by Carrie Elks
“I think you’ll find it is.” Nate glanced at the table – now devoid of cups. “Just like it’s in your job description to clean the tables between every customer.”
The barista jerked his head back, and looked at Nate for a moment, saying nothing. Then he walked back to the counter, picking up a cloth and a spray bottle, coming back to clean up their table.
Ally sat down, resting her crutches against the window, and reached behind to grab their coffees. She passed the cappuccino to Nate and took a sip of the soy latte.
“How did he do?” Nate asked. The barista glanced at them suspiciously. He was lingering around even though their table was completely clean.
“Good. There was a crema in the espresso glass. Three layers like you taught me. And the latte tastes pretty good for a soy one.”
Nate took the lid off his cappuccino and glanced at the foam. “A little too much,” he murmured, lifting the cup to his lips. He closed his eyes for a moment, his mouth shut tight. When he opened them, he shrugged. “It’s passable.”
The barista looked up from where he was wiping the table next to theirs. “Is there something wrong with the coffee?”
“No. Out of everything that’s wrong with this place, the coffee’s at the bottom of the list.” Nate put his cup down and reached his hand out to the man. “My name’s Nathan Crawford. I own the Déjà Brew coffee chain.”
The man’s mouth dropped open. “Oh.” He gave a little shudder, then quickly took Nate’s hand. “It’s good to meet you, sir. Is this one of those TV programs they make?” he asked, looking around the shop. “Where are the cameras? Are they hidden on you?”
Nate raised an eyebrow at Ally. She grinned back and mouthed, “Undercover Boss.”
Nate rolled his eyes at her before turning to face the barista. “This isn’t a TV show. I’m just doing a check, and if I’m honest, I’m not liking what I’m seeing. He glanced at the barista’s nametag. “Alex, where’s your manager?”
“Mandy? She’s, ah, out in the back. Having a smoke.”
“How big is her cigarette?” Nate asked. “We’ve been here for ten minutes and she hasn’t been back.” He shook his head. “You know what? Just take me out so I can talk with her.” He glanced at Ally. “You gonna be okay here for a while?”
“I got my soy latte,” she said, tapping the cup. “And if I get bored I’ll pick up some of the trash on the other tables.”
“No you won’t,” Nathan warned. “That’s your job, isn’t it, Alex?”
“Yes, sir.” Alex nodded. “I’ll get right on that as soon as I’ve taken you to Mandy.”
“Wish me luck,” Nate said quietly.
“Good luck,” she whispered as he followed Alex behind the counter, and out through the door that led to the kitchens at the rear.
Not that he needed it. She had a feeling that Nate Crawford ate Déjà Brew managers for breakfast, followed with a nice cup of espresso.
15
It was late afternoon by the time they made it to their second stop. San Martino Bay was a hundred miles north of Angel Sands, but had that same small town feel, complete with a boardwalk that ran along the sand and some retail outlets behind it. The building Nate was interested in was empty right now – but before it had shut down it was a seafood restaurant. The walls still held a stench of shellfish as they looked around.
“What do you think?” Nate asked her as he walked around the empty room. “Would you open up an outlet here?”
“It’s pretty,” Ally said, looking around at the golden sand and the pastel shops that lined the beach. “So yeah, I probably would. But then I never was the best business person. That’s why my dad ended up selling to you.” She smiled, as though it still smarted a bit.
“Even the best business person can’t keep a company going on air. With the cash flow like it was, you were always fighting a losing battle. I’m amazed you kept it going as long as you did.”
Her face lit up when he complimented her, making her eyes glow and her lips curl. Man, was she beautiful. No wonder she’d started to haunt his dreams.
“Well for what it’s worth, I think this place has good bones.” She made her way over to the window, and looked outside. “The beach is quiet right now, but that’s not a surprise on a weekday. I’d want to come back on the weekend and during the tourist season to make sure the footfall was good.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “How many tourists visit each year?”
“Around two million according to the local business bureau.”
“A bit less than Angel Sands. But still sustainable. And the location is great.” She turned on her good foot. “Are you thinking of branching out into beach locations, or will this and Angel Sands be your only ones?”
“I wasn’t thinking of expanding at all,” he answered honestly. “We’ve had a massive period of growth in the past few years. I wanted to bed everything in before we go through another one. But then this place came up and it’s too good an offer to miss. Plus Angel Sands is doing much better than we’d projected, so I’m thinking that we may look at acquiring a few more up and down the Pacific coast.”
“That makes sense.” Ally nodded. Her brow dipped, as though she was thinking something through. “But you know, these beach cafés have a much different feel to your urban ones. Maybe you should think about branding them a little differently.” She bit her lip and stared out at the bay, her brows dipping together in concentration. “I don’t know, maybe something like ‘Coastal Coffee by Déjà Brew.’ You could make them less about grabbing a coffee to go and more about the experience. Make them somewhere people want to visit whenever they’re on vacation at the beach.”
Nate stared at her, feeling his heart pound against his chest. “Say that again,” he asked, his voice graveled.
