CHAPTER TWO
“Margot? Are you—”
Before I could think, my hand shot out and covered Georgie’s mouth. Her eyes flew wide as she stared at me.
Why did I have to order a cortado? It was a highly ineffective camouflage. I tried scooting my chair and hiding behind Georgie’s curls instead.
When I retrieved my hand, she leaned in and whispered, “Should I be concerned?”
I had a lousy poker face, and I couldn’t rip my gaze away from the guy in line hunched over his phone.
Georgie glanced over her shoulder and turned back to me, with what could only be pure mischief sparkling in her eyes.
I shot her my best, “If you say anything right now I’ll break off my heel and stab you” look, but it was already too late.
As if he could sense our presence, suddenly his attention fell on me.
Teddy Bowman’s electric smile hadn’t changed one bit. His hair was longer, his jaw scruffier, but he still wore that same oversized denim jacket from high school. Somehow, the years only made him broader.
Exactly the right look for a heartbreaker.
And he grinned at me, huge and wide and completely oblivious to the sounds of squealing tires and exploding bombs playing in my mind.
Georgie, bless her soul, intervened.
“Teddy!” She hollered, flying from her chair and running to him with open arms.
I watched with open disdain as he laughed and caught her in a hug, not a care in the world for anyone else in the cafe.
Growing up, our friends always joked that those two might’ve been fraternal twins separated at birth.
They were like two human sunbeams—radiant and warm and, in Teddy’s case, as unreliable as the weather in Bluebell Cove.
My pulse thundered at the base of my throat. No matter which way I sliced it, there was no way out of this.
I was not going to let him win.
So I slipped from my chair, schooling my features into an indifferent mask as I smoothed the front of my skirt and pulled my shoulders back.
“Teddy,” I murmured once he’d set Georgie down.
He dragged a hand through his hair and approached, eyes threatening to melt me on the spot if I wasn’t older and stronger. Teddy might’ve been well-traveled and quasi-famous, but I spent four years climbing the ladder in a cutthroat industry. I wasn’t the same Margot who thought he hung the stars.
I sucked in a sharp breath when he pulled me into an unexpected embrace, my name on his lips in a voice that had to be huskier than I remembered it. Somehow, he smelled the exact same—a mellow, earthy scent that instinctively urged my body to coil into his.
Instead, I patted his unfairly large shoulder and pulled away, because I was no longer that version of me. I couldn’t be.
Teddy’s smile faltered a skosh as I stepped back.
“You haven’t changed,” he said, meaning it as a compliment even though it landed as a gibe.
“And you have,” I quipped. The subtext could’ve cut glass.
I slid back in my chair and slung one leg over the other, allowing Georgie to carry the conversation as he pulled a seat to our table. Teddy sent me sidelong glances every now and then, but I continued nursing my cortado as if it wasn’t mostly empty.
“I thought you were coming into town on the first?” Georgie continued, “Fallfest isn’t for another week and a half.”
He shrugged the way he always did and leaned back in his chair. “I was on assignment in New York last month, so I figured I might as well come down here early.”
“New York?” I echoed, forgetting I was on a temporary strike from speaking.
“New York Fashion Week,” Teddy replied, “Not really my thing, but I figured it might be fun to try.”
I swallowed the annoyed lump in my throat and choked down the dregs of my cooled cortado.
Georgie seemed to hear the war drums churning beneath my skin. Or maybe she saw my eye twitch.
Either way, she continued before I could light something on fire: “On assignment? I thought you were working at Travel and Taste.”
Teddy’s fingers drumming on the raw edge of the table drew dangerously close to my knee. “On a trial basis. They haven’t quite convinced me if it’s worth it to be locked down.”
Blood boiling, the back of my knees hit my chair as I stood and sent it squealing backward. Four blue eyes stared back at me. Not exactly the calm, indifferent persona I committed to channeling.
“Coffee,” I explained, strutting toward the bar without another look.
“Register’s over there, Margot,” Rachel murmured as she dumped some milk into a steaming pitcher.
