Probably because of the pictures Dawn had sent, although those were mostly of flower arrangements and every cute dog in town.
Maybe I’d just seen hundreds of shots of the Oregon coast in my life and it all looked more or less the same.
Either way, I made my way to Main Street and smiled as I pulled up a little way down from what I knew was my sister’s florist, just as my phone went off.
Dawn: are you coming or not?
I might’ve told her that I’d literally just pulled up, but I’d spotted something next to the florist.
A bakery. A real small town bakery that’d probably been in the same family for a hundred years, not the kind of place that got pastry deliveries off the back of a long-haul truck like a gas station Starbucks did.
What better way to say hello than with baked goods?
3
XANDER
“…just saying, the best way to getoversomeone is to getunder—”
Dante stopped talking as the bell over the door tinkled and a tall, dark-haired man in a charcoal business suit cut like it’d been made for him and a grey-lavender sweater that made his equally lavender eyes practically glow stepped inside.
I almost dropped the tray of cinnamon rolls I’d been trying to slide into the display case while Dante had been trying to convince me to go to Faith, the local gay bar, with him tonight.
My mouth was hanging open.
“Hello,” Dante said, turning on the stranger, eyes gleaming.
Did this guy know he was stunning or did he just walk around oblivious to people swooning after him?
“Hi,” the stranger said, tongue darting out to wet his lips as he looked between us.
“Ignore him,” I said, jerking my head toward Dante and hoping that’d be enough to stop him horribly embarrassing me in front of a hot stranger, something I absolutely didn’t need right now. “What can I get you?”
“I smelled cinnamon and I haven’t eaten since yesterday,” the stranger said. “I would do almost anything for a cinnamon roll. Actually,” he said, “half a dozen.”
“Well,” I said, lifting the tray back onto the counter. “Saves me setting these out.”
“Am I causing trouble?” the stranger asked, shifting his weight. Adorably. “Because I could definitely not do that. Whatever’s easiest for you.”
“Oh no,” Dante responded before I could. “Trust me, you want these cinnamon rolls. Fights have broken out over them.”
“That was one time,” I said, transferring the rolls into the box I’d grabbed. “And I feel like there were other things going on there.”
“Well, Murielhadjust stolen Charlene’s husband,” Dante admitted. “But I dunno, I’d probably threaten to gouge someone’s eyes out over those cinnamon rolls too.”
The stranger’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline.
“You’re scaring my customer,” I said, sliding the box along the counter. “Who I will give a discount for putting up with you.”
Dante snorted. “Excuse you, I’m a relentless delight,” he said. “Are you a Capricorn?”
“Umm.” The stranger offered me his card just as the stupid machine decided to reset. Great. I’d been trying to rescue him from Dante, but now his whole experience of being in Otter Bay was going to be my weird best friend interrogating him. “My birthday is in September?”
“A Virgo,” Dante’s eyes lit up, and he turned the same look I remembered from last week on me.
When he’d been telling me how hot the sex would be with a Virgo.
“So close. But you do look like a Virgo. You’re definitely not a Libra.”
