Page 12 of Haunted Ever After

“Okay…” He tried to sound doubtful, but let’s be real. If she kept moaning at him like that, he’d let her do anything she wanted. “Lunch starts in about an hour. It might get a little crowded.”

“If it does, I’ll give up my table.” She held up her hand, prepared to swear on a stack of Bibles.

“Or you could just…you know…get some lunch. Branch out from banana bread a little.”

“I dunno.” She broke off another corner of said banana bread. “What’s your lunch menu like?”

“It’s all right there.” He gestured to the chalkboard above his head, hanging on the back wall.

“So extensive.” She leaned on the counter, studying it, and Nick caught himself starting to lean toward her in response. “Pretty sandwich forward, I see.”

It didn’t sound like a criticism, but Nick wanted to apologize anyway. “I’m not much of a cook,” he admitted, “but Ramon makes a mean chicken salad.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Your baking is phenomenal.” She lifted the banana bread plate in illustration as she headed back to her table. “You won’t know I’m here, honest.”

Yeah, good luck with that. His phone buzzed in his pocket, because of course it did. Elmer had been quiet for far too long. Hey, that cute girl is back! You should ask her out.

Nick’s heart was clearly on Elmer’s side, leaping at the thought, but he shut that shit down quick. Not gonna happen.

Why the hell not? You like tourists. You like to DO tourists.

Nick choked, turning it into a cough when Cassie looked his way. Elmer wasn’t wrong, but damn. He didn’t have to put it like that.

He needed to correct Elmer about one thing, though. Not a tourist. She lives here. Not gonna go there. Even though he wanted to go there. Very much.

Oh come ON. Live a little, will you? For my sake.

Funny. It was tempting. More than tempting: it made things inside of him light up that had been dormant for some time. But it made him nervous too, like he was about to skydive without a parachute.

Over at Cassie’s table, she was frowning at her laptop, and the iced latte at her elbow was almost gone. Well, that was a problem he could fix. It didn’t take long for him to make another one, and her frown cleared almost instantly when he approached. “You’re a lifesaver,” she said as he set down the drink and picked up her empty glass.

“No problem,” he said. He nodded toward the laptop. “Everything okay there?”

“Oh. Yeah. Just…” Her sigh said the exact opposite. “Three deadlines got moved up without anyone telling me. Everything’s due on Monday now, when I was supposed to have another week.” She made a disgusted noise and reached for her fresh iced latte. “I was going to unpack some more this weekend, but I guess that’s off the table.” She took a long pull of her drink, as though mainlining caffeine would help her get through her work stress.

Nick knew when he was dismissed. “I’ll let you get back to it, then. Didn’t mean to distract you.” He didn’t know what he was thinking; she wasn’t into him. She was here for the caffeine and the Wi-Fi. Not for him.

But her eyes flicked up to his, and her abashed expression made him think that maybe he was wrong. “Please. You’re not distracting at all.” She closed her laptop with a definitive snap. “Or if you are, I’m not complaining.”

“Ah.” Well. If that wasn’t an invitation…It only took a second for Nick to set her empty glass on the counter before returning to her table and dropping into the opposite chair. And then he remembered: he was the worst at small talk. He gestured toward her laptop on the table between them. “So…uh. What is it that you do, anyway?” Perfect. Great job. She’s annoyed at her work, so the first thing you should do is ask her about it.

“Oh.” She looked at her laptop as though she’d never seen it before. “I’m a copywriter. I work on ad campaigns for different brands. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s a giant clusterfuck.” She rolled her eyes with what looked like forced cheer. “You ever have a boss practically hanging over your shoulder, micromanaging everything you do?”

Nick thought about the phone in his back pocket, and Elmer’s weird obsession with what Nick put in the pastry case. “Yeah. I know a little something about that.”

“It’s all so stupid.” She huffed out a sigh as she traced a line of condensation down her glass with a fingertip, and something about the movement made Nick catch his breath. “We spent, what, a year or so locked down, working from home? You’d think they would have gotten used to us working independently. But now that almost everyone’s back in the office, it’s like I have to fight twice as hard to prove I can keep up.”

“What brought you all the way out here, then?” Seemed like she was asking for trouble, moving so far away from work. But again, what the hell did he know?

“Lots of things.” She looked thoughtful. “Mostly that the house I was renting went on the market. It made me wonder what it would take to buy a place of my own. But everything in Orlando’s crazy expensive, of course. So I kept looking farther and farther out until…”

“Until you were at the coast?” He snorted. “That’s pretty far out.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Her lips quirked up. “Y’all don’t even have a Publix way out here.”

She had a point, but Nick wasn’t going to admit it. He liked being way out here, in a town too small for a stoplight, not to mention a chain grocery store. “We get by.”

“But how do you live without Publix subs?” Cassie shook her head with mock regret. “I really didn’t think this through.”

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