Page 100 of A Barista's Guide to Love & Larceny
“Yes, please,” they said. “Plus a plain cappuccino for Asa and hot chocolates for the three goobers.”
“Coming right up.”
Oliver followed her over to the handoff plane while their family looked around the café. “Wow, it really is dead here, isn’t it?”
“As a doornail,” Dani said cheerfully, pumping some peppermint syrup into a cup, adding an Earl Grey tea bag, and filling it halfway with boiling water from the tap. She’d invented this latest drink for Oliver after they’d gotten out of the hospital, and it had since become a Quarter Cast holiday special called the Snowcap. “What kind of milk did you want today?”
“Soy’s fine, thanks. So, what are your plans for the break?”
“Absolutely nothing.” Dani poured soy milk into a pitcher and began to steam it, a shrill scream that forced a pause into their conversation. When it was done, she added, “I’m going to sleep in, eat too much dessert, read, make snow angels—might even have a stab at dyeing my own hair. Dunno yet.”
“You did that yourself?” Oliver said in surprise, indicating the tail of her braid, which had faded considerably from its original glory. Her stylist had thrown in a longevity charm free of charge, but the enchantment had worn off since the gala, so she was hiding her earthy roots under a beanie.
“Ha, I wish,” she said, starting on the cappuccino. “But how hard can it be?”
“Really hard,” Oliver said, making her laugh. “Hey, so Asa rented a house not far off campus. If you and Kass want to come by for holiday dinner, I’m sure we’ll have plenty.”
“That’s really sweet of you to offer,” Dani said. “I’ll check with him, but I think we’d both love to come.”
They both turned at the wheeze of the door-ghost.
“Speak of the devil,” Oliver said.
Kass stepped into the festive coziness of Quarter Cast, bundled up in his usual peacoat and mittens. Snow was melting in his hair, and the cold tinged his cheeks with cheery pink. Dani’s gaze landed on him like a beam from a lighthouse, his arrival a ship pulling into the harbor of her heart. Hecate’s bones, he was perfect.
She and Oliver watched him as he made his way over to the counter, shedding snow in his wake.
“Hey,” Kass said. “I thought you’d be on a plane by now.”
“I’m actually staying here for the holiday,” Oliver said. “My family surprised me with a visit.” They gestured to where their siblings were gathered around the tree. “And I had to bring them here for a drink from my favorite barista.” Oliver took a sip of the Snowcap Dani had just given them and a blissful expression smoothed their brow. “You are an artiste.”
The three of them chatted as she finished up the drinks, then Oliver called their siblings over. “Well, I’m off to give them a quick tour of campus,” they said. “I’ll message you where and when to come for dinner—see you two later!”
“Take care,” Asa said with a kind smile for Dani.
Then the five of them were gone in a flurry of merriment and winter hats, leaving Dani and Kass alone in the café, staring at each other over the handoff plane.
“Hi,” Dani said.
“Hi,” Kass said. “Oliver knows that you can’t be their favorite barista when you’re already mine, right?”
They met for a kiss over the plane. He tasted like an alpine forest, like a hearth in a cabin somewhere in the mountains, almost too beautiful to be believed.
“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Dani said when they broke apart, a contented warmth pooling in her chest cavity. “Why are you here so early? I wasn’t expecting you until close.”
“I had to pick up my keys from the landlord,” Kass said. His father hadn’t disowned him for what he’d done to the company, but he’d come damn near close. Kass had been kicked out of the house and his dad probably would have stopped paying for Fox’s Leap, except for the fact that Kass’s tuition came from a trust his mother had set aside for him before she died, a fact Kass hadn’t been privy to before now. As it turned out, Lukas Sr.’s constant threats to pull him out of school if Kass didn’t do what he wanted had been empty this whole time. Dr. Rodriguez had reached out a few times to Kass with apologies, and he’d accepted them, though he wasn’t ready to meet with her yet. She’d offered to talk to their father about letting him back in the house, but Kass wasn’t interested—he felt freer without the looming presence of Lukas Sr. in his life, and was planning to declare his concentration for wood magic in the spring. “The apartment’s pretty small, but I think it’ll be fun to live right around the corner from where you work. I’ll be able to hang out with you every night you have a shift.”
“Yes, please. Notice anything new in here, by the way?”
He followed her gaze across from the register to a bookshelf against the wall. “Hey,” he said, going over to it. “It looks great.”
Kass was renting a studio apartment a block away from Quarter Cast, since his mom’s trust only covered tuition. To pay for it, he’d decided to try selling some of the furniture he made. Dani had sweet-talked Burren into commissioning him for a piece, and she’d ended up buying a bookshelf for customers to use as a little free library. There were already a few used textbooks and the latter half of a historical fiction series on it.
“I guess that generosity charm is working,” he said happily.
“You’re going to have to bring in more cards,” Dani said. It had been her idea for Kass to leave his business card on the top shelf, and the stack was almost gone.
“I will after the holiday,” he said, returning to the register. “I’ve already got enough commissions to work on over break. In between spending time with you, obviously.”
