The mystery girl. Yeah, she’s being extra mysterious this morning.”
Wait. Was he talking about…her?
“I seem to have misplaced the girl of my dreams. Could I send her a message here?”
Hope’s heart was in danger of beating out of her chest, but not even self-preservation could force her eyes away from the screen. No, she couldn’t look away from the incredible sight of Johnny if she tried. “Hope…”
Becky turned to look at Hope, mouth agape. Hope guessed she looked about the same level of shocked. Was this really happening?
Johnny started straight into the camera and Hope’s knees started to shake. “I know why you left and, Christ, I’m so sorry, baby. Look at me.” He paused for breath. “You know we fell in love last night. You know it was real. You’re having doubts about that, so I’m coming to find you, okay? I’ll take all the doubts away, one by one, just stay put while I figure out where you went.” Frustration pulled his dark eyebrows together “I can’t figure out how an angel is out there, just walking the streets, in the first place. It shouldn’t be that hard to find you, right?”
And then he was gone, replaced by a news anchor.
Becky shook her by the shoulder. “You were at the show last night. Is he talking about you, Hope? Lord, please tell me yes, I need some excitement in my life.”
“Yes,” Hope whispered, wide-eyed. “Oh my God, he was talking about me.”
Before her fellow waitress could respond, one of Hope’s regulars burst through the door. “Y’all have to come see this. Johnny Scott is walking around town in nothing but a pair of sweatpants.”
Becky took off running, nearly knocking down Hope in her haste to get out the door. Slowly, Hope walked toward the front window of the restaurant and peered through the lace curtains. And there he was. Johnny Scott, jaw set with determination, walking into each restaurant that lined the block, one by one, and coming back out. Moving on to the next.
It would take him another three minutes to reach this restaurant.
A sound of joy broke from her mouth. No way was she going to make him wait that long.
Hope ripped off her apron and ran through the near-empty restaurant, bursting through the door. Traffic had stopped to watch the Shirtless Johnny Scott Parade, so she wandered into the middle of the street, waiting, and a moment later when Johnny left the Chinese takeout place on the counter, signing an autograph without so much as a pause in his step, Hope called his name.
Johnny halted in place and his reaction to seeing Hope was breathtaking.
He doubled over, resting with his hands on his knees a moment, before he straightened and started weaving his way around stopped cars, closing in on her like a heat-seeking missile.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed when he reached her. “I’m sorry I believed anything you didn’t tell me yourself. I should have known—”