“I hope you’ll come back soon under better circumstances,” Jessica said with a warm smile.
“Thanks. I will.”
As Savannah started to walk away, Jessica called out, “Oh, wait!” and Savannah turned back to face her. “I’m afraid your pretty blouse is ripped!” She reached out to touch the tear that went down the length of the shirt, revealing Savannah’s bra strap and most of her right side.
Savannah sighed and opened her bag. “Of course it is,” she murmured as she pulled out her cardigan.
Jessica held Savannah’s bag while she put her sweater on. When she was done, Jessica said, “You can’t even tell.”
Savannah gave her a tired smiled and turned toward home, suddenly feeling more drained than she could ever remember feeling.
Chapter 11
As she turned the corner onto her street, she saw Sweet Happens all lit up and beckoning to her like the coziest, safest place on earth. Veering off toward the glowing shop, Savannah pulled open the door and was enveloped in a rich smell of chocolate and sugar and knew that she would find something here that would make everything OK.
“Hiya,” the woman called cheerfully from behind the counter. “You are just in time. I was about to close up.”
“Can I still get something?” Savannah asked, panic in her voice.
The woman looked at her a little more closely before saying, “You can have anything you want. It was a slow day so we still have lots to choose from.”
As Savannah peered into the glass-fronted case, the woman asked, “Are you a chocolate girl?” Savannah nodded. “I thought so. How would you like a cup of old-fashioned hot chocolate? I was just making some for myself.”
“I’d love some,” Savannah said, and it felt like the truest statement she’d made in days.
“Great! You pick out a treat while I get it for you.”
The woman bustled off with more energy than Savannah would have expected from someone who’d presumably been working since early that morning. She decided it must come from being surrounded by all those heavenly treats and briefly wondered if she’d picked the wrong career path.
By the time the woman came back with a sturdy paper cup filled with steaming hot chocolate and piled high with whipped cream, Savannah had decided on a chocolate cupcake with raspberry buttercream frosting.
“Excellent choice,” the woman said as she put the treat in a plastic cupcake-shaped container and rang up the sale. “Hot chocolate’s on the house, the cupcake is three dollars.” Savannah pulled some ones out of her wallet and handed them over.
“Thank you. You’re a lifesaver,” she said.
“Bad date?”
“The worst! How did you know?”
“That’s the main reason I started staying open later on weeknights,” she said with a laugh as she started wiping down the counters. “You wouldn’t believe the business I get from women on their way home from bad dates.”
Somehow knowing she wasn’t unique made Savannah feel a little bit better. “Mind if I sit on the patio to eat this?” she asked.
“Go for it. It’ll be at least half an hour before I get to putting the chairs away. I’m Crystal, by the way.”
“I’m Savannah. And your shop is definitely the best part of this neighborhood.”
Crystal beamed. “Thanks! Don’t forget to tell your friends.”
As Savannah sat outside sipping her hot chocolate and nibbling at her cupcake, she started berating herself for letting things get so out of hand tonight.
“I’m such an idiot,” she said out loud.
“Talking to yourself, Red?”
Savannah snapped her head up at the sound of Colin’s voice and felt her stomach flip over in that way it always did around him. He was smiling as he headed toward her. She wiped a stray tear from her cheek and pulled her hair loose from its messy ponytail.
“Having a little dessert?” His smile faltered as he got a closer look at Savannah’s face. “You OK?”
“I’m fine.” She reached for her hot chocolate but then pulled her hand back when she realized it was trembling.
Colin sat down next to her. “Savannah, tell me what’s wrong,” he said, and somehow hearing him use her name instead of a nickname made tears well up.
Looking into his warm eyes, lit up by the light spilling from the bakery window, she fought the urge to tell him everything and said, “It’s nothing. Just a bad night.”
“Bad date?” he guessed.
Savannah laughed. “God, am I that much of a cliché?”
“How bad?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing that left any marks, other than on my ego,” she said, trying to sound light.
“Please tell me what happened.” Colin was close enough that she could feel his body heat and smell what was quickly becoming a familiar scent of...him. But unlike when Ryan had been this close, now Savannah didn’t feel threatened. In fact, she felt utterly safe.
She hesitated a moment longer then recounted the evening as briefly as she could, including how impressed she was with the way the hostess had handled Ryan.
“She was amazing. I felt like such a weak, stupid girl. I let him get me cornered. I let him bully me. I should have left after the first five minutes—”
“Hey, hey, hey, give yourself a break.”
“No! I don’t deserve a break.” Savannah stood up and paced across the patio. “I’m too nice! I’m too trusting! I have no survival skills.” Spinning to face him, she said, “I had no idea how I was going to get away. If that guy hadn’t come over—”
Suddenly she couldn’t stop shaking, and tears were rolling down her face. Colin closed the distance between them in two long strides and pulled her into a hug.
“Shhh, you’re safe now. Everything is OK,” he murmured into her hair.
Savannah relaxed into him but didn’t allow herself to hug him back because she knew she would lose what little emotional control she had. After a few seconds, she took a deep breath and pulled away.
