Chapter 2 Chance #2
I squared my shoulders and tried to ignore the way my stomach knotted up. Maeve had her back to the window, kneading like she meant to punch a hole through the dough. She missed nothing, but she also didn't like worrying when there were paying customers to be fed.
Not that our family needed the money, but we didn't run this place for money. It was our passion. It'd been in our family for over a century.
I inched closer to the glass, plant-pot camouflage and fake cheese Danishes between me and the world. The SUV didn't move. No one got out.
Weird.
Make them leave. Caden growled in my head.
"Maeve, check this out." I jerked my chin at the window.
She didn't even look up. "If it's not a customer, don't waste your time. The only people up this early are contractors and nosy neighbors."
I kept staring anyway.
SkyArc didn't do subtle. They moved in, bought up land, and turned everything into "cozy vacation cottages" overnight. Last time they'd sniffed around, a whole street of cabins had lost their view of the creek to cheap condos.
Maeve finally noticed the silence. "What is it?"
I pointed with the flour-dusted handle of a wooden spoon. "SUV."
She approached, wiping her hands on her apron, and gave the vehicle a hard look.
"Ugh. Leeches," she muttered. "They'll leave once they realize we don't do breakfast for corporate drones."
But she kept watching, eyes narrowed.
Inside, Caden growled. My dragon had gone from restless to outright furious. I couldn't blame him. We'd put too much work into coming back. Nobody was taking Laurel Gap away this time.
I shaped another loaf, working extra fast to burn off the nerves. Flour dusted my shirt and clung to the ridges on my hands.
The next batch of rolls came out perfect, but even that didn't shake the feeling.
The SUV sat still. No movement. Just the slow, rhythmic haze of exhaust melting against the dawn.
Why were they parked here?
The regulars started to trickle in as the sky shifted from gray to pale yellow.
Maeve called me back to reality by flinging a towel at my shoulder. "Heads up, baby cousin. If you burn another tray, you'll owe me a week of cleaning the bathrooms."
She was a whole week older than me.
Still, I kept one eye on the window.
Maeve slammed a tray onto the counter. "You want to stalk the enemy, at least do it with more bread in your hands."
I shot her a half-smile. "Noted."
She snorted, not unkindly. "Just don't scare off the paying customers. They're the only ones keeping this place from turning into a haunted house."
Caden and I snorted together. This bakery will outlast everyone, even if the ghosts have to keep the ovens running.
I settled behind a mountain of crusty loaves, blocking myself from Maeve's view, and watched the developers through smeared glass while the scent of cinnamon finally overcame traitor-mint in the air.
The bell over the door chimed, and a rush of cold air swept through.
In the middle of it stood a woman. Not one of the regulars, that much was obvious. She paused just inside the threshold, taking in the bakery with a careful sweep, like she wanted to memorize every color, every smell.
Short and soft, with a glow that made her look sort of unreal in the pale light. Curvy, yeah, but there was a steadiness about how she planted her feet, how she held her head high. Her hair, thick and dark, was pulled back in a ponytail.
Her scent, God, that scent. Caden almost knocked me to the floor, lunging at it.
Underneath the vanilla and sugar and yeast, there she was.
Heat slammed through me so fast I gripped the prep table to steady myself.
I told myself it was shock, recognition, but the truth was uglier.
I wanted her. Immediately. Completely. Just like before.
No question, it was her. The woman from the party. That night still burned behind my eyes, even years later.
Absinthe and Everclear, that had been the combo.
College party, music too loud, and enough green haze in the air to make bad ideas look like genius.
She'd been the only one in the room who understood what it was to be invisible and still impossible to ignore.
Just for one night, I'd let myself forget everything, family, duty, secrets, and we'd vanished together.
No last names, no baggage, just touch and warmth and a half-drunk promise to see what happened next.
Except next never came. The Hollow Order had already been sniffing around. A Hunter was spotted in Laurel Gap, and my family was boxed up and on the road before sunrise, just a few short months after the party.
Maeve spotted her first. Typical. "Morning, honey," she sang out, already working her best southern hospitality. "Are you here for breakfast, or just to case the cinnamon roll situation?"
The woman laughed, low and warm. "Little of both, but mostly breakfast. My girls, they're ruthless. If I come home without something good, I might get locked out."
