Who the fuck has time for sleep?
I jack up the volume on my phone and scoop a tablespoon of instant coffee grounds into my mouth—washing the bitter, spiky granules down with a gulp of black, cold coffee. We don’t serve instant for the coffee shop. Instant coffee is disgusting.
But it serves a purpose. It’s effective—efficient. I love caffeine. Love it. The high, the rush, the feeling that I’m Wonder Woman’s long-lost cousin and there ain’t shit I can’t do.
I would mainline it, if that were actually a thing.
I would probably become a meth-head if it weren’t for the rotting-teeth, ruined-life, most-likely-dying-by-overdose elements of it all. I’m a high school senior, not an asshole.
After swallowing my nasty liquid-of-life, I get back into the song—shaking my hips and shoulders, flipping my mermaid multicolor-streaked blond hair back and forth. I spin on my toes, I twerk and shimmy, I may even leap like a ballerina—though I’ll deny it—all while filling the pie dishes on the counter with ooey-gooey, yummy, freshly sliced fruit and rolling out the balls of floured dough for the top layer of the two dozen pies I need to make before we open.
My mother’s pies—her recipes—they’re what Amelia’s is known for and the only reason we didn’t go under years ago. We used to need only a dozen, but when news of my sister’s romance with the Crown Prince of Wessco hit, the fangirls, royal-watchers, mildly interested passersby and psycho-stalkers came out of the woodwork . . . and right to our door.
Business is booming, which is a double-edged sword. Money’s a little less tight, but the workload has doubled, and with my sister gone, the workforce just got cut in half. More than half, actually—more like a third, because Olivia really ran the show. Up until recently, I was a total slacker. That’s why I was adamant she go to Wessco—why I swore I could rise to the occasion and handle things while she was gone.
I owed her and I knew it.
And if I’m going to actually keep up my end of the deal, I really need to move my ass with these pies.
I sprinkle some flour on the dough and roll it out with the heavy, wooden rolling pin. Once it’s the perfect size and thickness, I flip the rolling pin around and sing into the handle—American Idol style.
“Calling Gloriaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . .”
And then I turn around.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Without thinking, I bend my arm and throw the rolling pin like a tomahawk . . . straight at the head of the guy who’s standing just inside the kitchen door.
The guy I didn’t hear come in.
The guy who catches the hurling rolling pin without flinching—one-handed and cool as a gorgeous cucumber—just an inch from his perfect face.
He tilts his head to the left, looking around the rolling pin to meet my eyes with his soulful brown ones. “Nice toss.”
Logan St. James.
Bodyguard. Totally badass. Sexiest guy I have ever seen—and that includes books, movies and TV, foreign and domestic. He’s the perfect combo of boyishly could-go-to-my-school kind of handsome, mixed with dangerously hot and tantalizingly mysterious. If comic-book Superman, James Dean, Jason Bourne and some guy with the smoothest, most perfectly pitched, British-Scottish-esque, Wessconian-accented voice all melded together into one person, they would make Logan fucking St. James.
And I just tried to clock him with a baking tool—while wearing my Rick and Morty pajama short-shorts, a Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt I’ve had since I was eight and my SpongeBob SquarePants slippers.
And no bra.
Not that I have a whole lot going on upstairs, but still . . .
“Christ on a saltine!” I grasp at my chest like an old woman with a pacemaker.
Logan’s brow wrinkles. “Haven’t heard that one before.”
Oh fuck—did he see me dancing? Did he see me leap? God, let me die now.
I yank on my earbuds’ cord, popping them from my ears. “What the hell, dude?! Make some noise when you walk in—let a girl know she’s not alone. You could’ve given me a heart attack. And I could’ve killed you with my awesome ninja skills.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “No, you couldn’t.”
He sets the rolling pin down on the counter.
“I knocked on the kitchen door so I wouldn’t frighten you, but you were busy with your . . . performance.”
Blood and heat rush to my face. And I want to melt into the floor and then all the way down to the Earth’s core.
Logan points toward the front of the coffee shop. “The door wasn’t bolted. I thought Marty was going to replace the broken lock?”
Relieved to have a reason not to look at him, I turn around and get the lock set out of the drawer—still in the packaging. “He bought it, but we got swamped the other day and he didn’t have time to install it.”
Logan picks it up and turns it over in his hands. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Do you need a screwdriver?”
“No, I have tools in the car.”
I lean my elbow against the counter, looking up at him. Logan’s really tall. And not just because I’m a minute five foot one. He’s like, tall-tall. Long—like a sexy tree. And solid—broad across the chest in his black dress shirt. Strapping.
“You’re like a Boy Scout, huh?”
It’s my attempt at flirting—probably only slightly less effective than Dirty Dancing’s “I carried a watermelon.”
He does the mouth-quirk thing again.
“Not even close.”
There’s a bad-boy edge in the way he says it—a heavy hint of the forbidden—that gets my heart pounding and my jaw eager to drop.
To cover my reaction, I nod vigorously.
“Right, me neither . . . Never been a—”
Too vigorously.
So vigorously that my elbow slips in the flour on the counter and I almost knock myself unconscious. But Logan’s not only big and brawny—he’s quick. Fast enough to catch me by the arm and waist to steady me before I bash the side of my head against the butcher block.
“Are you all right, Ellie?”
He leans down, looking at me intently—a look I’ll see in my dreams tonight . . . assuming I can sleep. And, wow, Logan has great eyelashes. Thick and lengthy and midnight black. I bet they’re not the only part of him that’s thick and lengthy.
My gaze darts down to his promised land, where his pants are just tight enough to confirm my suspicions—this bodyguard may have a service revolver in his pocket, but he’s got a magnum in his pants.
Yum.
“Yeah, I’m good.” I sigh. “Just . . . you know . . . tired. But I’m cool . . . totally cool.”
And I shake it off, like I actually am.
He nods and steps away. “I’ll fix the lock now. And I’ll give you the key afterward. Keep it with you; don’t lose it. From now on, you lock the door behind you when you leave, and you keep it locked when you’re home by yourself. Understand?”
I nod again. Livvy must’ve been talking to him. It’s not my fault keys abandon me. I put them in a specific spot, so I’ll know where they are for later—and I swear to God, they sprout legs and run away.
Slippery, little Houdini bastards.