Tweed Twit’s voice reached her then. He strode behind the counter with Lorna’s box, giving the register person an exasperated smile. “Scrounged up some glasses from the old folks’ home next door. I should probably take them in back and clean them first. There’s probably a decade of dust caked on the rims.”
Hallie’s adrenaline spiked back up, and she glanced around through the red haze, attention landing on the cheese wall. Each block had its own shelf, backlit by pink lighting. Little silver dishes extended out with samples arranged in neat rows, sort of like human feeding troughs. And she was already moving toward it, turning her shirt into a makeshift apron and piling the cheese samples into it by the handful.
This was it.
Grand Theft Gouda would be the crime that finally brought her down.
“Hey!” That was Tweed Twit. “What are you doing?”
Focused on her mission, whatever the hell it was, Hallie didn’t answer. She just needed some sort of compensation for the chunk the manager had taken out of Lorna’s pride. Was it silly? Probably. Would Hallie regret this? Almost definitely, but only because it wouldn’t help Lorna in any way. Not really.
She ran out of room in her shirt apron and started stuffing cheese samples into her pockets.
“Hey!” The manager came to a stop beside her and started slapping at her hands, but she blocked him with her back. “Call the police!” he shouted over his shoulder. “This . . . Oh my God, it’s the same girl who stole the flyers a few weeks ago!”
Uh-oh.
Jerome was right. This was textbook escalation.
Hallie made a break for it.
Tweed Twit was faster. He blocked the exit. She turned, searching for a back door. All of these places had them. It would empty into the alley, just like Fudge Judy. And then she would . . . what? Hide behind the standing mixer again? Would she even be able to avoid the fallout this time? Her temples started to pound, the sounds of the wineshop turning muffled. Her face stung. Some of the cheese chunks plunked to the ground.
And then the craziest thing happened.
She locked eyes with Julian Vos through the glass window of UNCORKED.
He had a brown paper bag in one sculpted arm, and she recognized the convenience store logo. He’d gone grocery shopping. Julian Vos: He’s just like us! The professor’s attention dropped from her face to the mountain of assorted cheese blocks in her shirt apron, and he popped out his AirPod, a single black eyebrow winging up.
Slowly, Julian’s gaze drifted over to the manager—who was simultaneously yelling at her and shouting orders to the person behind the counter—and his expression darkened. One long stride and he was inside UNCORKED. Leaving a chorus of complaints in his wake from people in line, he very effortlessly took command of the whole establishment without saying a single word. Everyone stopped and looked at him, somehow knowing his arrival was important. This man was a bystander of nothing.
The only person who didn’t notice Julian entering UNCORKED was Tweed Twit, who continued to demand she pay for the ruined cheese, listing the crimes she’d committed against the wineshop like broken commandments.
But his mouth snapped shut when Julian stepped in front of Hallie.
“You’re finished yelling at her now.” Hallie couldn’t see his face, but based on the clipped delivery of his words, she imagined his features were tense. “Don’t ever do it again.” He turned and glanced at her over his shoulder. Indeed, with his Very Serious eyebrows and jawline, he resembled a gallant duke come to rescue a damsel in distress. Well, call her Princess Peach Toadstool, because she welcomed his services. “Hallie, please go outside where this man can’t shout at you anymore.”
“I’m fine right here,” she whispered, her belief in chivalry rising like the dead in an old zombie movie. Not even the threat of being bitten by a walking corpse could have convinced her to miss what was happening here. Julian defending her. Taking her side without getting both sides of the story first. Just being all-around wonderful. God, he was wonderful.
Tweet Twit sputtered. “She stole our cheese!”
“I can see that,” Julian said with forced calm, turning back to the red-faced man. He lowered his voice to such a level that Hallie almost didn’t hear his next clipped words to the manager. “You’re still not going to yell at her anymore. If she’s upset, I’m upset. I don’t think you want that.”
Hallie . . . was finding religion. Is that what was happening?
Am I ascending to a higher plane?
Whatever was happening on his face must have convinced the manager that ticking Julian off should be eliminated from his chore chart. “Fine, I’m done yelling, but we’re calling the police,” the manager said, snapping at the counter person.
“You’re going to call the police over cheese samples?” Julian asked slowly. Hallie looked down at his butt—she couldn’t help it, not when he was using the snobbish professor tone of voice—and, God, the way it tested the seam of his jeans almost made her drop the hunk of Parmesan that she’d been secretly planning to keep for herself. “I don’t think that would be wise. Number one, that would upset her, too, and we’ve already established I’m not a fan of that. And two, you’d have to press charges. Over cheese. Against a local. I don’t think the other locals—your customers—would like that very much, do you? We both know I wouldn’t.”