Getting Lucky (The Portland Pioneers Book 2) by Beth Bolden Read Free Book Online Page B

look that he’d definitely know how to interpret.
    “How’s the fan?” Cal had the nerve to ask.
    “It’s working,” a voice from behind her said, and she glanced back and very nearly gaped at Noah Fox, who was just coming out of the back, wiping grease-speckled hands on an old dish towel. “I had to reset the belt, but it appears to be fine now.”
    Maggie turned to Cal, very curious to see what his reaction to this stranger fixing thefan was. She expected shock. Maybe awe. She didn’t expect anger that evaporated almost as instantly as it appeared. Maggie was definitely planning on telling him what a jerk he was being, embroidered with lots of extra flourishes, when they were finally alone.
    “Sounds like you saved the day,” Cal said, and she was further annoyed by the snide edge in his voice.
    She was supposed to be the one annoyed with Noah Fox.
    Noah just shrugged. “I’ve got a knack for tinkering with things.”
    “Sounds like a lot more than a knack,” Cal drawled, leaning back against the edge of a booth and crossing his arms over his chest. Maggie rolled her eyes at all this ridiculous alpha male posturing.
    “Cal,” she snapped, “unless you want breakfast, no need for you to stay. And you,” she glanced pointedly at Noah, “get a free meal.”
    Noah’s grin was brighter than the sun at the height of summer. “That sounds great. I’m starved.”
    “Well sit down, and I’ll bring you something. How do you like your eggs?”
    He slid into an empty booth and flashed her another smile. “Scrambled.”

Noah was still trying to reconcile the pissed-off, sharp-tongued Maggie from earlier with the soft, smiling woman who’d just offered to feed him, when the older, dark-haired waitress with “Janice” on her name tag dropped off a full plate of heavenly-smelling food.
    A heaping mound of fluffy eggs sat next to crisp bacon and a pile of sausages, their skins crispy and crackling. Pancakes rounded out the plate, butter melting from their heat. A basic breakfast, maybe, but he’d eaten in a lot of crappy diners and had plenty of early morning room service deliveries in his years as a baseball player. Very rarely had a breakfast ever enticed him with just the aroma wafting from the plate.
    “Coffee?” Janice asked with a hard-edged smile that told him she’d been serving for more years than this place had probably been open. He nodded and she set a mug down and filled it efficiently with not a single spilled drop.
    He’d basically skipped dinner the night before in favor of the dark room and a handful of the pills that had sent him into a dreamless sleep. But he’d woken up this morning with no headache and hadn’t even had to squint in bright light of the tiny hotel bathroom.
    All good progress. After he finally got the information he needed out of Maggie, he’d head down to San Francisco anyway and pay Dr. Singh a visit. Potentially this improvement meant his symptoms were finally disappearing. Maybe he could finally get cleared to participate in actual baseball activities.
    Fear momentarily soured his stomach, as it always did, and he had to swallow hard to force it to pass. Picking up the mug, he took a large gulp of coffee and prayed it would do the trick. Then he picked up his fork and dug into the eggs.
    He’d been hungry, but even hunger didn’t do justice to Maggie’s cooking. The eggs practically melted on his tongue. Picking up a piece of bacon, he took a bite off the crispy end and savored the perfect balance of salty pork fat and the faintest hint of maple and brown sugar. The sausages were a revelation of spices, subtle in one mouthful, aggressive with another. Noah savored them one bite at a time, practically hoarding them until he’d popped the last chunk into his mouth.
    The pancakes? They were so sublime, he practically cried into his coffee as he ate them. He shouldn’t have been surprised, after everything else he’d eaten, that Maggie had put a subtle spin on