Best Served Cold

by Emma Hart

  “Wanna get some coffee first?” He looked over at me. “I didn’t have any yet.”

  “Sure. Can we get breakfast, too?”

  “Fine, but I’m not splitting the pastries in two just because you can’t decide. It doesn’t work like that anymore.”

  I poked my tongue out at him. “Then I’ll have two pastries. I don’t have anyone to watch the size of my ass for anyone anymore.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your ass.”

  “Have you been looking?”

  “Have you ever seen your ass? You’re damn right I’ve been looking.”

  I turned and blinked at him. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

  He shrugged and pulled into the parking lot I always parked in. “You don’t have to. I know damn well you were looking at mine yesterday when I was steaming that wallpaper.”

  “I was not!” My cheeks burned because, well, I had been.

  “You looked at me like you’d never seen such a fine specimen of a man.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, ready to rip him a new asshole, but the twitch of his lips stopped me.

  He was screwing with me.

  He was pushing my buttons to get a reaction out of me.

  I smiled my sweetest fake smile and unbuckled my seatbelt. “I’m not falling for that.”

  “Falling for what?”

  “You. Trying to get under my skin. You might be helping me because you want to, but we both know it’s because you feel bad about breaking my toe.”

  “Again, you broke your toe.”

  “Again, you—” I stopped and slammed the car door shut. “Nope. Still not doing it. I’m not letting you get to me that way. Nice try.”

  I spun away from him as he laughed. My attempt to stomp off was thwarted somewhat by my inability to actually stomp. I couldn’t even step, but I added a huff as he caught up with me for good measure.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Chase fell into step beside me. A very slow step.

  “I’d believe you if you didn’t sound like you weren’t trying to laugh.”

  At that, he let the laugh go. “It’s not my fault you’re so easy to wind up. You’re like a match. One strike and you explode.”

  “Are you saying I have a bad temper?”

  “I’m saying you’re easy to wind up. Take from that what you will.” He shrugged. “You’re the one putting words in my mouth.”

  “I’m not putting anything in your mouth.”

  “You used to,” he replied with a smirk.

  I smacked his arm, willing my cheeks not to flush. “You’re painting my walls. I don’t want to hear any of that shit.”

  “I’m painting your cheeks red is what I’m doing.” He snorted and held open the door to the café.

  My nostrils flared in annoyance, but he was right. Despite my inner plea, my cheeks were burning, and not from the hot sun.

  I had once put things in his mouth.

  It wasn’t my fault.

  He’d always been wicked with his tongue. It was rude not to sit on his face.

  I coughed and pushed that thought to the back of my mind.

  Note to self: reopen the store as soon as possible and avoid Chase at all costs.

  “What’d you do, honey?” Concern marred Jenna’s features as I limped to the counter.

  “Dickhead over here broke my toe.” I pointed at Chase.

  She did a double-take. “I didn’t know you were back together.”

  My eyes widened. “We’re not!” I said a little too loudly right as Chase shook his head with his own denial.

  Jenna’s sharp eyes flickered between us. “All right. If you say so.”

  I snapped my jaw shut. “We’re not back together. I’d rather walk over hot coals on my hands,” I ground out.

  Chase shrugged. “I’d skip the hot coals, but the sentiment is the same.”

  “Ooookay.” Jenna smirked. “What can I get for you both?”

  “I’ll have my usual, a cream cheese bagel, and a cinnamon roll, please.” I pulled out a chair and took a seat.

  “Chase?”

  “Coffee and the same. Thanks, Jenna.”

  She raised her eyebrows at that, but when he shrugged, she turned and went back to work. “How are the renovations going, Rae, honey?”

  “Well until he broke my toe. He’s painting for me today to apologize.”

  “I thought you two didn’t talk.”

  “We didn’t until he started annoying the crap out of me.”

  “Then I broke her toe and here I am, torturing myself with her delightful, happy company,” Chase continued.

  I flipped him the bird a little too enthusiastically.

  “See?” he said to Jenna when she set the coffees on the counter. “She’s a little ray of sunshine walking around town.”

  “I might not be able to walk, but I can still throw things,” I warned him.

  Chase snorted and handed Jenna enough money to cover his order. “Yeah, but you have the aim of a drunken squirrel. I’m not exactly terrified.”

  I hauled myself up and, glaring at him, handed Jenna a ten from my back pocket. “I don’t need an aim if I use a frying pan.”

  Jenna handed us both our change and slid the bagged food toward us. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were in denial.”

  “About what? How orange isn’t my color so I shouldn’t murder him in my sleep?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Scoot, before you scare off my customers.”

  Chase looked around. “We’re the only ones in here.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “She might have a bad aim, honey, but I played softball in high school. Don’t play with me.”

  I laughed and limped toward the door. “Checkmate.”

  “That’d be more effective if you weren’t walking like you had one leg shorter than the other,” Chase said, following me.

  “I take it back,” Jenna said. “I totally get the hot coals comment.”

  That cut Chase’s laughter off like she’d sliced through it with a knife. His immediate silence sent Jenna into peals of giggles, and I chuckled to myself as I hobbled onto the sidewalk.