She shook her head. “Sorry, I was talking without thinking. Ignore me. You know better than anybody else what you’re doing.”
“No, tell me what you’d call the shops again.”
“Coastal Coffee?”
“By Déjà Brew,” he murmured, tapping it quickly into the notes on his phone. “Jesus, who told you that you had no head for business? You’re a genius.”
The glow spread down her neck, pinking up the top of her chest. “I just know beach towns. I’ve lived in one all my life.”
“What would you do differently to the coastal Déjà Brews?” he asked her, staring at her lips. It was taking everything he had not to clear the two strides between them and pull her against him. He wanted to feel them on his mouth, feel her hair as he knotted it in his hands. She was so damn enticing it made his body ache.
“I’d change the menu up. Maybe put more emphasis on meals rather than pastries. And the décor. It might be a bit cheesy, but I’d make it more beach-themed. Let’s face it, locals are going to come in to grab a coffee no matter what the place looks like, but tourists want the full experience. And they’re usually willing to pay extra for it.”
A pulse of excitement shot through him. “Yes they are,” he said, slowly nodding his head. “You’re right. They’re a completely different kind of customer.”
“It would be worth doing a little market research before you commit to anything,” Ally said, though she was glowing at his approval. “But the way I see it, if Disney can charge eight bucks for a cup of coffee, then Déjà Brew can probably find a way to mine the tourist gold too.”
“How come you never went to college?” he asked her. “You’re clearly bright enough.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“I’ve seen your resume, remember?”
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s not fair. You’re one up on me. I don’t know anything about you.”
“There’s not much to know. What you see is what you get,” he told her.
“I don’t believe that for a second.” The corner of her lip lifted into a smile. “You know, they should give employees their bosses’ resumes. We should know who we’re working for.”
“I’ll print you one out when we get home.” He couldn’t help grinning. He liked that she wanted to know more about him.
“Well, I didn’t go to college because I was chickenshit,” she said, adjusting her stance as if she was trying to get comfortable.
“You want to sit down? You’ve been standing for a while.”
“Yeah, my leg’s getting tired.”
He led her out of the store and down to the boardwalk, finding an empty bench seat overlooking the ocean. Helping her down, he took her crutches and sat next to her. There was only an inch or two between them. And it felt like too much and not enough all at the same time.
“So you were saying…” he said, when they were comfortable. “Something about being chickenshit?”
She laughed. “Yeah. I had an offer to go to Sacramento. I accepted it, too. And right until the last moment I really thought I could go there.” She was staring into the distance, her face forming a perfect profile. She sighed and it lifted her chest up. Nate tried not to look.
“So what happened?”
“I got scared.” She looked down at her hands, turning them palm up. “I’m not great at changes, and I was so afraid that if I went away something would happen to my dad. He tried to get me in the car to drive me up there, but I cried and cried until he got the message. I took a few classes at the community college, but really I spent most of my time working at the café.” She turned, her eyes still downcast as she gave him a rueful smile. “So there you go. I’m not exactly setting the world on fire.”
“It’s never too late.”
“I’m twenty-seven years old. And even if I could get an offer, I couldn’t afford the tuition. I made my bed when I was a teenager, now I get to lie on it for the rest of my life.”
“You sound defeated,” he remarked. What the hell had stopped her from reaching her potential? He wanted to dig it out of her.
She looked up. This time her expression was defiant. “No, I’m not,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve accepted what happened. And I’m happy in Angel Sands. The only time I get embarrassed about my lack of college education is when I have a conversation like this one.”
“Would you like me to change the subject?” he asked, even though he didn’t want to. There was so much more he wanted to ask.
Her eyes caught his. “I’d like that a lot.”
He blew out a mouthful of air. Time to lighten the mood. “Okay, then. Can you tell me why some women shave their eyebrows off and pencil them back in? Because I’ve always been wondering about that.”
This time her laughter was genuine. She tipped her head back, her eyes closing as she giggled out loud. “I’ve no idea,” she said when she got herself under control. “But I’d like to know, too.”
“You’re beautiful when you laugh.” The words escaped his lips without going through his common-sense filter. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to stop himself anyway. Because sitting there beside him, her face illuminated by the sun, she looked like beauty personified. It hurt his chest just to look at her.
She slowly turned her face to his. Her eyes were soft, her lips slightly parted, but it was her breathing he noticed most of all. It was shallow, as though it was caught in her throat. A slow flush worked its way up her neck.
Verboten, he reminded himself. It didn’t stop his body from reacting to her.
“Beauty’s only skin deep,” she whispered.
But it wasn’t, not with her. Maybe he’d thought that when they first met, but right now he could see so much more to Ally Sutton than just a pretty face. There was a fragility to her that made him want to protect her from everything, along with a strength that made him know she wouldn’t accept that at all.
“It is,” he whispered, the ocean breeze lifting his words. It lifted her hair, too, whipping it against her face. He leaned forward and gently pushed it away from her cheek, his fingers trailing across her skin.
