Yep. There it goes. My chance.
I guess things were moving just a little too smoothly, even for me.
Jacinta thumbs her phone and I can’t help but see her mom’s text instead of calling.
Jacinta taps out a short reply and tucks her phone away.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, reddening.
“Your mom owns the diner?” I ask out of reflex.
Always gathering information, but in a friendly way.
But with Jacinta, I need to know as much as I can and fast.
And not for my regular, buying up the whole town reasons either.
My question seems to have done more harm than good though, and I can see at once I’ve hit a raw nerve.
“Not anymore,” Jacinta says quietly. Bitterly.
I think better of saying anything else to make it worse but after a long pause, she takes a breath.
Explaining things in her own way.
“My dad used to own the diner and a lot of other places in town. Used to own part of the mill too. Before it went…”
But it’s a tale I’ve heard a thousand times.
Boom to bust towns are my currency, and for my sake, I’ve always detached myself from the emotional side of these things.
It always ends badly for someone, then someone like me comes along and makes a killing by doing nothing more than signing a few checks.
It’s a sad fact of life. But only depending on which side of the circumstance you’re on.
“What happened?” I ask, getting the feeling she wants to tell me. Get it off her chest.
“I dunno really,” she shrugs, lightening her mood somewhat. “Dad left when I was little, but all I can remember is everything was fine one day and miserable the next.”
She shifts uneasily in her seat. Reminding me that a six-foot-seven man in a shoebox for a car isn’t a very comfortable place.
“Sometimes it just works out that way,” I offer sympathetically. “But your mom is still working there, at the diner I mean, that’s gotta be a painful reminder?”
Nice work, Kyle. What happened to sympathy and understanding?
Jesus.
The pain I’m referring to shows on her face before she flattens her mouth.
“Yeah. Yeah, it sucks,” she says hotly, collecting herself before continuing. “It was bought out by the same people who bought the old mill site too.”
My ears prick up. The best intel is always from the townsfolk themselves. There’s only so much you can find out online, even these days.
“People?” I ask, sensing the thrill of competition. Reminding myself of the thrill of a different kind of chase.
Not the same kind of chase I want with Jacinta either.
“Yeah, some out of towners with money. Wanted to buy up all of Cherry at one point… But that was ages ago. Everything to do with the diner goes through my mom now. She just gets paid to run it.”
“And the mill?” I ask, casting a keen eye to the trio of huge silos opposite the valley.
The only real landmark apart from the diner.
Jacinta gives me a sidelong glance. “This isn’t a very exciting tour, is it?” She smiles suddenly, wanting to forget the whole topic, but I can’t let it go.
Not just yet.
“No, not at all,” I counter. “It’s interesting to me,” I tell her honestly.
Her eyes narrow for a moment, then widen, clear again once she lets go of whatever pain from her past threatens to bring her down.
It’s just me and her in the car again.
And although I can’t say it right now, her future is more than bright if she’ll do more than just show me around town.
“Can I tell you something?” I ask.
Needing to come clean about so many things, even though we’ve only just met.
She nods eagerly, and I feel myself leaning in. My face is so close to hers I can see as well as feel the shiver in her breath.
The quickening of her pulse.
“I’m… I mean. I—”
Shit Kyle. Just say it. Tell her who you are and what you’re doing in her town.
“What is it?” she whispers, looking concerned.
“I… Don’t just want to stay in town for the view,” I finally manage to say. Struggling for words is a new experience for me, and it’s also one I don’t like.
But with Jacinta, she takes more than my breath away and gives a hundred times more back to places in my body I’d forgotten even existed.
She frowns in question, but her phone buzzes again, breaking the moment.
Again.
“Mom,” she growls, clicking her tongue in the same way her mother does. But I’m guessing from her profile that Jacinta has her father's genetics.
Amen to that.
I wonder what happened to him after he left town. I wonder if Jacinta even wants to know.
“Sorry,” she murmurs again, and before she even says it, I know our little tour’s over.
“She wants me back at the diner… Pronto.” Jacinta huffs, blowing air from her cheeks, making a face I can tell means she’s saving the worst of her emotions for her mom.