Kord Read online

  “He can bus my table anytime,” a woman snickered.

  “Please return to your seat,” I said in a low voice.

  He straightened. “I would like to apply for the job as bus person. Did I say that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I got the job?” He grinned from ear to ear, a white, wide smile that could melt a girl’s panties right off.

  Heat of a different sort spread from my neck to my chest and lower. “I meant you said it right.”

  “Oh.” He looked so crestfallen, I felt like I’d kicked a puppy.

  “You don’t want to work here,” I argued. “The hours are crappy. The pay sucks.” I didn’t usually dissuade people from working for me, especially when I needed help, but I couldn’t hire him because…because…well, I just couldn’t. He’d be too, too…close. I tucked my hair behind my ears and then untucked it. Retucked it and dropped my hands.

  “I don’t mind about the hours, and I have no use for money. I need something to do, and I would like to help,” he said.

  “Oh for goodness’ sake. Hire him!” someone shouted.

  “Hire him! Hire him! Hire him!” customers chanted over the country music.

  What the hell? I could have a riot on my hands. I did need more busboys. But I didn’t know anything about him. Not even his name. Did he have a work visa?

  “Hire him! Hire him!”

  Horns a-twitching, he curved his lips into a lethal, bad-news grin. But a plea in his dark eyes had me caving. “All right.” I’m such a sucker.

  Customers hooted and applauded.

  “Obah!” he said. “Thank you.”

  “But you don’t work tonight. Tonight, you go back to your table and eat your dinner. Understood? Come back to tomorrow about 2:00 p.m., and we’ll talk. Okay?”

  “Yes.” He cocked his head. “What’s your name?”

  I chuckled. “I guess you need that. I’m Barb. Barb Quintain.”

  “The proprietress of this eating establishment.”

  “Yes.”

  He grinned. “Well, Barb, my name is Kord. Thank you for giving me a chance. I plan to make you very happy.” He went back to his table, raised his ale in a salute, and took a sip.

  Of course, he meant the job, promising to be a good employee. I shook off the crazy idea he’d intended something more personal as I hurried to seat customers at the tables he’d cleared.

  Chapter Three

  Kord

  Working quickly, I cleared away used dishes and glasses, loading the items into a bin on my wheeled cart. Most Earthers seemed to be light eaters, judging from how much remained on their plates. It couldn’t be they didn’t like the food because diners continued to pack into Barbie Q’s night after night.

  If I wasn’t mistaken, the restaurant had gotten more popular in the two weeks since I’d started working here. The dinner crowd had to wait about an hour and a half to get seated.

  “Hey there, handsome…I was wondering if you had plans for tomorrow night.” A female customer sidled over.

  “I’m working,” I said.

  “That’s too bad. I’d love to show you the town. Do you have your phone?”

  “It’s, um, in my locker.” Employees weren’t permitted to use cell phones on the restaurant floor. Barb didn’t like staff taking calls and texting when they should be working.

  “No problem.” She smiled.

  Before I could react, she’d grabbed my forearm and scribbled some numbers on the inside of my wrist with a black marker and scrawled her name with flourish. JENNI. “Call me.” She winked and sashayed out of the restaurant with her friends while other females glared.

  I studied my arm. Jenni wasn’t the first female to approach me since I started working at Barbie Q’s. Their attempts to engage me in conversation, requests for things they didn’t need—they hampered my work. Many slipped notes, often marked with lip prints, into my pockets. Occasionally, groups of two, even three, accosted me outside when I got off work. I had no intention of calling any of them. I had found my mate.

  She owned Barbie Q’s.

  Unfortunately, she refused to acknowledge we were meant for each other.

  “Did that woman just write on you?” An angry voice sounded behind me.

  My horns throbbed, the tingles shooting down to my manhood. I turned. My mate stood there, hands on her curvy hips, fire in her eyes. “Well, that takes chesticles!” Barb tossed a headful of yellow hair. “Take a break and go wash that off.”

