Page 2 of Edmond

The little bell over the door signaled someone else joining the diners just as his food was being set in front of him. He was pleased to see that he had the pulled pork because that had been what he’d been smelling when he entered the place. His tea was topped off a few seconds later, and he was just to put a forkful of the pork when his silverware was slapped out of his hand and the food and all hit the window.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” He looked at the kid, no more than about seventeen years old, he thought when he sat down across from him. “I asked you a question, moron. What do you think you’re doing here with my sister.” Thelma stood by his table, hand on her hip and a flyswatter in her hand, when she started yelling at the kid.

“Get your asses out of here, Jimmy Pendleton, or I’m calling the cops on you again. Get out of here now.” Thelma sat a fork down next to his plate just as three more men. He could tell that they were about his age now that he had a closer look. And all four of them tried to sit on the other side of the booth from him. “Jimmy, you’ve been warned not to be coming here when Mac is working. I’m not shitting you right now, so you’d better be getting out of here.”

“Miss Thelma, I think you’d better call the police, please. I’m just in the mood to teach these idiots a lesson.” Picking up his fork, Edmond turned it over and over with his fingers, then slammed it into Jimmy Pendleton’s hand and into the table. “Now, see what you made me do? I just wanted a nice meal, and you screwed me out of that.”

~*~

Mac watched the paramedics as they worked on getting her brother’s hand free from the table. She kept an eye on the man, too, who had rammed the fork so far into her brother’s hand that it had come out on the other end of the table. Finally, when they had all tried to get his hand free with no luck, someone uncuffed the large man and had him do it. That, of course, had her brother screaming bloody murder when the man simply jerked Jimmy’s hand off the fork and then removed it from the table.

Jimmy and her other three brothers were being arrested. She didn’t care so long as they didn’t expect her to be bailing them out. She wouldn’t, of course. She liked it when they were put someplace where they couldn’t cause any trouble. Thelma came to the kitchen where she was working and asked her to make the big man another plate of food.

“I don’t know if you noticed this or not, Thelma, but he’s going to be arrested, too. How do you suppose he’d going to eat anything with his hands cuffed behind his back?” Thelma said that she’d feed it to him for getting Jimmy out of here. “You know that he’s still my brother, right?”

“Oh honey, I’m sorry. But when I saw them coming in and them just getting out of jail after beating up Missy Blue, too. I was never so happy to see that man just take care of them lickty-split.” She would admit this to no one, but she had been dancing in the kitchen since it happened. “What do you think they’re going to do to the big man? I heard him telling the police that he needed to call his brother. I don’t think they know what to do with him, the police, I mean. He sure is a big fella.”

Since the police had arrived and her other brothers were sitting on the floor with the man standing over them, Thelma had said he was a big fella about ninety times. Not really but it seemed all she could focus on right now. When there were other things about the man that were much nicer looking than his height.

He had pretty blue eyes. Dark hair that made her want to run her fingers through it until—stopping those thoughts, they’d get her nowhere. She started dishing up the orders she’d been working on when the commotion going on in the dining room caught her attention.

Mac had been working in this place since she’d turned sixteen. She’d been the cashier, having had more experience with the money being changed out than Thelma and her husband. Then she became a waitress, hating every minute of dealing with people until one day, Daniel Thomas didn’t show up for his early morning shift, and she began cooking. Daniel hadn’t been to work since, even though he only lived about a mile from the diner. He’d told Thelma that he’d have enough cooking for slobs and wasn’t coming back. It suited Mac just fine.

After finishing up with the midnight diners, she started to clean up her area. Mac wasn’t a sloppy cook, but there were times when Thelma would tell her an order and then come back and tell her that she’d messed up. It was happening more and more frequently; Mac had realized just this morning. Instead of it happening once a month, Thelma would come back and have her do over an order at least twice a day.

“Mac? You back there?” She told Officer Pendleton that she was. The man knew she was here. He was her flipping uncle. Where else did he expect her to be. “Those dumbasses are saying that you’re to come down there and bail them out. If you do that, I’m going to tell your grannie. She likes having them in jail.”

“If you want to know the truth, Uncle Tim, I do as well.” He asked her again if she was going to bail them out. “I’m not. I told them that I’m finished with their asses. How long were they out this time before you had to come here? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Grannie will tell you the same thing, they’re hooligans, and neither one of us is going to put up with their shit.”

“You don’t need you to be blowing a gasket. I only asked.” She glanced at the doorway when the bell rang. She knew immediately that it was blue eyes family. His brother looked like they’d been popped from the same people. When he asked if his brother could talk to him, her uncle said he was going to release him. “I know you told me where you were from, Mr. Frazier but I don’t remember right now. I’m going to need you to show up in court when they are set to be tried. I believe if there was any other judge in the courtroom they’d have been sent away by now. But Ms. Anden, she’s sweet on Liam because he mows her lawn. I’m not saying that she’s corrupt or anything, but she sure is turning her head when it comes to those nephews of mine.”

