Page 1 of Soft Serve

Chapter 1

Paloma

The bell over the door rings like it always does, sharp, cheerful, and completely oblivious to the fact that I've been on my feet since five this morning. My lower back is staging a quiet protest, and the honey peach base I've been nursing for the last hour still isn't sitting right.

I don't look up. I don’t need to. I know that Rose is out front, and she will serve whoever walks in. I don’t want to lose my concentration on the honey peach base.

"Rosie," I call out, "If that's the Hendersons again asking about a custom order for the reunion, tell them I need two weeks' notice, not two days."

"It's not the Hendersons," Rosie calls back, and there's something in her voice I don't like. It’s not her normal voice; it has a careful quality. It’s what she uses when she's trying not to react to something and failing completely.

I scrape my spoon along the steel rim of the vat, slow and deliberate, and keep working.

The shop goes quiet.

Not slow-afternoon quiet, not we're-between-the-lunch-and-after-school-rush quiet. It’s as if it’s a loaded quiet that only happens when something has walked in and rearranged the air without asking permission.

My shoulders tighten before I've even processed why.

"Paloma." Rosie again, more careful this time. "You're going to want to come out here."

I set the spoon down, wipe my hands on my apron, and take exactly one breath to prepare myself for whatever fresh complication July has decided to deliver.

Then I push through the door to the front. He's standing just inside Soft Serve, one hand resting loosely at his side, the other holding nothing. He doesn’t have a briefcase, no phone, or any prop to hide behind. He’s just standing there like he arrived with all the time in the world and has decided to spend some of it here.

He’s tall, broad across the shoulders in a way that a well-cut shirt tries to understate and fails. His dark hair, touched silver at the temples, gives me silver fox vibes. I don’t know where that came from, and now I can’t lose the thought. He is neat without being precious about it, the kind of neat that suggests discipline rather than vanity. His clothes don't announce themselves; there’s no logo, no flash, nothing that screams money.

They hum it, though. Quiet and confident, like he's never once needed to prove a thing.

And his eyes, they find me the moment I clear the doorway, they settle with a kind of purpose that makes something low and traitorous shift in my stomach, and I do not have the time or the patience for that today. So, who is he, and what is he doing in Soft Serve?

"Can I help you?" I ask because it's either that or stare back at him, and I refuse to give him the satisfaction.

"I hope so," he says.

His voice is low. He is definitely accustomed to rooms going quiet when he speaks and has long since stopped noticing.

I cross my arms and wait.

He looks around the shop slowly, and I watch him do it. I watch the way his gaze moves over the hand-lettered chalkboard menu, the worn wooden counter my grandmother refinished three times, and the mismatched chairs that started as an accident and became a signature. He's not assessing it the way a customer does, tallying flavors and prices. He's reading it and taking stock of something.

It prickles, and I don’t like it.

"Nice place," he says, and it doesn't sound like small talk.

"It is," I agree. "Are you here for ice cream or are you here to compliment my furniture?"

That gets a reaction, the faintest lift at one corner of his mouth, controlled before it can become a smile.

"Both, potentially," he says. "But I'll start with a single scoop of whatever you'd recommend."

I hold his gaze for a beat longer than strictly necessary, then turn to the case. "Roasted honey peach is what I've been working on this morning."

"Then that."

I scoop it cleanly, set it on the cone, and slide it across the counter. He takes it without fumbling, which shouldn't be noteworthy but somehow is, and takes his time with the first taste.

His expression shifts. It’s not dramatic. It’s just a small, genuine thing that moves through his eyes before he catches it.