Page 1 of Allured By Her

Chapter One

“I ordered an iced macchiato, and this was hot,” a voice said behind me. I’d been washing dishes in the sink and I had to grip it for a second before plastering a smile on my face and turning around.

“Tenley. You ordered a hot one. I know. I was the one who took your order,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. I had a lot of regulars at the Common Grounds Coffee Shop, but Tenley Hill was by far the most irritating. At least once or twice a week, she came up to the counter and pretended that she’d gotten the wrong order in an effort to try and scam a free coffee out of us. I’d asked my boss, Liam, to ban her from the shop, but he said it wasn’t a big deal and she did spend a lot of time and money when she wasn’t scamming us. Tenley was here at least three or four days a week for full days with her laptop. She did a lot of typing, but I had never asked her what the hell she was doing all those hours. I didn’t care and I didn’t want to know.

“Oh come on,” Tenley said, leaning on the counter and letting her honey-blonde hair fall over her shoulder. “I really need it.”

If I didn’t know better, I would have said she was trying to flirt, but Tenley Hill would never flirt with someone like me. Girls like me didn’t get flirted with by cheerleading-captain prom-queens.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, give me an iced caramel macchiato. Extra caramel.”

“Coming right up,” I chirped in a fake voice. Tenley and I had gone to high school together and while she might not have given me the time of day then, everyone knew who she was, and they still did around here. Tenley Hill could have anything she wanted, and I was not on that list. Besides, she had a sexy boyfriend that she talked to—often and loudly on her phone. No shocker that he’d been the captain of the basketball and baseball teams. It was a match made in high school heaven. Ugh.

I did my best to put Tenley out of my mind, which wasn’t hard, since my job was so fast paced. Most days I barely got a minute to sit down, let alone think.

“She being her charming self?” my coworker and friend Lark asked, nudging my shoulder with hers.

“Always,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Can you grab me some more almond milk from the back?”

“Sure,” she said, heading to the storage room. I made a few lattes and iced coffees and heated up scones and muffins before she made it back. “Sorry, Liam grabbed me for a second.”

“It’s okay,” I said, taking the almond milk from her so I could froth it into a latte. Lark and I moved in tandem to make everyone in line happy, sliding by each other with the ease of practice. Sometimes our boss, Liam, said it looked like we were dancing. Having chemistry with your coworkers was so important when you were working in a confined space. Lark and I were a great fit.

There was a brief lull that let us take a breath and catch up on things we couldn’t do when we were busy.

“No, Shane, I do not want to go house hunting with your mother,” a sharp voice said, cutting through the soft jazz music that played all day and wormed its way into my brain even when I wasn’t at work.

Lark and I shared a look. Tenley was fighting with her perfect boyfriend for the second time this week.

“I should not be enjoying this, but I am,” I said to Lark as Tenley continued to argue with Shane. Several other customers shot her dirty looks, but Tenley was oblivious.

“Me too,” she said. “I feel like I need popcorn.” She pulled out her phone.

“You’re not filming her, are you?” I asked.

“No, I’m sending a play-by-play to Sydney. She loves other people’s drama,” Lark said.

“I should probably tell you that management would frown upon you doing that, but I’m not going to,” I said as Tenley continued to talk to Shane and gesture with her free hand. Things were not going well.

“Fine, Shane, that’s just fine,” she said, her voice in that deadly soft tone that just about anyone would recognize. She hung up and set her phone down on the table.

Everyone in the shop was staring at her, but she didn’t seem to be bothered. Tenley never seemed bothered by anything that I could tell.

She just went back to typing on her laptop, but her jaw was clenched tight.

“Okay,” Lark said with a sigh, pushing back from the counter she’d been leaning on. “Drama over. For now.”

“Yeah,” I said, still looking at Tenley. Everyone else lost interest, but I saw her reach up and swipe away a tear before she started typing again.

“I wish I could have been there to see it,” Sydney said as Lark made dinner that night. When I’d first moved in, they had insisted that I come over for dinner a few times a week and I’d caved due to the pressure from both of them. Lark was my best friend and Sydney was her girlfriend and it was two against one. Plus, Lark had become a really good cook and I got to sit on the couch and gossip with Sydney and pet their fluffy orange cat, Clementine.

“It wasn’t the Fourth of July, but it was still pretty intense,” I said. “If I didn’t know her, I might have felt sorry for her.”

“I barely know her, and I don’t feel sorry for her,” Sydney said. She’d been a few years ahead of us in school, so she hadn’t had the misfortune of dealing with Tenley, but she’d heard enough from me and Lark that she’d formed a correct opinion.

“Oh, they’ll make up and she’ll be back to messaging him constantly and taking selfies to send him,” I said. “People like that don’t change.”

“Maybe,” Sydney said, a thoughtful look on her face. “But I thought the same thing about Honor and look at her now. She’s one of my closest friends and I’m going to be in her wedding.”

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