Winning Dixie Read online

  He wouldn’t be sharing that little detail with his family.

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I was getting to that. What does the job pay?”

  When she told him the hourly wage—before taxes, she explained—he nearly choked. He would have to work for three weeks to buy a new jock strap. So this, then, was how the rest of the world lived, he thought.

  But he said nothing. Instead he nodded. “That’ll be fine.”

  She looked at him as if she didn’t quite trust him, but said, “Great. There’s the dishes.” She indicated three plastic tubs of dirty dishes. “Help yourself.”

  “In other words, get to work?” he asked with a smile.

  “You read my mind.”

  “Order up,” Pops said again.

  “I’m coming.” She loaded a tray, grabbed a folding stand and disappeared through the swinging door.

  “Now,” Pops said, putting down his spatula. He turned toward Wade and folded his arms across his scrawny chest. There was nothing scrawny, however, about the look on his face. “You may have pulled the wool over her eyes, but I’ve got better than twenty-twenty vision, boy. Who are you, and what are you really doing here?”

  Wade paused in the middle of tying a dish towel around his waist as an apron, the way Dixie wore hers. “Pardon?” he asked to stall for time while he decided how to answer.

  The old man snorted and turned back to his grill to flip a burger. “You heard me. You’re not some down-on-his-luck street bum lookin’ for a job that pays peanuts.” He turned to face Wade, the spatula still in his hand. “Who are you and what are you after? If you’ve come here to mess with the girl, you’ll think you’ve been pulled through a knothole backward when I get through with you. I might be old, but I ain’t dead yet.”

  “The girl? You mean Dixie?” Wade asked, incredulous. “You think I’ve come here to, what, mess with her? I don’t even know what that means. But no, I’m just a guy looking for a job.”

  “Bull hockey.”

  Wade would have laughed at the old man’s verbal expression, but the look on his face was deadly serious and nearly compelled him to blurt out the truth. It was a good thing he’d never had to face those eyes during a takeover negotiation or Wade might have buckled.

  But if he told the truth, a lot of people would freak out. He chose to stick to as near the truth as possible.

  “Whatever my reasons for coming here,” Wade said, looking Pops straight in the eye, “they’re personal. But I will tell you that I mean harm to absolutely no one, and certainly not the woman who just trusted me enough to give me a chance.”

  Dixie served the Mexican Platter, heavy on the jalapeños, to George Miller at table three, and a bacon cheeseburger with chili fries to Sonja Guitierez at number eight. After making the rounds with her tea pitcher, she went back to the counter.

  A few minutes later she stepped into the kitchen. As she had every time during the past couple of hours, she gave a start at the sight of her new dishwasher. At least six feet of lean, gorgeous man who so obviously did not belong in her small diner kitchen, but who somehow looked just right with his sleeves rolled up and his arms plunged to the elbows in soap suds as he scrubbed one of Pop’s skillets. The open collar of his shirt revealed a scar that disappeared down inside his shirt. She had a sudden urge to find out how far down that scar went.

  At the thought her pulse raced and an odd tickle danced around her insides.

  Whoa. Was she having a physical reaction to a man? A physical reaction of a…well, okay, just say it, of a sexual nature? Sheesh. It had been so long since she’d felt any such stirrings, she didn’t know what to make of the situation.

  Should she run for her life, or jump his bones?

  Maybe she was coming down with a bug.

  “How’s it going?” she asked. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why did she feel the need to speak to him, to get him to speak to her?

  He shrugged. “You tell me.”

  Dixie blinked. Oh. He was responding to what she’d said, not what she’d thought. Thank God.

  She looked around. The tubs of dirty dishes from the breakfast shift were gone. Trays of clean glasses stood stacked in their proper place alongside stacks of clean plates and a stack of napkin-wrapped cutlery settings ready for use.

  “Wow,” she said. “You’ve been busy.” She hadn’t expected so much work out of him so quickly.

  “That’s what you’re paying me for,” he said with a smile.