"Oh, I know those types," Maeve said. She winked at the woman as if they'd been co-conspirators for years. "What can I set you up with?"
The brunette's gaze flicked toward the display, gaze running over every item with deep concentration. She didn't look nervous, just focused. Maybe a little too practiced at hiding nerves, but who wasn't, these days?
She tapped the glass, then smiled at Maeve. "That cheese Danish, please. And the spicy cinnamon rolls."
Maeve beamed like she'd found a lost relative. "Anything else?"
The order grew, a couple iced cookies, four sausage rolls "for the carnivores at home, not me", a multigrain loaf if Maeve had it. Nothing fussy. She sounded like someone who'd stood in a hundred bakery lines and already knew what she wanted.
All the while, I stayed behind the baking rack, pretending to stack trays but really just watching her.
Talk to her!
I ignored my dragon as the woman, whose name I'd never even learned, didn't even glance my way.
She'd said she had daughters. She'd found someone, settled down, and I wasn't going to ruin that for her.
Caden growled.
Maeve made chit-chat, asking about the kids and if she was new in town. The woman grinned and made a joke about moving and the number of boxes versus the number of siblings, how everyone survived, and only the dog remained traumatized. She laughed easily.
I'd bet money she was a good mom. The kind who remembered field trip forms and which color cup each kid liked at breakfast.
What would she think if I just popped up, dough in my hair, and said, Hey, remember me? My gaze kept snagging on the curve of her hip as she shifted her weight, the line of her throat as she laughed with Maeve. Every detail carved itself into me, bright as flame, impossible to look away from.
Do it!
Maeve boxed up the order, humming under her breath.
"Anything else?" she asked, double-checking the ticket.
"Do you have those chocolate croissants?" the woman asked. "It's Meredith's absolute favorite. She's had a tough year, so I promised."
"We do, and I'll throw in an extra since it's your first week in Laurel Gap." Maeve's smile made everything sound easy.
They kept talking, and it all ran together in a blur of kid stories, something about water and animals in creeks, and gossip about who'd bought the old book store. I barely heard it. My brain was stuck on the way she moved, fast, efficient.
It killed me not to go up to her. It really did. But I stayed hidden, stacking pans and playing mannequin, telling myself it was the right thing. She deserved to keep her life.
Caden disagreed. She's ours!
No. She's moved on. There was nothing to move on from, really. It had just been a one-night stand.
She thanked Maeve, left an absurd tip, and turned for the door. Not a single look in my direction.
But I saw the moment she passed the window, the quick glance she threw at the black SUV. Not long, but sharp enough to stab right through me. She clocked it as a threat, too. Maybe not consciously, but instincts didn't lie.
Then she was gone. The bell jangled once, then silence.
Maeve peeked around the divider.
"You looked like you'd seen a ghost," she said, eyebrow raised.
I tried to play it off. "Late night. Or maybe the mint poisoning's getting to me."
She snorted.
The SUV started its engine. I tensed, ready to block the door if it tried anything. But it just drove away in the opposite direction.
Caden raked my insides raw, furious to let her walk away. I held firm.
She's moved on, I repeated. Or there was never anything for her to move on from. It's highly unlikely she's thought about me for the last seventeen or so years.
He growled in answer.
I barely remembered the drive home.
One minute I was scrubbing flour off my forearms at the back sink, bellowing "see ya tomorrow" to Maeve over the usual clatter of the bakery's closing routine, and the next I was gunning my truck up the rutted mountain road.
I'd skipped the post-shift wipe-down. My shirt and jeans were streaked with dough, sweat dried into the creases of my elbows, and I itched all over from a day in the kitchen trenches.
It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Not with the way Tash's face kept flashing through my mind, every damn time I blinked.
She hadn't even been in the bakery for more than ten minutes.
Just enough time to drop every single word out of my mouth and rewire my head.
All day, I kept wanting to see her again.
Hell, it was worse. I needed it. Her laugh.
That stubborn tilt of her chin. The way her hair had glimmered in the overhead lights, the memory of cinnamon and honey and bright, burning hunger.
Every time I rolled more dough or shoved another tray in the oven, there she was, carved behind my eyes.
I was used to running hot, but this was something else.
Maeve teased me about obsessive tendencies, but she had no idea.