If there’s one thing I can count on in life, it’s that a little manual labor will clear my head. That's what I've spent my days up here doing over the past few months – making this cabin livable and clearing my head. An hour of splitting logs outside of the house today should have taken the edge off, but it hasn’t. An afternoon of digging fence posts in the sun didn’t do much to help that either.
The way that girl at the general store looked at me yesterday the judgment in her eyes when she smelled the bourbon in my coffee has grated on me all damn day. It's the kind of look people used to give my father, and it's the reason I stay in control of myself. The bourbon in the coffee was all Bud's doing. I went to the bar earlier to see the old man who owns it and before I knew it, he was ruining my iced coffee.
I've never much given a shit about what anyone thinks (growing up in a family of pariahs in a small town will take that right out of you) but the way this girl looked at me back there got to me. I don't even know her name, and she's taking up residence in my brain like she owns the place.
So I tried to shake it off by splitting logs and digging fence posts. Women don't get under my skin, and I don't care what some uppity PTA mom thinks about me, especially a huffy, sanctimonious PTA mom — even if that huffy, sanctimonious PTA mom had the nicest rack I’ve ever seen. She stood in front of me, nostrils flaring, looking up at me with wide eyes like she was daring me to kiss her. Her lips were slightly parted, and all I could think about was bringing my mouth down on hers.
Fuck that.
With all those juice boxes she was buying, she probably has seven kids. And I don't like kids. I'm not like my brother Luke, who finds some chick and suddenly decides he’s a family man, complete with a damn baby to take care of. Granted, his girl Autumn is pretty decent – after all, she did shoot that crooked son-of-a-bitch Jed Easton, and she owns a cider distillery. Even so, family life is Luke’s thing. I might be closer to Luke than to my other brothers, but I’m not like Luke and I never will be.
Damn it. Closed.
The general store’s hours seem to be whenever the hell Connie feels like working. My coffeemaker broke this morning and I need a new one. I haven’t had near enough coffee today to function, and apparently expecting the general store to be open during normal business hours is just too much.
Behind me, a woman clucks her tongue. “Looks like Connie up and left,” she complains. “I needed milk.”
“I needed coffee,” I grumble. I decide to take my miserable ass over to Luke and Autumn’s place and scrounge up some coffee and food.
“That new coffee shop is pretty good,” the woman says. “I heard it is, anyway. Haven’t been in there myself. I heard the woman who owns it was married to — ”
I put up my hand, grumbling, "Thanks," before walking away. People in this town and their gossip annoy the hell out of me. I don’t need to hear the damn life story of the coffee shop owner.
The store is on the main street that runs through town, nestled between a shop selling country-style house décor and a shoe store. When I look up at the sign, a white wooden antique thing with pink scrolled letters that spell out Cupcakes and Cappuccino, I groan. This is definitely not my kind of place. I almost turn around, except coffee is coffee, right? And I’m desperate.
The inside of the store is thankfully not as girly as the sign outside would have suggested. I half-expected the place to be done in pink and polka-dots and ruffles. Instead, it looks more like a beach cottage than anything else with grey plank flooring and white tables and light streaming through the large windows.
And her. The girl I spilled coffee on at the general store a few days ago.
She's standing at a table wearing an apron over a t-shirt and jeans, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail high on her head, the same as it was when I saw her at the general store. She doesn't look like she's wearing a lick of makeup except for some kind of gloss on her lips that makes them pouty as hell.
She's waiting on two guys at a table. One says something and leers at her while the other guy laughs. A flush creeps up her neck to her face, and then her face colors red. When she turns around, the guy who talked reaches up and grabs hold of the apron string that dangles over her perfect ass, and the apron unties, falling from her waist.
She whirls around with fire in her eyes.
I don’t know why I do what I do next. I don’t even think before I do it. I walk across the room, sliding my arm around her back and pulling her against me before she can react.