Page 27 of My Vigilante Valentine

You know what? Tomorrow.

When he showed up at Wilde Brew, I’d head straight to his table and speak my mind. With cookies to butter him up.

I knew he liked them.

He didn’t fool me one bit.

I grabbed a box of mac and cheese—because sometimes even a mac and cheese snob needed the version without too many steps—and made my way to the checkout, mentally rehearsing all the things I was going to say to Jax.

It was going to be epic. Bold. Assertive.

Assuming I didn’t chicken out, of course.

And it was that worrisome thought that had me not paying much attention as I rounded a corner, causing me to gracelessly collide with something—or someone—solid.

Cue the slow-motion disaster: almond milk tipping roughly against a bag of chips, which launched my box of mac and cheese from my basket in an Olympics-style somersault.

I scrambled, managing to catch exactly nothing but empty air between my hands.

Only… the box didn’t clatter to the ground.

Instead, in a move too fast to track, it was snatched out of the air and returned to my basket.

“You okay?” a low, familiar voice rumbled above me.

Slowly, I looked up—straight into the sharp, dark eyes of Jax Thorne.

Of course.

He would be the one to make me fumble my mac, only to rescue it with his super speed like it were a rectangular damsel in distress.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite Wi-Fi leech.” I forced an awkward laugh. It was very cringe. “Funny running into you here. Are you secretly a fan of chia seeds?”

Jax didn’t smile. His expression was tight, eyes scanning the aisle like he was expecting danger to leap out from behind the gluten-free pancake mix.

My snark deflated slightly. I squinted at him, tilting my head. “I’m not coincidently running into you here, am I?”

He looked at the box of mac and cheese in my basket, then down at himself, and then finally at me.

I knew he was insinuating that I had justrun into him, but that was not what I meant, and I shot him a look that told him so.

He sighed in reply. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you.”

I blinked.

He shifted from foot to foot as if admitting that simple, strange truth physically pained him.

“But...Why?”

This time, he met my eyes with a little too much intensity for my liking. “In case that guy who broke in wasn’t just some random robber.”

My heart flipped over, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he thought I was in danger or because he cared.

Both, if we were being real.

“Do you think he was after me? As in, not after the cash in my register, but like...me?”

He shook his head, just once, and with force. “Doesn’t matter.”

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