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“I can’t believe he’s actually back,” Annie said.
“I heard he’s back helping his granddad with harvest.” Jen put her elbows on the counter and leaned in. “And that he has plans to stay for a while.”
“That’d be a change,” Annie mumbled.
When Luke had left to go expand his family’s name and business, she’d had no idea how badly it would hurt. Something that she’d never admit out loud.
For whatever reason, that one night, they just clicked. It was like he understood her. Wasn’t afraid of her the way most men were. He didn’t avoid her because of her tarnished last name or, if she were honest, her reputation that as of recently had been upgraded from mouthy to man-eater.
She wasn’t exactly discreet last night at the bar, and word had obviously gotten around. Her “welcome-home gesture” to the town’s golden boy was probably why her “lunch rush” was looking more like a lunch slowdown. In fact, it was after one and not a soul other than Jen was in the café.
“Where is everyone, anyway? Where are all your coworkers? They’re usually here by now,” Annie asked Jen.
Jen worked across the street at the bank and spent every lunch hour at Annie’s Café.
“Can’t go around assaulting a Jacobs man and not expect it to affect your business,” Maggie Thompson, Annie’s grandmother, said, shuffling behind the counter from the back room. “Makes for hostility. No matter how much they may deserve it.”
It wasn’t a secret that her nana didn’t like Andrew Jacobs, Luke’s grandfather. She never shared the details, but apparently they had dated right after high school and the breakup was messy. Soon after, Old Man Jacobs ended up marrying a city girl.
“For God’s sake, I punched one guy in a bar and now I’m considered hostile?”
“Yes, dear,” Nana said as the café’s phone rang. She dusted off her hands on the front of her apron and answered it.
Annie rolled her eyes and went back to stocking the muffins. “The man isn’t here twenty-four hours and already he’s affecting my business.”
“Maybe you should settle things with him,” Jen said. Which only made Annie want to roll her eyes again.
Problem was, nothing about Luke or his being home settled her. Damn it! Why did she have to react to him the way she did? She shouldn’t have lost her control, but all the hurt and confusion and anger from the cold morning she’d woken up alone without Luke came flooding back the moment she saw him. And those weren’t the only feelings overflowing in her.
She could still feel his lips on her skin. His hands sliding up her thighs—
“Lunch order!” Nana said loudly, hanging up the phone and placing a sticky note in front of Annie.
“Twelve turkey sandwiches?”
Her grandmother nodded. Those rosy cheeks and that big smile made Annie wonder why she was suddenly so happy. “Yep, and that’ll be for delivery. So you’d better scoot.”
“We don’t deliver, Nana.”
“We do on orders of twelve or more. New rule. Just came up with it.”
“Nana, that is not going to work.”
“Well, unless you want our grand total today to be zero dollars and zero sandwiches”—she paused to look around the empty café—“then I suggest you take what you can get and hurry up.”
That was all she said as she headed toward the back room, the smell of baking bread drifting through the swinging kitchen doors.
Crap. Her grandmother was right. A few sales were better than none. Especially on a slow day like today.
Jen peered over the counter and squinted at the scribbled piece of paper. “What kind of address is ‘Apple Heights Dock’?”
The breath stuck in Annie’s throat. She looked at her grandmother’s writing, then glared at the door she’d just walked through.
“That would be the loading dock up Apple Heights Road.”
“So, the Jacobs property?” Now Jen was obviously trying to hide a smile.
Not wanting to lose her only sale of the day, Annie stifled the urge to scream and started making twelve identical turkey sandwiches, wondering what gossip would arise after this encounter with Luke.
