I was nervous as hell to leave Penny up here alone and prayed he wouldn’t destroy anything of Lex’s. As I turned to leave once more, I came nose to nose with a woman. A beautiful, leggy woman who was walking around in one of Lex’s t-shirts.
Edit that. She was walking around in only one of Lex’s t-shirts. Her long, slender legs on display below the hem, which was only a couple of inches below her panty line.
And not only a woman… but the woman I had seen him with at Greico’s the other night.
12
Ronnie
I was speechless. I stood there stunned, not knowing what to say with the half-naked girl standing in Lex’s hallway who had clearly slept over last night.
Was this the damn emergency he had left our kiss for?
I needed to wrap my head around this. Lex had a woman sleeping over last night. This woman had slept in his bed the same night we had kissed at happy hour. The same night he had left me, claiming an emergency.
Something was weird. The woman smiled and popped a jaw-cracking yawn, covering her open mouth with the back of her hand before she jumped, startled, seeing me for the first time.
“Oh! Um… hi?” she said and seemed just as rattled as I was.
“Hi,” I said and gave a weak wave. Penny did not get the memo about the awkwardness and charged toward her, jumping up to say hello.
“Oof,” she grunted as he lunged into her. “Hello, big guy.”
“I-I’m sorry,” I said, tugging on Penny’s collar. “He’s not very well-mannered yet. Lex said he could hang out up here while I watched the café downstairs.”
Her eyes widened. “Tony’s not down there yet?” Her eyes darted to the clock and she muttered a curse, wincing as we both heard the shower running for the first time. “He’s only just getting in the shower now?” she groaned. “I knew it. I knew I couldn’t trust him to take the first shift.”
Something in her demeanor shifted and she held up a palm to me. “Okay, you go downstairs. I’ll be down there in a couple of minutes. Just give me a second to put on some clothes and run a brush through my hair.”
I did my best to smile at her even though my mind was reeling. Who the hell was Tony? Why were they both in Lex’s apartment? Oh, God. Was Lex polyamorous? Into ménage? Not that there was anything wrong with that, but it was so not me.
“Take your time,” I said, smiling—or maybe grimacing. To be honest, I had no idea what kind of face I was making at the moment. “Let me know if Penny is any trouble. I can come up and grab him.”
True to her word, the woman came downstairs in five minutes. I recognized another one of Lex’s t-shirts and it even looked like his jeans she was wearing. They were baggy and she had a black belt cinching them at her hips, with the Ramones t-shirt tucked in only in the front and the sleeves rolled up to her shoulders.
I ignored the painful pang in my chest at the sight of her in Lex’s clothes. Confusion fogged my brain. In the five minutes that she was changing, Latte Da had gone from dead to slammed. Which made sense. It was almost eight o’clock by now and all the rush hour folks were coming in to grab their java fixes and baked goods on the way to work.
“I’m Lana, by the way,” she said, giving me a dazzling smile and offering me her hand. I returned her smile and shook her hand. Firm grip. Good handshake.
“Ronnie,” I said. “Sorry to barge in on you upstairs.”
She waved me off and held up her phone. “I didn’t see the text from Lex until I started getting dressed. My husband is such an idiot sometimes.”
My blood went frosty in my veins. “Your… husband? Lex is your husband?”
She laughed, throwing her head back as she steamed some milk for a latte and I put a banana muffin into a bag for a customer. “No, my husband, Tony. Lex is one of our best friends and we knew he had to rush out of here in the morning, so we stayed over to help him run the café. Tony was supposed to get up at 6:45 and take over at 7:15. And since I helped Lex bake last night, I was going to sleep in and come down for rush hour at 8:00.” She rolled her eyes in spite of herself. “Fine job we did of that though, huh? I’m so not a morning person. When I woke up and wandered into the kitchen, I didn’t even realize Tony was still in the shower.”
