Page 175 of A Taste of Vanilla

I stop.

“I stopped.”

Oliver studies me, then sets the cash drawer down with a soft click. “Did she ask you to?”

“No.”

His jaw tightens, and after a moment, he looks toward the wall that separates the businesses. “You know,” he says, his voice soft. “For a man who notices everything, you miss the obvious a lot.”

I look at him. He doesn’t elaborate.

Behind me, on the other side of the wall, Halston is alone in her kitchen because I convinced myself that leaving was safer than staying.

For the first time in years, leaving doesn’t feel like discipline.

It feels like fear.

fifteen

. . .

The Black Coffee Empire Has Fallen

HALSTON

There arethree things that I know for certain by nine fifteen on Wednesday morning.

One, Barrett Whitaker has terrible taste in food.

Two, my bakery is not dying, despite what my anxiety and a few extra empty tables would like me to believe.

Three, Warren King is a liar.

Not a huge liar. Not about taxes or murder or whether he secretly has a second family in Munich that also gets production schedules with five billion columns.

But a liar all the same.

Because no man who keeps looking at the coconut syrup like a soulmate gone to war hates sweet coffee as much as Warren claims to hate sweet coffee.

He stands at the prep table with his sleeves rolled up his forearms, his stupid notebook open beside him, and a black coffee sitting untouched next to it.

Untouched.

Criminal.

I narrow my eyes at him from my place in front of the espresso machine.

He doesn’t look up. “Stop staring at me.”

“I’m not staring.”

“You are.”

“You have no idea what I’m doing. You haven’t even looked.”

“You get quiet. It’s unsettling.”

“I get quiet all the time.”