Chapter Five
Sam
Monday morning saw Sam opening his front door, juggling his messenger bag, his travel mug, and his keys, while trying to stall Basil’s escape attempts. He stepped forward, and his foot connected with something that shouldn’t have been there.
A bag sat on his doormat.
Not a mail package, just a medium-sized brown paper bag - the kind bakeries used - folded neatly at the top.
Sam glanced down the street. Mrs. Channing was watering her roses two houses down. Mr. Kapoor backed out of his driveway. Nobody lurked suspiciously near Sam’s cottage.
He picked up the bag. It was heavy, and something shifted inside with a pleasant rustle. Then the smell hit him - rich, dark, and complex. Coffee?
Sam opened the bag. Inside, there was a smaller kraft paper bag with a label he didn’t recognize. Single Origin Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, it read in elegant script. Light roast, notes of blueberry and jasmine.
A folded card was nested against the bag. Sam pulled it out.
Have a nice day.
That was it. No signature. No return address. Just four words in neat handwriting on cream cardstock.
“Huh,” Sam said to Basil, who’d taken advantage of the open door to sniff the morning air with great interest. “That’s...nice?”
He looked down the street again. Maybe it was Mrs. Channing? She knew he worked at a coffee shop. Or Emma from the library - she was always trying to get him to branch out from his usual dark roast.
Sam brought the bag inside, setting it on his kitchen counter. The beans smelled incredible and were probably more expensive than his usual brand. He’d open them tomorrow, after his shift. It was a sweet gesture, though, a lovely gesture of neighborhood kindness.
/~/~/~/~/
Tuesday’s discovery made him reconsider. This time it was three books stacked on his doormat, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine like something from a period drama. Sam carried them inside and unwrapped them at his kitchen table.
His breath caught. The Fireborne Trilogy – special editions with embossed covers, gilt edges, and illustrations he’d only seen online. The kind of books Sam drooled over, but never seemed to manage to save up for.
There was no note this time, just three beautiful volumes that he’d mentioned wanting exactly once, to Emma, three months ago during a lunch break conversation he barely remembered.
Sam ran his fingers over the dragon embossed on the first cover. The detail was extraordinary - scales picked out in copper foil, eyes that seemed to gleam.
“This is weird, right?” he asked Basil, who’d claimed the wrapping paper. “This is starting to feel weird.”
But he put them on his bookshelf anyway, between his modest paperback collection. They looked gorgeous there, as if the collection belonged to someone who had their life together instead of a twenty-seven-year-old barista who wrote unpublishable romance in his spare time.
/~/~/~/~/
Wednesday’s offering brought chocolate. Sam nearly missed the bag. It was organza, tied with gold ribbon, practically camouflaged against his brown doormat in the early morning light.
Inside the bag were gold-foiled chocolate coins, the expensive kind from a boutique shop in Cheltenham that Sam had wandered through once and immediately wandered back out of after seeing the prices. The note made his stomach flip.
Because you’re sweet. Three words in the same handwriting and written on the same cream cardstock.
Sam stood on his porch, chocolate coins in one hand, the note in the other, looking up and down his street. He was starting to think that his gifts had nothing to do with neighborly kindness anymore.
But if it wasn’t that, then what was it? A secret admirer? At twenty-seven, after years of radio silence from the entire dating world, someone had decided Sam was worth expensive chocolate and handwritten notes?
He put the coins in his fridge so they wouldn’t melt, tucked the note in his pocket, and walked to work feeling off-balance.
Emma noticed immediately. “You look weird,” she said during her lunch break visit. “Good, weird, like you found money weird.”
“Someone’s leaving me things,” Sam blurted.
“Things?”
“Gifts on my doorstep. Coffee beans on Monday. Books on Tuesday and chocolate today.”
Emma’s eyes went wide. “Oh my god, you’ve got a secret admirer.”
“Or a stalker.”
“Don’t be dramatic. What kind of gifts?”
Sam described them, and Emma’s expression shifted from excitement to thoughtful concern somewhere around the special edition trilogy.
“Those books cost like fifty dollars each,” she said slowly. “The ones with the foil edges and everything.”
“I know.”
“And the coffee beans - did you look up that label?”
“Not yet.”
“Sam.” Emma pulled out her phone, typing rapidly. “Oh. Oh wow. This roaster? Their beans go for thirty dollars per bag.”
Sam’s stomach dropped. “Thirty…”
“Dollars. For coffee beans. And you said the chocolate was from Marguerite’s?”