  I started to do as she said until a little voice, perhaps a whisper from the Fates, told me to hold off. “Maybe I’ll keep her number.” I cocked my head.

  “I’m not paying you to flirt with customers.”

  Her hair fascinated me, the way it didn’t move, just formed a huge yellow bubble around her head. Texas-beauty-contestant hair, a server had called it. I loved her big, bold hair; it suited her stubborn personality. I liked females with snap and crackle. But getting her to like me was proving to be more difficult than I had anticipated.

  “Employees dating employees gets stickier than shoo fly pie at a church social in July. It’s bad for morale, worse for business, and is grounds for dismissal,” she had explained at my “orientation” when I received my red apron and a name tag designating me as a valued Barbie Q’s team member.

  If I had known about the restrictions beforehand, I might have hesitated to accept the job. My horns hadn’t stopped throbbing since I’d met Barb. No wonder none of my IDA matches had worked out. This female was the one I was supposed to be with. Didn’t she feel the rightness?

  Apparently not. I seemed to annoy rather than attract her. Even other team members had noticed.

  “What’s got into Barb? She’s pricklier than a porcupine with a heat rash,” Holly, the assistant manager, had whispered to me the other day.

  Fortunately, my job enabled me to stay close to Barb so that I could find a way to convince her we were meant for each other.

  I regarded her now. This wasn’t the first time she’d felt the need to check up on me.

  “Oh, never mind! Keep her number, then!” With a huff and a toss of her head, Barb spun on the heel of her rhinestone boot and charged across the sawdust-covered floor. Her buttocks, two perfect globes, shifted under her tight denim skirt as she hiked up to her office where she had a view of the entire restaurant.

  I eyed my inked arm. Had she seen me with the female from table fourteen and come to investigate? Was she the tiniest bit jealous, maybe? Or just annoyed? I sighed. Most likely, she had come to chide me for slacking off.

  Hungry customers stared at me from the crowded waiting area. No doubt they, too, thought I was slacking off. Busing tables wasn’t hard work, but it never ended. I no sooner finished one table than another one had to be done and then another.

  I cleaned as many tables as I fast as I could and then exchanged the full bins for empties and hurriedly finished clearing. When I got caught up, I rushed to the men’s room.

  The ink wouldn’t wash off.

  My skin was sore when I conceded defeat. I let the restroom door slam, and I sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Holly who’d emerged from the women’s room. On my planet, we didn’t have separate elimination facilities for male and females. Digging one latrine was hard enough. But two? Sharing an outhouse saved a lot of labor. However, Earth’s water-filled receptacles whooshed waste away with no effort required.

  “I’ve been tattooed,” I said dejectedly. Earthers liked to decorate their bodies with colorful designs, but if I’d chosen to be inked, I wouldn’t have picked a bunch of numbers.

  “You got a tat?”

  “A customer did it.” I showed her my arm.

  She started to smile but then bit her lip. “That’s not a tattoo. It’s just a girl’s phone number. But it looks like she wrote it with a permanent marker—”

  “I’m going to have this forever?” How was that any b
etter than a tattoo?

  “No-no. It will last awhile, but it will wear off your skin eventually.”

  “How long will it last?”

  She shrugged. “A couple of weeks? Depends on how often you wash your arm.”

  I’d be washing my arm a lot.

  Holly grinned. “You’re a popular man. Word has gotten out Barbie Q’s has a Dakonian busboy. Reservations are booked, and we’re turning people away. If Barb promoted you to server, she could really cash in.”

  “You don’t mean they’re coming to see me?”

  “Hell, yeah!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re an alien, and you’re hot. Haven’t you noticed the vast majority of the customers are women?”

  “I thought females liked barbecue.”

  “Dude, they’re coming because of you.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, right.”

  She pointed to my wrist. “What do you think this is all about?”

