Page 68 of After All

She spelledanniversarywrong. Twice.

Peyton blew her hair out of her eyes and shook her head. Damn. She’d never been this distracted at work before. She’d been hungover. She’d come in after an hour of sleep. She’d worked with a migraine before. And she’d never had this much trouble getting her stuff done.

She swiped theAnnniversaryoff of the cake and redid it for the third time, finally getting it right.

Then she wroteKathy and Scott.Instead ofKathy and Steve.

She growled softly, fixed the error, and decided it was time for lunch. Even if it was only ten forty-five.

“Is it okay if I head out early for lunch?” she asked Adrianne, as she stepped into the front of the bakery. “I have an errand to run today.”

“Of course,” Adrianne said, looking up from the caramels she was dipping in chocolate.

“I’ll be back in an hour.” The second her shoes hit the pavement outside of the bakery, Peyton turned for the Come Again. She hoped that the bar wouldn’t be too busy at this time of day. They did burgers and basic sandwiches, but most people headed to Dottie’s for lunch, saving the Come Again for the late-night munchies.

Her phone dinged in her pocket as she crossed the square. She silenced it, assuming it was another sexy text from Scott. She’d already gotten three, referencing things he’d like to do with strawberry yogurt, dill pickles and peanut butter. Not necessarily all at once. And she should have been expecting them.

She’d left notes around the house again today. Like a note on the jar of pickles in the fridge that said,there’s never a dill day with you,and one on a container of strawberry yogurt that said,yogurt a great butt. She’d also stuck one on the jar of peanut butter that read,I’m nuts about you,even though that was really close to sharing feelings she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to share. She’d almost gone back inside to throw it away, but she’d been afraid of waking him.

She just wasn’t quite ready to see him today. Her thoughts were still spinning from last night—from the things she’d shared with him and the things he’d told her. And she needed more information. Because frankly, she was ready to jump him and do all kinds of dirty things to him and just deal with the relationship debris that would occur in the wake later.

Scott had worked to stop sex trafficking and save victims? He’d gone undercover? He’d pulled young girls out of horrible situations and kicked major bad-guy butt? Oh, yeah, she could totally see that. But how had she not known about it?

But she had a pretty good idea why. She’d never paidthatmuch attention to him.

She’d assumed that she knew the important things, and she’d been focused on making it all about the physical between them. She’d definitely taken inventory of his great ass and his wide shoulders and his big hands and his general gruff, protective, bossy attitude that did delicious things to her hormones. But she hadn’t really paid attention tohim. The things he cared about—other thanher.The things he spent time on—other thanher. The things he talked about—other thanher.

Ugh. It all made her stomach roil. As long as his attention had been on her, she hadn’t cared what elsehe’dcared about or thought about or did.

She was more and more like her mother every day.

Peyton hit the door to the Come Again with enough force to send it bouncing against the wall inside.

“I add holes in the drywall to bar tabs,” Derek said from behind the bar where he was drying glasses. “Just so you know.”

“We need to talk,” Peyton told him as she slid up onto a stool.

“Is this iced tea talking, beer talking, or tequila talking?” Derek asked, seeming unfazed by her slamming his door open or stomping inside. At least before noon. She’d done some slamming and stomping around in here before. But it was almost always after ten p.m.

“Iced tea,” she said. “But only because I have to go back to work.”

He pulled the pitcher of tea from the fridge behind the bar and poured her a glass. “So it should be a tequila talk?”

“Definitely.”

“Then I’m guessing this has to do with Scott somehow.” Derek gave her a grin and propped a hip against the bar. “What did he do?”

“Told me about the sex trafficking work he did,” she said. “Told me he worked undercover to bust up sex trafficking along I-80 and save all those kids. Told me he came back here because he got burnt out. Told me that he would never let anything bad like that happen here.”

Derek straightened away from the bar, his half grin melting away. “Oh.”

Peyton nodded. “So that’s all true.”

Derek shrugged. “Well, yeah. I mean, he did that task force work for a few years, but when he had a chance to come back here to work, and only help out with the special ops once in a while, he took it.”

Peyton ran her thumb through the condensation on the side of her glass. Then she lifted her gaze and looked at one of Scott’s best friends in the world. Derek was a laid-back, get-by-on-his-charm-and-good-looks kind of guy. But there were a few things he took very seriously—the Come Again, Sapphire Falls, and his friends and family.

“Do you think Sapphire Falls is enough for him?” Peyton asked.

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