No Safe Place

She was new in town.
…and she definitely didn’t belong there.

Nat walked into the diner and headed back to his usual booth. He stopped short halfway there. It was occupied by a good-looking brunette in a thin-strapped red sundress, who was busy desecrating the place by eating a salad. A meat and potatoes man all his life, it was almost more than Nat could bear to watch her nibble daintily on a cherry tomato where he should be sitting and anticipating the flavor of a fully-loaded hamburger and a plastic basket of crispy french fries.

“Gonna have to find another place, honey.” Bess, the gray-curled owner of Pop’s, elbowed him out of the way as she headed toward a back table with a full tray. “She just walked in and sat down. I could hardly tell her to move because that booth’s yours.”

A tendril of concern snaked through Nat as he chose a table where he could watch the woman. No one came to Oslo without a reason. The town wasn’t along the Interstate, and there sure as hell wasn’t anything here to see except a few hundred people and a three-block downtown. The few stores in town catered mostly to retirees, except the two farm supply stores, one at each end of town. The woman in his booth was a good thirty years too young for retirement, and he suspected she didn’t know a pig from a plow.

He might have passed her off as someone exploring America’s backroads if he hadn’t talked to Will Connor only hours earlier. He’d known something was wrong as soon as the agency number flashed across his pager. Connor never contacted him. Task force policy was to put as many people as possible between the guys in the field and the desk jockey who called the shots.

A shiver of fear snaked down Nat’s spine. His boss’s voice had been somber, and worry permeated the conversation. Connor might be right. Could be he’d been made. Nat had survived so far by playing his hunches, and he was getting a real bad vibe about that babe. She was pretty, not drop-dead gorgeous maybe, but nobody he’d kick out of bed. She seemed friendly, chatting away with Bess. Yet a tiny warning bell was dinging like crazy inside his head, this nagging feeling he’d met her somewhere.

Well, there was one way to find out. Flagging down Bess, he said, “Send that lady over there your biggest piece of lemon meringue pie. And tell her it’s on me.”

Bess winked. “Will do.”

Nat had just taken the first bite of his burger when he Bess delivered the pie. He almost choked when the woman in red turned, dipped her fork tines into the meringue and slid the bit of smooth, white fluff between her lips. Her eyes met his, making sure he was watching. She let her the tip of her tongue sample the fluffy topping first, flicking across it delicately, her eyes still locked with his.

When she slid the froth into her mouth, her eyes narrowed like it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever tasted. Her head tipped back slightly as she swallowed, her tongue sneaking out to salvage a bit of meringue from the corner of her mouth.

That was the sexiest thing Nat had seen anyone do with or without food in Pop’s Diner, and all of a sudden he was glad she wasn’t a local. A woman who could turn sampling a piece of pie into a sensuous experience was trouble, and he had plenty of that as it was.

He broke eye contact first, looking at his food, the jukebox, the teenage couple arguing on the other side of the room, anywhere but the woman and the pie. He finished his meal, drank his coffee, and thanked Bess as she handed him his bill. Fishing in his wallet for a tip, he chanced another look at the mystery woman.

She was gone.