“I think so. Gold foil, fancy packaging…”
“That’s another twenty.” Emma looked up from her phone. “Someone’s spent roughly two hundred dollars on you in three days.”
“That’s insane.”
“That’s so romantic.”
“I’m sure that’s actually concerning.”
/~/~/~/~/
Thursday brought a mug, which sounded mundane, but it truly wasn’t. It was made from hand-thrown pottery, Sam’s name painted in a flowing script around the rim and glazed in deep blues and greens that reminded him of the sea. The note explained: To enjoy your coffee in.
Sam held it in both hands, feeling the weight of it, the slight imperfection in the handle that proved it wasn’t mass-produced. Someone had made it, or commissioned it for him.
“Okay,” he told Basil. “This is definitely straying into weird territory now.”
But he used it that evening, filling it with tea and wrapping both hands around the warm clay while he tried to write. His characters argued about destiny and fate while Sam stared at his own name rendered in careful brushstrokes.
Who did this? Who knew him well enough to know he liked fantasy stories, chocolate, and good coffee, but not well enough to just tell him they were interested?
/~/~/~/~/
Friday morning, Sam opened his door and froze at the sight of tissue paper. It was cream-colored, expensive-looking, and wrapped around something soft and folded. As he picked it up with careful hands, the tissue fell away.
It was cashmere. More to the point, it was a jumper in soft charcoal grey, exactly his size, with a note pinned to the tissue: To keep you warm.
Sam stood on his porch in his worn jeans and coffee-stained Henley, holding a piece of clothing that probably cost more than his monthly groceries, and felt his concern rise. This wasn’t cute anymore.
This was...what? A prank? Some elaborate joke where his friends were pooling money to see how long before he noticed? Except his friends were broke librarians and fellow baristas. Nobody he knew had cashmere money.
Sam looked down his quiet street. Mrs. Channing had already left for her morning walk. The Kapoor’s car was gone. Everything looked just the same as it always did.
But someone was watching him closely enough to know his size, his interests, and his schedule - that same someone who was spending some serious money on him. And Sam had no idea who, or why, or what they wanted in return.
He brought the jumper inside, added it to the growing collection on his kitchen table, and tried to ignore how his hands shook slightly as he made his morning coffee, in the special mug, with the expensive beans.
While wearing his regular clothes, though, because cashmere felt like too much for a Friday shift at the Daily Bean.
“This is fine,” he told Basil. “People get secret admirers all the time. This is...normal. Probably.”
Basil was eating his breakfast and declined to comment.
/~/~/~/~/
Saturday morning saw Sam’s porch gift free.
Maybe my admirer has something else to do over the weekend.
He left the Daily Bean at noon, relieved to escape Emma’s increasingly elaborate theories about his secret admirer.
Maya had joined in the gossip, and they were now both convinced the gifts were romantic gestures from an “eccentric millionaire who saw you once and fell madly in love.”
“That doesn’t happen in real life,” Sam had said.
“It’s happening to you.”
Now, walking up his garden path, Sam spotted another package on his doorstep. It wasn’t as big as the jumper, and it was wrapped in plain brown paper, rather than tissue.
Sam’s stomach did a double flip. It seemed his gift-giver just got up later on a Saturday. He picked it up, surprised by the weight of it, and unlocked his door with the package tucked under his arm.
Inside, Basil wound around his ankles, demanding lunch.
“Give me a minute,” Sam muttered. He set the package on the kitchen table - next to the other gifts, and stared at it.
Five days. Five gifts. Each one was more expensive than anything he’d ever buy for himself. What on earth could come after cashmere?
Sam unwrapped the brown paper with careful fingers. A wooden box emerged, plain and unvarnished. There was no note this time. He opened the box, and gold gleamed up at him…actual gold.
“No.” Sam blinked and looked again. “That’s not possible.”
But that was what was staring back at him. A small gold bar, maybe three inches long, stamped with official markings he didn’t recognize. But it looked disturbingly legitimate, with serial numbers, purity stamps, and weight measurements on it.
Sam picked it up. The bar felt cold and dense in his palm, heavier than it had any right to be for its size.
“This is getting a bit out of hand, isn’t it?” He looked at Basil, who’d jumped onto the table to investigate. “It has to be fake, surely?”
Basil sniffed the gold bar and turned away. Sam turned it over. The stamps looked real. The weight felt real. But that one little bar had to be - what, a thousand dollars? More? People didn’t just leave gold bars on doorsteps for non-descript baristas.