Pleasure Train by Christelle Mirin Page A

Mikey. “How about you, young blood?” He looked to be the wildest, most normal of the three, probably midtwenties and a father’s nightmare.
    Mikey waved his menu back and forth in front of his face, fanning himself. “Can I get a burger? Please? You know I’m not into this breakfast stuff.” He stuck out his lower lip in a fake pout.
    Willow laughed. “You make my day, you know that? Sure, I’ll get you a burger. With fries, too.” She wrote it down and flipped her order pad closed. “I’ll be back.” She turned and walked away, putting an extra sway into her back view. She’d worn a white tee just a bit too small today that tended to ride up her back and a pair of her low-cut jeans. Her rear view should give them a glimpse of the tiger paws that were tattooed across her lower back and looked as if a tiger was clawing her skin to escape from inside her pants.
    She turned in their orders and went to the kitchen to get the orange juice from the fridge where they kept it.
    Her tiger paws—or “tramp stamp” as some would call it—had been the final thing that had caused her to tell her boyfriend, Kenny, to get lost. He had gone ballistic when she had come home after spending hours in the tat chair. Kenny wanted her to act like a PTA-member wannabe, and she wanted to experience the full circus of life. So…she left.
    It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. She had, at first, but their relationship started to change, and in her view, it wasn’t for the better. He wanted to settle down and started hinting about buying a house and getting married. No more spur-of-the moment trips or wild sex in new, sometimes dangerous places. At twenty-seven, she wasn’t ready to give it all up to settle down. She was still the same person she had been when he met her, back when he had loved her fearlessness. Kenny had changed. He had begun to act more and more like his father, and that wasn’t who she had fallen in love with.
    Which made leaving easier than she had imagined.
    Willow had landed there, in Forever, Missouri, six months earlier and had not been able to find the right man to help her do more exploring of the wilder side of life. Thanks to the lack of male companionship, she had been forced to relieve her frustrations herself. If things didn’t change soon, she was going to move on, preferably before her vibrator gave out.
    Shaking her head to bring herself back to real time, she finished pouring the juice and returned to the front. She placed the orange juice on her serving tray and waited for her orders to come up.
    Sue came to stand beside her. “Hasn’t one of them asked you out yet?”
    Willow glanced at her three regulars. Two of them were discussing something animatedly while military-hunk Josh sipped his coffee and watched the volley of words between the other two. She sighed. “No,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “I don’t get it, either. They’re interested, I can see it in their eyes, but not one of them has jumped.” She looked at Stu, who was slurping his coffee and trying not to look like he was listening to every word—which he was. Willow straightened and parked her hands on the countertop on either side of Stu’s cup and saucer. She leaned forward, just a little, to allow for some cleavage and the edge of the pink and white polka-dot bra she wore to show above the vee neck of her tee. “What do you think, Stu? Have I lost my feminine allure?” She tilted her head coyly.
    Stu leaned back in his chair. When he was able to pull his gaze from her boobs, he finally looked her in the eye. “I’d do you,” he said, matter-of-factly, his face as stoic as ever.
    Willow pursed her lips, took a deep breath, then let it out. Shoving off the counter, she snatched Stu’s check from beneath his saucer. “It’s on me today,” she said, tucking the paper into a pocket on her apron.
    “Order up!” Chuck, the grill cook, who was also the owner, called through the serving