  How could anyone be so damned cheerful while washing dishes? Dixie hated washing dishes. She’d hated it from the day she’d opened the diner and realized what a horrendous job it was cleaning up after so many customers all day long.

  Not that she minded the customers! God love and bless each and every one of them with a hearty appetite. But that didn’t mean she had to like washing their dishes. She had dirty dishes aplenty at home every day.

  Out in the dining room, the bell over the front door dinged.

  She turned toward the doorway. “Back to work.”

  The bell over the front door continued to ding frequently with the comings and goings of customers. The afternoon business was good. Wade made it out to the dining room a couple of times to bus tables, but spent the bulk of the afternoon in the kitchen elbow-deep in soapy water. He actually worked up a sweat, but he figured that was more due to the steam rising in his face than from physical exertion. He worked out regularly and was in good shape. No pile of dirty dishes could get the best of him.

  When the front bell dinged again at 3:30 p.m., Dixie, who was building a salad at the counter across from the stove, heaved a sigh.

  “That’ll be the boys,” Pops said with a smile.

  Dixie looked up at the clock over the door. “Right on time.” She started for the door.

  Wade got a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. The boys.

  His boss didn’t make it out of the kitchen before the swinging door shot inward and two small tornados burst into the room.

  “Mom! Mom!” the oldest called in breathless excitement.

  According to Wade’s research, that would be ten-year-old Ben McCormick.

  “I’m right here,” Dixie said calmly. “No need to shout.”

  The boy shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. “Gary Thompson fell down the stairs and broke his nose. There was blood everywhere. It was way cool.”

  “Yeah,” the younger boy agreed wholeheartedly. “Way cool.”

  This, Wade knew, would be Tate McCormick, age eight.

  “Shame on both of you,” Dixie gave them a deep frown. “Someone getting hurt is not cool.”

  Both boys grinned and said in unison, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Wade stood at his sink and stared, something deep inside him going still and soft and warm.

  “Who’s he?” Tate asked, pointing at him.

  God, Wade thought, they were so…perfect. That was the only word he could think of, regardless of the little-boy dirt and sweat and mess that covered them, or the shirttail that was only half tucked or the shoelace that was untied. Those things were simply typical parts of typical boys. It was the big eyes—brown on one, blue on the other—the smiles, the sheer energy emanating from them, the freckles on one, the cowlick on the other, that captured him.

  These were the sons of the man whose heart beat in Wade’s chest. He knew it. Felt it more certainly than anything in his life.

  “This is our new day-shift dishwasher,” Dixie explained. “Wade Harrison, these are my sons. Ben is ten, and this is Tate.”

  “I’m eight,” Tate rushed to clarify.

  “We call him Tater,” Ben announced. “’Cuz he’s just a little spud. You don’t look like any dishwasher I ever saw.”

  “I don’t?” Wade asked, trying to keep up with the change of subject. “What does a dishwasher look like?”

  Both boys looked at Wade with total innocence in their big brown eyes.

  “Like that.” Ben, the oldest, pointed at
the stainless steel automatic dishwashing machine next to the sink. Then both boys giggled.

  Pops chortled. “Had me going. For a minute, there, I thought they were gonna say a dishwasher was supposed to look like a girl.”

  “Pardon?” Wade said.

  “They wouldn’t dare,” Dixie said with a dark glare for Pops. “He means Keesha, our previous dishwasher.”

  “Where’d she go, Mom?” Tate asked. “Where’d Keesha go?”

  Dixie put an arm around her youngest son’s shoulder. “Her husband got a new job in Dallas, so they had to move.”

  “I knew that,” Ben said. “She left last week.” He gave his brother a slight shove for emphasis. “’Member? We had to wash our own dishes that one time.”

  Tate made a face. “Oh, yeah. Ugh.”

  “You washed your own dishes?” Wade asked them.

  They stuck out their chests as if about to take credit for having built the Empire State Building. “Sure did,” Ben admitted.

  “Yes, indeedy,” Tate said with a sharp nod.

