of it.
"I'm really sorry, man. Wait ..." Derek rotated in the chair, trying not to disturb the baby falling asleep in his arms. "Please tell me you didn't quit your day job."
"I was looking for a change anyway," Dan not-quite-lied. It wasn't quitting if he hadn't had a job to begin with. He'd been knocking around between short-lived security gigs, whenever he could get a bar owner or event manager to give him a chance as a bouncer, but even that work had dried up lately.
Ben gave him a look, and Dan remembered that Ben's panther let him know when people were lying.
Oops.
"Crap," Derek said. "Listen, dude, we might be able to figure out something, like a trial basis kind of thing ..."
Dan stiffened.
"I don't need charity," he said, his bear bristling.
"It's not charity," Ben said quickly, moving in to defuse the situation. "Actually, what we've both realized lately is that neither of us is that good at the administrative side of things. You used to do the supply-clerk thing in the Army, didn't you? Filing, typing—"
Dan was already vigorously shaking his head. "Typing's not my thing these days," he said, gesturing with the metal clamp.
"Website building?" Ben tried hopefully.
"What about babysitting?" Dan asked.
It was meant to be a joke, but by the time he said it, he had already realized that he meant it. And at the looks on their faces, he felt something new—a cautious dawning of hope.
"Yeah, I—wait," Derek said. "Are you offering?"
Dan shrugged. "I came here looking for a job. I'm not too picky about what the job actually is. I can't do data entry worth a damn." He gestured with the clamp again. "But I can cook and change diapers."
"Can you?" Derek asked. "I don't mean to offend here, seriously. But I've got all I can do keeping up with with these two with a pair of working hands."
"I can brush my teeth, zip my fly, and tie a necktie, so I think I can handle a baby," Dan said. A baby's diaper was a delicate task, but after some of the exercises the physical therapist had put him through, he was confident he could do it.
Especially if the alternative was being homeless.
Derek and Ben shared a look.
"How are you with baby dragons?" Ben asked.
"Well, let's find out." Dan reached out his flesh-and-blood hand. Skye immediately jumped from her father's shoulder to Dan's arm and scrabbled up to curl around his neck.
"Job interview done," Derek said. "You're hired."
Paula
"You quit?" Paula said in desperation and disbelief.
She hip-checked her way into the diner's kitchen with a stack of dirty plates in each hand, her shoulder tilted up next to her ear to hold her phone.
"I'm sorry!" said the voice of the diner's one and only (and now former) full-time waitress, sounding a little desperate herself. "I was going to tell you, I swear! It's only, I hadn't heard back from the other job and I thought I didn't get it and then I did get it and they pay more than you do—"
"So you just decided not to come in to work instead."
The kitchen was sweltering, the cook busily slapping scrambled eggs onto plates. Paula slid the dirty plates one armload at a time into the dishwasher.
"I'm really sorry," the ex-waitress was saying. "Um, can I come in on Friday and collect my last paycheck?"
"Sure," Paula said. "Why not. You can bring back your DeWitt's Diner T-shirt at the same time. And now we're in the middle of the breakfast rush so I have to go."
She very carefully hung up instead of throwing the phone across the room.
"Lost another one, huh?" said the cook, Mitch, without a break in the quick slap of spatula on griddle as he somehow balanced a dance of hash browns, eggs, and pancakes without ever mixing them up or getting pancake batter in the scrambled eggs.
Big, tattooed Mitch had been Paula's first hire after she inherited the place from her parents only to have their longtime cook retire for health reasons immediately after. She had hired him mainly because she was desperate, but at this point it was hard to imagine the diner without Mitch and his always entertaining, dubiously authentic stories of his misspent youth.
"Third one in a month," Paula groaned. "It's not even worth training people at this point." She checked her phone. Other than the waitress, there were no recent calls or texts. "Mitch, please tell me you've seen my son today."
"Sorry, Miz DeWitt. Nope."
Paula sighed and sent yet