Page 9 of Brewbies
On a normal day, when she wasn’t having mild, regret-based panic attacks about a man who’d had his mouth on her lady bits lurking at the back of her line, she’d have remembered to
reset the timer the second she saw Roy Dobson roll up.
Silver-haired, sour, and perpetually rumpled, Roy was a walking ad for how to die alone.
Tempted as she was to give him decaf, Darby decided that inviting any further karmic consequences might not be in her best interest at this precise moment.
“My sincere apologies, Roy,” she said, pressing her hand to breasts he made a show ofnotlooking at. “If you don’t mind waiting for another ten, I’d be happy to brew a fresh pot just for you.” She smiled so hard, her canines poked into her lower lip. “Or maybe I could interest you in a hot pour-over?”
Your face.
Judging by his sigh alone, you’d have guessed that she’d just asked him whether he preferred to move Fort Warden Beach grain by grain, or empty the Puget Sound a thimbleful at a time.
“I guess I’ll just take what you’ve already got.” His gaze narrowed behind thick glasses. “But don’t microwave it, or I’ll know.”
He shoved the thermal cup he always brought from home through the window. Darby had the distinct feeling the tempestuous secondhand store owner did this not out of any conscience-driven need to lessen his carbon footprint, but for the fifty-cent discount she offered to anyone who brought their own cup.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” If her forced smile got any wider, the tendons holding her jaw on were liable to pop like rubber bands.
Three customers away.
Darby stepped just out of eye line and covertly glanced at him beyond the brassy beast of the espresso machine that had devoured an entire third of her initial business loan.
He hadn’t looked at her once.
Something in the distance had his attention. And not in a good way.
Arms folded against the solid wall of his chest, he flexed his angular jaw beneath the tawny carpet of stubble she could still feel on her lips. Just as she could feel the press of his angular hips against her inner thighs. That rough palm clutching the sensitive skin of her throat as his thick fingers slid her panties to the side beneath her skirt, scalding her…thumb?
“Fuck,” Darby said, sloshing more hot liquid on herself as she jerked her hand away from the steam wand. “Motherfucking shitbiscuits! Sonova bitch, that hurts.”
Darby turned the tiny sink tap onto cold and shoved her hand in the stream to calm her offended nerves. The relief was instant, but wouldn’t last, as she knew. Steam burns were the literal worst.
Spotting the lavender essential oil one of her passing patrons had gifted to her, Darby liberally anointed the stinging digit and carefully rubbed in the unguent salve.
“Excuse me.” Roy pecked on the aluminum siding of the service window. “Excuse me, but you were planning on refilling my cup, correct? Because I couldn’t help but notice that you spilled a significant amount of coffee—Onyeeep!”
Darby’s head whipped around hard enough for several vertebrae to crunch, her eyes going wide as duck eggs as she saw the reason Roy had broken off so abruptly.
Him.
He stood before the service window with a handful of Roy’s button-up shirt gripped in one white-knuckled fist, the other cocked back like a wrecking ball.
“Can’t you see she burned her hand you pointless, demanding fuck?” His bicep mounded beneath his sleeve as he hauled Roy’s face closer to his.
Roy’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “I— But— Tits,” he stammered nonsensically.
“That’s what I thought.”Heraked Roy with a withering look. “Now you’re going to back off and let her take care of it before I forget that I’ll lose my job if I rearrange your face.”
Roy nodded and was released with enough force to send him stumbling backward. He sat down hard on one of the picnic table benches she’d painted a soothing seafoam teal in optimistic days unsullied by the scene before her.
Still tight with rage, her one-night stand’s face swung in Darby’s direction. Their eyes met, and recognition surged into his features like the tide. The eyelids lowering. The jaw unclenching. The mouth softening.
He knew.
He remembered her.
Darby stood at the window, her pulse pounding in her ears and her lips parting on a breath that refused to fill her lungs.
