Mr. Emotionally Unstable (The Seattle Svenssons #3)

Chapter 1

WINNIE

“Are you just going to watch him like a creep, or are you going to go ask him out?”

I elbow Carolina, and she squawks. We duck behind the counter when The Guy looks in our direction.

“Girls don’t ask guys out. Girls who look like me, especially, don’t ask guys who look like him out.” I peek over the counter.

Carolina whispers over my shoulder, “I think he’d be into it. I bet he has some sort of domination ki—”

“Shhh!” I can feel his gray eyes staring at the top of my head.

“If you have a crush on a guy, just shoot your shot.”

“Crushes? Please. I experience catastrophic devotion and yearning so intense it makes me sick.” I try to scoot down more.

“You’re ovulating. Go get laid, girl.”

“Or, I don’t know, it could be carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“I think your dog would have croaked, then. And she looks fine.”

Fidget looks up balefully, panting, fogging up the cone around her head.

“Actually, she looks hungry.” Carolina scratches Fidget’s shaved belly.

“Don’t feed her. She’s on a diet.”

The Guy idly scrolls through his phone as he waits in line. Gosh, he’s got nice hands.

“Honestly, though, if I’m paying the vet thousands of dollars for emergency surgery, I also don’t want him to fat-shame my dog.” I duck when he looks up from his phone.

“I’d eat a sock, too, if someone was forcing me to eat lettuce, cottage cheese and poached chicken.” Carolina coos to Fidget then sneaks her a treat.

I peer over the counter again. “It’s like I’m a teenager again, lusting over the unattainable star hockey player at school who only has eyes for my younger sister.”

“We’re decentering your sister. Do your tapping exercises.”

I ignore her and stare. “He’s so dreamy.”

“He’s blond. Let’s lower that pedestal you’re putting him on just a smidge.”

“Yeah, we should.” I swoon. “Because he’s so tall and so nicely proportioned. He doesn’t look like an asparagus.”

“Yikes, are we circling back to the VeggieTales fan fiction that got us kicked out of Vacation Bible School the summer of sixth grade?”

“I stand by that fan fiction.”

He’s got one muscular arm draped casually on the back of one of the twenty-two-year-olds’ chairs as he flirts with her while she shows him the photos she took on her phone.

“He does this every day. He comes in here just to flirt with those influencers.” I scowl.

“The influencers provide free marketing. Be nice,” Carolina reminds me.

“But at what cost?” I glower. “I bet one of them marries him.”

“Eeh.” My friend’s nose scrunches. “He doesn’t look like the marrying type. One of them’s for sure going to fake a pregnancy and try to blackmail him.”

“I don’t know. That bottle redhead just got a massive contract with Nuvéa. She’s not doing anything half-assed.”

“We respect the hustle.”

I do begrudgingly respect the hustle, even if she’s after the target of my delusional longing. More sighing.

“You have a stalker. You’re very happy with your stalker. He can flirt with those girls if he wants to and spend money. Look, he’s offering to buy them all drinks. More money in your pocket.”

All the modelesque girls in my café pose on the cute café chairs, batting their fake eyelashes up at The Guy. I feel sick remembering the one time I tried that with Logan Buckley and the entire school laughed.

I sink back down behind the counter.

“I still think it’s your weirdo neighbor. Did you change your locks yet?”

“I’m like ninety percent sure it’s my weirdo neighbor, but I’m at that point in my thirties where if a guy wants to break into my house, do my laundry, and leave me home-cooked meals in individual portions, I’m cool with that.”

Carolina grimaces.

“He cleaned my bathroom,” I protest. “I’m not locking him out.”

“He probably did it because he jacked off in your shampoo.”

“To be fair, my hair has never been better.”

Suddenly, the smell of fresh-baked pastries is overwhelmed by the scent of cedar smoke and the masculine musk—Carolina hates that word—that I’ve come to associate with The Guy. My crush. My unattainable prize.

Do I stand up? Meet his eyes? Gasp—greet him?

Or just stay down here with my friend where it’s safe?

Carolina’s already crawling away.

“Traitor,” I hiss.

Maybe that’s the move. It’s not like he’s going to notice me. He’s too busy flirting with my latest part-time college worker who is on the rich-dad scholarship at the local uni, where she’s phoning it in on her MRS degree.

I’ve spent the past month trying to train Olive. She should know how to work the point-of-sale system. And yet…

“Um?” Olive looks down at me. She giggles. “I can’t remember how to ring the orders up, Winnie.”

I sigh, clear my throat, and dust off my plain black pants, hem folded to show off my sturdy Crocs.

I am a business owner. I am a grown adult woman in her thirties. I own a house. I have a dog. Really, a dog and a half.

Fidget grumbles.

I am not an insecure teenage girl. I will not let this man intimidate me just because he has that fancy black credit card he’s idly spinning in hands that I crave all over me.

