Right With You (Veterans of Silver Ridge #6)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Elise

H ow does this man eat donuts three to five days a week and look like that?

The thought wasn’t new. I had it approximately three to five days a week, every time Jean-Luc Doux entered my donut shop, ordered a plain glazed, and sat with a book at a small bright white table to eat it.

No coffee from next door. No milk. Not even water.

Just a donut. Like a monster.

Well, to be fair. Donut and a book.

A book he read using glasses he slipped on surreptitiously and tucked away again before he stood up to leave, usually ten minutes after arriving. The titles were usually in French with unfamiliar covers, which only heightened the air of mystery he carried.

Today, he waltzed in looking as impossibly handsome as always. His dark brown hair styled in a careless sort of mess that somehow still looked polished, his facial hair the perfectly short length so it wasn’t quite a beard nor quite stubble, and his gray-green eyes set against the dark fringe of his lashes and brows. He wore a simple-looking jacket of plain black and under it a cream-colored Henley-style shirt with the top button undone, which seemed rather French of him. Not that I knew what was or wasn’t French, but his style always looked a touch more careless and yet composed than his friends and coworkers at Saint Security.

Sometimes, I imagined he was a famous pop star hiding out in the safest place he could find. Other days, I wondered what it’d be like to discover he was on a secret mission from the government. Still other times, I fantasized about discovering he was some kind of fairy lord who ran a secret realm everyone assumed was bad but was actually an equitable and lovely place.

Lovely little fantasies that don’t mean a thing.

I had a rich inner life, one might say. I’d never been a quiet person, but these last few years, I’d drawn inward, where it was safest. I had an outlet with my closest friends in some ways, but otherwise, I tucked myself away and focused on work, which suited me just fine.

“Hello there. What can I get you?” I asked, as I always did, because I was a normal person and not someone who let how severely beautiful this man was, or how often I imagined secret lives for him, show through our interactions. My secret world would remain secret, please and thank you.

Predictably, a dramatic pause followed. He read the menu as though he’d never been in before, then eyed the sign for specials.

I braced, knowing what was coming.

His gaze shifted to meet mine. My stomach swooped, but I pasted on a smile. We’d been through this dozens of times now.

Keep calm .

“One plain glazed today.”

Ah, the plain glazed. Definitely his favorite, if I had to guess, though he did sometimes opt for our specials or the daily. I often changed the flavors when feeling inspired or during the height of tourist season, but now that the ski season had ended and we’d entered the shoulder slow down, I’d eased off.

Maybe that was also due to my total lack of inspiration, my complete exhaustion, and a general sense of impending doom, but who wanted to think about that? It was so much easier to imagine fantastical scenarios where this beautiful man and his friends were secretly actual superheroes destined to save the world from alien invaders.

Or whatever.

“One plain, gotcha. Anything else I can get you?”

We didn’t offer much beyond donuts, except bottled water and locally sourced milk that came in adorable glass bottles. Since we were directly next to Joe, an amazing local coffee shop, it would be silly to compete. Most people brought coffee here and settled in with a donut or vice versa.

Not this man.

“No, thank you.”

I ducked my chin in acknowledgement, ignoring anything happening in my chest cavity or stomach because there should be no flutters or flips. An attractive man buying donuts was not uncommon around here. Silverton had something that lured men of a certain age and sexiness to the area, and one need only look at the roster of former military guys working for Saint Security to confirm it.

Add to that the plethora of other handsome men floating around and it was simply ridiculous.

Cut to: a film titled There’s Something in the Water where we find out there’s literally something in the mountain run-off that pulls men via their genetically near-perfect makeup here.

Sadly, it had also pulled men like Callum, my garbage pail ex, so… they’d need to work on that in storyboarding.

Despite the silly theories and logical banishment of such things, little zings and flares of heat still popped up whenever I saw Jean-Luc Doux, aka Cookie, much less sold him a donut.

“Here you go,” I said, handing him a bright pink bag containing his donut, Glazed emblazoned in white across the front of it.

Wait for it…

“Thank you, Elise.”

His gaze lingered, and I could’ve sworn there was some kind of twinkle in his gorgeous eyes. How could he make that simple phrase sound soft and alluring and flirty?

I nodded, swallowing down the riot his words started. Cells in my chest and synapses in my brain threw a party as the sound of my name in his low, smooth voice hit my ear drums.

Elise .

Good gracious, he said it every time, and I’d never loved my name more than when it slipped from his lips with his French pronunciation making it sound so beautiful. A crisp eh instead of the variable American approaches to the start that so often sounded like uh. And then the firm se almost like a z, a far cry from the wispy ss sound of my native language.

Okay so I had no linguistic training to properly explain the sounds his glorious French tongue made of my name, I just knew I liked it.

A little too much, weirdo.

That helpful thought shoved me back to work just in time to see another customer wander in, keeping me from the oft-visited story my brain had come up with where Jean-Luc’s glorious light accent had the ability to command anyone in its hearing, not unlike a vampire glamour. Nay, there was no time for that.

