Her Scream in the Silence (Carly Moore #2) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,1

stared Max in the eye. “Phyllis is terrible in the kitchen. You need to fire her.”

Max and I both stared at him with dropped jaws. “What?” we asked simultaneously.

“Hey,” my cranky customer asked from across the room. “Am I gonna get my food here?”

Great. Mr. Fancy Pants had noticed me dawdling with Jerry while holding his plate of food. Given my short interaction with him, I should have known to serve him first. Within thirty seconds of walking in, he’d grabbed my arm and pulled me away from a table of customers. In a condescending tone, he’d asked about the VIP dining area, as if we might have a secret back room to separate rich people from the riffraff. With a chuckle, I’d told him this was as good as it got. He’d taken a table in the middle and asked for a fresh cloth to wipe down the table and chairs as if the place were dirty instead of very well-worn. I’d obliged, but his attitude had made me spitting mad.

Truth was, I dreaded waiting on him. His expensive dress shirt and pants, silk tie, and Italian leather loafers all screamed that he wasn’t from around here, and he wore a perpetual smirk that reinforced that he thought he was too good for our tavern. He reminded me of the people who’d populated my past.

I set his plate in front of him, stretching my smile as wide as possible and forcing a cheery tone. “Here you go, sir. A cheeseburger with no mustard or lettuce, with a side of fries.”

His dyed black hair was slicked back, and his face was clean-shaven. There was a hint of crow’s feet around his eyes, but something about his forehead suggested he was a frequent Botox customer.

“They’re cold,” he said, staring up at me with narrowed eyes.

I tried not to shudder.

“You didn’t even try them yet,” I said in a forced teasing tone, pretending to be oblivious to his insults.

He didn’t take his hard gaze from mine, and I realized we were in one of those staring contests my third-grade students had loved to challenge one another to back when I lived another life—the first one who blinked lost.

I knew I should just take his plate back to the kitchen and get a fresh order of fries—“The customer is always right” was the first rule of waiting tables—but I also knew they were still hot enough to burn his tongue. Mr. Fancy Pants got off on scaring people with his thousand-dollar clothes and arrogant attitude. He liked to see people run off with their tails tucked between their legs, but Charlene Moore didn’t have a tail to tuck, and I was all out of patience with rich people trying to intimidate and destroy me.

I let my smile fall. “Those fries are just fine. You don’t scare me with your condescension. What are you gonna do? Walk out without paying? I’ll just give your meal to someone who’ll appreciate it.”

I should have kept my mouth shut, but he reminded me of my oil baron father and the assholes in his entourage. I might not be strong enough to face Randall Blakely, but I could definitely stand up to this prick.

The man continued to glare at me, but his face was starting to turn red.

I cocked my head to the side to show how unimpressed I was with his temper.

“I see you’ve met my son’s new waitress,” a man said from behind me.

Mr. Fancy Pants broke eye contact to glance at the man who was now sliding into the seat across from him.

The silver-haired man wasn’t dressed as well as his dining partner, but he made up for it in arrogance and attitude. Bart Drummond was wearing a button-down dress shirt, with his sleeves rolled up to his forearms. It gave the impression he’d been working hard, but what he’d been doing was anyone’s guess. The Drummonds had founded Drum over two hundred years ago, but the town had fallen on hard times. Between the shuttering of their lumber yard, the legalization of moonshine, and the loss of their tourist industry after the state park system relocated the entrance to a popular trail down to Balder Mountain, Drum was hurting and hurting bad. According to the locals, Bart Drummond’s shine had begun to tarnish.

This was the first time I’d seen Max’s father darken the tavern’s door.

“Carly,” Bart said without bothering to look at me, “could you bother yourself to get me a glass of tea