Chapter 1
1
M aeve
“Watch out!” my coworker Ben cries out, smacking into me right when I’m rounding the corner with a venti iced coffee. Without a lid on. The whole thing topples backward. Right onto my chest, to be precise.
“Mae!” Ben groans, stepping aside and trying to save his white shoes from the puddle on the floor. “Be careful.”
“You ran into me. Literally ran, Ben.” I’m nearly growling from the unfairness of the situation.
“I need to grab oat milk. Sorry.” He rushes to the pantry at the back, leaving me soaked with the brown liquid. It was an iced latte with whole milk. In an hour, I’ll start smelling like a rotten fridge, and the shift just started.
“Mae!” my boss, Jerome, yells from the front. “Hurry up!”
It’s seven thirty in the morning, and the line of customers has already extended out the door. It’s only Ben and I here today. Well, plus our boss. Our very useless boss. He’s not really helping other than yelling at us to hurry up. This crowd on business days is usually served by at least six people. Being located on the ground floor of a giant office building, our early mornings are hectic to say the least. So I don’t know how we ended up here with just the two of us and Jerome.
I grab a towel from the counter and start trying to dry myself the best I can under the circumstances.
“Mae!”
Cool your horses , I nearly yell back with an eye roll, walking up to the counter. “Here.”
“What happened to you?” My boss’s eyes drop to my drenched used-to-be-white shirt that I embroidered myself only last week and then go up to my hair, which is dyed a soft pink and pinned up tightly.
I have a job interview at twelve, so I don’t want my hair looking a mess when I burst into one of the offices of this very same building. I’m tired of being yelled at, so I’m ready to move on. Or up as one might say. I am that one.
“You can’t serve people like that,” Jerome announces in a squeak. “Get an apron and cover that mess.”
I gently push him away from the register because he’s just standing here without actually doing anything. You’d think he could take orders at least to make things move faster, but no. It’s not like it’s his business or something.
“Tough morning?” a smiling man with the most stylish outfit I’ve ever seen asks. He’s been here every morning, picking up two coffees, since the moment I started working here. He’s always been friendly. Not overly chatty, but also not a rude office rat like the majority of people here in the mornings.
“You could say that,” I sigh back, side-eyeing Jerome who’s now going after Ben. “What can I get for you?”
“I’ll take two black coffees and—” He pauses and tilts his head to the side, giggling a little. “You know what.” He snaps his fingers as if he just came up with a brilliant idea. “Today, I’ll take just one black coffee with two creams. Thank you, dear.”
I ring up his order and run to get his coffee. Under the watchful eye of our boss, of course. He’s here to make sure we don’t slack off.
The stylish man takes his coffee and whisks away, wishing me ‘Good luck.’
Fifteen minutes later, the line is not shorter. Not even by a person. My shirt is even wetter from running around like I’ve been bee-stung in my ass. A few strands of my sweaty hair have popped out from my strategically pinned updo, so I’m sure I won’t be looking good during my interview. Jerome is yelling even louder without offering any help. Ben is about to have a mental breakdown after fetching ten boxes of oat milk in the span of five minutes. The crowd grows aggravated. My hands shake more and more. Ben starts sniffling. Jerome yells louder. My eye starts twitching.
I’m moving on autopilot, taking orders, making coffee, trying to smile. Soon, my smile doesn’t dissolve because my facial muscles just get stuck in this position, and I’m sure I look like part of the cast of a horror movie.
“Coffee. Black.” Comes a low voice, gruff and raspy. It’s not loud per se but loud enough to drown the whole cacophony of sounds in the room. “Now,” he adds when I don’t react fast enough and jump to fulfill his order.
Here comes the asshole of the morning. There’s always one. This time, it’s someone new, someone I haven’t seen here before. And nearly everyone here is a regular at this point. People stop by to grab their morning coffees before a long day at work, and then they come back to refuel during lunch.
I bring my eyes to a usual level where I’d expect to see a person’s face. But I’m met with a chest. A very wide chest dressed in a white shirt and rather expensive gray suit. One that probably costs more than both my kidneys combined.
I lift my eyes a little and nearly whistle. I mean, c’mon, I’ve been living in New York for the past five years. Attractive guys are a dime a dozen here. And yet, I want to whistle. His face is so symmetrical, it’s annoying.
His dark hair is cut short on the sides and a little longer on the top. Not a strand out of place. A normal human activity like walking or breathing would turn my hair wild. Not him though. It just sits on his head in the perfect shape he probably was born with, the damn symmetrical asshole. His face is disgustingly perfect, with a straight, big nose and somewhat plump lips which should never belong to a stuck-up guy like that because those lips are not meant for barking orders.
His pale skin looks like it has never seen the sun, and he might as well be a vampire. Under the bright lights of the coffee shop, he looks almost translucent.
The obvious lack of vitamin D makes his eyes look dull and bored. Like the look on the face of someone who’s seen it all and tried it all and now he’s bored to tears but he’s too bored to even cry, so he just looks like a mannequin from a mall. A very attractive mannequin with very dark circles under his very hard eyes.
“If you’re done staring, can I finally get my fucking coffee?” he says. His voice is low and rumbly. So rumbly, I nearly clamp my thighs shut because I feel his voice right between them, vibrating all the right places.
“I’m not.”
“What?” he asks in a quiet voice.
“Not done staring.” I lift my chin.
He narrows his eyes while they dart toward my eyebrow piercing, and I immediately get the sense he’s making judgments. So I squint my eyes even more in return. His nostrils flare. But I don’t miss the moment his eyes dip to my front this time where the wet used-to-be-white shirt is still clinging to my chest, probably revealing the purple bra underneath. With no padding—it’s too hot for that.
I quirk my pierced brow, letting him know I’ve noticed, and his well-defined jaw clamps shut. So hard the muscles pop.
“Of course Mae will get your order, Mr. King,” Jerome interrupts the beginning of what could have been a fun story of a barista sticking a fork into one man’s eyes. “It’s such a pleasure to see you here. Very unexpected too.”
Even his last name is pompous. Mr. King my ass. I’ve never met a King in my life but heard of plenty. None of them sound like decent folks.
I plant a smile and go to make his coffee, because I can’t afford to lose this job now. Doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun with his coffee.