Chapter Three #3
Blair rolled her eyes. Why was grown-up Luke so aggravating?
At least he was doing a great, actually, a fantastic job of reminding Blair of why she used to hate him.
He was in jeans again, these ones fitting as well as the ones he’d been wearing yesterday.
The solid forest green flannel he’d paired them with looked soft and worn, which was a bit confusing considering all his social media showed him in suits or dress shirts.
But these clothes looked like he wore them all the time.
Luke hadn’t been into the whole logger aesthetic when they were teenagers, despite the fact that he grew up in a town surrounded by farms and forests.
In fact, his new look meant he fit in at Moonbeam Hollow more than ever before.
‘Why are you dressed like that?’ Blair asked. ‘I thought you were an architect, not a lumberjack.’
He smirked. ‘Why are you paying so much attention to what I’m wearing?’
Blair blinked. Why wouldn’t she notice his clothes? They were literally on the outside of his body. She turned away from him. ‘Go away, Luke. I’m trying to get into my café.’
‘Why can’t you get in?’ The mirth was gone from his voice now, replaced by concern.
‘My key is sticking. I got it. You shoo.’ She waved him away. Had Blair told Luke Caldwell to shoo? She needed to figure out how to hold herself together around this man.
‘Let me try.’ Luke put his hand out to take the key from her.
Blair shook her head. ‘I’m not some weak woman who needs a man to rescue her. I open this door every day. I can handle it.’ She tried again, but nothing happened. Ugh. If Luke wasn’t here, she’d use a lubrication spell, which was easily the worst-named spell in existence, so Blair hated using it.
‘It doesn’t look like you can. Look, Blair, this isn’t the patriarchy speaking, I’m an old friend who would like to help you. We said yesterday that we were going to try to put the past behind us, didn’t we?’
That’s not quite what Blair wanted – she wanted to pretend they had no past at all.
But she was stressed and frazzled, and Luke showing up now looking like that, and smelling like him .
. . was making it hard to think about much other than their past. Blair finally exhaled.
She said she was going to be an adult about this and was failing miserably.
She handed him the key and took a step backward.
There was no way Luke was going to be able to unlock the door, anyway.
But Luke easily slid the key into the lock with seemingly no resistance.
He didn’t even have to wiggle it. After pulling the key out, he tugged on the door, opening it easily.
He handed Blair the key, a smile on his face.
Stupid smug sexy man. Why did the door open for him and not for her? Blair snatched her key back. ‘I don’t know what you did to my lock, but sabotaging my café before yours even opens is low. Even for you, Caldwell.’
Luke’s eyebrows raised. ‘I didn’t do anything to your lock.’
‘Then why could you open it when I couldn’t?’
‘Maybe your weak little hands couldn’t turn the key?’
Blair blinked. Amusement was shining in Luke’s brown eyes – the exact shade of brown as the skin on Blair’s arm.
They’d compared once, and he’d said it was because he only had eyes for her.
He shook his head, smiling small. ‘For some reason, you seem determined to see me as your enemy. But I have better things to do than mess with your locks, Briarwood.’ At that, he turned and walked toward the door of his bakery.
Blair sighed as she went inside the café and turned the lights on.
Had she gone too far by accusing Luke of sabotage?
But he had to have done something. There was no logical reason why Luke showed up and easily unlocked the door the moment Blair was struggling with it.
And he had plenty of motives for trying to sabotage Blair’s café, considering he was opening one right next door. And she’d broken his heart.
But maybe Blair shouldn’t look for logic when there was unexplained magic in town.
Blair took her apron down from the hook behind the counter and slipped it on. After starting up her espresso machine, she tidied the cream and sugar station. While she went through the motions of her opening routine, Blair took stock of her café.
It was getting a little shabby, if she was honest. The café had been open for six years now, and while the cozy vibes were timeless as far as Blair was concerned, she did acknowledge that a coat of paint and maybe some furniture polish could go a long way in freshening it up.
Maybe she could get coordinated bottles for her syrups instead of using mismatched mason jars?
The bakery display was still pretty full.
Her bakery supplier was a commercial bakery in a nearby city, and what they lacked in quality they normally made up for in reliability, until yesterday’s late delivery.
There was no way Blair would even think about baking in-house, first because she was no baker, and second because it was a lot of work that would take away from her focus on speciality coffees and teas.
Maybe she could use a bit of magic to make the Harvest Moon Café smell better to compete with the bakery?
The Harvest Moon Café could be turned up several notches in the cozy category to beat Shirley’s Sugar Mountain without Blair using any sabotage on her opponent. Because Blair was a bigger person than Luke Caldwell.