“I’m sorry. I’m OK now,” she said with a smile and a quick swipe at her eyes. She had stopped shaking, and Colin looked impressed at how quickly she had pulled herself together.
“New plan,” he said, clenching and unclenching his fist and looking like he wanted to punch something. Savannah had a brief, thrilling image of him knocking Ryan right on his ass.
“You’ll have all your dates at my bar,” Colin said.
Savannah stared at him. “What? No, I—”
“Because you’re planning to continue going on dates with virtual strangers, right?”
“In a manner of speaking. I mean, I can’t let one guy derail—”
“Right,” Colin said cutting her off. “So you’ll schedule any future first dates at Zipped, where I can watch your back.”
Savannah thought about it and had to admit that it did sound like a good plan. And if he was suggesting it, then clearly he had no interest in her himself, which was good, despite the way her stomach dropped at the thought. His face was serious and concerned, and she fought the urge to step back into his arms.
“OK,” she said softly.
“OK?” Colin repeated, sounding a little surprised. “You promise you’ll have all your first dates at my bar?”
Savannah nodded. She noticed that he kept referring to Zipped as “his bar.” Maybe he took his work more seriously than she thought.
“Great.” Colin let out a breath, and she walked back to the table to pack up what remained of her cupcake and retrieve the hot chocolate.
“I’m going to head home,” she said. “I’m wiped.”
“I’ll walk you.”
“It’s just a couple blocks,” Savannah protested, although secretly she was glad she didn’t have to say goodnight to him just yet.
“I’m walking you home, Red. Deal with it.” As he took a step toward her, Crystal came out onto the patio.
“Hey, Colin! Fancy seeing you here,” she said in a way that made Savannah think i
t wasn’t random that Colin had come by.
“Hey, Crystal!” To Savannah, Colin said, “Give me one second. And don’t even think about leaving without me.” He stared at her until she nodded agreement. When he walked over to Crystal, she told herself she didn’t care what his business was with her.
She wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but even so, she heard him say, “So, um, everything OK here today?” and was surprised at the tension that had crept into his voice.
“Yeah,” Crystal said, “but even though it was a slow day, I’ve got a bunch of custom orders to do tonight, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make it all the way to tomorrow night on my own.”
“I’ll stop by in the morning around 6 and see how you’re doing, and I can get you a boost if need be. Does that work?”
“Sounds good, babe,” Crystal said with a smile. Then she started dragging chairs from the patio and stacking them against the wall.
A boost? Savannah had no idea what that was about, but her curiosity was definitely piqued. Colin was at her side within seconds. “Ready?” he asked, and Savannah could sense a definite urgency to leave. After a beat, she decided it was none of her business, and they headed toward her house.
They walked in companionable silence for a few steps before Savannah said, “Maybe I should take up kickboxing.”
“Kickboxing?” Colin repeated.
“For self-defense. So next time I’ll have some options.”
They reached the sidewalk in front of her house, and Colin put his hand on her arm. “Learn kickboxing or whatever other self-defense skills you want, Red, but just know that most guys aren’t like that, OK? Most of us are regular old nice guys who know how to take no for an answer.”
Savannah turned to face him in the moonlight and tried not to think about how romantic the moment felt. “Even ones with tattoos and two-day-old scruff?” she teased.
Colin let out a slow breath before saying, “Especially us.”
Savannah grinned back at him and knew that if he took even the smallest step toward her, she was likely to kiss him.
But instead, he took a step back, hands firmly shoved in his pockets. Savannah felt the distance like a slap.
“Get inside,” he said softly. “It’s late.”
Savannah nodded and walked up the path to the porch. At the door, she turned around to find Colin in exactly the same spot.
“Just making sure you get inside OK,” he said.
She started to make a joke about the likelihood of something happening between the steps and the door but bit it back, wanting instead to enjoy the feeling of him watching over her. She slid her keys into the lock and pushed the door open. When she turned to shut it, she smiled. Colin was still standing in the exact same spot.
Savannah ran straight up the stairs to Rayne’s room. Not seeing any light under the door, she knocked softly before entering the room and stage-whispering, “Rayney? Are you sleeping?”
The bedside lamp snapped on, and Rayne said, “How was your date?”
Savannah set the cupcake and hot chocolate on the dresser and flung herself onto Rayne’s bed. “I’ve had the weirdest night.”
She filled Rayne in on everything with Ryan and then Colin’s plan, which Rayne endorsed fully. But Savannah didn’t mention the walk home or the strange moment she had shared with Colin out on the sidewalk. She wanted to keep that to herself.
Chapter 12
The next day Colin could not stop thinking about the state Savannah had been in when he ran into her at Sweet Happens, and by early afternoon, he’d started to wonder whether she might not have told him the whole truth about her date. He seethed to think about that douchebag Ryan physically hurting her.
After the lunch rush, he pulled out his cell phone and called his older sister, Jessica.
“Hey, stranger,” she said as a greeting.
“I just saw you, like, two weeks ago at one of Mom’s cocktail parties,” he protested.
“You live and work within five blocks of me, and yet I have to go to Georgetown to see my baby brother?”
