Page 2 of Promise Me

When I moved the tables around last spring, that table was the only one that didn’t find a new home.

I plate three muffins and pour three cups of black coffee. Then I walk their food and drinks to their table, where they are already into the gossip of the day.

It blows my mind how these three have the tea on anything in town by five in the morning, but here they are, heads dipped low as they speak in hushed tones.

You know, so that all the other early-rising customers don’t hear them.

“She’s selling it. I thought she’d never cave and do it, but she is.”

I grin, quickly returning to the kitchen to mind my business.

Gossip in a small town can spread like wildfire, so I try to avoid it as much as possible.

I pass through the swinging door and pause to look at the photo on my left.

It’s of my mother and the three men out front on the day she opened all those years ago. I wasn’t even a thought in her mind back then. The bakery was her baby during those years, and her love for this place never faded, not even when she took her last breath.

I hear a boom of laughter from the front of the store and smile.

Mom would love to know that those three still show up and share a decades-long friendship.

“Hey, have you read the latest book by Lena Hendrix yet?”

I step farther into the kitchen and find Brooke by the sink. Her blonde hair is pulled into a tight bun like ballet dancers, except this girl couldn’t dance if her life depended on it.

I was there for our first spring fling all the way to senior prom. I witnessed the disaster of Brooke dancing.

I love the girl, but she was born without rhythm. Baking, though, she’s one of the best.

“Yesss,” I reply dramatically, grabbing a towel to help her dry dishes. “Why am I sucker for the grumpy sunshine trope?”

Brooke sighs, looking to the ceiling as she smiles.

“It’s the slow burn for me. I love the build-up to the first kiss.”

“Me too, and she writes it so beautifully. If the firemen in our town were half as sexy as the men in her books, there would be a lot fewer single women walking around this place.”

“Here, here,” she cheers with the measuring cup she’s washing.

The bell out front rings.

When I return to the front, the smile I reserve for customers drops from my lips.

Hudson Asher is standing at the counter, his gaze roaming the menu on the back wall as if he hasn’t come here four mornings a week for the last three years.

For someone who doesn’t care for me and is extremely aware that I don’t care for him right back, it amazes me that he hasn’t found another coffee shop to pester by now. Or, you know, make coffee at home at least.

Nope. He continues to choose my place. I know the food is good here, but I have no doubt his choice to walk in here is solely to annoy me each day.

It works too.

But he doesn’t need to know that.

“Let me guess, black coffee with a cinnamon twist?”

He taps his chin like he’s thinking it over.

I struggle to hold back the growl I feel coming.

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