Page 32 of The Pumpkin Spice Cafe
‘It looks perfect! So cute. People are going to be swarming around you for drinks today,’ Annie said. ‘Oh, and this is George. He works at the bakery. His cakes are to die for.’
‘Nice to meet—’
The introduction was torn from Jeanie’s mouth by the next gust of wind. Everything happened all at once after that.
Jeanie’s easy-up easily lifted off the ground.
Annie shrieked, just as the clouds opened up and let loose a deluge of cold, fall rain.
Logan was soaked. Jeanie was soaked. Annie’s pies were in grave danger of being soaked.
George sprang into action. ‘We have to get these packed up!’ He started reloading pies into plastic containers while Annie frantically threw muffins into Tupperware.
Jeanie stood watching her tent blow down the street, her perfectly set-up farmers’ market table ruined by the downpour. She glanced at Logan, rain streaming down her face, plastering her hair to her head.
The look on her face wavered between laughter and tears, and he would be damned if tears won out.
‘Let’s go.’ He grabbed her hand and they raced toward her tent. The wind whipped around them as they splashed through the rapidly forming puddles. Where had this damn storm come from, and what good was a clairvoyant mayor if he couldn’t even predict the weather?
Logan was ready to drag Jeanie to the town hall next to give Pete a piece of his mind for endangering everyone with this farmers’ market, when Jeanie’s giggles cut through the sounds of the storm.
He glanced at her, and his breath caught. Her face was lit up, like the sun through the clouds. ‘What are we doing?’ she asked, her own breaths coming in gasps.
‘We’re going to catch that damn tent,’ he told her, making her laugh even harder.
‘Okay, but slow down!’ She grinned at him as he slowed his pace. ‘You’re fast when you have a tent to catch.’
‘It’s a safety hazard.’ He tried to keep his tone serious, but he felt his mouth tipping up with hers. Her fingers were still entwined with his and they were running through the rain, and his heart was already storing these moments away for later, to obsess over when he couldn’t sleep. Unsettled, but happy.
She fit here. She fit with him. His heart thumped the words over and over.
Her smile grew and she pushed the rain from her eyes. Those eyes, those dark-coffee eyes.
A crack of thunder overhead disrupted his thoughts of taking her face in his hands and pressing his mouth to hers.
‘Let’s go!’ she cried and tugged him into a run again, racing down Main Street. Luckily the street was closed to traffic for the market, so they only had a few other people fleeing from the weather to contend with.
‘There it is!’ Jeanie’s triumphant cry was quickly replaced with a dismayed gasp that cut through Logan’s chest. The tent was tangled in a tree. Its big metal legs bent like a giant spider’s; the blue tarp torn down the middle. ‘Shoot.’ Her face fell at the sight of the mess.
‘I’ll get it.’ Logan tugged at one of the metal legs, determined to get the stupid tent out of the branches, as though this tent was the one thing keeping Jeanie here. He battled that piece of camping equipment as though it was the only thing preventing her from staying, as though her failed attempt at the farmers’ market would send her crying back to Boston.
Would it?
‘Hey.’ She tugged at his arm. ‘I think it’s hopeless.’
‘I can get it,’ he growled, pulling harder until a branch cracked and the hole in the canvas tore open wider.
‘Hey.’ The hand on his arm grew more insistent until he turned to face her. She smiled. ‘Let’s go somewhere dry.’
He blinked. She was still here, smiling at him through the sheets of rain that continued to fall, her hand still on his arm, holding him tight. He swallowed hard.
‘Okay.’ He nodded. It was all he could manage. It was all he should say. Much better than the other words floating around in his head. Words about going with Jeanie wherever she wanted him to and all the things he wanted to do to her when they got there.
Instead, he just let her tug him toward the café.
ChapterFifteen
They snuck in the back door and up the backstairs like teenagers creeping past parents. But it was really only Norman and a few customers stuck waiting out the storm in the café. Jeanie could feel the relief in Logan’s body when she bypassed the front door, like he didn’t want to be caught, either; like neither of them was ready to walk through the café holding hands.
