“It was good, wasn’t it?”
He chuckled—a smooth, deep, pleasant sound. His presence was always so calm and steady. It probably came with the territory of being a firefighter, keeping a cool head amidst a crisis.
I was the spitting image of him, with wavy chestnut hair and chocolate brown eyes. Although he insisted that I inherited my flirtatious streak from Mom.
“Sweetie, I don’t know how to tell you this, but coffee is not supposed to taste like bubblegum,” Dad replied. He patted his stomach, which had been getting softer around the middle lately, despite working out between calls at the fire station. “Besides, I’m not as young as I used to be. This fifty-year-old body doesn’t metabolize sugar that well anymore. So, you’d better just give me straight black coffee this time.”
I tilted my head to the side.
“With some…extra whipped cream maybe?” I coaxed.
He sighed with a look of fondness. Everyone said that I had my daddy wrapped around my little finger, and they were absolutely right.
“Fine. Extra whipped cream. And you can add those fancy white chocolate shavings on top, too.”
A victorious smile touched my lips as I put his order into the computer. Ever since I was a little girl, my dad and I had been thick as thieves. He let me get away with murder, spoiling me rotten. And I spoiled him right back.
Secretly, I worried about him though. Mom and Dad always stayed on good terms after their divorce. It was an amicable split and they co-parented me without bickering or saying a single bad word about each other, even in private.
But Mom remarried only a year after the divorce, and I think that messed with Dad’s heart more than he was willing to admit out loud. He never talked about dating again, never even considered it.
“So,” Dad ventured. “When do I get to meet this boyfriend you were talking to all night long?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I replied lightly.
Dad narrowed his eyes.
“Does he know that? Or are you stringing along yet another poor kid? Do you have any idea how many lovesick boys drop by the fire station with their tails tucked between their legs, begging me to get you to see reason?”
I shrugged, setting to work on his order. With thirteen thirsty firefighters waiting on their coffee, I had my hands full.
“That’s not my fault. I always tell them, plain and simple, that I don’t want to date them. We’re just chatting.”
Dad sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“God, Ruby. You’re a menace. What am I going to do with you?”
I laughed as I deposited a generous dollop of whipped cream onto his coffee, dusting it with the white chocolate he’d requested until it looked like a snowy little mountain peak. I scribbled his name—Barrett Kent—in black marker on his coffee cup, with a heart and a smiley face. Then I handed it over.
“Come on, give me some credit here. I’m not hiding anything.”
Dad made a disgruntled noise.
“No, but it sounds like you’re baiting these boys by dangling the proverbial carrot in front of their nose.”
I huffed.
“I don’t know how I feel about my father comparing me to a carrot. Or bait.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it, you little troublemaker. You’re cute, bubbly, charismatic…it’s easy to fall in love with you at the drop of a hat. And you—” Dad pointed at me with a mock stern look. “You are using that to your advantage to mess with these boys.”
I smiled sweetly at him, feigning an innocent expression.
“Last I checked, there’s no law against some harmless flirtation.”
Dad shook his head and took a sip of his coffee.
“Karma is going to bite you in the ass one day, kiddo. Some guy will sweep you off your feet, and you won’t know what to do with yourself when that happens.”
