Читать книгу Cooking Up Romance онлайн | страница 30

“Uh, well, how about putting the mustard, mayo and ketchup bottles out for me?”

“Okay!”

It certainly didn’t take much to make the child excited. A flash of being around the same age and helping her dad during the summers led her back to the handsome first adult crush of her life, Zackery Gardner, who just happened to be Emma’s dad. The married guy with a family. But really, what were the odds of crossing his path again? What a coincidence.

Everything went quiet. Silence fell over the truck like a thick blanket. What happened to the busy woodpeckers?

Lacy glanced at her watch. Noon. No need for a horn or whistle to mark that. Evidently, the construction crew knew instinctively and had stopped working. Her previously distracted stomach flutters immediately reported back for duty. Taking a deep breath, as if her future didn’t depend on selling wraps to new customers in order to land a regular job, she hopped into place behind the counter and waited.

And waited.

Until the silence became painful.

Looking down the site, half of the men sat on the concrete slabs of the houses eating from lunch pails, and a dozen or two had hopped into cars and driven off for someone else’s fast food, no doubt. They didn’t even bother to look at her as they drove by. She hadn’t won a single man over by handing out her desserts last Friday. She guessed she was not good enough to pay for. She’d never once used the word crestfallen in casual conversation, but it turned out to be the perfect word to best explain how she felt right then.

As her heart sank, dragging her self-esteem with it, Zack came out from the office leading a line of three other employees behind him. One woman, two men. Not counting Little Miss Enthusiasm. He stepped up to the window, a sympathetic smile creasing his mouth. “Lunch is on me,” he said over his shoulder to the office staff, his left hand resting on the food truck counter. When all her concentration should’ve been on the noble act Zack had just performed, instead she couldn’t help noticing there was no sign of a wedding ring.