Chapter 1 Piper #2
Decision made, I pulled out my phone and fired a text message off to Mila.
Bribing my new coworkers with promises of coffee was the way to make a good first impression, wasn’t it?
Grinning when she answered with an enthusiastic order and a promise to see me soon, I slipped my phone back in my pocket and waited my turn.
I was next. I could practically taste the crunchy-sweet top of my blueberry muffin and the bitter notes of my coffee.
Life was good. All my nervous jitters melted away, and as I watched the elderly woman ahead of me fumble with her purse and wallet, I couldn’t help but feel a rush of gratitude for my situation.
I was starting my dream job. I lived in an adorable town surrounded by breathtaking scenery.
My boys were adjusting well, and my sister was just a phone call away.
For the first time since Nate was born, I was looking forward to earning my own money and carving out a bit of independence for myself. Finally.
“Thank you, dear,” the elderly woman said, then took her time snapping her bulky wallet closed. She fumbled with the closure, then fiddled with her purse zipper, and I pushed back the dart of impatience that tried to streak through me.
She was a nice old lady. No need to get irritated by someone who was here for exactly the same purpose I was. We both wanted coffee—and she hadn’t ordered the blueberry muffin, so I couldn’t be too upset about the speed at which she moved.
“Would you like to purchase a ticket to the Lovers Peak Charity Home Raffle?” the young barista asked. “It’s only five dollars, and proceeds are going toward the construction of the new community center and surrounding garden and playground. You might win a house!”
The elderly woman brightened. “Well, I think I might just have to. I remember bringing my own daughters to that playground. It could do with some cleaning up, couldn’t it?”
“Definitely.” The barista smiled, and we both watched the woman unzip her purse, then slowly reach inside for her bulky wallet.
Impatience tried to grow inside me, but I quashed it. Could the barista have asked that question before the lady put her money away? Sure. But this was small-town living at small-town speed. Mila knew I was on my way. If I was a few minutes late, it would be fine.
I hoped.
Finally, with a raffle ticket safely tucked into her wallet, the older woman slung her purse over her shoulder and said goodbye to the young woman behind the register, then stepped out of the way to go wait for her drink.
I inhaled deeply, smiled, and took a step forward to make my order.
Well. I tried.
What actually happened was that I took a step and smashed right into the broad back of a man who’d come out of nowhere to cut in front of me.
“Hi, Violet,” his smooth, deep voice intoned, ignoring the crash of my face between his shoulder blades.
The young woman behind the register simpered, but her eyes flicked over to me, and there must have been some horrible, murderous expression on my face, because no words actually came out of her mouth.
“I’ll have the usual, but make it an extra-large this time. And I think you forgot to stir the sugar in yesterday, so if you wouldn’t mind—”
“Actually, I mind,” I snapped.
There was a pause. A terrible, electric pause, like that moment between the flash of lightning across the sky and the boom of bone-rattling thunder.
The man turned. He did it slowly, as if it were completely unbelievable that someone would actually speak to him.
Speak up to him. He was quite a few inches taller than me, and I saw that beneath his navy canvas jacket he wore a collared denim shirt with the top few buttons undone, so that his strong throat and sharp jaw were on full display.
Eyes like coals bored into mine, one eyebrow lifting ever so slightly as he took me in.
“Excuse me?” the man drawled.
I stuck out my jaw. “Yes, that’s exactly right. Excuse you.”
He’d only glanced over his shoulder, half turning to see who had confronted him.
Now he spun around completely, likely to try to intimidate me with his breadth and height.
Little did he know that I was done being intimidated by men who swaggered around like they owned every room they entered.
I’d been married to a man just like this, who thought I was invisible, who believed he could walk all over me—and did.
Never again.
This was my fresh start, damn it. I wasn’t going to let a man push me around. Besides, what kind of jerk cut in line so brazenly?
His tone was quiet, slightly curious, and very dangerous. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
My smile was sharp. “No. Thankfully.”
