Page 36 of Bittersweet

“Hi,” he said sweetly when he reached her.

“Hi. Just a sec.” Harper squeezed the icing bag again. She was intensely focused when she worked on cookie designs, incapable of having a conversation and decorating at the same time. And she hated to stop halfway through a batch. It wasn’t how she worked.

After several minutes of drawing spots on the dinosaurs, she looked up into Brett’s warm brown eyes.

“I’m surprised to see you,” she told him.

His forehead wrinkled. “Why?”

She shrugged her shoulders and started to lower her icing bag to start another batch of cookies, but Brett’s hand on her arm stopped her. When she looked at him again, the corners of his eyes were wrinkled with a smile.

“I thought maybe you were avoiding me after last week.”

He rounded the counter to stand beside her and touched her cheek. “You think I’d avoid you after the best kiss of my life?” His words were quiet so only she could hear.

Harper’s cheeks warmed. The best of his life? An uneasiness settled over her. It had been a good kiss—a really good kiss—but could she say it was the best of her life?

Her mind traveled to the first time Logan had kissed her. He wasn’t her first kiss ever, but she would always consider it her first real kiss. It was the first time she’d felt so connected to another person—like his breaths were hers, his heartbeat perfectly synced with her own, like she was exactly where she belonged. Logan’s kisses made her toes curl, and she hadn’t experienced that since.

When she came out of her thoughts, Brett was taking the icing bag from her hand. He set it on the counter and glanced across the shop toward Savannah and Ginny before taking Harper’s arms and rotating so she was partially hidden from their view. And then he moved in for a kiss.

Guilt overcame Harper for her thoughts of Logan while she was standing there with Brett. She couldn’t let him kiss her right now. Not when her pulse wasn’t racing for him.

Harper lightly squeezed Brett’s forearms and dodged his advance, kissing his cheek before maneuvering around him to return to her work. She heard him let out a breath then felt him standing close behind her. His hands gripped her waist as his heated breath caressed the side of her neck.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

“I missed you too.” She straightened her back.

“How much?”

He was flirting, which was new territory for them. Brett had always shown his affection with subtle looks or touches and soft, tender kisses, but he’d never been so obvious about his attraction to her before. It felt like that territorial kiss he’d given her had moved them past a line she hadn’t known was there. A line she had perhaps drawn to keep from getting too close to him. And she’d been happy there on the other side of that line—developing a friendship, mutual respect for each other, and the bare minimum of physical contact and affection.

But now, with Brett’s chest pressing against her back, her stomach pushed against the counter in front of her, his lips touching her neck, a panic set in that surprised her. She shouldn’t be panicked by her boyfriend’s affection. But she was.

“Brett, come on. I have work to do.”

“Can’t you take a break? I think there’s a storage closet in the back that’s calling our name.” His lips closed over her earlobe, and that did it.

Harper pushed back against him and escaped from his grasp, walking to the oven to check on the progress of the cookies, which were minutes from being done. She glanced at Savannah, who appeared confused, then back at Brett, who stood where she had left him, looking dejected.

She straightened and walked back over to him, stopping a few feet away.

“Do we have a problem here?” He motioned between them.

“No problem.” She avoided eye contact.

“Then what was that?”

“What was what?” She sucked at playing coy.

His brow furrowed. “Did I do something wrong?”

“This is my place of work. Would you have done that if we were at the law firm?”

Brett smirked. “Well, I would have closed the door to my office first.”

There it was again, that flirtatiousness that seemed suddenly so foreign and somehow unwanted.

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