Chapter 21
Espresso Yourself smelled like roasted coffee and spun sugar—comfort in a cup—and Sutton was halfway to believing this morning could still be normal when Jo leaned over the counter and grinned like she’d just been handed gossip on a silver platter.
“Morning, Lynlee.” Jo held out her fist.
Lynlee didn’t miss a beat. Bump. “Morning, Miss Jo.”
Sutton smiled, reaching for her wallet. “A Wake-Up Call, please." She hesitated. "Heavy on the cream this morning."
Jo was already sliding a cup across the counter before Sutton finished the sentence. "Nope."
Sutton looked at the cup. "What is this?"
"Cortado. Strong, small, no hiding behind the cream." Jo's eyes were steady and entirely too perceptive. "You don't need comfort this morning. You need to think straight."
“How did you know?”
"The bean whisperer," Jo said, tapping a finger to her head. "Runs in the blood." Jo snapped her fingers. "Oh, and this is courtesy of Colter, by the way. He ordered it for you before I even saw your face."
Sutton stared at the cup.
"He ordered a cortado," she said slowly. "For me."
"Down to the shot count," Jo confirmed. "Man's got your order memorized better than his own social security number, and he doesn't even work here."
“Did Colter leave me a present?” Lynlee asked.
“Pumpkin,” Sutton said, hoping to ward off any heartbreak.
“Right here, kiddo.” Jo handed Lynlee a muffin.
She opened it and started jumping up and down. “It’s pumpkin. My favorite.”
Her daughter’s joy landed square between Sutton’s chest and sternum. Not just because he had remembered her coffee order, but because he had remembered the little muffin Lynlee always asked for without fail.
He wasn’t just paying attention to Sutton. He was paying attention to her daughter. And that kind of care, quiet and unshowy, reached places Sutton kept heavily guarded.
“He didn’t have to do that,” she said on a fake laugh—as if the gesture was some kind of inside joke.
“Men don’t wake up generous by accident, and they don’t have to do a lot of things they suddenly start doing when something’s going on.”
“Nothing’s going on,” Sutton said too quickly.
"Nothing's going on." Jo repeated it back slowly, then leaned forward across the counter, elbows planting firmly as she closed the distance. Her eyes narrowed and, blunt as always, said, “I. Call. Bull. Shit.”
Sutton’s stomach dropped. Whatever she’d been trying to hide was apparently written all over her, bold and underlined—like her face had subtitles.
“You said a dirty word,” Lynlee said her little hand already out. “Mommy, she said a dirty word.”
Jo grinned at Lynlee. “Sounds like you’re Dirty Word Police. Well, I’ll be putting you through college then since I’m the inventor of the dirty word dictionary.”
Lynlee wiggled her finger like a drill sergeant. “Consider me on patrol.”
Without saying another word, Jo reached into the tip jar, pulled out a bill and handed it over.
Lynlee stuffed the bill into her jacket pocket. “Can I haves a blueberry muffin too? For snack time.”
“Sure thing, kiddo. That will cost you one buck. Which I happen to know is in your pocket.”
It took everything Sutton had not to laugh because her daughter was weighing what she wanted more. A dollar or the muffin. Finally, she pulled the crinkled bill out of her pocket and handed it back.
A four-year-old with a better understanding of return on investment than most of Sutton's college econ classmates.
“One blueberry muffin coming up.” Jo handed it to her and Lynlee grabbed it with her greedy little hands and went to open the bag.
“We had pancakes,” Lynlee told Jo. “I wanted to put chocolate chips in for eyes and a mouth but Uncle Boone said that was dessert.”
Jo lifted a brow and mouthed, Uncle Boone?”
“Shut up.”
“Nothing going on my ass.”
“Then Mister Colter snuck me a handful under the table while Mommy and Auntie Vivi were doing dishes,” Lynlee finished completely unaware of the can of worms she was opening.
Jo snorted. “Mister Colter snuck you chocolate chips while you were doing dishes.” She glanced at Sutton. “Yeah, nothing’s going on there at all.”
“Hey pumpkin, why don’t you take your muffin to the table right there and you can have one muffin.”
“One and a half?”
“One or nothing,” Sutton said, her voice giving off all kinds of mom vibes.
“Okay.” Lynlee affixed her bottom to the chair and went to town on her pumpkin muffin.
Jo snatched up a cup for the next order, eyes glued to Sutton like a hawk. “Spill,” she said, voice sharp as a tack, “Or I ask Colter.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Jo pulled out her phone. “Hey, Siri. Call Colter Callah—”
Sutton reached over the counter and yanked Jo’s phone out of her hand.
Jo’s smile sharpened. “You do know that I have a land line. Or that the clinic is literally down the street. We can walk there and ask him together.”