The absence of a line when he arrived was depressingly indicative of business in the last two weeks since Silver Ridge Mountain closed for the season. I might’ve loved spring in Utah—the timid blooms peeking out, the bright pink skies that began emerging, and the glory that would be fields of wildflowers come June, but… ugh. It sucked for business.

I helped the new customer and staunchly refused to enjoy the view of Jean-Luc sitting at my table eating my donut and reading with those thick black frames. It would do nothing for me, and I had prep to do for tomorrow.

He wasn’t a lonely college professor, wishing for the right donut-making woman to take her coffee break and chat with him. He wasn’t a bedraggled single dad sneaking a moment for himself and discovering the perfect woman standing right in front of him.

I knew very well these things weren’t true, but what harm was there in a little imagination? Lately, it was all the creativity I had, and it was safe. No risks involved when the game afoot was merely me, myself, and I telling stories in the silence of our mind—to us.

After bustling around tasks and wiping down counters, I moved to the back to prep for a quick inventory of supplies so I could send in an order. By the time I checked back in the dining area, Jean-Luc had gone.

Ignoring the twinge of something I couldn’t name, I finished tidying up and set chairs on tables. With no one coming in and only twenty minutes left, I felt fine about it. Since we opened early and the tourist traffic had tapered off thanks to the end of ski season, I’d started closing before noon.

Maybe it made me a crap business owner, but my desire to stay chipper and welcoming right up until closing time had fallen by the wayside right about the time I’d had to start trucking donuts to the homeless shelter every day rather than selling out. After a few days and realizing it wasn’t a fluke and the traffic really had died off that abruptly, I’d adjusted how many I made and didn’t have the same surplus.

On the way out to the dumpster around the corner, a shout halted my progress.

“Elise, stop.”

Uh-leess. My heart sank.

“What do you need, Callum?” I asked, turning to face my ex and demanding my knees stand firm and my strength hold.

“What do I need? Leesy, it’s what you need, and we both know it.” He crossed his arms and looked at me, a mixture of pity, censure, and cruelty in his eyes.

Anger and fear warred as I gritted out, “I don’t think so.” I stepped away from him as he moved closer. My spine stiffened and my stomach clenched.

“You need me and what I’ve invested in your little shop. And if you want that investment to stay put, you’ll do as you’re told. You’re mine whether you acknowledge it or not. It’s that simple.”

Fury ignited in my veins and my teeth ground together, because right at its heels came fear surging past all my best efforts at walling it off. Familiar, ugly, shameful.

Talk about the opposite of a fun fantasy.

“You—you don’t get to tell me what to do. I’m not yours and I haven’t been in months.” My back hit the brick wall as he got closer and his hand reached for me. I craned my neck away, trying to melt back, to escape. But there was none, was there? Not where Callum was concerned.

“You’ll do?—”

His words cut off. I opened my eyes to see him sneering as he turned, someone grasping his arm and halting his progress toward me.

“Hey, you can’t?—”

“No. You can’t. You won’t.”

Jean-Luc.

Holy crap, that was his murderous growl as he shoved Callum away from me and prowled after him. The normally quiet patron of my donut shop, and friend of my friends, wedged his forearm under Callum’s chin, pressing onto his neck and pinning him against the other side of the small alley.

“You will not touch her again.”

Callum cowered, but managed to spit out, “Who… who the hell are you?”

“Her boyfriend.”

Her… boyfriend?

My boyfriend?

Um, wait. What?

Before I could process this fantastical announcement, Callum sputtered an expletive and made to move forward.

Jean-Luc simply leaned in, cutting off the air enough to silence him.

“Touch her again and I end you. That simple. You understand, or do I need to explain it?”

Forget about the “her boyfriend” thing for a second. How had I forgotten this man was a former special operations soldier in the Army, just like most of the staff at Saint Security? He was deadly and skilled and trained to do all manner of things I knew nothing about. That wasn’t make-believe storytelling, but a truth that only just now felt real.

Callum shook his head, apparently understanding his predicament more clearly.

“Good. Touch her”—he notched his head toward the side in gesture to me—“and you die. Easy.”

Wow, not just super soldier vibes, but even I could believe he was defending the spurned honor of his woman.

Completely swoon-worthy if not for the bit where I was, supposedly, the woman in question.

He pushed off Callum who instantly spat at Jean-Luc’s feet and sent me a furious look before stalking away, hollering “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!” as he went.

Jean-Luc turned to me, unperturbed by Callum’s threat, the fury melting into something I could’ve sworn looked like panic. He reached up and I flinched, the reaction an unfortunate byproduct of what had just happened. The adrenaline cranking through me couldn’t discern between the man who’d just stormed off—who was a genuine threat to me—and this one, who seemed to be intent on making sure my ex didn’t hurt me again.

But it was over. Callum was gone. All thanks to Jean-Luc.

A flood of overwhelm washed over me, and I shuddered, eyes glazing with tears.

He held up both hands, gorgeous face masked in concern. “Elise, are you okay?”