Or the past eleven years.
“Afternoon, Xander,” she said with a polite, blank smile she hoped hid the maelstrom of emotions swirling around inside her. “What can I get you today?”
Xander ignored the menu, glancing briefly at the chalkboard for the specials instead. “The chicken and dumplings and a slice of that pink, fluffy goodness he’s got there.”
“You got it.” She disappeared into the kitchen to put his order in. It came up quickly since Oscar already had it made, so she brought it out a few minutes later with a tall glass of water and a slice of strawberry cloud cake.
Lloyd was gone when she returned. It was the tail end of the lunch rush and most of her customers were settling up and returning to work. She dropped off Xander’s food and busied herself collecting dishes, waving goodbye and scooping up the tips into her apron pocket.
When there were no more chores to handle or customers to serve, she returned to her lone customer at the counter. He had finished off his lunch and was halfway through his cake. “Everything okay?” she asked.
Xander nodded. “Give my regards to the baker. This strawberry cake is blue-ribbon material. And since I’ve been recruited as one of the judges, that really means something.”
Rose smiled. “You’re one of the judges, huh? Then I probably shouldn’t tell you, but I’m the one that baked it.”
His brows shot up. “You made this?”
“I do most of the baking here. The owner pays me for each dessert on top of my hourly rate. When I dropped out of college, I got a job working at a bakery near the university. I did mostly counter service, but after a while, I got to help out in the back, too.”
“This is amazing. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it tastes great.”
“It’s basically a layered angel food cake with a fresh strawberry-meringue filling and iced with white fluff.”
“Fluff?”
“A girl has to keep some secrets,” she said.
Xander glanced around the diner and then turned back to her. “Speaking of which...” he began, and Rose’s heart stuttered nervously in her chest. “I know we had a lot of other things to talk about the other night, but why didn’t you tell me about Billy?”
Rose gritted her teeth and turned her head to look out the window to the street. She couldn’t face him while she talked about this. It was embarrassing enough. “I thought I was throwing enough crap at you already. You asked me out to a nice dinner to reminisce about old times. I didn’t want to burden you with my sob story. On a good day, I can convince myself that my father was killed rescuing drowning orphans or something. Then he writes me a letter and I’m forced to realize he’s just a sleazy criminal.” Rose sighed. “So who told you?”
“Your brother said something that didn’t make sense, so I asked Ken about it.”
Stupid small towns. Nothing could happen without everyone knowing about it. Rose rested her elbow on the counter and cupped her chin in her palm. “No wonder you didn’t come rushing to see me again. Your illegitimate son’s grandfather is a felon serving fifteen to life for conspiracy to commit armed robbery and felony murder. There’s a headline you don’t want to see going into your campaign.”
“That’s not why I haven’t been to see you,” Xander said. “First, I didn’t want to come by so soon and draw attention to us. We agreed we weren’t going to tell anyone I was Joey’s father. Having me hanging around all the time will eventually give us away. I decided to focus on some different things instead to kill some time until I could come in. My book is coming out tomorrow, so I was doing a lot of phone interviews with radio stations and such. Now that all that’s done, I came straight over.”
“Really?” Rose asked with a coy smile. She knew she shouldn’t be pleased, but knowing he was just waiting to see her again gave her a little thrill.
Xander’s green-gold eyes focused on her with nothing but sincerity showing in them. “Really. I’d like to take you out again.”
“The diner is closed this weekend for the festival. Daisy’s owner usually pays for me to enter the bake-off because it’s good advertising for the restaurant if I do well. When I’m not doing that, I’ll have Joey with me. I promised him that we’d go to the fair and watch the parade. With his arm, I’m not sure he can ride anything, but I’ll load him up with funnel cake and cotton candy.”
“That sounds great. I’ve got to spend a couple hours Friday judging the bake-off, but do you mind if I join you at the fair? Maybe the parade, too, on Saturday?”