  Her insinuation floored me. I’d never garnered this kind of attention before. Dakon had so few females, and couples paired up as soon as they found each other, so flirting and courtship were foreign concepts. “What should I do about it?”

  “Enjoy it. Most men would love to be in your boots.”

  “I would happily give them my boots.” I had a mate. Barb’s refusal to recognize our connection didn’t make it any less binding.

  “Guess you don’t need the attention since you joined the IDA.”

  “How did you know I had joined?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Word gets around. It’s a funny coincidence both you and Barb are with the IDA. It would have been a real hoot if you two had gotten matched—except she’s met somebody.”

  A spike of hot emotion shot through me. “What are you talking about?”

  “You did know Barb had joined, too, right?”

  “No. No, I didn’t.” I pressed my lips together. I’d had no idea. Why hadn’t she told me?

  Maybe because she was hardly speaking to me at all? She’d acted friendlier before I started working at Barbie Q’s. What I had assumed would be a perfect opportunity to get closer to her appeared to be having the opposite effect. Sometimes I feared working here had pushed us further apart.

  Holly studied her fingernails. “Yeah…the past couple of weeks she’s been on a dating blitz, and she’s ready to settle down now.”

  This wasn’t good news at all. Since the Fates had matched us, Barb shouldn’t be able to find someone compatible through the IDA, just as I hadn’t, but if she couldn’t yet see our connection, she might mistakenly become enamored. A false bonding could occur. The Fates did not err, but people could.

  “Are you sure she met someone?” I bit back a growl. “She shared this with you?”

  “She keeps her personal life pretty close to the vest, but I’ve known Barb for a while, and all the signs are there. She’s distracted and preoccupied. Her hair is bigger than normal. She’s definitely met someone.”

  No! Adrenalin shot through me. I couldn’t let this happen. This time I did growl, but fortunately Holly didn’t seem to notice with all the ambient restaurant noise.

  “Hey, we’d better stop gossiping about the boss and get back to work so you can strut your stuff and charm the customers.” She grinned. “It’s showtime!”

  Chapter Four

  Barb

  You’d think we’d advertised a free all-you-can-eat-ladies-night special. Barbie Q’s had gotten an uptick in business after the glowing review in Feats of Eats, but nothing like this. The way the crowds packed into the restaurant was pure insanity. I hoped the fire marshal didn’t drop in for an inspection because I had a feeling we’d exceeded our maximum occupancy.

  Women were here for beef but not the barbecued kind.

  From my office lair, I surveyed the floor. Every single table was occupied. Ninety-five percent of the customers were women, their microminis and sequined tube tops more appropriate for clubbing than chowing down on finger-licking barbecue. From having checked, I knew a line wound around the block. Earlier in the week, we’d had to implement a strict hour-and-a-half seating limit because customers were refusing to relinquish their tables until closing. All for a glimpse of the new busboy.

  Tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, muscular Kord with buns of steel and rolling abs of rock-hard…

  “Business is up 200 percent,” said Holly, my assistant manager.

  Bursts of light flashed as customers took photos while he cleared away dirty dishes. He’d gone viral, trending on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. He had his own hashtags: #Kord and #hotalienbusboy. Not that I kept track or anything.

  “He’s killing me.”

  “What?”

  “Hiring him was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “You’re kidding, right? Hiring him was the best thing you’ve ever done. You couldn’t buy publicity like this.”

  “I didn’t need publicity like this. The restaurant was doing fine.”

  “Well, now it’s doing phenomenal. Barbie Q’s is the hottest eatery in town.”

  “But they’re not here for the food.”

  “So what? Hang on and ride the wave to the bank.”

  “We can’t accommodate them all! Did you see the line? It’s around the block. We’ve had to turn people away.”

  “Which makes them want to come here more. People crave what they can’t have.”

  Like Kord. He was the man I couldn’t have.

