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“Same,” Eric said as he raised his cup and walked to one of the bistro tables by the large storefront window. This place sure was interesting. No, that wasn’t the word. This place just made him smile. And so did this drink. As he sipped, he let the tart apple flavor and caramel sweetness swirl in his mouth, wanting to savor every sip of this delicacy. When he saw Lucy in about an hour, he’d have to thank her for recommending this place.
Or maybe he’d thank her now. That was one thing he enjoyed most about this small town: the potential to see just about anyone—and everyone—with just a quick stop at the coffee shop.
Through the glass window, he watched Lucy hop off her four-wheeler and pull a few books from a compartment attached to the seat. She walked toward the park with what looked like a bag of something with the Mountain Brew logo on the side of it. He supposed a better man would have offered to take her some place to eat before their trip to the craft store tonight. But she’d seemed so uncomfortable when Stella had called it a date. He decided he’d better not. And now, here she was, about to eat pastries alone in the park on a bench.
Way to go, Eric.
“Do you need anything else, sir?” a worker asked as she wiped down the table next to him.
“I’m fine. Thanks,” he said with a nod and then picked up his cup. There was no sense in Lucy eating alone. Maybe he’d order her one of these drinks she loved so much and see if they had any of those pumpkin rolls left—he knew those were her favorite.
He was just about to walk to the counter to get her one when he noticed an older gentleman sit down on the concrete bench next to her. And as though she’d been expecting him, she handed him two of the books from her pile and opened the bag. The man grinned from ear to ear as he dipped his hand inside.
Eric had seen this man before, usually sitting at the edge of the park. He assumed he was homeless—definitely harmless—but you wouldn’t know it by the way most people crossed to the other side of the street when they passed him.
But not Lucy.
No, there she sat with a man most people paid no mind, offering him books and food with a familiarity that said this wasn’t the first time the two of them had met up. As the old man smiled at her, a warmth spread through Eric’s chest. Though he knew very little about Lucy, save for the hint from her cousin that she’d fallen on hard times recently, it was obvious she had a heart triple the size of the large pastry she pulled from her bag and broke off to share.
Unable to help himself, Eric steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and leaned closer to the window. He wanted to know more about this woman. And the longer he stared through the window, watching her pull her Kindle from her purse, the more things he wondered. Like, what kinds of treats did she buy at Mountain Brew? And how had she come to know the older gentleman? Like Eric, had she spent the last weekend binging the latest rom-com series by Kristin Canary?
The sound of coffee beans in a grinder snapped his attention from his daydream. And good thing—he had no business knowing this information. Two weeks, that was all he could get Nathan to agree to. Any more than that, he said, and they risked blowing their covers. And there was no way Nathan was letting that happen again. In fourteen more days, he was out of here. And whether they shared the same interests or similar titles on their TBR, it didn’t matter.
Eric looked down at his watch, noticing how much time he’d watched this beautiful scene play out before him. Enough time that he was due to meet Lucy at the craft store in fifteen minutes. He tossed back the rest of his drink and pushed back his chair, making a mental note to stop back here tomorrow. He was officially Mountain Brew’s biggest fan.
As he walked to the other end of town, toward the shopping plaza where he was about to meet Lucy, he realized he might have been her biggest fan too.
ChapterFive
Eric took just one step into Crafty Cathy’s before he got smacked in the face with all things fall. From the bold hues of the season on every floral arrangement to the various sizes of faux pumpkins and gourds—some of which were larger than his head—it was hard not to get wrapped up in the spirit of the season. Just like it was hard not to get wrapped up in his shopping partner. Because when he’d seen her stepping out of her car, he kinda got smacked in the face by all things Lucy too. Between her dark, tousled locks he itched to run his fingers through to the sweater that hugged her curves and made him wonder if it was as soft as it looked, he’d forgotten at least twice on the short walk from the coffeehouse to the store what they were even supposed to be doing here. He’d seen her moments ago but had no idea what she’d been hiding under her bulky coat that, lucky him, she’d left in her car. Like the Taylor Swift song he’d heard in the salon the other day, it seemed he was quite enchanted to be with her.
“Do we know what kind of theme we’re shooting for?” Lucy asked as they walked down an aisle with skeletons lined up shoulder to shoulder like they were in a kick line.
“Not really. Maybe if we walk around, something will give us an idea.” Plus, meandering through the aisles might make this task take a little longer, which was something he realized he wanted—more time with Lucy.
“I thought maybe…eh, never mind.” Her chin dipped to her chest, and her eyes fixed themselves to the floor.
He took a step toward her, entering her space, wondering if that was an okay thing to do but unable to pull himself away from the sweet vanilla scent that filled the air around her. “You can tell me,” he said, his voice soft and even.
“It’s stupid,” she said, shaking her head. But when her eyes met his, he nodded once. It was the best he could do to convey that, even if her idea wasn’t the best, he was the last person who would make her feel bad about it. There was a tentativeness about her, something he’d noticed at the salon. A shyness that stalked her, grounded her, kept her from being fully herself.
She twisted her lips as she looked at the decorations around them. “I just thought that…since it’s a salon…maybe we could play up that angle. Maybe create a haunted kind of salon…a salon for the undead or something? But I dunno. I’m no good at this.” Shrugging, she took a couple steps away from him, like she couldn’t bear the thought of him being within three feet of her when he gave the verdict of his thoughts on her proposition—which he thought was a great one.
“I love it,” he said matter-of-factly. Her head whipped in his direction, then tilted to the side like she was inspecting him, like maybe he wasn’t telling the truth.
“You do?” she asked, her voice soft, shaky, thinly laced with disbelief. But her eyes, rounded beneath slightly raised brows, begged him to tell her the truth—which he was. And he immediately hated anyone who had ever put any doubts into this woman’s head. He had a feeling the list was more than a few people long.
“Of course. I’ve gotta say, I’d been kicking around ideas all morning and couldn’t come up with a thing. You’re incredibly creative.”
She shook her head as she reached for a plastic skeleton. It had the crooked, maniacal smile of someone who might have met his demise by way of electrocution. “I’m definitely not.”
“Sure you are,” he boomed with maybe a little too much enthusiasm. But he couldn’t help it. He would have done anything to turn Lucy’s slackened mouth into a smile, he realized—even pretend he was trying out for the junior varsity pep club in the middle of Crafty Cathy’s, apparently. But he drew the line at a toe-jump, especially in these jeans that were a little tight in the rear. Nathan assured him they were in style, but Eric had his doubts. Although, the way they’d nearly incinerated under Lucy’s stare just now when he’d bent to snag something from the bottom shelf…now they were all he wanted to wear, despite their tight hug on his derriere.
“I’ll disagree with you on that. I have an unemployment status that says otherwise.” She ran her hand along the smooth plastic of the skeleton’s skull, and he got the feeling she was searching for something to train her eyes on instead of on him. “Decorating this window is a lot like designing.” She tilted her head up to him, and he fought to keep his hands firmly at his sides instead of sweeping the stray hair from her eyes like he wanted to. “As a designer, you make something creative out of nothing—kind of like what we’re doing with this display.”
“And that’s why you’re working at Hairy Stylez? Because you aren’t a designer anymore?”
Her shoulders raised and lowered with her breath as she bit her lower lip. “Yeah.” She punctuated the response with a nod that might as well have been a period. End of sentence. Nothing more to tell here. Except, there was, he thought as he watched her fiddle with the sleeves of her sweater. Her chin trembled ever so slightly that no one else probably would have noticed. But he had.
