Chapter 9
One Month Later
A man walked into The Spice Pelage. He was tall and walked with a swagger than seemed to tell the world it owed him one.
The hair on the back of Hayden’s neck stood on end, not in a good way.
The guy had a whiff about him that Hayden had smelled on Leonie’s clothes, not the pungent smell of fresh contact, but that old worn-in smell from many years of shared space.
He knew immediately that this was Mark, Leonie’s soon-to-be ex-husband.
“Excuse me,” Mark said, approaching the counter, never minding that the two people standing middle-distance away might have been queueing up to order instead of just waiting for coffees. “I’m looking for Leonie. is she around?”
Hayden ignored him and kept loading fresh macarons into the display, knowing Deanne was just over his shoulder and more enthusiastic about serving customers.
“I’ll get her,” she said, and ducked off to the kitchen.
Surreptitiously, Hayden sized the guy up.
Mark was broad-shouldered, but Hayden could take him if things came to blows, if he dared cause trouble for Leonie.
But up close, there was a secondary smell about him, a smell of weakness and possibly a little fear.
People who smelled like that were either too reluctant to cause trouble, or they took trouble to the extreme.
Hayden rolled a creak out of his neck and shoulders, hoping he wouldn’t need to step in, but ready if whatever Mark was here for came to that.
“Mark,” Leonie greeted, rounding the counter.
Mark held up a white A4 envelope. “I bought the paperwork. Can we talk for a sec?”
“Yeah, I got ten minutes.”
“Coffee?”
“No, thanks. You can order at the counter.” Leonie smiled at the waiting customers as she headed for a table in the middle of the seating area.
Hayden bit the inside of his cheek, amused at how his favourite human had just told her almost-ex to rack off and get his own coffee with such elegance.
Deanne took Mark’s order and flashed him a sideways grin, baring her teeth in a casual yet visible way.
A warning, veiled beneath pleasantry, not to upset a member of the pack.
Whether Mark, obviously a human, understood its true meaning didn’t matter. That message belonged to this place.
With the window filled, there was no reason for Hayden to linger at the counter, but he hovered in the doorway to the kitchen. Lara emerged from the office, took one look out the window, then hip and shouldered him through the door.
“Why don’t you take a break, have some lunch?” she suggested, nodding to the plants shelf in the corner. “Lupe’s plants look like they need watering,” she added with a smirk.
Pastry gods bless the clever big sister, Hayden thought as he filled Lupe’s long-nozzle’d watering can.
He grabbed a sandwich and a cupful of hot chips on the way to the back table, noting a brief and subtle smile from Leonie as Mark pointed at various sections of their legal papers.
Hayden watered the plants and sat with his back to them, relieved that she didn’t seem to mind him hovering nearby.
“Honestly, I wish you’d have just said you were unhappy,” Mark declared over the soft gak of pages hitting table.
“I could say the same thing,” Leonie replied without missing a beat. “Cheating on someone is a heck of a way to send a message.”
“Granted, that could have been handled better.”
“You had ample opportunity to figure that out.”
“I was thinking of everything we built together, Lee,” he argued. “Our savings, our home, our business. Now you want to tear it all down, and for what?” Far out, he was pathetic.
“I’m just taking my share and leaving you to whatever you want to do with the rest of your life, Mark.
Your choice to shutter the business and sell the house has nothing to do with me.
” Leonie’s chair scraped back. “Look, I’m technically still on shift, so .
. . thanks for dropping these off. And for not filing an opposition. ”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me anyway.
I have some dignity.” A silence passed between them, where all Hayden heard was his own intent chewing on his sandwich.
It staggered into an awkward farewell, a tall man’s footsteps leaving the café, then ended with Leonie’s cool elbow resting on the shoulder of an eavesdropping wolf.
“You catch all that, Furball?” she asked, stealing a chip. Hayden kicked out a chair for her to sit.
“Some of it,” he replied sheepishly. “I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
“Did you hear him make a big show of stuff he disagreed with from my lawyer but signed anyway?”
Hayden snorted. “What a saint.”
“Someone canonise the man.”
He offered her another chip. “So what happens now?”
“The lawyers will sort out the division of assets, but I can lodge the divorce application online. Then it goes to a hearing, which neither of us need to be there for, and then I get notified when it’s all final.
” There was a certainty about her as she said this, a lightness in her face and strength in her voice.
It came as no surprise. Hayden had been chuffed to watch Leonie’s little shifts since starting at The Spice Pelage.
Each day she seemed brighter, happier, more assertive with suggestions for improving things around the café—more confident that this was where she belonged.
Even Lara had mentioned something about it, subtly in her own way. “She’d make a good alpha one day,” came the quiet remark through a knowing smirk, while the rest of the pack were out of earshot. Hayden couldn’t agree more.
“I’m really happy for you,” Hayden said. “Why don’t we celebrate?”
“It’s not over yet, but . . . I really do feel like celebrating. When?”
“How about now?”
“Okay!” Leonie laughed. “What shall we do?”
“I’m testing out next month’s special brew this arvo. Wanna try it with me? You can have yours with hot chocolate; I know you don’t like coffee this late in the day.”
“Outside in twenty? The alleyway’s about to get sunshine.”
“Deal.”
Hayden made quick work of the of his special brew: a pumpkin spice latte, but better. American flavours were great and all, but his family was Australian, this café was Australian—it seemed only fair to give their homemade pumpkin spice mix an Aussie twist.
He pounded dried cinnamon myrtle leaves with the scantest amount of pungent Atherton ginger. He kept the exotic nutmeg and clove, but added a dash of Tasmanian mountain pepper leaf. It wasn’t as sweet as the foreign blend, but with the locally sourced mānuka honey, it made the perfect spice syrup.
He measured out two doses of house-roasted pumpkin puree, one for his coffee and the other for Leonie’s cacao hot chocolate.
When they were ready on the stove, he poured them out into Deanne’s handmade mugs and dusted the tops with a pinch of his ground spice mix, just enough for hints of the warm, homely aroma to greet the drinker upon first sniff.
He carried the drinks outside, ignoring Mackie’s teasing gesture of hands in a heart shape, and joined Leonie on the crates under the sun.
They clinked mugs, and synchronised their first sips. Leonie made a face and jerked back, licking her lips in confusion. Hayden froze, worried she’d hate it. Then her expression softened and she went back for another sip.
Her eyebrows lifted and she hummed an approval. “Oh, I see.”
“Is it okay?” he asked.
“I thought I was getting a hot chocolate, but this . . . this is so much better.” She clinked his mug again, holding him with a gaze that set a rising sensation in his chest.
Again he felt the urge to kiss her. It would be so easy to just lean in, especially now that he was at ease with the comfort between them, and sure of their chemistry and connection after how the past month had gone.
But he held back, not wanting to break this perfect moment, not yet.
They had time now, lots of it. But still . . .
“Hey, Lee?”
“Yeah?”
“If I asked you out sometime, what do you reckon you’d say?”
“Sometime when?”
“Not now, but soon. Maybe.”
“Well . . .” She sipped, eyes upturned crescent moons as they wandered to an ibis landing on a wall. “I suppose I’d say yes. Not now, but soon.”
“All right, then.” Hayden nodded, happier than he’d ever felt, and beaming in the way only a wolf can beam.