  “I should fire him.” Maybe then I could put my obsession to bed. Or take my obsession to bed—stop! Don’t. Even. Go. There. I glanced out the window again. Kord smiled at a table full of women. All my employees were instructed to be friendly. But was his smile a professional grin—or a personal one? In any case, the women were eating it up.

  “Are you crazy? He’s your cash cow, your golden goose, your winning lottery ticket. Besides, the girls would revolt. He’s been great for tips.”

  I frowned. “How is he good for tips? He’s only clearing tables.”

  “The girls tell customers they’ll ask Kord to stop by and say hello. He does, the customer assumes the server did them a big favor, and they rake in the gratuities.”

  What a racket! I dropped my jaw. Part of me was pissed, but wasn’t I the beneficiary of all that alien hotness? Business boomed. “They’d damn sure better be sharing those tips with him!”

  “They tried, but he refused to accept. He says he doesn’t need the money.”

  “What busboy doesn’t need the money?”

  “A Dakonian one. They’re loaded. They have more illuvian ore than they know what to do with.”

  So I had a hot, sexy, rich alien working for me. No wonder the women were lining up. “How do you know all this?”

  Holly shrugged. “I talk to people. I don’t spend all my time holed up in the office.”

  “Excuse me? I’m up here”—watching the busboy—“taking care of business, doing payroll, ordering food, doing the books. We’re fully staffed, and I’m not needed on the floor.” I was the boss. The owner. Waiting tables was not my job—although I subbed when I had to. After filling the vacancies, staffing wasn’t the problem—we lacked tables to seat the crowds. I couldn’t fix that. The building’s size and fire department occupancy rules limited the number of tables.

  “Hey, I’m just saying. If his new girlfriend finds out how popular he is, she might put the kibosh on him working here anyway.”

  “His new girlfriend?” A burning sensation shot through me. Kord had a girlfriend?

  Holly picked at her cuticles. “Yeah, he’s seeing someone.”

  “It has nothing to do with me. As long as he does his job, I don’t care about his personal life.”

  “I got the impression he met her through the Intergalactic Dating Agency.” Holly lifted her head. “Any of your dates pan out yet?”

  “Since the bucket of slime?” I shudd
ered. “I don’t understand it. The IDA worked for my friend Moxie. She met a great guy right off. The agency has a sterling reputation. Their methods are scientific.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know then…”

  “As comprehensive as their profile questionnaire was, they should have been able to produce a compatible match for me by now.” I’d been extremely accurate in filling it out. A good 90 percent of what I’d put down was the unvarnished truth. I’d only changed a few insignificant details. If I downplayed certain traits and aspects of my personality and played up others to appear to be what I strove to be rather than what I was, well, I was working on it, so close enough.

  If I didn’t show or act on my fears or insecurities, they didn’t count.

  My answers had been a solid 75 percent accurate.

  Sixty percent, anyway. The inappropriate dates couldn’t have resulted from the small fudges in my profile. Clearly, there was a glitch in the IDA matchmaking process.

  I peeked at the restaurant floor. Some woman twirled her hair around her finger and batted her false eyelashes at Kord, who tossed dirty dishes into his bin with record speed. Can’t you tell he’s not interested in you? He has a girlfriend, you bimbo!

  “If I didn’t work here, I’d take a shot at him, too,” Holly said.

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I’m not interested in him,” I said.

  “Good. Because the IDA program worked for him. He’s seeing somebody. He has a girlfriend.”

  “You don’t need to keep saying that,” I snapped.

  The bimbo had progressed from looking to touching. She stood so close, her boobs mashed against his arm.

  “She looks real friendly,” Holly commented.

  “Looks like sexual harassment. He’s trying not to be rude to a customer. I’m going down there,” I said. “If a guy came on to one of my girls, and she objected, I’d put a stop to it. I should treat all my employees the same.”

  “He doesn’t appear to mind. He’s not pushing her away. He’s smiling.”