A Little Like Fate (Robin and Tyler 1)

e. “Yeah, so.” Her voice is really loud, way too loud and now I’m certain he’s heard us.

“What’s he look like?” I ask, my voice not even a whisper, I’m being so ridiculously quiet. She gives me a confused look, then realization dawns on her features. She smiles an evil grin. “You have the hots for him!” she whisper-yells. My face flushes. I grit my teeth and reply. “No, shut up. Stop talking so loud.”

She leans way back in her seat, spreading out her hands and yawning, making sure to get a good look at him. “Oh yeah, he’s cute all right,” she says, her voice as loud as if we were at a rock concert and she was trying to get the lead singer’s attention. I could kill her! I’m paralyzed with embarrassment and can’t tear my eyes off her. Maybe if I stare hard enough she will vaporize.

She clears her throat. “It’s too bad I didn’t have the guts to talk to him.” I look at her and realize she’s faking conversation. She picks up her fork and stabs into a piece of my French toast. “You should say hi,” she whispers.

I give her the glare again. She shrugs. “Or you could do it the next time we see him. Who knows when that will be since Hollywood is calling our names.”

The cook appears with three plates of heart attack food for Cowboy. I take this opportunity to sneak a glance at him. If he’s not as cute as I think he is, I’ll die. It would mean I spent all night daydreaming about a nonexistent hottie cowboy who thinks my spit isn’t gross.

“Mornin,” he says, noticing me the exact second I sneak a glance. Damn my crappy sleuth skills. “How’s the head?”

“Good,” I say quickly, too relieved in the fact that he is totally hot and everything I envisioned last night while drunk was completely accurate. If anything, I underestimated how gorgeous he is in the daylight. He lifts an eyebrow as if to question my answer. I amend it with, “My face hurts, but I’m okay. I’m actually disappointed that I don’t have a cool bruise to prove how much it hurts.”

“I’m surprised too. You smacked me pretty hard.”

“I’m sorry, did you get hurt?”

He shakes his head and empties a ton of sugar packets into his coffee. I like the way his profile looks. It’s sharp with nice angles, despite him not shaving in a day or so. He rubs his hands on his napkin and then extends the right one to me. “I’m Tyler, by the way. Good to meet you.”

I take his hand and tell him my name. While we’re shaking, Miranda throws her hand on top of ours like we’re in a football field huddle. “Miranda,” she says. “I spit my roach eleven feet. Pretty good for a first-timer, I’d say.”

Our hands break apart. Mine still tingles from touching Tyler’s. I realize how pathetic I am, but I don’t care. I can pretend to have a crush on a guy I’ll never see again. There’s no harm in that. Tyler drinks half his coffee in one gulp. “Who are you two ladies visiting?”

“No one,” I say, resisting the urge to add, would you like some company?

“No one? Then why are you here?”

Miranda does what she does best, and butts in. “Aunt Robin had a mental breakdown. Went totally crazy.”

He nods as if he isn’t surprised, or maybe he doesn’t care, but I care. I already fell on him and spit a roach on his leg, I need to preserve some sort of self-dignity. “We were on a road trip. Miranda here had the bright idea to stop in the middle of nowhere, break her nose and ruin my car.”

He nods again, eating his food like this isn’t a crazy story. Come on! This town can’t possibly have seen anything as crazy as this. “You drive that Beamer?” he asks between mouths of food. I nod and he laughs. “Tough luck. Marcus will never live that down.” He shakes his head while eating. “What an idiot.”

“He seems nice enough,” I say, desperate to keep up conversation even though Tyler only seems to care about eating. “I don’t know why he would do something so violent.”

“He thought you were someone else.” He says it all matter-of-factly and goes back to scarfing down his food like he hasn’t eaten in a week. And that isn’t true because I know he had two corndogs after the roach spitting incident last night. He likes them with ketchup and spicy mustard. I want to say something else, but there isn’t anything to say. He’s just a small town guy and I’m just a city girl who absolutely does not need to complicate her life with another one night stand.

With an internal sigh, I ask for a refill of coffee and decide to let Tyler enjoy the rest of his breakfast in silence. I’ll just admire him from the next barstool over.

A few minutes pass and Miranda leans back in her barstool and taps him on the shoulder behind my back. Literally. “Hey why would he vandalize someone else’s car? What did they do to him?”

She’s lying. We know exactly why Marcus vandalized my car. That means she must be trying to keep up the conversation despite my having ended it. I could hug her and hit her right now.

I lean forward and turn sideways, trying to include myself in the conversation as Miranda hovers behind my back. Our new friend shakes his head as he finishes swallowing. “I don’t want to get into his business, but Marcus is a good kid. I don’t blame him for doing what he did. I’d do the same if I were him.”

Miranda sits back on her stool with a defeated sigh. “You people have morals too? God, I miss Houston.”

“Houston, eh?” Tyler’s even more handsome with the half-smile smirk he’s wearing. “What part? I have some family down there.”

“All parts,” I say, picking at my food. Ugh, great. I’ve been attacked with that inability to eat that some females get around sexy guys. I lost ten pounds in the first few months I dated my last boyfriend. Sexy guys—the only fool-proof diet.

“Hey I’ll be back in a minute, okay?” Miranda says. I nod and shoo her away with the wave of my hand.

Tyler says something about Galveston Island, but all I hear are the words Galveston and Island. Last night he was a stranger and now we’re talking as if we were friends. Even though I wanted to ignore him and go back to my boring day, I’m finding it really hard to end our conversation. I haven’t talked like this with someone in a long time. This isn’t even professional work-related talk or rushed, pointless Facebook status comments—it’s something more. I smile and nod and make a joke about the real estate in Galveston and he laughs.

My cheeks flush, my head tilts back and my laugh is girly. I barely recognize myself. I’m having an amazing time here, at this small town bar talking to a new friend who is totally gorgeous. I’m not worrying about getting back to the office on time, plummeting market values, open houses and piddly fights with Maggie. I’m free here.