Tristan flashes me a dazzling, dizzying smile over his shoulder before turning back to the espresso machine.
“You wouldn’t have. I just moved here, and it’s my first day, actually,” he says as I stare at the back of his head, mesmerized by his bubbliness until he tosses over his shoulder, eyes wide and deadly serious, “but don’t worry, I’ve made my fair share of lattes before.”
My stomach plummets at the same moment as prickly heat spreads from my cheeks down my neck. “That’s not what—”
He spins around, filled cup in hand, once again smiling that half smirking grin at me. “You’re just fine, sunshine. I was only teasing.”
He’s just snapping the lid over the top of the cup whenI reach the counter, and, because apparently this whole interaction, mixed with the pressure of Alex’s voice playing on repeat through my head, has turned me into a jittery mess of nerves, I reach out to take the drink from him just at the same instant as he’s reaching forward to set it down for me.
Instead of the papery-dry heat of the contours of the coffee cup, my fingers close around his, trapping them there for a long, breath-stealing heartbeat.
And then we both pull away at the same moment, leaving the cup to plunge down through thin air, because, apparently, that’s just how smooth I am.
4
Tristan
“Shit. Jesus, I’m sorry.”
The total mortification on the guy’s face is utterly fucking adorable. So adorable in fact, that I don’t even process this at first as the moment of victory that it is as I snatch for a rag. My head is clear and my heartbeat is still steady and calm in my chest, even though there’s no getting around the fact that I’m at least halfway responsible for the coffee explosion that just happened.
Typically, I’d be having a full-on panic attack, convinced that Cute Latte Guy had to be about to lose his shit on me.
In the seconds it takes for me to mentally pat myself on the back for reacting like a normal human being and not, well,me, said Cute Latte Guy has snatched up a wad of napkins and is now trying his best to mop up the mess with the already soggy paper. Totally wasteful, and Ikindathink all he’s doing is smearing coffee around worse than ever, but still super cute.
“I’ve got this,” I grin up at him, using my rag-free hand to shove his aside, and his already blushy-pink cheeks flare hotter. A scorching sunset pink.
I’d noticed how they’d flushed before, when he’d stumbled through his drink order, and again when my fingersaccidentally brushed against his when I took his credit card. With his bright golden-blonde hair and rosy-fair skin, the man can blush like nobody’s business.
Why this means that I’m suddenly totally caught up in the impulse to see how many times and just how bright I can make him blush again, I haven’t the least idea.
I reach out closer to where he’s dabbing at a little puddle of coffee with his falling apart mess of napkins, fighting the urge to let my hand bump against his again, just to see if I can get that color to spread down his neck under his scarf.
“You didn’t get burned, did you?”
Mutely, he shakes his head before he does an honest-to-god, cute as hell doubletake, eyes snapping wide when he registers the coffee-drenched front of my tee. “Areyoualright?”
I won’t lie and say that the totally genuine concern in his voice doesn’t make my heart skip just the teeniest bit. Nor will I deny that I’mtotallyhoping that he’s checking out how the super thin material is now completely plastered against my chest and abs.
“Hazards of the job,” I wave his sweetness away with a flick of my wrist. “I don’t even feel it anymore.”
My skin, where the scalding coffee splattered across me smarts like hell, but it’s not gonna blister or anything like that, and besides, I’d be a total asshole if I whined about it. Something tells me this guy would actually feel bad about it. Like for alongtime.
My heart gives another little skip at the idea of him thinking about me after he walks out of here. The messy, I-don’t-even-know-how-sexy-I-am, brainy thing he has going on, combined with the innocent, shy way he can’t seem to figure out where to look when I’m talking, mixed up with the fact I can’t helpwondering if he’s as genuinely nice as he seems, has me more than a little intrigued.
You don’t know a thing about him. Just ‘cause he seems super sweet on the outside doesn’t mean shit.
Still, a little flirting is harmless enough, right? Nothing risky about that.
My eyes sweep up from the counter, over the kinda fuzzy, charcoal grey surface of his wool coat. When they find what I was hoping for, the effort it takes me to keep from smirking is honestly a little ridiculous.
“C’mere, sunshine,” I press up on my toes, resting my hips against the counter so I can lean the upper half of my body close enough to get a good fistful of peacoat, just beside the splattered, dripping mess of latte running down it.
His eyes fly open in such a startled, hilarious expression that I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. And yeah, that probably wasn’t the worst thing I could do in whatever game I’m apparently playing here ‘cause instantly his gaze drops to follow the gesture for half a second before he snaps it away, staring down instead at the place where I’m now dabbing the coffee off his coat.
“Good as new,” I murmur, notentirelyresponsible for the way my voice drops lower as I let go of his coat. Before he’s got the chance to step away, I might just brush my hand across the material once. You know, to make sure I really did get all the coffee off?
Even with how thick his coat is, I can feel the warmth of his body right through the fabric, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to let my grip linger there just a little longer. Instead, I swipe my rag across the counter, giving it a final check for any missed coffee splatters.