Relief melted my muscles. I physically could feel my shoulders lower from my ears, relaxing my neck and back, and I rolled my head in a circle, releasing a sigh. I didn’t even care if she saw how obvious I was being. I moved to take the next person’s order. Black coffee—thank God. Those lattes and fancy drinks really slowed the queue down. I poured the cup of coffee nearly to the brim, swiped the guy’s credit card and gave him his receipt.
“You can run,” Lana said. “I know you probably have a job of your own to get to.”
Luckily, my gym was doing well enough that I had staff to run the desk, and I didn’t have any personal training clients until 11:00 a.m. But the Latte Da line was stretching out the door and I felt relieved that I had put Penny upstairs. I had no idea how he would have done in a large crowd like this, especially if he wasn’t able to see me through the group of people. “I can’t leave you with this huge line,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll run the register and do drip coffee orders and pastries if you handle the lattes and espresso drinks.”
“You’ve got a deal there.”
We managed a good rhythm between us, Lana and me. It took about fifteen minutes for us to get through the line. When it died down, I took a second to close my eyes and crack my neck to each side, finally feeling like I could relax.
That was until I heard my brother’s voice from over the register. “Did I miss some Tripp family announcement?” Cam asked. “Did you change careers? Because I’m pretty sure Mom would have put that in the family newsletter.” I glanced up, finding my oldest brother towering over me on the other side of the counter, grinning like an idiot. Lydia was beside him and smacked his arm.
“Ignore him,” she said, then scanned the room. “But where’s Lex?”
“He had some sort of emergency,” I said. “I’m helping out with the rush hour crowd and then Lana will take over.”
Lana waved from the espresso machine as Cam’s eyes darkened. “Why were you here to fill in?”
“Cam,” Lydia warned.
“What? She makes such a big deal about not eating pastries. Were you…” he faded off, his eyes drifting to the stairs that led to the apartment above the bakery. “Were you here… already?”
“Cam,” Lydia hissed and her eyes drifted down to where his daughter, Maddie was pressing her nose to the pastry glass.
“It’s just a question,” Cam said. “I’m allowed to ask a question, aren’t I?”
“Not when the question is none of your business and verging on overprotective big brother territory,” I snapped. He and Steve had always been protective of me, but ever since I was hospitalized in high school, their protectiveness had escalated to unhealthy levels. “But no. I was not here overnight. I came in for a coffee this morning,” I said, omitting the part where Lex baked me special goodies. “Now, there’s a line forming behind you. So, what can I get you? Everything else we can discuss another time.”
Lydia grimaced. “Well, we were uh, supposed to meet with Lex about wedding cake samples.” Oh shit. Lex was supposed to have a meeting today? With my brother? “But, it’s fine,” Lydia said, and I could see her squeezing Cam’s arm. “We can just reschedule.”
“Can we?” Cam said with a sigh. “It took us weeks to find the time this morning.”
“Cam, what do you want me to say?” I snapped, feeling suddenly defensive on Lex’s behalf. “The guy had an emergency. It happens. You of all people should be able to understand that.”
He sighed. “I do understand that.”
“It’s Maddie’s spring break,” Lydia said. “I’m sure we can find another day that works.”
At this point, Lana started paying attention and came over. “I can text him if you want.”
But even as she sai
d the words, it was clear her heart wasn’t in it. Not for the first time, curiosity piqued in me. What was he up to today? He said it was an emergency—and he certainly seemed nervous and jittery. But, he’d already mentioned that none of his family was here in the states. His sister—twin sister—still lived in England along with his parents.
A lump lodged in my throat. Was it his ex-girlfriend? Could they still be close even though I’d never heard him mention her before yesterday? I’d never seen him get close to anyone in this town in the two years he’d lived here. Hell, until I met Lana, I had thought my family and I might be his closest friends.
“No,” Cam said with a sigh. “We’ll text him later once he’s back.”
“Lana,” I said, as she handed two Americanos across the counter to customers. “This is my brother, Cam. His fiancé, Lydia. And his daughter, Maddie.”
