Just like I’d hoped, that blush of his has creptallthe way down to where it disappears under his greeny brown scarf, which, by the way,could notclash more with his brown-y, beigey yellow sweater peeking out beneath. Somehow, his mismatched clothes only add to his totally oblivious sexiness.
The man clearly has no idea that he’s a walking snack.
Way better to focus on that than the weird andtotallyunsafe fact that there’s something almost hypnotically soothing and warm feeling about his grey-blue eyes and soft, low voice.
In the year since getting the hell away from Tucson and all the shit that happened there, I’ve seen my fair share of sexy guys. Seen them. Flirted with them. Messed around with a handful, had sex (strictly of the one-night stand variety) with a few.
Never anything more than that though, and never with anyone who wanted more than that.
No information exchanged, no second dates or let’s-get-to-know-each-other. Nothing intimate or real.
I’m not going down that road again. Ever. Apparently, I’ve gotta learn everything by fucking it (or myself) up the first time around, but once I do, I never make the same mistake twice. Falling for Josh was the biggest mistake of my mistake-filled life, and out of sheer self-preservation, I intend to keep it that way.
“How about a new latte for you?”
Cute Latte Guy looks as mildly startled by my abrupt question as I feel at asking it. I don’t regret it though. It’sdefinitelytime to get things moving here.
Time to shut down whatever this tension between the two of us is.
“Um,” is his eloquent answer, and even though I’m not sureI really want this weirdly magneticthingthat seems to be happening here, there’s no denying that I love the fact that he’s all ruffled and wide-eyed over how I just got in his space.
“You’ve got it,” I grin, tossing him an overblown wink as I spin away from him, back to the espresso machine.
And if I’m hoping like hell that he’s watching the way I bend over—just a teensy bit more than strictly necessary—to grab the carton of soy milk from the minifridge, that really isn’t anyone’s business besides my own.
5
Tristan
The rest of my shiftdrags. Okay, not entirely true. The rest of my shiftafterCute Latte Guy leaves drags.
Before he left, I may or may not have occupied myself by sneaking peeks at him between the not so sneaky glances he tried to steal in my direction from over the edge of the laptop he’d pulled from his messenger bag.
It was all purely for the sake of entertainment, of course. Nothing more than that.
Unlike a lot of the other places I’ve worked, Upshot isn’t a revolving door of busy customers wanting to just grab a drink and get on to whatever they have next in their day. I’ve gotta say, I was totally loving the fact that, far from a line out the door making me work my ass off every second, the vibe here is so low key and slow that I actually have time to think between orders.
Or, Iwasloving it until Cute Latte Guy came shambling up to the counter and threw everything off with whatever it is that makes him so damn tempting. Now, I wish like hell that there were customers lined up around the fucking block.
Reagan, the girl who’s been training me today, is no help whatsoever. When it comes to keeping me distracted from mypesky thoughts about a certain customer with a hella cute blush and mussed up hair the color of sunshine, I mean.
Don’t get me wrong though. Reagan’s a total sweetheart and was great about talking me through the shop routines without hovering when the two of us got started. Apart from being way less busy, this place really isn’t all that different from the other coffee shops I’ve worked in, so there wasn’t much for her to show me.
“You mind if I read between orders?” she’d asked me an hour or so after she’d run out of items on her training spiel list. “This book I just started issoofreakingamazing, and I just never get a chance to read once I’m home.”
When I’d told her to go for it, she’d squealed and ducked right around the corner to where she’d stashed her bag, to grab a bedazzled Kindle. After that, except for when a customer needed something, she had her eyes glued to that thing right up until closing.
I can’t deny that I kinda wish she hadn’t. The need for distraction from my weirdly one-track thoughts about that warm, fuzzy sorta feeling I definitely shouldn’t have gotten when Cute Latte Guy fixed those soft grey-blues on me aside, I honestly just would have liked to get to know Reagan a bit. She seems super cool; quirky and funny and just like the kind of person I’d have totally hung out with…before.
Not that I’m holding her focus on her book against her. I wouldn’t with anyone, especially given that I’m totally the same when I get going on a painting, like I just want to block out the rest of the world andpaint. On top of that, it kinda sounds like Reagan deserves it a little extra.
Okay, not just kind of.
One of the first things she’d told me was that she’s got a four-year-old kid, and that her boyfriend is super busy, so he isn’t around much. Not gonna lie—hearing that shit hadseriouslyput up my hackles, especially considering that the next thing she told me is that she’s five months pregnant.
The picture I’d been building in my head of her boyfriend was all kindsof nasty until Reagan had gone on to tell me that the reason he’s so busy is that he’s just started his clinicals for nursing schoolandhe’s still working full time as a medical assistant until he graduates. Then she had to go and get all hearty-eyed and pull out her phone to show me half a dozen pics of her hella sweet little family, boyfriend included.
So yeah, that just left me feeling like a total douche for making assumptions.