He blinked.
I clutched my purse strap and jutted out my chin. “What I really want to know is whether or not you’ve heard of the concept of a line before.” I swept my arm toward the eight or ten people behind me, who all seemed to be enjoying the show.
So much for making a good first impression.
The line-cutter’s gaze remained on mine for a long, long moment. Then he flicked a glance to the other people in the café before returning those dark, dark eyes to mine. “I’m in a hurry,” he said, calm and unflappable.
“Yeah? So am I, buddy.”
“Well then, it’s in both our best interests to hurry this along, isn’t it?
” He gave me a closed-lipped smile, and the flatness of his gaze left no illusion as to what he really thought about this interaction.
He wasn’t amused. All he did was turn his back on me and say, “I’ll grab that blueberry muffin as well, Violet, if you don’t mind. ”
“Absolutely not,” I snapped.
This time, the man scoffed before he turned. “What the hell is your problem?”
“I was next in line, and that blueberry muffin is mine.”
“From where I’m standing, I’m next.”
“You cut in line.”
“I told you, I’m in a hurry.”
Violet took that moment to pipe up and say, “Ma’am, really, it’s not—”
“Unless you’re about to tell me I’m right and this asshole needs to get to the back of the line, I don’t want to hear it, Violet.”
“Asshole, huh,” he said on a huff.
“I said what I said.” I bared my teeth at him. All the lightness and excitement that had buoyed me as I waited for my coffee turned to lead in my gut. Now I wasn’t looking forward to my fresh start. I wasn’t feeling grateful for my dream job.
Now I was just plain ole mad.
Who cut in line like that? Without even a word or a glance? Honestly, who did that?
His eyes skimmed my face and lingered on my lips.
He took in my half-unzipped jacket and clenched fists, all the way down to the pinstriped wool pants that I’d bought specifically for this new job.
When his eyes finally finished their journey roaming all over every contour of my body and returned to meet my gaze, the amusement was gone, replaced by a look of flat disregard.
He swept his arm out in a dramatic flourish. “After you, madam.”
I took a giant step forward, but I didn’t face Violet. I kept him in my sights and arched my brows.
He arched his right back. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Sure,” I agreed easily. “Now I want to know why you’re standing directly behind me instead of at the back of the line where you belong.”
“You seem real sure of where I belong.”
“Well, I’m not confused about the concept of lining up and waiting my turn.”
All noise had ceased. The espresso machine wasn’t putting off puffs of steam, and the coffee grinder had stopped its whine. The baristas were openly staring, as were the customers.
But I was right, damn it! He was wrong. You didn’t just cut in line when ten people were waiting. You just didn’t. No matter how nice your jawline was.
To underscore that fact, I lifted my arm and pointed down the snaking line of people.
The person who’d been standing behind me, a silver-haired old man, cleared his throat and looked at the insufferable jerk trying to barge his way to the front of the line. The nice older man said, “You just go ahead of me here. I don’t mind.”
Scratch that. He wasn’t a nice old man at all! He was a noodle-spined enabler with no sense of right and wrong.
“Well, I do mind!” I planted my hands on my hips and glared at the two of them.
The line-cutter sidestepped neatly to block the older man from my gaze. He smiled at me, and it was pure challenge.
“I don’t have time for this,” I grumbled, and turned back to the counter. I took a deep breath and let it out in a gust, then said, “I’ll have a medium americano and a blueberry muffin. Please.”
Violet gave me a strained smile. “No problem. Um—” She gulped.
“Yes?”
“Well, our customers have been paying it forward for the past hour. Martha contributed five dollars to your order. You’ll be the hundred and eleventh person in the chain if you’d like to keep it going…”
I blinked at her, stiffening. I could practically feel the gaze of the jerk behind me boring into the back of my skull. Pulling out a twenty from my wallet, I smiled at the young lady currently looking at me like I might bite her head off.