I straighten my shoulders. I, too, have a credit card with a large limit. I was an investment banker, after all. I didn’t sell my soul for peanuts.

“Sorry for the inconvenience.” I give him a strained smile. “We’re still in the training period here.” I busy myself with tapping the correct operation into the iPad so I don’t have to look at the intense pools of his gray eyes.

I usually try to hide in the back and peek through the door to watch him when he comes in. Now I’m front and center and he is staring. At. Me.

I can feel Carolina sending me Flirt with him thought waves.

I ignore them. “What was your order, sir?”

Those slate-gray eyes shift to Olive—and the low-cut tank top she’s wearing.

“And no, my cashier is not on the menu,” I add tartly.

“I can tell those are fake.” He’s dismissive. Then his eyes slide down my chest.

My face immediately goes hot.

“I prefer real ones,” he purrs.

I bristle.

See, here’s the thing. I can’t flirt. The best I’m able to do is be mildly insulting.

“And I prefer men who have enough brain cells to muster a halfway-original pickup line and the honor not to flirt with inexperienced college girls, but here we are. Guess no one’s getting what they want.”

And this is why I’m still single, FYI.

That perfect mouth opens. He’s shocked, horrified, offended.

His eyes lock on me, pinning me. He leans over the counter, snarl on his perfect mouth. “I’m not flirting with anyone, Creampuff.”

“Yes, you are!” I sound shrieky.

I can hear Carolina face-palm.

No, I’m no longer that insecure teenage girl, but I did turn into a bitter middle-aged millennial woman who is so sick of men’s shit.

“Don’t just come into my café and gaslight me. You were all over those girls in the front.” I point to the young twenty-one- and twenty-two-year-olds gaping from their camp at the front of my café at the mean lady losing her shit on a customer.

“I was just being nice, which is apparently something you’re not capable of.” That large hand comes down hard on my reclaimed wood countertop.

“You’re not being nice!” I holler at him while Carolina clasps her hands and prays silently. “You’re being sleazy and manipulative. You probably have these girls thinking they have a chance with you.”

“They do have a chance with me. Every woman has a chance with me if she wants one.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “Even you, Creampuff.”

I fume. “Yeah, a chance for you to string them along, promise them marriage and babies, then leave them high and dry.”

“Do I detect a woman wronged?” His tone is mocking.

“No, you do not,” I reply tartly. “You detect a woman who knows basic logic and can see a con man a mile away.”

That sets him off. His nostrils flare. “A con man? Do you have any idea who—”

“Who you are?” I say mockingly. “Yes. A womanizer who goes after younger women because women his own age know better than to waste their valuable time on a man-child.”

“I just placed a hundred-dollar coffee order.”

I glare at Olive.

Olive giggles. “I’m still working on your order.”

“I bet you don’t even have a job. I bet you just put on that thrift-store suit and waltz in here.”

“This is a custom-made suit from imported wool of a Montclair Angora goat.” He looms over the counter.

It might be intimidating to someone else. But not me. The Guy is firmly out of attractive-crush territory. Now he is in public-menace territory.

“It’s so soft!” Olive titters and reaches out to run her hand across the sleeve of his suit.

He gives her an indulgent smile. “At least someone working here recognizes quality when she sees it.”

“See, Olive’s able to ask a man out for a date,” Carolina mutters. “It’s not that hard.”

“Aw, Creampuff, is that what this is about? You want to ask me out?”

“No.” I seethe, fists clenched.

“You should. I think you would be cute together,” Olive chirps as she does something unholy with my poor abused coffee machine. “Venti double-mocha raspberry!” she calls out.

I don’t even have to look at it to know that she did it wrong.

“Go on.” He leans over the counter, smug. “Ask me out just so I can say no.”

Do I swallow my pride? Take charge of my destiny?

Never.

I pick up that nasty cup of coffee sludge, and I throw it all over his fancy suit.

Carolina gasps.

Olive whines, “I didn’t mess it up that bad, Winnie!”

The influencer girls rush over to hover around The Douche, dabbing at him with wads of napkins.

“You—” He reaches across the counter like he’s about to grab me by the neck, shake me, make me pay.

I gulp and take a step back.

His hand closes into a fist, and he jerks it back.

“Get out of my café.” No, my voice isn’t trembling. I didn’t drink enough water today, okay?

Fidget, who cannot read the room, has trundled around the counter to lick at the coffee slushie dripping onto his shiny Italian leather shoes.

“You are banned from the Brew & Browse for all eternity,” I announce, stronger, as Fidget’s cone knocks against the sugar-and-spice rack as she tries to lick up the whipped cream.

“Oh, I don’t think so.” The growl rolls off his tongue.

“I’m not done with you, Creampuff.” His hand slips briefly into the breast pocket of his suit and pulls out a set of folded papers.

“This is my café now. I am the new owner of this tower and the land it sits on, and you have thirty days to vacate.”