Page 35 of Sweet on You
12
Ronnie
Iwas speechless. I stood there stunned, not knowing what to say with the half-naked girl standing in Lex’s hallway who hadclearlyslept over last night.
Wasthisthe damn emergency he had left our kiss for?
I needed to wrap my head around this. Lex had a woman sleeping over last night. This woman had slept in his bed the same night we had kissed at happy hour. The same night he had left me, claiming an emergency.
Something was weird. The woman smiled and popped a jaw-cracking yawn, covering her open mouth with the back of her hand before she jumped, startled, seeing me for the first time.
“Oh! Um… hi?” she said and seemed just as rattled as I was.
“Hi,” I said and gave a weak wave. Penny did not get the memo about the awkwardness and charged toward her, jumping up to say hello.
“Oof,” she grunted as he lunged into her. “Hello, big guy.”
“I-I’m sorry,” I said, tugging on Penny’s collar. “He’s not very well-mannered yet. Lex said he could hang out up here while I watched the café downstairs.”
Her eyes widened. “Tony’s not down there yet?” Her eyes darted to the clock and she muttered a curse, wincing as we both heard the shower running for the first time. “He’s only just getting in the shower now?” she groaned. “Iknewit. I knew I couldn’t trust him to take the first shift.”
Something in her demeanor shifted and she held up a palm to me. “Okay, you go downstairs. I’ll be down there in a couple of minutes. Just give me a second to put on some clothes and run a brush through my hair.”
I did my best to smile at her even though my mind was reeling. Who the hell was Tony? Why were they both in Lex’s apartment? Oh, God. Was Lex polyamorous? Into ménage? Not that there was anything wrong with that, but it wassonot me.
“Take your time,” I said, smiling—or maybe grimacing. To be honest, I had no idea what kind of face I was making at the moment. “Let me know if Penny is any trouble. I can come up and grab him.”
True to her word, the woman came downstairs in five minutes. I recognized another one of Lex’s t-shirts and it even looked like his jeans she was wearing. They were baggy and she had a black belt cinching them at her hips, with the Ramones t-shirt tucked in only in the front and the sleeves rolled up to her shoulders.
I ignored the painful pang in my chest at the sight of her in Lex’s clothes. Confusion fogged my brain. In the five minutes that she was changing, Latte Da had gone from dead to slammed. Which made sense. It was almost eight o’clock by now and all the rush hour folks were coming in to grab their java fixes and baked goods on the way to work.
“I’m Lana, by the way,” she said, giving me a dazzling smile and offering me her hand. I returned her smile and shook her hand. Firm grip. Good handshake.
“Ronnie,” I said. “Sorry to barge in on you upstairs.”
She waved me off and held up her phone. “I didn’t see the text from Lex until I started getting dressed. My husband is such an idiot sometimes.”
My blood went frosty in my veins. “Your… husband?Lexis your husband?”
She laughed, throwing her head back as she steamed some milk for a latte and I put a banana muffin into a bag for a customer. “No, my husband, Tony. Lex is one of our best friends and we knew he had to rush out of here in the morning, so we stayed over to help him run the café. Tony was supposed to get up at 6:45 and take over at 7:15. And since I helped Lex bake last night, I was going to sleep in and come down for rush hour at 8:00.” She rolled her eyes in spite of herself. “Fine job we did of that though, huh? I’m so not a morning person. When I woke up and wandered into the kitchen, I didn’t even realize Tony was still in the shower.”
Relief melted my muscles. I physically could feel my shoulders lower from my ears, relaxing my neck and back, and I rolled my head in a circle, releasing a sigh. I didn’t even care if she saw how obvious I was being. I moved to take the next person’s order. Black coffee—thank God. Those lattes and fancy drinks really slowed the queue down. I poured the cup of coffee nearly to the brim, swiped the guy’s credit card and gave him his receipt.
“You can run,” Lana said. “I know you probably have a job of your own to get to.”
Luckily, my gym was doing well enough that I had staff to run the desk, and I didn’t have any personal training clients until 11:00 a.m. But the Latte Da line was stretching out the door and I felt relieved that I had put Penny upstairs. I had no idea how he would have done in a large crowd like this, especially if he wasn’t able to see me through the group of people. “I can’t leave you with this huge line,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll run the register and do drip coffee orders and pastries if you handle the lattes and espresso drinks.”
“You’ve got a deal there.”
We managed a good rhythm between us, Lana and me. It took about fifteen minutes for us to get through the line. When it died down, I took a second to close my eyes and crack my neck to each side, finally feeling like I could relax.
That was until I heard my brother’s voice from over the register. “Did I miss some Tripp family announcement?” Cam asked. “Did you change careers? Because I’m pretty sure Mom would have put that in the family newsletter.” I glanced up, finding my oldest brother towering over me on the other side of the counter, grinning like an idiot. Lydia was beside him and smacked his arm.
“Ignore him,” she said, then scanned the room. “But where’s Lex?”
“He had some sort of emergency,” I said. “I’m helping out with the rush hour crowd and then Lana will take over.”
Lana waved from the espresso machine as Cam’s eyes darkened. “Why were you here to fill in?”
