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“But that’s what cinnamon does to me, and cinnamon is part of pumpkin spice and pumpkin desserts have pumpkin spice in them.”

She looks very pleased by all of that. “Wow, that sounds like it could be a problem. Should we make the dessert theme apple instead?”

I lower my voice. “You were being such a good girl earlier,” I say. “And now you’re just being naughty.”

Her grin grows. “No, I’m telling you what I want. That’s good, right?”

“So you do want me hard?”

And then, with that angel pendant settled against her sweet, creamy skin, her gaze drops to my mouth and then scans down my body before coming back to my eyes. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

And as she turns and starts sweeping away from me, I realize that Sutton Moore being naughty is very, very good.

And it is possible to regret and enjoy something all at the same time.

CHAPTER 15

SUTTON

Andi has the door to her art studio propped open, and I knock, but I can see that she’s welding and know she probably doesn’t hear me.

I step inside the space that, at the moment, is lit only by the sun streaming in through the high windows along the top of the four walls of the building that used to be some kind of small warehouse.

The walls are brick, the floor is concrete, and the ceiling, with exposed ducts and pipes, is twenty-five feet above us, making it a safe space for her to weld and chisel on huge slabs of stone.

She also got it for cheap because it’s haunted and the ghost—an old blacksmith whose business was in the building over a hundred years ago—has run every other business out within a year. But he, apparently, likes Andi. He hasn’t done anything to bother her or mess with her tools or the building since she bought it.

Andi draws and paints in a building behind her cottage, outside of town, but uses this industrial space for her larger, more aggressive work.

I think she likes it because it gives her an excuse to come into town even though she claims she’s trying to become a swamp witch. She says she wants to stay out in her witch hut by herself with no company except her black cat Merlin. But she’s in town at least four days a week, never passes up an invitation for girls’ night, and hasn’t missed a hockey game since Astrid took over the league.

In addition to her failed attempts to be a crabby introvert, her “witch hut” is a cute little cottage painted in pastels and decorated with some of the prettiest, girliest stuff I’ve ever seen. There are flowers everywhere—on blankets, on the chair upholstery, on the walls, painted (by hand, of course) onto the door frames, even on the toilet in the guest bathroom.

And she collects teapots. She must have a hundred. She put up shelves in her kitchen that now extend out into the living room to display them all.

For a witch, she sure loves pretty stuff. And she’s making a point to surround herself with things her ex-husband, Stephen the Dickhead, would hate and never let her buy.

I cross the room trying to get in her line of sight so as not to startle her while she has a welding torch in hand.

Her love for pastel and pretty things is an amusing contrast to how she looks right now.

She’s dressed in denim overalls and thick-soled black boots. Her long, wavy blond hair is tied up under a red bandana, and she has a welding face shield covering her face and throat, and thick work gloves on her hands.

She looks kick-ass, bending over some intricate twist of metal with a torch in hand.

I wave both arms, and she finally sees me, shutting off the torch as she straightens and pushes her shield up to the top of her head.

“Sutton, hey!” She greets me with a grin.

“I come bearing milkshakes.”

She sets the torch down and pulls off her gloves. She takes her helmet off and tosses it to one side. “Oh, boy. What happened?”

Yeah, I didn’t think she’d just accept it as a let’s hang out and chat offering. Milkshakes are serious stuff in our girl gang. They are not for casual, mid-afternoon visits. They are for big moments.

I head to the beat-up wooden bar and two stools she dragged in here for just such an occasion. Her cell phone, sunglasses, and car keys are resting on top.

“What do you mean?” I ask innocently, setting down the drink holder with the milkshakes and the paper bag from Perks and Rec before I climb up onto one of the stools.