The Beauty and the Biker Alpha

Chapter 1: Another Waitress (Almost) Bites the Dust “Calla, you’re fired!” he said. My heart plummeted. “I need this job,” I pleaded, my eyes widening. I searched his face, trying to decipher what he was thinking. Nick, the manager of the Road Alpha Diner, dismissed me with a wave of his hand. He was shooing me away like I was some flying insect buzzing near his ears. “Please, Mr F, I really can’t afford to lose this job,” I begged. “Not right now. I’m behind on rent.” “How is that my problem, Calla?” said Nick, shrugging his shoulders and leaning back in his office chair. Nick Fletcher had been hired as manager of this diner just two weeks ago. The owner was Nick’s father, Nathan. I had been working there for the past seven years. I had started working at the diner on the very day I turned eighteen years old. It was my twenty-fifth birthday today, and I was getting fired. Happy birthday to me. The truth was that Nick despised me for two main reasons: one, I refused to flirt with him like the other waitresses, and two, Nick’s father admired my work ethic and had threatened to give Nick’s job to me. It was an empty threat, but Nick didn’t know that. His father had talked for years about promoting me to Manager the very moment Ethel left. Ethel, the previous manager, had retired six weeks ago. I had been named “Acting Manager” for a month, after which Nick returned from Business School to take the position. Nepotism Baby Nick wasn’t more qualified than me. He hadn’t graduated from Business School, he had just flunked out of it. I had worked my way through Business School part-time, penny-pinching as much as possible, yet I still sat upon a mountain of debt. “I promise you, it won’t happen again,” I beseeched him. That wasn’t true. It would, but we haven’t arrived at that part of the story yet. “You’re always running your mouth,” grumbled Nick. “Mouthing off to me and to some of our best customers.” By “mouthing off”, he meant standing up for myself and the other waitresses whenever they were being harassed. By “our best customers”, he meant his sleazy, thirsty friends, who were often skulking around the diner, never tipping but always teasing the waitresses. His best friend, Conner, had smacked Sailor’s behind. Sailor Naples was my best friend. She was a willowy strawberry-blonde with a face full of freckles and a mind full of mischief. At five feet and eleven inches, she was half a foot taller than me. Despite being of average height at five feet and five inches, I was considered short by both patrons and staff members alike. The other workers were all a bunch of skyscrapers. The security guards were probably six and a half feet tall and all the other waitresses were just under six feet tall, like Sailor. I didn’t mind though. I wasn’t easily intimidated. I wasn’t particularly athletic either. I had an hourglass figure but very little muscle mass. I did my fair share though, never shying away from some of the more strenuous tasks like unloading the truck when we got new inventory. Nick, Sailor and the others made carrying those huge boxes of produce look like a breeze. I used a moving cart to help me keep up and to spare my back the pressure. I sighed, tucking a long dark tendril of my hair behind my ear. I had gotten my dark brown hair and eyes from my mother and my olive complexion from my father. They had always encouraged me to stand up for myself and others. I couldn’t believe what I had been reduced to, begging for my job. Begging Nick Fletcher of all people. Nick was one of those guys who seemed great as long as you didn’t get to know him too well. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His skin was bronzed from spending so much time under the scorching sun. The diner was situated on a dusty old highway that ran straight down the middle of a vast desert. You would think the place would be as empty as a ghost town, but it was always packed with rowdy rugged men and their statuesque girlfriends. There was something weird about this diner. Something off-putting. The place and the people in it felt wrong, like they didn’t belong here, or maybe, I didn’t belong here. It felt like everyone was aware of something that evaded me completely. Even after seven years of working here, I still felt like I was missing something, some secret that everyone else, including Sailor, was in on. I took a deep breath, assuring myself that I was just being paranoid. I was always more sensitive on my birthday. It was a rough day for me. I was a lifelong member of the birthday blues club. My birthdays always seemed to end in calamity of some kind. Sadly, I wasn’t even exaggerating in the slightest. “Are you even listening to me?” snarled Nick, snapping me out of my rumination. “I told you to get out.” He slammed his hand down on the desk and I flinched. I wanted to dive across