  “That woman,” he muttered, joining me.

  “She’s got your number. A bit like I have.”

  “You’re not even close to having my number.” He slid his gaze to me for a brief second. “You might like to think you have, but you’re wrong.”

  I snorted, tucking my food between my body and my arm so I could get my keys. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “I’ve got yours, though.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I’ve got your keys.” He stepped in front of me and unlocked the door.

  I glared at the back of his head and followed him inside. I beelined for the window seat where I carefully slid my flip-flop off and rested my foot on it.

  “Where am I supposed to sit?” Chase looked at me.

  “The floor’s clean,” I offered. “If you hadn’t broken my toe…”

  “Yeah yeah, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.” He shook his head. “Whatever you say.”

  I opened the paper bag containing my bagel and bit into the roll. I sent a shrug his way as I ate. It was true, and he knew it. “Maybe now you’ve learned not to eavesdrop on people’s conversations, especially your ex-girlfriend’s.”

  “I’d love to say yes, but…nah.” He leaned against the counter and picked up his coffee, his old denim shorts tightening over his thighs. “Not gonna lie, you were being nice. I was almost expecting you to say you’d come to your senses about breaking up with me after all this time.”

  My mouth was full of food, so instead of justifying that with a response, I pulled my phone out of my purse and opened Spotify.

  Seconds later, the opening beat to Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” burst out of the little speaker.

  Chase frowned, pausing with the lid of his cup against his lips. His g
aze was fixed on my phone until the chorus hit, and then he lowered his cup, pinching the top of his nose. A tiny smile played on his lips.

  “Really?” he asked. “You had to use a song for that?”

  I raised my bagel in explanation, still chewing. I even added a nod just in case he wasn’t totally clear on that.

  Lord knew he hadn’t taken the hint a couple days ago, so I didn’t expect him to understand that today.

  Instead of the snarky comment I expected, he simply rolled his eyes and sipped his coffee. “Hollywood called. They want their drama back.”

  There it was.

  I swallowed the bagel and said, “High school called. They want their jerk quarterback back.”

  Chase choked on his coffee. “I wasn’t a jerk.”

  “I can tell you I’m not a moody bitch, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

  “All right,” he said slowly. “Maybe I was a bit of a jerk, but that didn’t stop you having a crush on me.”

  “Riiiiight.” I drew the word right out and put down my bagel. “I never had a crush on you in high school. I seem to remember you asking me out several times over like six years before I finally took pity on you and said yes.”

  He barked out a huge laugh. “Took pity on me? Your brain must stink with all that bullshit inside it.”

  “I totally took pity on you!” I pointed at him. “I rejected you like four times in high school because you were a jerk. When you asked me out on my twenty-first birthday, I felt bad for you and said yes.”

  “Yeah, you felt so bad you didn’t leave my apartment until the next morning.”

  “I—” did, in fact, stay the night.

  His grin was lopsided. “What’s up, Rae? Don’t have a comeback for that one?”

  Fuck it, I didn’t.

  Where did he get off being right? That wasn’t how society worked. Everyone knew the woman was always right.

  My toe had me off my game. That was my excuse, and I was sticking to it. Like glue.

  “Whatever,” I said. “I will never consider for a second that I made a mistake breaking up with you.”

  “Really?”

  I pointed toward the wall that separated our stores. “Really.”

  His eyes met mine. His eyes were darker than usual, but they still held my gaze with an intensity that sent a shiver down my spine. He didn’t look away from me as he sipped his coffee.

  “Really,” he said flatly. “We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see?” My eyebrows shot up. “What does that mean?”

  He put his coffee down and walked over to the door. “Whatever I want it to mean.”

  “Don’t you walk away from me in the middle of a conversation!”

  He grinned, and did just that, leaving the store and turning in the direction of the parking lot.

  I glared at him as he walked past the window.

  Jerk.

  CHAPTER EIGHT – RAELYNN

  My frustration was like a little gremlin that had taken up residence inside me. Don’t feed the gremlins and all that.

  Fortunately, that was a rule Chase seemed to be following. We hadn’t spoken for two hours except for me asking for more paint in my tray.

  It wasn’t the most elegant paint job I’d ever done. But, hey, I was sitting on a stool with my foot on another and an awkwardly long paint roller.

  And this silence fitted me just fine.

  That’s what I told myself. I’d have given anything for this silence just a few days ago. For him to fuck off and leave me alone, but now he was talking to me and seemingly feeling indebted to me for hurting me, the silence was horrible.

  It was awkward and uncomfortable. We had too much history between us, and I hated it. We’d known each other since high school, and our earlier conversation hadn’t been wrong.

  He had asked me out several times in his senior year and my sophomore one. I’d said no because I wanted to focus on my education. I was that weird kid who was too “pretty” to be a nerd, but too “studious” to be a popular princess, at least by societal norms. I hovered in the middle, but I’d taken the quiet way through school.

  I needed it because I knew Best Served Cold would one day be mine. If I didn’t get the grades, I wouldn’t get into college, and I wouldn’t know how business worked. There was only so much my grandparents could teach me, and I’d always wanted the degree.