The two men sat in the same booth that blue eyes had been sitting in before Jimmy had arrived. The pretty woman that came with the brother and sat down on the side blue eyes was on. Thelma asked what was left over that she could dish up quick and she told her that the grill was clean but still on. Whatever they wanted.

She made eight cheeseburgers with all the trimmings and three orders of fries as well as made them all the Friday special of peach shakes while she was at it. It was that, or she was going to have to take it out to the trash. There was nothing wrong with the peaches. It was just that the place wasn’t open on Sunday or Monday, and it wouldn’t last that long. Cleaning the grill off, she turned just as the pretty lady was about to touch her.

“Don’t.” Nodding, she backed away. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m sunburnt to hell and back, and if you touch me, like I think you were, then I’d be sobbing like a five-year-old.”

“My name is Brandy Fraizer. The man in the blue blazer is my husband, and the man across from him is his brother.” She asked her why she thought that she’d care. “I don’t suppose that you would, but I just…I pissed the others off. All five of them. I guess I was going to come back here, and…Christ, I don’t know. I do know that I was in the wrong. My husband doesn’t think so, but I know that I was thoughtless in my actions.”

“And?” Brandy looked at her when she was wondering what that had to do with her. “And so you fucked up. Goody for you. You did…let me guess…you have bucks, I’d say a great deal of them, too. So you…you gave them a bunch of money to bring them up to what you considered to be equally moneyed. No, you’d not give that much but enough that they’d be beholden to you.”

“How did you…did Edmond tell you that?” She said she didn’t know who that was. “Well, you’re good at guessing, is all I can say. But I hadn’t meant to make them feel they’d be beholden to me. I wouldn’t…Okay, I might have thought that I’d like for them to be well dressed when we were all…how did you know all that?”

“Your brother-in-law has on new clothes but his truck looks like it’s about his age. And he bought and paid for it by working hard. His clothes, as I said, are new, but his boots are worn down and cleaned of mud. He even wiped his feet when he came in, I didn’t know that part, but Thelma told me. When he got in here tonight, Thelma asked him if he had the money to pay with, and he assured her that he did. I think she asked him several times, at least four more, before my brother showed up. He never got short with her, never told her that she’d asked him that several times, but assured her, even going so far as to show her his wallet each time.” Brandy asked what she meant by Thelma asking several times. “It has only just occurred to me that she might be losing her grip on things. Her husband, he died several years ago, tried his best to keep her focused on what she was doing, but she’s slipping away with each day, I think.”

“I’m so sorry.” Shrugging, she asked Brandy if she wanted a cup of tea. “I would love one. While we’re waiting on the water, can you tell me, you seemingly knowing that I hurt their feelings, what you would have done to make them have a safe house with better furniture?”

“Did you tell them that? Or did you just flop down some cash in an envelope and expect them to be praising you for thinking of them?” She told her that she had flopped. “I thought so. You’re used to having money. And you don’t care who knows you have it either.”

“How on earth did you come up with that?” She told her. Brandy looked around the room while she went into the little office to get out the tea cups that she had only ever shared with one person. Thelma’s husband, Grant. “You’re absolutely right. I never thought of how I project myself when I’m out and about. And you were correct in assuming that my husband has on a blazer that he more than likely wouldn’t have worn had I not suggested it. He wants to make me happy so I believe he’s been doing what I say to him to do so. What else have you observed? I’m not being a bitch, I can be, but I’m not. However, I’m sure that you have a great many other things that you’ve noticed, too.”

As she poured them both a cup of tea, she also got out the chocolate chip cookies that she’d made last night. They were still gooey, just the way she liked them, and offered her the tin. When she took out two, Mac told her not to be stupid and to take what she wanted.

“I want them all.” In answer, Mac got up and pulled down a large container with about ten dozen cookies in it. Brandy laughed and told her that she liked her. “I so love this kind of good cookie. My grannie used to make them when I was a child. But I want you to tell me what else you’ve seen.”

She didn’t want to get into this game with the woman. A false move, and she’d be hurt. Knowing what she did about the woman, even things that she might not know herself, would get her labeled again, ridiculed, and most of all chased away. Sitting across from her with the large batch of cookies between them, she thought fuck it. She needed a better job anyway.

“You’re the alpha bitch to your husband’s Alpha. Neither of you are full-blooded, but the child you carry will be. Simply because you’re alphas. You’re also carrying a male child. You do have a great deal of money, in the billions, I’d say. You still go to your father and mother when you need advice, and for the most part, they’re honest with you. However, what you don’t know, or perhaps—Again, I don’t know, you might not care. Your father is dying. He has recently found out that he has an inoperable tumor on his brain. When he dies, and he will if something isn’t done soon, your mother plans on joining him, killing herself so that she won’t have to face the world without him.” Mac picked up her tea, dumping the contents of her cup in the sink, careful with the delicate thing. “There is a man in your past who has been harassing you about what he thinks he deserves for having to be around you. His name is Jasper Williams. What would you like to—”