“Tell you what, Violet, I’m going to put this in here,” I said, stuffing the twenty into the tip jar. “But it’ll be a cold day in hell before I pay for that guy’s coffee.” I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder. “I have this thing called principles.”
Violet looked at me. Then the tip jar. Then she glanced behind me. She nodded. “S-sure. Of course.” She lifted the takeout cup in one hand and a Sharpie in the other. Her smile must have been honed through years in customer service. “Your name?”
“Piper,” I said.
“Piper,” the man behind me mused. “Interesting.”
“Yeah?” I spat out as I whirled. “What’s so interesting about that?”
It wasn’t amusement in his gaze. It was pure condescension. Like I was such a silly little woman to stand up to him, a passing curiosity who’d had the audacity to annoy him this morning. He spread his hands and shrugged, and it only served to make my anger grow to unmanageable proportions.
“Say what you want to say, buddy,” I challenged.
“I don’t want to say anything.”
“Um, ma’am, would you like to buy a ticket to the Lovers Peak Charity Home Raffle? It’s—”
“No,” I snapped, staring at the man, who arched his brows. A ripple went through the rest of the waiting customers, and I saw them begin to murmur to each other.
“You could win a house,” Violet said, her voice small. “It’s for the community center…”
One woman near the back of the line narrowed her eyes at me. Another woman frowned, pursing her lips.
Doubt began to trickle through me, piercing the veil of anger that had driven me so far.
Had I broken a social rule? I didn’t care about some raffle. But I’d been rude to the poor barista, who hadn’t deserved it.
“We believe in community in this town,” the jerk with the nice jaw said, disdain dripping from his words.
“I believe in community,” I insisted, my voice cracking.
“I’ll buy two tickets, Violet,” the man said, and the elderly gentleman behind him had the nerve to pat him on the shoulder as if he’d done some sort of amazingly good deed.
The anger inside me was still so big it choked me. Violet was scratching out a handwritten ticket when I turned around to face her again, and I could feel everyone’s stare like an itch between my shoulder blades.
“I’d love a ticket,” I told her. “I’m sorry for being rude.”
Violet looked up at me with big eyes, then slid her gaze over my shoulder to the man behind me. “It’s okay. You don’t have to buy one.”
“Maybe today’s the day my luck changes,” I said, and plucked the ticket out of her grasp, swapping it for a five-dollar bill. “Thank you.”
“Oh, okay, but—”
“I’ll still grab two,” the jerk said, handing a ten-dollar bill over.
Violet nodded, taking his money. “Yeah, sure, let me just write your name—ma’am, I need your phone number and email—um—hold on. Jess, can you get the muffin, I need to—”
There was confused shuffling as Violet handed the raffle tickets out, I paid for my order, and the barista at the machine leaned over to give me a brown paper bag with my precious muffin inside.
I thanked her but had to set the muffin down as I finished writing out my details on the little slip of paper for my raffle ticket while the line-cutter invaded my personal space to accept a steaming-hot coffee from a third worker.
That happened before I got my coffee, I noted, scowling.
Finally, handing the raffle ticket stub and pen back over the counter, I grabbed my muffin and shuffled sideways. When my name was called, I took my coffee and lifted my gaze, only to see the line-cutter staring right at me. He took a sip of his coffee, then lifted it in salute.
It took all my self-control not to stick out my tongue at him. Head held high, I marched out of the café and over to my car. I took a big gulp, burned the roof of my mouth, spluttered and coughed coffee all over my steering wheel, then swore.
That was when I realized I’d forgotten to grab Mila’s order.
Through the windshield, I saw another couple enter the coffee shop to join the long line.
It was too late to go back—and I wasn’t sure I could manage the humiliation of getting in line again—because there was no way I was cutting in front of all those people. Unlike some people, I had principles.
Sighing, I turned the key in the ignition.
Today, it turned out, would not be a good day.