He looks adorable.
He looked adorable when he first walked into the bakery, a little tired, and a little disheveled, which was a nice change after the perfectly put-together man I spent time with at Thanksgiving.
This Everett reminds me more of the man I woke up next to after Halloween. He’d been polished and perfect in the bar, but after our night together, his hair had been mussed, he had stubble on his jaw, and lying in nothing but a pair of boxers amongst rumpled sheets, he looked nicely, sexily tousled.
Now he’s wearing khakis and tennis shoes with a long-sleeved Henley and has that same next-morning scruff on his face, and looks like he’s run his hand through his hair multiple times.
And he looks very…content.
Yep, that was how he’d looked that morning after, too.
That was probably part of the heart-stomach-flipping thing.
He and Graham were later than expected. They’d had a couple of intense days in New Mexico, where they’d been meeting with some farmers about converting their farms into green-energy-powered indoor farms. Apparently, one farm isespecially interested and could be the key to convincing the others. I’m dying to know how Everett feels about how everything went. I’m not officially an employee for a few more days, but I want to know it all.
He doesn’t look like he wants to talk about farms right now, though.
At the moment, along with that general tiredness, he has a soft smile on his face that makes me want to smile back. And hug him. Not even naked hugging. Well, the naked-hugging urge is always right there, just below the surface, but I just want to squeeze him too.
He’s enjoyed his time in my mother’s bakery with these people who are family to me.
So he only did a dozen cookies and cupcakes. He was still helpful. And more than that, I’m glad he’s here. That he’s with people who all welcome him, appreciate him, and make him feel comfortable and accepted.
“Well, I guess that means that we’re going to have to go to the Come Again tonight,” I say with a fake sigh. “You’ll have to meet people there.”
Mia laughs as she steps around us. “Yeah, because there was no chance you were going to end up there tonight anyway.”
Everett moves closer to me. We’re not alone. We’re just outside the swinging door to the kitchen, and the entire bakery can see us. But no one else can hear us, and it feels like there’s a little bubble around us for a moment.
“The Come Again is—” I start.
“I missed you.”
He doesn’t just interrupt me. He actually makes me suck in a quick breath.
He quirks an eyebrow. “You’re surprised?”
“Of course not,” I say. “I’m a fucking delight.”
But the truth is, I am surprised. At least that he would just blurt it out like that. We haven’t seen each other in a month. We haven’t texted or called. We are not dating. We don’t even know each other that well. And I have flat-out told him that we can’t actually get involved.
“You really are,” he says, sincerely, even though I was teasing.
I swallow hard. “How many cookies did you sneak back there? Is this a sugar rush or something?”
He lifts a hand and brushes his index finger over my cheek. He holds up a little streak of white icing. “When it takes you an hour to frost six cookies, you can’t risk eating one of them. Not to mention more than one. Definitely not a sugar rush.”
It’s December twenty-third, and when I said goodbye to him on November twenty-fifth, I really thought that this would be enough time to prepare to see him again and just be his friend.
I was wrong.
“There’s one more shift of kids coming in for Christmas camp,” I say. “Then we can head up to the house. Mom will have dinner and everything, and then we can go out to the bar. There really are a few people I think you should meet.”
“Whatever you say,” he tells me.
I decide not to try to flirt with him or not flirt with him any further. I just lead him out from behind the front counter.
“So, your brother mentioned Christmas camp, but he never explained it.”