  “I bet you did a good job of it, too,” Wade told them.

  “Yes, indeedy,” Tate said again, this time with a wide grin that showed a missing upper canine.

  Ben’s eyes narrowed slightly. “How come you wanna know?”

  “Well,” Wade said, “I’m new here. I wouldn’t want to get in your way or anything.” He held up a wet, sudsy dishrag. “Next time you eat I’ll be sure and let you do your own cleanup.”

  Both boys gaped, horror slowly filling their eyes. “Mom?” Tate cried.

  “We don’t really have to, do we?” Ben asked his mother, his voice tentative.

  At the grill, Pops let out a loud cackle. “Got you good, didn’t he, boys? Got you a good’n, yessiree, Bob.”

  Wide-eyed, Tate asked Wade, “You were kidding?”

  Wade grinned. “I was kidding.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dixie said with a nudge to each of her sons. “I think the idea has merit.”

  “Mo-om,” Tate protested

  “Mom, no,” Ben cried. “Oh. You’re kidding, too, right? Sheesh. Grown-ups.”

  “Maybe I was only half-kidding,” Dixie said. “By the time I was your age, Ben, I was doing the dishes every day for my whole family.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a girl.”

  Pops made a strangling sound and tried to look as innocent as an angel. It wasn’t working.

  Dixie glared first at Pops, then at the boys. “And that means…?” She propped her fists on her hips and narrowed her eyes at Ben.

  “Oh, uh…” Ben hung his head, shuffled his feet and peeked up at his mother with a small grin. “Uh, gee, nothing, Mom.”

  “You’re darn right, nothing.” She nodded sharply. “Unless you’re worried that you, as a mere boy, might not be able to do as good a job as a girl could.”

  “Aw, Mom.”

  “Aw, Mom,” she mimicked back at him with a smile.

  Wade watched the byplay, and, as trite as it sounded even to him, he felt his heart melt. And why not, he thought. It was their father’s heart.

  “What kind of homework do you have?” their mother asked them.

  The youngest one, Tate, made a face, complete with gagging noises for sound effects. “Ugh. Yucky math.”

  “Poor baby.” She smoothed a hand over his head and smiled.

  “Huh. You think that’s bad,” Ben said, “I’ve gotta write a paragraph. A whole, stinkin’ paragraph.”

  Dixie chuckled. “About what?”

  “A subject of my choosing.” He said it as though pronouncing his own death sentence.

  It was all Wade could do to keep from laughing out loud. He really needed to spend more time with his nieces and nephews. He’d forgotten how much fun kids could be.

  Easy for him to say, he silently admitted, since the kids in question weren’t his responsibility. Whenever he needed a break he could simply send them off to their parents.

  “Come on, boys,” Dixie told her sons. “Take the back booth and get started on this dreaded homework. I’ll bring you a snack to tide you over till dinner.”

  The boys started out of the kitchen, dragging their backpacks behind them.

  “Pick ’em up, boys,” she warned.

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison. And they shouldered their bags.

  Wade chuckled. “You have great kids.”

  Dixie smiled with pleasure. “Thank you. I agree.”

  Pop laughed. “Yeah, and they think they’re pretty great, too, if you ask them.”

  Dixie rolled her eyes. “We have a little work to do in the humility department. They sometimes take too much after their father.”

  “Is that bad?” Wade asked, glad that his voice sounded only slightly curious. As though he was simply making conversation. Not as though his breath hung on her response.

  She chuckled. “Sometimes it is.”

  Wade bit his tongue to keep from asking her to explain.

  Dixie took a couple of apples and glasses of milk to her sons and checked on the progress of their homework. “Here you go. How’s it coming?”

  Both boys groaned and rolled their eyes.

  “I don’t get nines,” Tate complained.

  “What’s not to get?” Ben said. “It’s one less than ten.”

  “Oh. Huh?”

  “What I don’t get is what I’m supposed to write about,” Ben griped. He’d written his name at the top of his notebook page, but nothing else.

