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“I think she’ll be okay. It would be nice if we could bond a little while she’s here. In some ways, it feels like I don’t even know who she is.”
Holly returned her gaze to the screen and smiled. “I’m sure you’ll get closer. Three months is a good amount of time to spend together.”
I nodded. “As long as I can keep her away from Nick.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I think she has a crush on him. I don’t want her thinking he’s gonna be her rebound guy.”
“Wait, wait. How old is he?”
“I don’t know…but he said he did eight years in the Marines, been out for another one. So, what does that mean? He’d have to be close to thirty.”
Holly did the mental math and nodded, confirming my guess. “Sounds right.”
“Whatever he is, he’s way too old for her. Which is another reason why I’m not going to go there. I’m trying to get closer to her. If I swoop in and run off with her summer crush, that’s certainly not going to win me any points.”
“But, Carly, you can’t let that stop you.”
“At least while she’s here. Okay?”
Holly grinned. “Okay.”
Before she could push me for more details about Nick, her chocolate lab puppy, Hunter—now fully grown and nearing eighty pounds—came crashing into the room, howling. Holly jumped away from the chat to deal with him and Princess, Jack’s yellow lab, as they paraded through the apartment. I laughed at the chaotic scene and the pressure from the day melted away.
When she got the pooches wrangled, she came back to the computer, and the thread of conversation was lost. We moved on to talking about Holly’s crazy neighbors and the loud rap music that they blasted at all hours of the night. We wrapped up the call a little after that so I could finish closing the shop and get home to check on Alesha.
A few days passed and everyone settled into a new routine. Alesha worked with me at the shop—mostly without complaint—for four hours each morning and left at lunch to go hang out at the beach with some new friends she’d made. They were her age and while I still worried about her getting into trouble, I still had the assurance that if things went crazy, I could threaten her with the green Jell-O ultimatum.
Nick came into the shop twice a day. Once in the morning for his cup of joe, usually a huge house blend, black. And then again in the afternoon to work his way through every item on the lunch menu.
In the mornings, Alesha would practically bowl me over to get to him first and be the one to make his drink. I swear, as soon as he’d walk through the doors, she’d be calculating the line in front of him and work her way to be done with whatever she was doing just as he stepped to the counter.
It would have been impressive if it wasn’t so damned annoying.
I tried to tell myself I was annoyed by it because she had no business flirting with him, but slowly I was admitting to myself that there might be a hint of jealousy underneath my sisterly protectiveness that was more to do with my motivation.
From what I could see, Nick was polite and smiled a lot, but he didn’t cross any lines with Alesha. But his niceness was all she needed to convince herself—and anyone who would listen—that he had a crush on her too.
Eventually, I stopped reminding her that he was too old for her. My warnings only fell on deaf ears.
Besides, he never stayed for long in the mornings. In the afternoons, he always came in later than most of my regular lunch crowd. Which worked well for two reasons. One, Alesha was almost always gone for the rest of the day. And two, the shop was bustling and humming with guests, but they’d already been served and didn’t need much attention.
Regardless of what I’d told Aaron, Holly—and dammit to hell—even myself, I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t like this man—or the attention.
We’d reached the first weekend since Alesha and Nick had arrived in town, and I wasn’t sure what to expect as I let myself in the back door and flicked on the lights. It was still dark and chilly outside, so I’d dressed in warm, cozy layers, knowing that as I got busy working, I’d want to strip them off. I very rarely ran the heat in the building. Mostly because my industrial sized oven more than took care of the job.
Alesha was still sleeping when I’d checked in on her before leaving. She’d been out late the night before with her new friends—doing God only knows what—and while I fully planned on asking her about it, I was relieved to have the shop to myself that morning. When Alesha worked with me, she had the tendency to run her mouth the entire time. Rarely did she have any topics that interested me. Most of what she talked about was clothing, her friends back home, and her new obsession with gel eyeliner.
