ONE
POWELL
I didn’t lose the coin toss.
I volunteered.
Not that I’d ever tell Moose that, or anyone else at the station. I’d rather eat a hose clamp.
The morning felt like Christmas had sneezed all over downtown Huckleberry Creek—twinkle lights strung from one lamppost to the next, wreathes on every door, the big cedar tree in the middle of the square dripping with ornaments hand-painted by the elementary school. The Monday after Thanksgiving, and the town had shifted to full-on holiday cheer mode. It should’ve made me smile.
Instead, Moose elbowed me in the ribs as we headed down the sidewalk. “Boy, you look like you’re walking into your own funeral.” He paused, considering. “Which, given the way Jess Donnegan looks at you, might be accurate.”
“She doesn’t look at me,” I said. “She looks through me. Or around me. Or like she’s wishing she had laser vision to melt me into the pavement.”
Moose grinned. “That’s practically affection.”
I rolled my eyes. “Jess Donnegan hating me is a town tradition at this point.”
“And yet,” Moose sang under his breath, “you still volunteer for the coffee run. Curious.”
I walked faster.
Pour Decisions glowed ahead of us—Jess’s pride and joy, a vintage retrofitted Airstream. Her holiday decorations were always a little overboard: red ribbons on every corner, a string of golden jingle bells on the service window, snowflake stencils misted onto the metal siding. The scent hit us halfway across the square—fresh espresso, caramelizing sugar, and cinnamon drifting out into the cold.
My stomach did a happy little flip.
Unfortunately, so did my heart.
Jess looked the same as she always did this time of year—hair in a messy bun that appeared to be secured with a pair of candy canes, cheeks flushed from working over hot steam all morning, a red apron tied tight around her narrow waist, accentuating that hourglass figure that spent way too much time as the highlight of my dreams. She was smiling at the customer in front of her when we stepped into line.
Then she saw me, and all that warmth dropped away into something practically subarctic.
Moose whispered, “Aaand there it is,” like he was narrating a nature documentary.
I ignored him and stepped forward. “Morning, Jess.”
Her eyes flicked over me like she was checking for defects. “What do you want?”
“The usual,” I said.
She stared at me without a smile or a blink. Definitely not happy I existed.
Behind me, Moose stage-whispered, “She means the drink order, big guy.”
Jess didn’t crack even a partial grin. The woman had an Olympic-level deadpan. If she could play poker worth half a damn, she’d have a solid second career.
She turned to the espresso machine and started pulling shots. That gave me a second to breathe in the scent of freshly ground beans and wonder—not for the first time—what the hell I’d ever done to deserve a decade of eyebrow daggers from Jess Donnegan.
I’d asked her out once in high school. She’d turned me down with frigid politeness. Despite the fact that I’d thought we’d been circling something real, I hadn’t pouted. I hadn’t stalked. I hadn’t even brought it up again. So what the hell had I done?
Moose leaned his massive frame against the counter of the service window, forearms braced on the metal surface, and called into the truck with the kind of grin that usually preceded trouble. “Hey, Jess, any chance you can make his extra bitter? Fits his personality to a tee.”
The espresso machine hissed and gurgled as she worked, her voice floating back through the window, dry as month-old sawdust left in the Alabama sun. “Every time he opens his mouth, I consider it.”
I choked on a laugh before I managed to stop myself, the sound catching in my throat like I’d swallowed wrong. I couldn’t help it—even when she was being mean, she was funny.
She returned to the window with two drink carriers, both loaded down with an impressive array of holiday drinks—peppermint lattes topped with whipped cream and candy cane dust, gingerbread mochas that smelled like Christmas morning, and holiday cappuccinos decorated with cinnamon art for half the firehouse. The seasonal drinks were Jess’s specialty, and even I had to admit they looked like something out of a coffee shop magazine.