  Dixie set down their apples and milk. “Stop and eat. Maybe something will come to you. What about Little League?” she suggested.

  “What about it? The game’s not till Thursday.”

  “You could write about why you like to play.”

  “Hey, cool! Thanks, Mom. Why I Like Baseball, by Benjamin McCormick. I like it.”

  “Me, too,” she agreed.

  “Mom.” Tate pushed his math away and picked up his apple.

  “Yes?”

  He rubbed his apple against his shirt and inspected the shine. “I like Wade.”

  “You do, huh?”

  He took a giant, juicy bite of apple and nodded yes.

  “Think I should hire him?”

  “I thought you already did,” Ben said.

  “Just trying him out for now,” she told them. “See how he does.”

  “Gol’, Mom, it’s only dishwashing,” Ben told her. “What’s the big deal? Who can’t wash dishes?”

  “Me,” Tate piped up. “I’m allergic.”

  Ben’s “You wish,” was accompanied by a snort, and the swing of his foot under the table, directly into Tate’s leg.

  Tate’s response was to grin and kick back. Dixie didn’t need to look beneath the table to know the latter. She knew her boys. That was enough. That and their body language, the slight lean to one side, the little bounce when the foot connected with the opponent’s shin. So predictable, her boys were. Usually, anyway.

  “When you’re finished eating, take your dishes to the kitchen,” she told them. They knew the routine, but it never hurt to remind them.

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said together, both with their mouths full.

  Dixie rolled her eyes and turned away. Behind the counter she picked up a full pitcher of iced tea and made another round of the room offering refills.

  She would offer Wade the job. There was no reason to dilly-dally around about it.

  Dixie was used to making decisions of all shapes and sizes. There was no sense in fretting over things. She weighed the pros and cons of a matter, then made her choice and lived with the consequences. Those consequences weren’t always what she might wish, but they were hers, and she would make do.

  At four, Earline, her evening manager, came in. Within five minutes the rest of the night crew—MaryLou, Frank and Lyle—showed up.

  Dixie went to the kitchen and introduced Wade to everyone as Lyle was taking over Wade’s spot at the sink for the day.

  “You’re the
new guy, huh?” Lyle asked.

  Wade looked to Dixie with a raised brow.

  “Yes,” she said. “Not that I think you need it, but if you want the job, it’s yours.”

  Wade’s smile came slow and full. “Thanks. Yes. I want the job.”

  The relief she felt was because the job was now filled. Not, surely not, because this particular man filled it.

  And that was the last thought she was going to give the man and the subject until tomorrow. So there.

  “Fine,” she said to her new dishwasher. She stepped out of the kitchen and retrieved a form from the shelf beneath the cash register. “Fill this out and bring it back tomorrow. Be here at six in the morning.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His polite smile had just enough of a touch of the shark in it that, if she let it, might make her nervous.

  But men, as a rule, did not make Dixie McCormick nervous. She’d been in love, been married, then divorced. In the bargain, she’d been blessed with the two true loves of her life—Ben and Tater. And heaven help her, two males were enough for any sane woman. Certainly her ex had never made her nervous. How could he, when she’d known him all her life? Best friends didn’t make each other nervous.

  At 4:30 p.m. she turned the café over to Earline, then gathered those loves of her life up and headed out, they on their bicycles, she in her car, for the five-block trip home. She put her new dishwasher and the funny feelings he generated inside her completely out of her mind. Several times.

  Chapter Two

  Wade followed his new boss and her sons out the door at 4:30 that afternoon and drove back to his motel, three blocks from the diner, in a daze. He had yet to stop grinning when, several moments later, he called home.

  “I found them.”

  His father put him on the speakerphone. It was his mother who responded to Wade’s remark. “Honestly, Wade, you can’t simply traipse off to the wilds of Texas—”

  Wade broke out laughing. “You say that like it’s the middle of the Sahara Desert.” He could almost see one of her fiercest frowns; his mother was a champion frowner.