She was still staring at him with those big blue eyes, as if he was some kind of God. It made him want to beat his chest, pick her up, and carry her back home. His muscles flexed with the memory of how she’d felt when he’d held her. Warm, soft, everything.
“Beautiful,” he said again. “Kind. Funny. Clever.” He traced his finger down from her cheekbone, along her jaw, and up to her mouth, trailing it across her bottom lip.
He could feel her stilted breath on his finger. One of them was trembling – he could feel it in his fingertips – but he wasn’t sure if it was Ally or him. Maybe it was both of them, because this moment was so full of everything.
He dropped his forehead, his brow resting against hers, and cupped her jaw, his fingers brushing against the soft skin of her neck. Her eyes were wide as she stared into his, and for a moment he wanted to drown in them. Her close proximity pushed any good sense he had left out of his mind. Everything about this felt inevitable. It was only a matter of how long he could last out.
Right now he was barely hanging on by a thread.
“Ally,” he whispered.
His lips were only a whisper from hers. When he said her name again he could feel her bottom lip quiver. He was full of her. Surrounded by her. Everything else around them faded into nothing as the spotlight of his desire fell firmly onto this woman. All those thoughts about how wrong it was. How he was her boss, how she was so young, they all seemed to dissolve into the air. His mind couldn’t concentrate on anything but her.
“I want to kiss you,” he said, his voice full of grit and need.
She blinked and looked up at him again, her face tilting a little until he could feel the warmth of her mouth only a brush away from his.
“Why don’t you?”
Right now he couldn’t think of a single damn reason. But still he hesitated, savoring that moment between thought and action. He was standing on the edge, teetering as gravity fought against sanity. Then he stroked her neck with his thumb, closing the gap between them to brush his warm lips against hers.
It wasn’t quite a kiss, but it was definitely an intention. He felt her breath catch, watched her close her eyes as she melted against him. He did it again, this time parting his lips against hers, sliding his other arm around her waist so he could pull them closer together.
She hooked her arms around his neck, arching her back so her face was angled perfectly against his. He deepened the kiss, still cupping her face as he moved his mouth with hers.
Ally threaded her fingers through his hair and let out the smallest of moans, the sound vibrating against his lips like a tiny concerto. Desire punched him in the gut like it was ready for a fight. It rose up through his belly, filling his chest, before it pulsed its way down to his thighs. Still holding her tightly, he slowly traced a line of fire along her bottom lip with his tongue. She tasted like everything he never knew he wanted.
She arched her back even more, pressing herself against him, the soft swell of her breasts pushing into his muscled chest. His body ached to scoop her up again – the way he’d done when he first brought her home – and carry her some place away from prying eyes where he could show her exactly how she made him feel.
“Nate.” His name was a sigh against his lips. He opened his eyes to see her staring into them, but then they suddenly darted away. “We have company,” she said, pulling back from him.
He turned to see a little boy – no more than three-years-old – standing next to them. He was holding an ice cream cone, but it was melting and turning his hand sticky. A bead dropped onto his yellow t-shirt. He was entranced by Ally’s crutches, reaching out a finger to touch the metal. He left a grubby brown fingerprint on them.
“I’m so sorry. He keeps running off.” A woman ran over, grabbing the boy by his arm. “Honey, you have to keep licking it or it melts everywhere,” she told him, lifting his hand up and running her tongue around the cone.
“My ice cream,” the boy said, pulling his hand away sharply.
From the corner of his eye Nate could see Ally biting h
er lip, trying not to laugh. He took a deep breath in, trying to steady himself as he smiled at the woman who was apologizing once again.
“It’s fine,” he said. And it was. Even if his body felt cold in spite of the Californian heat. It missed the feel of her against him. “We were just heading out anyway.” He looked at the little boy. “You should probably listen to your mom, though. She looks like she knows about ice cream.”
“Mine.”
Okay, then. The kid clearly didn’t want to share. And who could blame him? He hadn’t learned the ways of the world yet. Hadn’t worked out that by not licking regularly, more of the ice cream was going to end up on him than in him.
Everybody in this world had to make their own mistakes – it was pretty hard to learn from somebody else’s.
“You ready?” he asked Ally.
She nodded. He stood and grabbed her crutches, rubbing off the ice cream with his thumb. Passing them to her, he helped her up.
“Come on. Let’s go home.”
16
“Oh. My. God,” Ember said, leaning into the camera. “I can’t believe he kissed you. So what happened after that?”
“Nothing,” Ally told her. “We got in the car and came home. Then Nate said he had to cook dinner, and Riley was in the kitchen with him so I told them I needed a quick nap and called you two.”
The three of them were on a video call. Crazy, since they lived in the same town, but there was no way to get together tonight – and this was a crisis. Ally needed her friends like she needed air. If she didn’t talk about what happened she thought she might explode.
“How long was the drive home?” Brooke asked. She was cooking dinner, her laptop angled so she could see them both from the stove. She stirred the sauce and turned the heat down, then added some pepper.