THE PALE SERIES - Sparks and pigs fly when a wise-cracking waitress meets a reclusive billionaire. Trixie is a wise-cracking waitress trying to work her way through college when a late-night storm blows in a stranger. He's not like the usual customers with his pale skin and dark clothes. Her kindness to him is rewarded with an invitation to his house in the country, and she finds herself in a sticky relationship when he returns her kindness with more than just a thank-you.
Chapter 1 The Moonlit Encounter
It all started with ketchup. I wasn't scheduled to work that night at the
diner, but one of my coworkers slipped on a packet of ketchup and
sprained her butt. That's why I was called in to fill her position that
dark and stormy night when he showed up.
It was the usual chaos around the diner, a dirty little place off the
intersection of Going and Nowhere, which, like this book, was the story of
my life. I'd worked at the small, cramped, old-fashioned rectangular
building for the last seven years and saw myself coming near the end of my
college years without any way to brake and put the car of life in reverse. I
was plump, but not fat, witty, but not mean, blond haired, but not dumb, and
made more friends than enemies with whom I met. It was a comfortable
life, other than the stress of college and work, but not one with much
prospect of becoming a millionaire and living a life of retirement at age
forty. If I kept up this pace I could retire at four hundred and spend the rest
of my days on life-support.
One of my friends, Sheila, was helping me run the diner that night. The
rush hour of regulars was over, the hour was late, and our muscles were
tired from scampering from table to table all night taking orders. Sheila, a
skinny young girl of twenty with as much ambition as a sloth, plopped
herself down in a chair beside the door to the kitchen. She glanced outside
and shook her head. "What a night," she sighed.
She wasn't kidding. A storm raged outside the windows the likes of
which I'd seen only once or twice before. I'd just washed the outside of the
windows yesterday, so that ensured that the wind blew leaves and rain
against all of them. The wind blew so hard people had trouble staying on
their feet, and I swear I even saw a cow fly by, which was strange
considering we were in the middle of the city.
"Trixie?"
"Huh? What?" That was my name, and Sheila was calling it.
"I said, do you think the power will go out? We don't have any way to
keep the burger patties frozen if the fridge dies," she pointed out.
I shrugged. "Then we'll have to take one for the team and eat them all
ourselves," I told her.
She snorted. "As if. I'd be so bloated I couldn't fit through the door."
I shuddered; being stuck at work all night wasn't my idea of fun. Maybe
somebody else's idea, but I wouldn't have been a part of that planning
process. "If the power does go out just don't open the doors."
"Or hope it goes out after we leave," she added. "How much longer do
we have?"
I glanced at my watch, and around the diner. Two diners were finishing
up their meals. "We have an hour left and then it's rough sailing through the
storm." I walked around the counter to one of the booths and glanced out
the window. The streets were running with water. "Looks like some of the
city's fine sanitary infrastructure isn't working right," I told Sheila.
"The whats-it?" she asked me.
"The sewer drains are clogged," I rephrased. "At the rate the rain's
coming down we might need to flip one of these tables over and use it as a
boat to get home." I glanced over to our two remaining customers. "Sirs,
you might want to get a move on or you'll have trouble getting through the
streets." The two men were nice enough to finish their meals, pay and get
out, leaving Sheila and me alone with just the cook in the back. He was as
friendly as a bear awoken in mid-hibernation, so we didn't include him in
our conversations.
After I showed the last man out and made sure the door shut behind
him, I glanced at my watch. Half an hour left. Outside the storm raged like
a toddler hell-bent on destroying a model city, and the night was so dark I
couldn't see more than a yard past the doors. The decrepit streetlights were
broken, and the rain came down in sheets of thick silk. The owner of the
diner was very strict about closing and opening on time, but the weather
was so bad and made me so nervous that my hand hovered over the lock.
I didn't even see the man until his face was pressed against glass. My
loud, vibrating scream registered on the Richter scale, and I stumbled back
onto the floor when the door swung open. Sheila, my brave and bold friend,
ducked down beneath the counter and the cook stuck his head out of the
kitchen.
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