“This is why I prefer texting.”
“Oh, fine. What’s up?”
“I heard you had a little excitement at the restaurant last night,” he said, cradling his phone against his ear as a he rang up a credit card sale.
He could hear her sigh through the phone. “Facebook’s got nothing on the restaurant industry,” she said. “How did you hear about it already? And technically it took place outside the restaurant.”
“I know the woman who was involved. I ran into her afterward, and she told me the story.”
“How’s she doing?” Jessica asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “She seemed pretty rattled when she left. Not that I blame her.”
He nearly dropped the customer’s credit card in the bin of dirty dishes behind the bar. “Was it bad?” he asked, unable to keep the concern out of his voice.
“Bad enough,” Jessica said. “The guy was a real creep.”
Colin felt the tension in his gut. “She insisted she was OK, but I wanted to get your take on it.”
“Trying to decide what level of knight in shining armor to deploy?”
Colin smiled at how well his sister knew him and tucked the credit card and receipt into a small padded folder. “Something like that,” he said with a chuckle. “The guy’s a regular here, which is how she met him, so I feel a little responsible. I’m trying to decide whether I should just ban him or throw him up against a wall next time he comes in.”
“Go with the wall,” she said. “But you definitely don’t have anything to feel bad about. If anyone does, it’s me. We kept serving him even when he was clearly drunk, and their waitress said he was a bully and an ass at the table. We should have done something.”
Jessica told him what had happened, and her version pretty much lined up with what Savannah had said, which made him feel marginally better.
“How many free drinks did you end up giving out?” he asked.
“About a dozen, but almost all of them also bought food, and several people mentioned us positively on Facebook and Twitter, so all in all, not a bad night for us.”
“Sounds like you handled it well. Have you told Dad about it?”
“I sent him an email this morning but no reply yet. I don’t think he’ll fuss too much. Although if you wanted to screw up something big today as a distraction, I would let you.”
Their dad was obsessive about the image of his properties, especially top-tier ones like The Lounge, and when it came to the restaurants his kids worked in, he had even higher expectations.
“Better idea,” Colin said. “Tell Mom Chase is in town. She’ll freak out that she had to hear it from you, and Dad will be so busy trying to calm her down and track Chase down and get him out to the house that we could probably burn down an entire restaurant and he wouldn’t notice.”
“Excellent idea!” Jessica said with a laugh. “I’ve gotta run, but tell your friend that I’m sorry again and that if she wants to come back, I’ll buy her dinner.”
“Will do, sis.” Colin said.
Chapter 13
Savannah’s fourth day of work was no less overwhelming than the previous three had been. She was still trying to get up to speed on the programs she was overseeing and still got lost on her way to the kitchen.
But today had the added bonus of her first staff meeting, which meant that all the executives and managers from Development, Communications, Administration, and Finance were there. From her department, it was Savannah, Sarah, and two other program managers, both of whom had been at the Capitol Foundation for at least two years. During the meeting, Savannah learned that the person she replaced had been well loved, and most people seemed to doubt that Savannah would be half as well liked or competent. She even overheard the CFO ask why an intern was in the management meeting, gesturing to her.
Instead of getting upset, she resolved to do whatever it took to prove herself. Right after the meet
ing, she had gone straight to Sarah’s office and asked to be put in charge of the annual donor appreciation reception, which was only a month away but an excellent opportunity for Savannah to demonstrate her talents. Her predecessor had worked at the foundation for a year before taking over the event, but Savannah didn’t want to wait that long.
After Savannah made her case, Sarah agreed but made her promise to ask for help the minute she needed it.
Savannah decided to get off to a running start by staying late to go over the files from the previous years’ events and make a list of all the things she needed to do.
At 5:30, her phone dinged with a message from Rayne. Trivia night at Zipped tonight?
Savannah typed, Working late. Too much to learn!
Oh come on! It’s your first week. And we said we were going to go to meet men.
Since when is that such a priority for you? We can go next week.
Several minutes passed before Rayne’s reply came. I’m kind of hoping to run into Colin’s brother again followed by a blushing-face emoji.
Savannah laughed out loud. Chase must have made quite an impression on Rayne. She looked at the stack of files and her rapidly filling-up notepad and then back at Rayne’s text. She finally decided that if she worked for another hour, then reviewed her notes on the Metro, and maybe brought a folder home to look at before bed, she could make it work.
She picked up her phone and typed, Fine! See you there at 7:00.
Rayne’s response was an immediate I LOVE YOU.
Savannah had been so focused on work during the metro ride that she hadn’t thought ahead to what it would be like to walk into Zipped. As she pulled open the door and the sounds of a lively happy hour washed over her, she felt two conflicting emotions bubble up inside her. One was a stab of fear that Ryan would be there. Not that she feared for her safety, but she didn’t want to deal with him. The other was a little tingle of anticipation at seeing Colin.
Savannah slowly made her way to the bar while scanning the room for Rayne. When a woman got up from a stool, Savannah grabbed it and hopped on, hooking her bag under the bar while continuing to glance around.
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