“Fine.” Sutton took a breath, then another. “I fell asleep.”
“Boring. Get to the good part.”
“In his lap,” she said burying her face in her hands.
Jo’s eyes went wide. Then she grinned so hard it was practically a public service announcement. “You fell asleep in Colter Callahan’s lap? I guess it’s true what they say about him being a panty whisperer.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Sutton whispered loudly. “It was late. We were exhausted. There was a dog involved.”
“There’s always a dog involved.”
"That's not a saying."
"It should be. Put it on a plaque."
“I’m starting to think he’s not the play-it-fast-and-loose guy everyone says he is.”
“Everyone says I’m intimidating but I’m just a truthful person. Maybe everyone thinks Colter’s a playboy when he’s just a people person.”
“You are intimidating,” Sutton clarified.
“Prove it.”
“You just scammed my kid out of a dollar.”
“She scammed me first. So the question is what came first. The lap dance or the coffee?”
“It wasn’t a lap dance, we were asleep.”
“Yet, he started bringing you coffee. There’s more to the story.”
“We had breakfast at the diner the other day.”
“So breakfast twice. Coffee every day.” Jo grinned like she’d just lit a fuse. “When are the save-the-date cards going in the mail?”
“Save-the-date cards?” Her voice cracked and wasn’t that annoying. “Even if there was something to send one for—which there isn’t—I’m done with dating. My family is Lynlee and that’s enough for me.”
Jo didn’t snort or glare. She simply went very still, lips pressing together as she studied Sutton like a puzzle she’d already solved. Then she leaned back with a slow, knowing smile and shook her head once. “Again, I call bullshit. You miss sex.”
"I miss a lot of things. Sleep. Silence. The concept of a bathroom door that locks."
"Sure. But mostly sex."
Sutton rolled her eyes, smirking. “There are other ways to be satisfied.”
From behind her, Colter’s voice slid through the air, low and teasing. “Other ways? What did I miss?”
Sutton felt a zing of awareness, which turned to a jolt when she saw him leaning casually against the counter, with that smirk twisting in a way that made her stomach flip.
The problem—and it was a significant problem—was that he looked even better than she remembered, which was saying something considering she'd spent the last twelve hours trying to forget.
Worn jeans sitting exactly where worn jeans had no right to sit.
Flannel rolled to the forearms like he'd personally consulted a manual on how to ruin a woman's concentration.
And that mouth. That completely unreasonable mouth, doing that thing where it wasn't quite smiling but was somehow worse than smiling.
“Yes,” she said, voice steady despite the heat creeping up her neck. “Ways you can’t even imagine.”
“Oh? I’m pretty imaginative. Care to show me?”
“I don’t give demonstrations. That’s not my style.”
His voice dipped into that low, gravelly tone he knew made her brain melt. “Guess I’ll just have to be persuasive then.”
“It’s a hard pass.”
Colter leaned in, just close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him. “You haven’t even let me get to the creative part.”
“What are you even doing here?” she asked.
“Picking up coffee for the office.”
He grabbed a to-go cup that had his name written down the side.
“Oh,” she said, suddenly feeling silly. He hadn’t just been picking it up for her. He’d been bringing it for the whole office. Her face heated with embarrassment.
“Unless your office is now a party of two, then your maths aren’t mathing,” Jo said.
"Thank you, Jo," he said.
"Anytime."
Sutton opened her mouth to give him a hard time, when a small pink blur came barreling across the café.
“Mister Colter!”
He barely had time to turn before Lynlee catapulted herself at him. He caught her easily, laughing as he scooped her up and swung her around.
“Well, hello there, Princess,” he said, settling her on his hip. “You trying to knock me over before eight o’clock?”
She giggled, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Thanks yous for the muffin.”
“You’re welcome.” His gaze made a deliberate pass of Sutton’s lips before meeting her gaze. “Do I get another thank you?”
Sutton’s mouth curved into a real smile this time. She felt it reach her eyes and soften everything she usually kept locked down. “Thank you. For the coffee, yes, but mostly for remembering Lynlee.” Her voice dipped, warmth threading through it. “That mattered more than you know.”
The shift in him was immediate and unguarded, like she’d stepped somewhere tender without meaning to.
His teasing ease fell away and he just watched her, eyes softening, shoulders releasing as if her honesty had settled him instead of unsettling him.
It looked like relief, maybe even gratitude, the kind that came from being seen for more than charm or convenience.
When he finally did smile, it wasn’t cocky or practiced—it was warm, almost shy, and it hit her square in her chest like a promise she hadn’t asked for but suddenly wanted to believe in.
He opened his mouth to say something—something Sutton desperately needed to hear—but Lynlee broke the moment.
“Mister Colter, will you walk me to school?”