Page 30 of Reckless

I nod once. “I’ll remember that.”

“You absolutely won’t.”

I chuckle, taking it from her. “No, I won’t.”

“You’ll come back in six months and ask for ‘that swirly one with the sugar.’ ”

“Probably.”

“I’ll still know which one you mean.”

I pay for the coffee and bun, take the plate she hands me, and move over to one of the smaller tables near the window while the rest of the club gradually settles into the easy rhythm it always seems to find.

Conversations overlap.

Someone laughs.

Deek is trying to convince Bear that calories consumed before ten in the morning don’t count.

Bear doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He simply reaches across the table, steals one of Deek’s sausage rolls, and takes a bite.

Deek stares at him. “I trusted you. You’re my father, for crying out loud, literally stealing from a baby!”

“Then don’t act like a damn baby.”

Everyone laughs as Deek scowls. “I was saving that.”

“You’ve got seven more.”

“I had seven more.”

Bear chews thoughtfully. “Problem solved.”

Nitro laughs so hard he nearly spills his coffee.

Even Sin’s mouth twitches around the rim of his cup, and across the room, Millie watches. For just a second she stops moving. She looks around the bakery, at the brothers filling almost every table, at Anchor carrying another tray out from the kitchen, and at Deek loudly accusing Bear of theft in a room full of witnesses who refuse to intervene.

And she smiles.

Not because business is good.

But because somewhere in the middle of all this noise, she realizes she isn’t doing opening day on her own.

Eventually, the brothers peel away one by one, engines rumbling to life as breakfast finally gives way to the rest of the day.

And I head in the opposite direction.

Penny’s florist shop sits two blocks north of the bakery, exactly where Millie wanted it. Close enough, her best friend was never more than a couple of minutes away if either of them needed coffee, advice, or someone to remind them to breathe.

Buckets of flowers spill onto the footpath beneath a hand-painted sign that’s seen enough summers to lose the argument with the sun years ago. The bell above the door chimes as I step inside, cool air replacing the Vegas heat almost immediately.

Penny looks up from the workbench and takes one look at me and smiles. “You must be Ghost?”

“Yeah.”

She juts her hip out, looking me up and down in a clearly checking-me-out kind of way. “I pictured you taller.”

“I’m not.”