“I don’t have a puppy.”
“Well, if you did, and it just got ran over, this is what it would look like,” Theo muttered, waving at Beau’s face from where they stood behind the counter of the coffee shop.
Beau grunted and turned away, sinking down into a crouch to re-organize the shelf below; a shelf that definitely didn’t need to be re-organized… again. For the third time that morning.
“You gonna share with the class why you’ve been a real dick the last few days?” his brother asked as he leaned his hips against the back counter.
“Theo.”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck off.”
“No can do, big brother.”
“Then you’re fired,” Beau snapped, standing and striding down the narrow aisle behind the counter toward the back stock room, carrying a mostly empty box of sugar packets.
Theo’s chuckle grated on every last nerve hehad left. Val had avoided the coffee shop for several days, sending Noelle or Willow in to get their usual morning orders. He didn’t blame her. He was an asshole.
Returning to the front, he glared at Theo, but it did no good. His damn brother was a giant pain in his ass. Had been all week. Pouring a cup of coffee, he took a long swallow, relishing the burn as it traveled down his throat. His own penance for what he’d done.
Through the frosted windows, a flash of dark hair under a pink knitted hat was the only warning he had before the door opened and she walked in.
She stalled just inside, her eyes meeting his for a fraction of a second before lowering to the floor. His heart was hammering in his chest as she came forward, stopping just in front of himself and Theo.
“Good morning,” Theo murmured, when it became obvious Beau wasn’t going to greet her. “How’s our man hating Val today? We are still man hating, right?”
Beau fought the urge to cringe. If only his brother knew the validity of those words. He kept his face impassive as she raised her eyes to Theo for a moment before turning her gaze to his.
He couldn’t stand the hurt on her face; in those hazel eyes he knew so well. So, as the emotionally stunted idiot that he was, he stayed obstinately silent, hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans.
She swallowed hard before dropping her gaze from his. It did nothing to help him breathe any easier. In fact, it only made it worse. Fuck he was an asshole.
“I’ll just have our usual,” she said quietly to Theo, who sidestepped into Beau to get him to move. Tapping the screen, he typed in the girls’ orders.
Val extended her credit card to him, but Beau muttered, his voice a low grunt, “Put that away. On the house.”
Snapping her eyes up to his, he saw a flash of fire in her eyes.Pushing the card toward Theo, she bit out, “No, thank you. I don’t need any more of your pity handouts.”
He felt his brows pull low over his eyes in a deep scowl as they stared at each other.
“Go ahead and scowl all you want,” she muttered, then accepted her card back from Theo, replacing in her purse. He could see her hand trembling. Fucking god dammit. “You can’t bully me into taking anything else from you.”
“So, fully man hating today, I love it,” Theo chuckled with an appreciative nod as he turned away to start the three coffee drinks. “You gonna do something useful or just stand there glaring at her, Beau?”
“Didn’t I fucking fire you?” he snapped under his breath as he turned and stalked away from the two of them, rounding the corner into the stock room.
“Geesh, grumpy old man,” he heard Theo mutter and then Val’s scoff of laughter.
Shoving the fingers of one hand through his hair, he let his head fall back so that he was staring at the ceiling. Taking deep, controlled breaths in, he waited until he was certain she had left before exiting the stock room.
“So.”
“Fucking don’t, Theo. I mean it,” Beau snarled, glaring at his brother again.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as his brother’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, holding out his hands in an innocent gesture.
“Just strange seeing you two at each other’s throats.”