“I know,” I hissed. “Can’t you just—pretend?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Pretend I’m making coffee?”
I hoisted myself onto a stool as gracefully as I could manage and tried not to shoot daggers at the back of his head. Rachel poured a heart design with the foam and set it on the counter, announcing another pumpkin spice latte.
“How many is that?” I asked, eager for a subject that didn’t involve the next week and a half being torture.
“I’ve lost track,” she said, leaning her hip against the bar.
An uncomfortable silence fell between us.
Rachel and I didn’t know each other very well, aside from being Georgie’s best friends.
The one other thing we had in common was our love of unsullied espresso, which would only get us so far when our copper-haired mutual friend was busy chatting with her comrade-in-sunshine.
“Hey,” Rachel began, peeking over the espresso machine, “Isn’t that Teddy Bowman?”
Of course. He was inescapable. It didn’t matter that I fled to Bluebell Cove as a safe haven from my dumpster fire of a life. This had to be some sort of cruel joke.
I turned on the stool until I couldn’t see him anymore. Boundaries. Candice would be proud.
“Oh I see. You’re avoiding him. You only needed to say that,” Rachel drawled quietly. “I’m quite experienced helping Georgie evade men.”
“No, I’m—” I sighed and splayed my hands out on the cool tile. “I’m fine.”
“That’s good, because he’s coming over here.”
I shot up. “What?”
He hadn’t moved from the table by the window.
“Yeah, tell me again how you’re fine?” Rachel snorted and wiped a rag over the counter.
“That was mean,” I mumbled, even though I was fighting a smile.
She shook her head and started tinkering with the machine. “Cortado?”
“Cappuccino,” I replied. I’d have better chances of hiding behind that, at least.
Rachel worked silently. The low hum of chatter throughout the cafe helped keep me from trying to listen in on Georgie and Teddy’s conversation. Not that it would be too hard to get out of her later.
I hated that he was back in my life for all of two seconds, and I was already desperate to be around him and hear what he said. Unfortunately, my “pretend like I’m not slowly losing my mind” routine was going to be harder than I expected.
She slid the cappuccino and its little saucer across the bar, propping her elbows on the sage green counter. “The price for that is information.”
I pursed my lips and stared at the perfect, slight sheen of the foam. Was this how regular people made friends? Coercion by caffeine? Well, if Georgie was going to be around him, maybe I needed to branch out a little.
“Fine,” I relented, bringing the drink to my lips and relishing the taste of untainted espresso.
“You guys dated, right?” A twinkle appeared in her eye. “Sorry, Georgie’s downloaded a lot over the years.”
My stomach turned. “Briefly,” I replied.
Even though I wanted it to be longer. Even though that heartbreak sent me on a warpath that ended me up here.
Rachel hummed. “And you’re not over it.”
I straightened in my stool, the words landing like a needle to the heart. Being on the receiving end of someone equally as shrewd as me was a lot less fun than freely dispensing my observations. In other words, no—I did not like the taste of my own medicine.
Was I over it?
Sure. It had been seven years since we broke up, and four since I saw him last. I’d have to be a lunatic to still be in love with him. And it’s not as if I didn’t go out with other men in New York, either—albeit not many survived the first date.
It didn’t matter if some of them recommended a career change to an FBI interrogator. I had standards.
“Of course I’m over it,” I replied mechanically.
“Ah.” Rachel wagged a knowing finger at me. “First loves, and all that.”
Yes, that explained it. Not the fact that the boy I was head over heels for most of my life crushed me to a pulp.
She clucked her tongue. “He’s coming over. Not lying this time.”
Alright. I could do this. I’d stared down sleep-deprived, mildly unstable authors after informing them we weren’t budging on their contract. I’d successfully climbed the greased, shifting rungs of the corporate ladder.
Teddy Bowman was nothing.
“Georgie and I are grabbing lunch,” he said, leaning on the bar, far too close for comfort. “Coming along, M?”
All I needed to do was say no. It was as simple as that.
“Sure.”