“Yeah.” The bloke frowns and snaps his tongs:Yes or no?
“With raspberriesandcustard?”
“Yeah.” He still sounds bored.
“Wow, y’all’s zeppole is way fancier than the ones I’ve had before.”
“We’ll take a zeppole,” I interject with a chuckle.Y’all’s?Ryan’s not from the South. Is she?
“Zeppola,” he corrects, monotone. “That’s one.Zeppoleis multiple.”
“Yeah, all right. Thanks for the Italian lesson.” Fuck’s sake. You try to do something cute, and this is what you get for your troubles. “I tell you what. Give me a half-dozen box and a couple of the pistachio pastries.”What a miserable fecker.Me, not him. It’s not like I was expecting cartwheels, but I wanted this to go better than it has.I’m a fucking try-hard.
We move down the counter to pay and wait for our coffees. I glance down at a tug on my sleeve.
“Thank you.”
My heart lifts a good inch from its cavity. “It’s just breakfast,” I murmur, all pleased anyway.
“Not for breakfast. Thanks for remembering.”
“I don’t know if anyone has ever told you,” I say, pressing my thumb to her chin. “You’re kind of hard to forget.”
Chapter 22
Matt
“Look at that,” I say as we get back to the car. “Not a parking ticket in sight.”
“Okay, smart-ass.” She pulls an unimpressed face. “So you got lucky.”
“I told you I was feeling lucky. In fact, I’m always lucky.”
Call me a romantic, but her hand moves very slightly, almost as though she’s about to touch her stomach. She doesn’t follow through, because that would be too revealing. Instead, she sends me a look:You’re crazy.
Maybe I’m crazy about you.“I wonder if ...”
“Where are you going?” Her face is an absolute picture as I begin to wander up the driveway of the house I’ve parked in front of. Large, detached, with a Regency-period facade. Picture-box perfect, really.
“I’m just gonna have a look.”
“You can’t—that’s trespassing. It’s someone’s property! Matt, seriously,” she hisses as I saunter away. “Come back!”
“In a minute.”
“If you don’t come back here, I swear I’ll ...”
I halt in my steps, feeling a slow smile spreading across my face. “Make it worth my while?”
“Urgh!” She crosses her arms. “I won’t call emergency services when you get bitten by a big-ass guard dog.”
“To be fair, it does look like the kind of place that should have security.” I glance up at the camera in the roofline. Then give it a wave. “Oh, look—it has.”
“Matt!” she kind of growls this time. Like an annoyed Chihuahua.
Because I don’t want to stress her out too much, I pull a key fob out of my pocket. “Who knew you were such a little Goody Two-shoes?”
“There’s nothing wrong with following rules,” she retorts pertly. “Rules are created for reasons. Mostly for reasons like you.” But then her mouth clamps shut as the security gate begins to close between us. Then open again almost immediately. “You live here?” she accuses.
