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Janie shrugged.
“I’m not up for stirring trouble.”
“We’ve only gone out a couple of times.”
Hunter grunted. It sounded like disapproval. Then he moved to the sink and washed his hands. “Do you have something I can do that I won’t ruin?”
“I’m going to put the rolls in the glass display, and then the pans need washed.”
He nodded. They worked, no exchange between them. When the rolls were in their proper place for the morning, and the aroma of coffee filled the whole café, Janie filled two mugs and set one on the counter beside Hunter.
She sipped hers while she studied his profile. His jaw was tight, lips pressed firm, brow creased. Everything about him screamed tension. And yet he’d come. Why?
Janie cleared her throat. “Isa is ... pretty.” That was what she wanted to open the day talking about?
Hunter stabbed her with an irritated glance. “Sure.”
“You didn’t notice?”
“I’m a man. Yes, I noticed the pretty girl.”
“She seemed nice.”
He dropped the pan he’d been washing, letting it clatter to the bottom of the sink. Then he shook the suds off his hands, snagged the towel near Janie’s hip, and turned to her while he dried his hands. “What are you doing?”
Her pulse raged with something hot and intensely uncomfortable. She had no idea what she was doing. Words were just pouring from her mouth, unbidden, unthought, and most certainly unwelcome.
“I just ...” What? What on earth was shejustdoing? “Thought maybe you liked her.”
“Would that be convenient for you?”
No, it absolutely would not be convenient for her. Though she didn’t want to look at the selfishness that drove her sense of distinctinconvenience.
“You’d feel better about dating Grady if I found someone else?”
Huh. Maybe that was what this was. Janie ignored theliar, liar, liarbuzzing in the back of her mind. She shrugged, working hard at mere friendly interest. “I thought I saw a spark.”
Also not true. She’d seen Isa’s full appreciation for Hunter’s manly, military build, his good-looking face, and his heart-jolting smile. That wasn’t a spark—it’d been a glowing blaze on the young woman’s part.
Hunter’s part? Had there been a spark?
Come to think of it, he hadn’t seemed to mind Isa’s touchy ways. Hadn’t tried to carve distance so the girl couldn’t graze her fingertips along his arm. He’d laughed at her stories.
Maybe therehadbeen a spark.
Janie grasped at the friendship thing she’d determined to have with Hunter, which required she doused the fire of ... whatever the burning thing was in her belly.
Hunter clenched his jaw, scratched the spot behind his right ear, and turned back to the sink full of suds.
“You’re not going to answer?”
“No.”
“Because you don’t want to say?”
“Because this is a stupid conversation for you and me to have.”
“Why?”
