From Daddy Lessons

     Kate loved sharing a meal with her son Eddie, her brother Travis and his family at the Four Square Café. The décor was a little outdated, even by the current “retro” standards, the menu a bit heavy on carbs, sugar and fats, and the service not nearly as speedy as the fast food place on the highway. But the waitresses were friendly, the food delicious and the company the best she’d had in years.
     Since about six months into her marriage with her lying, cheating ex-husband Ed, to be exact.
     “Here you go,” Charlene Jacks said as she delivered a tray of burgers and fries to the table.
     “Thanks, Charlene,” Travis said. He handed a plate to his wife, Jodie, which she immediately passed to Eddie.
     “Thank you, Aunt Jodie.”
     Kate smiled at her seven-year old son, the light of her life, who’d thankfully remembered his manners. Her divorce and Ed’s subsequent desertion had been especially hard on their son – not that Ed had ever been an involved parent. He’d never been the kind of father that Travis already was with his infant daughter, Marsha.
     “Earth to Kate,” Travis said, interrupting her thoughts as he’d done so many times when they were children. He held out her plate. “If you’re not hungry ...”
     “Oh, no you don’t. I’ll take that right now.” When she’d lived the suburban lifestyle, she enjoyed all the trendy chain restaurants. Now she was happy with simpler fare . . . even if she did sometimes miss a good grilled chicken caesar salad.
      “You folks need anything else?” Charlene asked.
     “We’re great, thanks,” Travis said, and Kate smiled up at her while Jodie adjusted the pacifier for baby Marsha.
     As Charlene moved away from the table, sunlight flooded through the front window of the café, making Kate squint. And then she noticed something that made her eyes open wide. Something she hadn’t seen in Ranger Springs in the two months she’d lived here.
     The heavy blub-blub-blub of the motorcycle engine died as the rider came to a stop across the street, facing the gazebo in the middle of the town square. With his back to her, she worked her gaze up from his heavy boots to his faded, tight jeans, past the black leather jacket to the dark, too-long hair that blew in the cool breeze.
     He threw his muscular leg over the seat and stepped away from the bike. Kate caught her breath. Wow.
     “Kate! Do you want your lunch or not?”
     She blinked, focusing on Travis instead of the scene outside the window. “Yes, I want . . . lunch,” she said in a slightly shaky voice. She absolutely did not want to look at the bona-fide bad boy on the big motorcycle.
     “Are you okay?” Jodie asked, placing a hand on Kate’s forearm. Jodie sat facing the back of the restaurant and obviously hadn’t seen the same sight as Kate.
     “I’m fine. I just saw . . . I wonder who that is. He doesn’t exactly look like a local.”
     “Who?”
     Jodie and Travis both turned to look out the window. Travis narrowed his eyes, exactly as he did whenever he was getting all protective. “No, he’s not local.”
     “Like I would have missed him,” Jodie added, then smiled at Travis’s deepening frown.
     Kate grinned at her sister-in-law’s saucy remark. She loved the way her brother and sister-in-law teased each other, argued in a good-natured way, and made up with lots of love. She and Ed – the lying, cheating rat – had never developed that type of relationship.
     “Who, Mommy?” Eddie asked.
     “Just some man on a motorcycle,” Kate replied casually, smiling at her son and then looking back out the window. The bad boy was walking this way, as though he’d sensed her ogling him. Not that she was exactly ogling. She was a thirty-two year old divorced mother without a steady job or a permanent place to live. She owned a few pieces of furniture, a couple of suitcases of clothes and a few boxes of personal belongings. Until she found a job, hopefully teaching school, she was officially unemployed, although she did substitute teach whenever possible. She didn’t have the luxury of ogling strange men.
     Still, her unruly heart thumped wildly as he opened the door of the café, setting off the tinkling bell and drawing the attention of everyone in the place. He brought the crisp winter air and the smell of well-worn leather into the restaurant. Or perhaps she just imagined the leather. One thing she wasn’t imagining was her reaction – shocked appreciation for a one-hundred percent male. No, make that one-hundred percent off-limit male.
     “Hey, Luke.” Hank McCauley called out from across the café. From the corner of her eye, Kate saw him rise from his booth and walk toward the bad boy biker.
     “Hank.” The man’s soft, deep voice fit his persona as well as his white t-shirt molded his pecs and abs. He walked right by their table but didn’t linger. Didn’t politely smile or nod as most of the locals did. Didn’t even notice how she’d been practically drooling, despite her mental efforts to curb her inappropriate reaction.
     “Your hamburger’s getting cold, Sis,” Travis said in a warning tone.
     Just then Charlene walked up to their table and mentioned, as she refilled their iced tea, “He’s Hank’s friend from California. Hank said he’d be in sometime around noon. Rode all the way to Texas on his Harley.”
     “California?” Jodie asked. “I wonder where. I’ll have to find out.”
     “It’s a big state,” Travis said in a slightly peeved tone. “Just because you’re from California too doesn’t mean that he’s your new best friend.”
     “Jealous, darling?” she teased.
     Travis snorted. “Of him? Hardly.”
     “I think he’s a very attractive man,” Charlene added. “Not for me, of course. I mean in general. He looks like a movie star, but Hank said he’s a stuntman and a trainer.”
     Personal or animal?
     “Wow, a stuntman,” Eddie said. “I know what they do.”
     Oh, great. Now her seven-year old was going to have a serious case of hero worship. That, combined with her own inappropriate thoughts, meant they’d all better avoid the newcomer. “I’m sure he’s just taking a short vacation.” Probably a vacation from all the gorgeous women in Hollywood.
     “Not really,” Charlene answered. “According to Hank, he’s bought 640 acres, an old ranch just out of town.” The older lady grinned. “Travis, he’s your new neighbor!”
     Neighbor? That would be bad. Very, very bad. Kate swallowed the lump in her throat with a big drink of iced tea, vowing have a long talk with Eddie when they got home about how they needed to stay away from their new neighbor.
     She only hoped she could follow her own advice.