  It shut people up when they came around here to try to buy it off the “young, naïve owner.”

  I’d always turned Chase down, not because I didn’t fancy him—I did—but because I knew he’d be a distraction. I’d escaped when I’d gone to college, but almost as soon as I’d come home without education for an excuse, he’d cornered me at my birthday party and said the magic words.

  “Come on, Rae. You don’t have an excuse anymore. Go out with me. Just once. What do you have to lose?”

  Of course, if I’d known back then that two years later my life would flip upside down, I’d have said no. I never thought we’d ever be anything serious. He’d never had a relationship longer than four weeks, and I don’t even think they were relationships in the traditional sense.

  More like fuck buddies.

  I thought it’d be that for us. I was wrong, and I’d fallen in love with him in a heartbeat. Despite his asshole persona and ability to keep up with my smart mouth, he was charming and thoughtful and sweet.

  When my aunt had first gotten sick, he stopped by her place three times a week with soup, and he brought flowers once a week. He used to hang out with my grandpa in the garage getting his hands dirty on whatever project he was working on at the time. Grandma loved him and sent him home with leftovers whenever she could after he got his own place.

  He once told her that he was going to start paying her for them because he didn’t have to grocery shop anymore. In response, she told him he knew where the mop was because the mudroom needed a clean.

  He’d laughed—and mopped the floor.

  I paused and smiled at the wall.

  Of course, then everything had changed. My parents—who were running the store at that time—announced they were done here and wanted to move to Michigan to be closer to my dad’s parents because my grandma there was really sick. She recovered, but they never came home.

  The same month, my aunt took a turn for the worse, and my grandparents informed me the store was now mine.

  In hindsight, I could have handled things better. I could have told Chase I needed a break to handle the upheavals in my life. I could have talked to him more. I could have not burned that bridge, but emotion was a funny thing.

  Emotion controlled you in ways you didn’t understand. Instead of being rational, I freaked out. I put all my energy into running the store, ignoring the fact my parents had left permanently, and my favorite aunt was dying any day. I ignored him until I finally broke up with him, and the rest is history.

  When I laid all my thoughts out, it wasn’t a surprise he’d opened the store next door. That was his revenge.

  I might have done the same.

  Hell, I was. I was redoing this store to shove him out of business, and here he was, helping me. This was my revenge for his revenge, and he was actively taking part in it without knowing why it was happening.

  I should have handled things better. I hadn’t been sixteen. I’d been twenty-three.

  And, even after I’d hurt him, he’d still tried to be nice to me.

  And I’d been nothing but a raging bitch to him.

  “You’re not over him…. You never got over him.”

  Sophie’s words were an echo inside my mind, but I brushed them away. No, I was over him. I knew that. Two years was long enough to get over someone. The thoughts I was having were just because he was back in my life.

  It was normal.

  It was normal for a situation like this to bring back old memories and the whisper of a feeling. Sometimes the present pulled the past forward, but that didn’t mean the past had to be a part of the fut
ure.

  When I was able to walk properly again, I wouldn’t need Chase to help me. He could go back to The Frozen Spoon and get on with his life while I got on with mine and stopped remembering how good things used to be between us.

  No matter how hard the memories came, I’d never be able to forgive him for taking my ideas and opening my store. Even if I did have responsibility for not doing these renovations sooner and letting him steal my customers, it still never should have happened.

  I rolled my shoulders and moved the roller through the paint in the tray. The urge to peek over at Chase overcame me, and I gave into it.

  He was on the counter on his knees, and sometime in the last thirty minutes, he’d removed his t-shirt. His tanned back rippled with lean muscle as he used the roller to get the top of the wall where the shelves usually went.

  Back and forth his arm went, his shoulder muscles flexing with each movement he made. A lump formed in my throat as I watched him, and I let my gaze wander down his spine to the spot right above his ass where he had two deep dimples that I just wanted to poke my fingers in.

  He was handsome as hell. And why the hell were backs so hot? What right did Chase’s back have to be so smooth and tanned and perfectly muscled in all the right places? And if the dimples at the base of his spine blinked at me one more time I was going to explode.

  This wasn’t fair.

  “What are you doing?”

  I jerked my attention up to his face. He looked over his shoulder at me, his blue-green eyes shining with mirth, an emotion reflected in the stupid half-smile on his face that I wanted to slap off.

  “Making sure you’re doing it right,” I lied. “Just checking.”

  “Right. I do the same thing when I ogle your ass. Even when you limp.”

  “You make it very hard to be nice to you.”

  “You’re the one checking me out like you’ve never seen me naked before. You’re almost drooling over there.”

  I touched my fingers to the side of my mouth instinctively.

  His half-smile became a grin.

  Crap. I’d fallen for it.

  “You’re impossible,” I snapped.

  He jumped off the counter and put the small roller in his tray. He leaned against the main counter again and reached for his bottle of water. With a shrug, he said, “As I said, Rae, it’s just too easy. Plus, you shouldn’t stare at me if you don’t want me to call you on it.”