She smiled and offered her hand to each of them. “It’s so nice to finally meet some of Lex’s other friends. My husband and I were beginning to worry he didn’t have any other than us.”
Lydia glanced briefly at me… just a quick flick of her fair eyes in my direction. “How long have you been friends?”
“Only about a year. He’s such a great guy.” Lana smiled, affection in her expression.
Cam grumbled, checking his cell phone “No offense to Lex, but if it was up to me, I’d just serve some lemon meringue pie at the wedding and be done with it.”
He softened the comment with a small smile directed at Lydia that, for reasons I did not want to know, caused a blush to sprout on the apples of her cheeks.
“Oh, gross,” I said. “Whatever the hell you two have done with lemon meringue pie, I want nothing to do with it. In fact, I think you may have ruined lemon meringue for me forever.”
Lana laughed behind me and I pointed at her. “Don’t egg him on!”
Lydia giggled and her palm brushed against Cam’s forearm as she buried her face into his bicep.
“What did you do with pie?” Maddie asked from below the counter, pushing onto her toes and peering at me.
I lifted a brow at Cam. “Yeah, Cam. What did you do with pie?”
His expression darkened at me briefly before he brushed his fingers through his daughter’s dark hair. “We ate it. Duh.”
“It doesn’t matter that neither of us wants cake,” Lydia said. “It’s a wedding. People expect a wedding cake. It’s tradition.”
“Do you not want cake because you don’t like it?”
Lydia and Cam both simultaneously pointed down at Maddie. “Only one of us in this family wants cake,” Cam said with a grin.
“You know,” Lana said, pouring herself a coffee and sipping it black. “Neither Tony or I have a sweet tooth either. And when we got married, we delegated the cake stuff to my sister. She went to the tasting, knowing what I like, and I sent her with a picture of the design I wanted. It took a huge task off my plate for something I didn’t really care too much about.”
“Some of us care, you know,” Maddie said. Despite the cheeky words, her tone was playful and she was grinning from ear to ear, her tongue pushing through the gap in her smile where she had lost a baby tooth last week.
Lydia’s eyes brightened and turned to me. “That’s an amazing idea,” she said. “Ronnie, could you? I mean, your gym is only a few doors down and Callie said you’re training Lex anyway. You could take Maddie for a couple of hours and the two of you could pick a cake for us.” She leaned in with a fake loud whisper, “But no Frozen themed cakes!”
“Aw, come on!” Maddie whined, still smiling.
Cam poked Maddie’s nose. “At your wedding someday, you can have an Elsa cake.”
She seemed to accept that answer, because she turned to me, clasping her hands and pleading. “Please, Aunt Ronnie?” Her big, brown eyes looked up at me in the exact way she knew would tug at my heart strings. She was worse than Penny upstairs.
Inwardly, I groaned. “Of course I can help out,” I said. “But Callie is way better at this stuff than me, you know.”
“She’s already helping me with centerpieces and flowers and seating arrangements,” Lydia said. “I’d feel bad adding yet another favor to her list.”
I forced a smile. “Okay, I’ll do it.” At the very least, it would put Lex and me in the same room again. Even if it was with Maddie.
Maddie jumped up and down. “Yay!”
“Can I get you something this morning before I take off?”
“Two coffees with room,” Lydia said.
“And a hot cocoa and chocolate chip muffin, please!” Maddie chirped.
Cam cleared his throat. “Little Bear… you can have one. Either the hot cocoa and we go get a real breakfast. Or you can have the chocolate chip muffin and a glass of milk.”
I smiled at my brother. He was such a damn good dad. Watching him with Maddie almost made me think I could do that, too. Almost.
To her credit, Maddie didn’t protest at all. She pushed her lips out in thought before saying, “Chocolate chip muffin and a milk, please.”
“Good choice,” Lana said and bounced back to pour the coffees while I grabbed a muffin out of the glass case.
“You’re lucky,” I said. “That’s our last one.”