this table and slap him, but I couldn’t do that. I swallowed my pride. I knew what I had to do, what Nick wanted me to do. “I’ll apologize,” I mumbled. “What was that?” asked Nick, pretending he hadn’t heard me. He knew very well what I had said. “I will make amends with the customer,” I said stiffly but clearly. Nick grinned. If he wasn’t evil, he would be handsome to me, but he was such a douchebag that his inner ugliness seeped through. He ran his fingers through his short shiny black hair. His dark brown eyes had a smoldering intensity to them whenever he was angry or triumphant, and on this day, it was the latter. He marched me out of his tiny cluttered office and into the diner. We were behind the counter with its scratched and scuffed up marble from years of wear and tear. I followed him from behind the counter to the long row of booths where Conner and company sat. Connor looked up from the menu he was perusing. He was feigning interest in the specials. He knew every special we had. He ate here every day, sometimes twice a day. There was even a gross sandwich named after him. The Conner sandwich comprised of ingredients that were delicious on their own but questionable when put together. Peanut butter, smoked bacon, apple coleslaw and an allegedly freshly-made beef patty on a pretzel bun. At least, the sandwich was less disgusting than Connor’s outlandish behavior. The sandwich was probably smarter too. “Can you tell me about the specials?” he asked in a theatrically polite tone. His blue eyes were on me. His artfully disheveled blonde hair was long enough to tuck behind his ears and cover the nape of his neck but not long enough to brush against his shoulders. I rattled off the specials obediently, listing them all from rote memory. “While you’re deciding, I’d just like to say I’m sorry,” I forced myself to say. “Sorry? Whatever for?” Asked Connor. His cronies guffawed. I resisted the urge to pour maple syrup on his head for the second time today. “For dousing you in syrup,” I said softly. “But I don’t think you should be allowed to touch the waitresses’ behinds,” I added defiantly. “I did no such thing,” said Connor indignantly. Are you kidding me? My blood boiled. He was lying so blatantly. I forced myself not to react in an explosive manner. “I saw you,” I said simply. “Let’s put this he-said-she-said stuff to rest,” said Nick, pretending to be diplomatic. He knew Connor had done what he had been accused of. He was a repeat offender when it came to s****l harassment, not that he had ever been convicted or properly reported at all. It was heinous that Nick protected him from the consequences of his actions. “I accept your apology,” said Connor, running his fingers through his blonde hair only to find that it was still sticky with syrup. I stifled a laugh, averting my eyes as he tried to use a dry napkin on the syrupy strands of hair, resulting in pieces of tissue sticking to his hair. He frowned. Taylor walked past, carrying a tray overladen with drinks. Connor wolf-whistled at her. I should have smeared the butter on him too. The maple syrup hadn’t even been the spectacle they were making it out to be. The diner's syrup was so thick that when I had turned the container upside down, it had fallen rather slowly. Instead of easily moving away, Connor had sat there, dumbfounded, looking up at the line of syrup coming towards him. After a few awkward seconds, a gloop of the stuff had finally dislodged from the container and gone splat on his hair. The result was lackluster, though just the memory alone would carry me through the rest of the day. “Back to work,” barked Nick. “Ay, ay, Captain,” I said, my tone dripping with sarcasm, though Connor and Nick didn’t seem to notice. A bleached blonde woman with huge…brains had just walked in. Ugh, it was Milan. Milan was another regular at the diner. She was tall and shapely with an ample bosom. She had the ‘girls’ (as she called them) hoisted upwards in the tight pearl-white corset she was wearing. She was usually in a corset or anything that cinched at the waist to give her this desired effect. How could she breathe like that? It was a mystery. Her pale skin had been spray-tanned to an orange hue and dusted with shimmering body glitter. Her pants were so tight it looked like they had been painted on. Don’t get me wrong, the overall effect was impressive. She looked sexy, but it was a tad dramatic for a Monday morning. She spotted me and instantly rolled her eyes. I glared at her. We had been friends growing up until I realized she had been sabotaging me and spreading rumors about me behind my back. “Wait till you hear what I just found out!” She squealed, running up to the guys in her platform heels. “What?” Said Connor and Nick in unison, both staring at her cleavage as though the information was printed there. “Alpha Callum is coming,” she screeched.