Free You're Not Broken by Gemma Hart

window.
     
                  What was going on?
     
                  “Tell him we don’t have cheese,” Malcolm nearly snarled.
     
                  Kat could hear Janelle’s surprised voice at the opposite end of the window. “We don’t have cheese? But for table three’s order, you just made—”
     
                  “Well now it’s out. And a Denver omelet has cheese. But there’s no cheese. So no omelet,” he said in a clipped voice.
     
                  Kat stared at her brother in astonishment as Janelle’s steps retreated, presumably to tell the customer the unfortunate news.
     
                  “Col, what are you talking about?” Kat started, her hands floury and half in the mixing bowl. “We just ordered 20 pounds of—”
     
                  Janelle had returned. “He said that any omelet would do then.” It was clear by her wavering voice that Janelle was a little nervous to be caught in the middle of this awkward interaction.
     
                  Malcolm didn’t skip a beat. “We’re out of eggs,” he said flatly as a dozen uncracked and pristine eggs sat in a bowl next to him.
     
                  “Uhhhh,” Janelle started, clearly seeing the same.
     
                  “Malcolm!” Kat chastised. “What is wrong with you?”
     
                  Wanting to save Janelle from this highly unusual behavior from her brother, Kat pushed through the swing door out to the front of the restaurant. Almost immediately, she wanted to swing right back in.
     
                  Sitting at the end of the bar, near the order window, was Jason Daniels.
     
                  And he was looking right at her.
     
                  As if someone had a direct accelerator to her heart, she could feel her pulse racing as she looked at the man with the smoldering gaze sitting calmly at the end of the diner bar.
     
                  He looked a little different from when she had seen him a week ago in Fayetteville. He had shaved the long dark scruff off. His hair was trimmed and slicked back. And instead of the all black ensemble she had seen him in that night, he wore a green flannel shirt and jeans. The shirt was rolled up at the cuffs, giving Kat a tantalizing view of his well muscled forearms.
     
                  He seemed like a hallucination of that soldier she had met two years ago, the man who had taken her breath away and had stolen her heart.
     
                  But Kat wasn’t fooled. She still saw the tightness in his jaw. She saw the darkness in his eyes. There was something changed in him. He was not the same man she had seen sitting at table six two years ago. That man had been powerful but sweet. Quiet but charming. There had been something still a little boyish about him.
     
                  This man, the man that sat at her restaurant bar, exuded something far more dangerous. There was a whiff something lethal about him. You could tell he had been in danger, touched it, slept with it, and had breathed it every day for years. There was nothing boyish about this man. He was 100% all man.
     
                  Kat approached the end of the bar. Through the order window, she saw Malcolm glaring at Jason, clearly remembering just who the man was.
     
                  “Err…” Kat started, unsure where to go in this situation.
     
                  Jason took the lead. “Apparently Doughy Pop’s has fallen short a few key ingredients,” he said dryly, unbothered by Malcolm’s fierce squinting glare.
     
                  Kat looked over at Malcolm, giving him a look that said, cool it. But her brother took no heed. She knew he was feeling anger on her behalf but at the end of the day, they still had a business to run.