“Maybe I just have a sweet tooth.”
“You don’t be careful, and you’re going to rot them all out.” I tried to form it a tease, but it came out breathy and almost pleading. He had no idea just what that box tucked to his side meant to me.
He smiled a smile that pierced me straight through my center.
An arrow that nearly dropped me to my knees.
Because that knowing kindness was back. The one that made me feel vulnerable and exposed.
“I think I’ll take my chances,” he said.
I sucked in a breath. Set off kilter. Lightheaded. “All right, then. Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“Large regular coffee.”
I swiveled away, going for the coffee urns, thankful for the moment of reprieve. Looking at him was making it impossible to stop the foolish notions from racing through my brain, especially when I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he were different.
If there were something intrinsically good at the heart of him.
Caring and . . . and . . .
Giving.
My hands were shaking as I filled the cup, my smile probably more so when I turned back to him and slid it across the counter. He already had his wallet out, pulling out a stack of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.
He set them on the counter.
Another tremble.
“What is this?”
“For charity.” The depths of those turquoise eyes deepened in a way that promised he saw too much.
Part of me wanted to refuse because something about it made me feel weak.
But the money wasn’t for me.
“Thank you,” I offered. “That’s really generous of you.”
He took out a five and placed it on top of the other bills, tapping it as he let that grin ride to his lips, which were getting more and more difficult not to reach out and trace. “And that’s for the coffee, which is delicious, by the way. Though, not nearly as delicious as the cupcake.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I told him. A rush of that shyness pulled fast, getting all mixed up with the crazy desire that thrummed through my body.
It seemed unfair attraction was always immediate.
Natural.
Easy.
It was what came after that left your world in shambles. Battered walls and broken windows, your house falling down around you. It was taking everything I had to rebuild mine—to reconstruct and restore and revitalize. I had worked tirelessly to fill the spots that had been dredged out by cruelty, and I couldn’t falter or misstep.
He hesitated for a second, as if he were struggling to find what he wanted to say, before all that easy confidence came riding back. “Thanks, Shortcake.”
A short laugh escaped, and I shook my head, unable to keep up with him. “You’re absurd.”
“And here I’d thought you’d implied I was cocky?”
“That, too.”
He laughed, though, the sound was soft. So different from the guy I’d thought I’d first run into at the bar on Friday night. This man revealing something good every time he invaded my space, making me want to dig deeper, see more.
I was drawn to him in a way I couldn’t fathom.
He blinked at me, and I leaned forward, drawn, unable to stop myself from reacting to his presence.
Then he shook his head as if he needed to shake himself out of a dream.
He jarred me out of my own.
A smile was pinned on his lips, and he hiked the box up a little higher on his side, grabbing his cup and lifting it in the air. “I hope you have a great day, Hope.”
I sucked in my bottom lip. “You, too.”
I watched him stride across the café toward the door, hating the way everything tightened when he did. The way something like regret rippled through the atmosphere when he pulled open the door.
His or mine, I wasn’t sure.
But it was there.
Heavy.
Pressing on my heart.
I couldn’t stop from watching him through the big windows as he started down the sidewalk, the man a scorching silhouette in the blaze of the day.
But he didn’t climb into his car that was parked at the curb.
He began to pace.
A pace that looked like indecision and turmoil.
Back and forth right on the other side of the window.
His head tilted back toward the sky, as if it might hold an answer, before he set his coffee and the lollipops down on one of the open tables, dug in his pocket, and pulled out his phone.
“You’re an idiot,” Jenna hissed from beside me. “That guy likes you, and he’s literally the hottest thing to ever walk through that door. And he bought All. The. Lollipops.”
Maybe that was part of the problem.
“I don’t get simple,” was my response.
“What if he doesn’t want simple?”
I would have answered her, told her that in the end, everyone did. They always took the easy way out when the going got tough. Except the café phone rang. I moved for it, thankful for the distraction, something to keep my feet from rounding the counter and running after him.