covers and went to stare out the window. If she angled her body just right, she could… Well, she couldn’t really see her house, five miles away, but she could picture it there—with that New York snake coiled up and hissing inside it, probably with laughter at dumb hick Ames.
Damned if she would call the New York police, who’d probably write her off as a nut job. First she’d find out all she could about Nick Rossi. He didn’t suspect she knew the truth about him. She’d play dumb and this time she’d be the one drawing out his secrets.
It turned out Ames could abandon all her late-night plans to visit Rossi and get him to talk to her again, because he turned up at the Back Porch during her morning shift. It was her turn to open, so she’d been there since before sunrise. The sleepless hours of the previous night were starting to drag on her when Rossi walked through the door.
Her heart did a flip, then banged against her breastbone at the sight of the handsome, horrible stranger filling the doorway. Was he a physical danger to her? She didn’t really think so, because they’d been alone in the woods yesterday and he hadn’t done anything besides ply her with questions. But if he knew she’d discovered who he really was, that might change.
Ames pasted on a big, wide, good-ole-girl, waitress smile and met him at the counter as he slid onto a stool. “Mornin’. How’d ya sleep?” Good lord, she was affecting a Southern drawl as if she were a character in a movie. But Sam/Nick didn’t seem to notice.
“Okay. That old house has a lot of creaks and groans.”
“Oh, it’s haunted. I have no doubt of that. But not in a violent Amityville kind of way. I think the spirits that walk there are more the weepy, how do I get to the other side? kind.” She grinned. How easy it was to make small talk with him as if she didn’t know anything. For one fleeting moment, she wished she didn’t know, wished she could go back to yesterday’s innocence. That was the worst part. She’d really liked Sam, but now she had to remember he was Nick Ross—no Rossi—the biggest clue to Elliot’s disappearance she’d found so far—and who might be behind her brother’s vanishing act.
Ross smiled back, and she’d have to be dead not to notice the way his dark eyes shone with amusement, a shared moment of pleasure. “Well, I didn’t hear any moaning or ghostly whining, but I did hear plenty of claws scrabbling on the floors.” Some fellow vermin coming in for a visit? “You know the number of a good exterminator?”
“Jim over there can take care of it.” She nodded at the large man wedged into his usual corner booth along with his buddies, Al and Dave, two other very wide men.
Ross glanced at the booth, then back at her. “Listen, I’m sorry about last night. I wasn’t very sociable. Guess I was still tired from fixing the place up.” He lowered his voice. “And as for that…thing that happened under the tree…”
Ames waved it away. “Forget it. Slate’s wiped clean. It was a heat-of-the-moment kind of thing.” Heated moment, indeed. Her body started to stoke again at the mere memory of the previous night’s kissing and groping and rubbing, and she had a hard time keeping her gaze from settling on Rossi’s mouth.
How sick was it that she was still attracted to the dirty liar and possibly worse? She couldn’t let herself dwell on his real identity and what he might have done to her brother. She wasn’t enough of an actor to hide her response.
He didn’t seem to notice her discomfort yet. “I’d like to make it up to you. When does your shift end? Can I take you out for a meal or coffee or something?”
And grill me with more questions about my missing brother? Sure, why not. Ames turned on her waitress smile again. “Sure. Why not? One good thing about the early morning shift, I’m off by one. Give me some time to go home and clean up, and I’ll be good to go.”
Ames went to fill coffee cups and take orders from the morning rush of customers. The familiar work settled her some, so by the time she faced Ross again, the flutters in her stomach had turned to a dull ache.
“Where can I pick you up?” he asked.
“My apartment’s on Dodge