Once assured there was nothing more alarming than a middle-aged waitress with a stout body stuffed into a white uniform and bleached hair pulled into a knot on top of her head, he urged her over the threshold.
Sally caught a glimpse of a long counter with stools at the back of the room, with a glass case that displayed an assortment of desserts.
“No apple pie,” Roke murmured softly.
Sally’s mouth watered at the scents that filled the air. “No, but on the plus side, there’s cheesecake.”
“Hello.” The waitress sashayed forward, her avid gaze drinking in Roke with open appreciation. Not that Sally could blame the poor woman. Men like Roke didn’t stroll into isolated cafés except in porn movies. “Can I help you?”
Roke placed an arm around Sally’s shoulders, visibly claiming them as a couple. It should have annoyed the hell out of her, but for some stupid reason, Sally didn’t even try to pull away.
“A booth with a view,” he ordered.
The woman sent Sally an envious glare before turning to lead them toward a far table.
Roke pulled out a chair, making sure that Sally was comfortable before taking his own seat, which offered a view of both the parking lot and the empty lot next them.
The waitress tossed a laminated menu that offered a handwritten list of the breakfast food on the table.
“Coffee?”
“We’ll take one of everything,” Roke murmured, his gaze never straying from Sally’s face. “Start with the cheesecake and a glass of milk.”
The waitress choked on her gum. “Everything?”
Roke at last glanced toward the woman, his gaze glowing with a power that had the woman instantly enthralled.
“Is that a problem?”
“No, no problem,” the woman instantly denied, the trance allowing her to fulfill her duties on autopilot while remaining oblivious to what Roke and Sally might say or do.
It was an old vampire trick. Once they left the restaurant the woman wouldn’t remember they’d been there.
Waiting until the older woman had moved away, Sally regarded Roke’s tense profile as he peered out the window.
“Do you think we’re being followed?”
“I always assume there’s a possibility for an attack,” he confessed. “Besides, we need to keep a watch on the local fey. It’s hard to keep a low profile with a dozen fairies kneeling in the parking lot.”
She flinched at the reminder they were suddenly being plagued by the fey.
“It’s not my fault.”
Without warning he jerked his head back to meet her defensive glare.
“No, it’s not,” he said in a fierce voice. “Neither were any of the other bad things that have happened in your life.” He reached to grasp her hand. “So stop blaming yourself.”
His unexpected words caught her off guard.
Did she blame herself?
It was a question she’d never truly considered.
She grimaced, struck by an unwelcome memory of hiding in a moldy crypt after she’d run away from her mother, cursing her demon blood.
She’d been convinced that if her father had only been human she would never have been forced from her home or become a persona non grata of witch covens everywhere.
She hadn’t been good enough.
She wouldn’t ever be good enough.
With a small movement she pulled away from his lingering touch, disturbed by Roke’s unnerving ability to see past the walls she’d so carefully constructed.
Being exposed meant being vulnerable to danger.
“You blame me,” she accused, stubbornly going on the attack rather than admit he might have a point. “At least for the mating.”
“Sally—”
His words broke off as the waitress returned to set a plate of cheesecake on the table along with a tall glass of milk.
Eagerly, Sally lowered her head and dug into the food.
When she had a choice between prodding at unhealed wounds or enjoying silky, creamy cheesecake . . . yeah, no contest.
The cheesecake was going to win every time.
Roke waited for Sally to polish off the dessert and start on the plate of scrambled eggs and bacon that arrived next.
Only when it became obvious she intended to try to block him out completely did he reach across the table to lightly touch her arm.
“Sally, look at me.”
She went rigid beneath his touch, grudgingly lifting her head to meet his searching gaze.
“What?”
He held her wary gaze, forcing the words past his lips. “It’s difficult for me to discuss the death of my chief.”
She blinked, clearly caught off guard by his confession before she was smoothing her expression to one of faux indifference.
“Yeah, you’ve made that perfectly clear,” she muttered. “I understand you were close to him.”
“It’s not that.” He grimaced. “Or at least that’s not the whole story.”
She shrugged. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I don’t have to, I want to.”
She stared at him, her dark eyes too large for her pale face and her stoic composure unable to hide the fragility just below the surface.
“Fine.”
He turned his head to stare out the window, keeping watch on their surroundings as he struggled past his instinctive need to keep the past locked away.
“My sire, Fala, was unusual for a vampire.”
“Unusual?” Sally prompted.
“She believed that she could read portents revealed by nature.”
“Could she?”
His lips twisted. Fala had thoroughly enjoyed her role as mystic for the clan. Roke had simply enjoyed knowing his beloved sire was happy.
“She had an uncanny knack of being right more often than not,” he said.
“Did she pass the talent onto you?”
“No.” The vivid memory of Fala standing in the middle of the desert, her dark hair flowing down her back and her sloe eyes narrowed as she studied the formation of rocks or the precise speckles on a bird’s egg, sent a pain slashing through his heart. Their bond had been more than sire and foundling. She had been his teacher, his protector, and in some strange way, his mother. “Fala managed to teach me to decipher glyphs and trained me in most of the known demon languages, but I had no talent for her mystic readings.”
He turned back as the waitress returned with a tray of pancakes, biscuits, hash browns, and fried pierogies.
They waited until the woman had once again retreated before Sally buttered a biscuit and studied him from beneath lowered lashes.