An Emotional Festival of Chickpeas
“You ruin it that way,”Chef grumbled as I poured two shots of espresso over ice.
I spared him a glance before adding some cream and stirring the drink with a butter knife. “I don’t need it to be good. I just need it to be effective.”
He pointed in the direction of Naked Provisions. “Go. There,” he said. “It ismagnifique.”
Of course Bartholomew knew the quality of the coffee across the way.
“While that is most likely true,” I said between sips, “I’m more or less an insomniac. I need to wake up right now but I can’t go over there yet. This will have to do.”
He shook his head in disgust and returned to scribbling ideas in a notebook and sipping his sherry from a chowder cup. It was early in the afternoon but never too early for sherry.
“He’s right about the coffee,” Agent Price said from the bar, nose in a book, and a paper cup from Naked in reach.
I scowled at him, not that he noticed. “What the fuck are you reading, Price?”
He flipped the book to glance at the woman on the cover. “It’sBefore I Let Goby Kennedy Ryan. I picked it up for the Read Naked book club.” When I continued staring at him, he added, “There’s nothing wrong with men reading romance, Loew.”
“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it.” I shrugged, adding, “By all means, read whatever you want.”
“You should try it. You might learn something.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
I had a ton of work to do back in the office but I leaned against the counter with my coffee. There was a rainbow of reasons why I wasn’t sleeping, and it started and ended with Sunny. Parker, my parents, and all of my other problems were in there too but it was Sunny in my conscious thoughts, Sunny when I closed my eyes, and Sunny when I woke up hard and aching and mindless for her. As if sitting outside her house in a parked car for thirty minutes at night wasn’t enough of an indication that I was well and thoroughly fucked.
I lingered in the kitchen, watching through glazed-over eyes as the chefs chopped and diced, steamed and sautéed, chorusing back responses when Bartholomew called out. I didn’t really want any of this. I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t want to dig my family out of another one of their homemade disasters, and I didn’t want this woman to consume every corner and crevice of my mind.
And of all the women to consume me, it had to be Lance’s little sister.
By my math, all I could do here was fuck things up. There was no going back now. We could’ve gotten away with a few kisses. Those kisses had fundamentally altered my DNA and triggered a highly inconvenient need to be near her at all times, but if push came to shove, I could lie to Lance and tell him it was nothing. He’d malfunction for a while but he’d get over it.
But there was no getting away with last night. I knew what it felt like for her nipple to harden under my thumb. I knew the heat between her legs and the impatient sighs that stuttered out of her when she wasn’t getting what she wanted. And I knew the relationship I’d had with Lance for the last twenty years would never be the same if I allowed this to continue.
Which meant cutting things off with Sunny, and if I was being honest, I was more likely to grab one of Bartholomew’s cleavers and cut off my hand than go through with that. That left me to fuck up one of the only healthy, sustained relationships in my life. And for what? A woman who lived in Rhode Island and mildly despised me? It didn’t matter whether she’d climbed me like a koala last night, there was no doubt in my mind that she still hated me. At least a little bit. So, I was bound to fuck this up too. If not now, it would happen when I sorted out my family shit and went back to Singapore.
Yet none of this mattered when I saw the aqua streak of her bicycle as she rode in from the path. I pushed off from the counter, set my glass in the wash bin, and walked out of the restaurant. I wasn’t even going to pretend I hadn’t been waiting for her.
I glanced up at the gray layer of clouds blocking out the afternoon sun and noticed the roof on the café. I’d always clocked it as gently weathered but now it looked worn out, in need of replacing before hurricane season kicked up. Definitely before the winter.
And this was why I needed to speak with Sunny immediately. The state of her roof.
I wasn’t even halfway across the crushed shell driveway before hearing, “Hello there.”
The timing of this guy was truly impeccable. Doing my best to swallow a snarl, I turned to see Ranger and Phil Collins emerge from the path. I wasn’t in the mood for a postmortem on the town council meeting or another lesson on the inner workings of this town. “Hey. How’s it going?”
“Glad we caught you out here. If it’s not too much trouble, we’d like a moment of your time,” Ranger said, last night’s knobby walking stick in hand. I was positive he could kill me with that stick and make it look like I’d died of natural causes. “It won’t take too long. We know you’re a busy man.”
There was ice in his tone, unlike anything I’d heard on his usual walk-and-talk visits. I slipped my hands into my trouser pockets. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”
Phil Collins adjusted the wide brim of his straw hat while Ranger eyed me for a long moment. Goddamn, I should’ve eaten something with that coffee because there was a headache gathering steam at the base of my skull and my heart felt like a rusty trombone. I was not equipped for whatever lecture this guy wanted to hand out today.
“What are your intentions with Miss Du Jardin?” he asked.
I peered at him as if that would make any of this make sense. “My—what?”
“Intentions,” he repeated with a great deal of impatience. “As you may know, we are very fond of Sunny.” He gestured to himself and Phil Collins. “And it’s not just the two of us. Everyone who meets Sunny loves her. You’re a fine fella but we all know your sights are set beyond this town. Sunny, she’s ours. She’s Friendship. We won’t let any harm come to her.”