After I handed them their treats and coffee, Lydia, Cam, and Maddie waved as they headed out the door, and a man came downstairs yawning, tucking his shirt into his jeans. “When the hell did Lex get a dog?” he asked, covering his yawn with the back of his hand.
“That’s my dog,” I said, waving.
He blinked at me a few times, clearly confused, before he looked at his wife.
“This is Ronnie,” she said. “And you owe her big time because she covered for us when you overslept this morning.” She swatted at his butt with the back of a spatula. “We had one job—to make life easier for Lex—and you failed miserably.”
“I couldn’t help it,” he said. “Lex’s bed is so comfortable.” He glanced at me, hitching his thumb over his shoulder toward the stairs. “Have you slept in that thing yet?”
“Um, no.” I felt my cheeks go hot and quickly ducked my head, hoping neither of them saw it.
“Hot damn. It was like sleeping on a cloud.”
“How was Penny?” I asked. “My dog. Was he being good?”
“He was awesome. I came out of the shower and he and Frost were curled up on the couch together.”
I knew Penny and Frost got along well, but hearing that sent tingles spiraling down my torso to my belly. Like somehow, if our pets got along, maybe Lex and I could potentially be together. I sighed and covered my smile with my palm.
“Babe, can you take over the register?” Lana asked. Though, it really wasn’t much of a question. “I’m sure Ronnie needs to get going.”
I glanced at my phone. I had some time before I needed to head out. But still, it would be nice to have a little downtime before I started my own work day.
“No problem,” Tony said, stepping beside me to the register, even though no one was waiting to order. Lana and I had handled the rush and now everyone seemed to be sitting quietly, enjoying their pastries and coffees.
“I’m just going to pour a coffee for the road,” I said, taking a paper cup. Surely, at the very least, Lex owed me a cup of joe. I pulled the pot of drip coffee off the warmer and barely got an inch poured before it was empty. “I’ll start another pot,” I said and crouched to where Lex had pre-ground coffee beans. The tub was empty and I groaned. Of course, when I wanted to get a cup of coffee, there was none to be had. Water, water everywhere with not a drop to drink.
“Empty?” Lana asked.
I nodded. “I’ll go grind some more for you. I think I saw a coffee grinder in the back.”
I slipped into the small area behind the café that was blocked off with a curtain. It was tiny, not well lit and utterly organized to a t, even though it was crammed with stuff. Not a spec of dirt or dust lived anywhere. Sure enough, in the back corner next to an outlet rested a
n industrial-sized coffee grinder. I vaguely recalled Lex grinding beans out front, though for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why. It was loud as hell and the café was currently full of customers sipping their coffee and enjoying a quiet morning before work. The last thing they probably wanted was the screeching sound of beans being chopped between blades.
Besides, there was an outlet back here. Why in the world wouldn’t he just use that one?
I plugged it in, opened the top and poured an entire bag of beans into the opening. I made sure the lid was secure and hit the button to start the grinding.
For one minute, the machine worked its magic and the scent of freshly ground Arabica filled the back room.
But just as quickly, I smelled smoke. And before I knew what was happening or could stop it, the outlet sparked. It popped, the sound loud and terrifying like a firecracker.
I screamed and out of instinct ducked, covering my head. A lot of good that did.
Tony came running in. “Holy shit!” he cried. When I looked up, peeking at him through my fingers, I saw the flames. In a matter of seconds, the wiring had lit up like a fourth of July show.
He grabbed a towel and smacked at the flames, and Lana came running in, too, with a cup of water. “No!” I stepped in front of her before she could toss the water on the fire and make everything ten times worse. “It’s an electrical fire. We need baking soda. Do you know where he keeps it?”
Lana’s eyes went wide, her face white as a sheet, but she nodded, ran back out to the front and returned with a giant box of baking powder.
Tony was still smacking the flames with a towel. I grabbed another one to wrap around the part of the cord not engulfed in flames and tugged the whole thing out of the wall. As long as the wire was still plugged in, the source of the heat and the fire would continue.
Sweet on You Page 10