Page 57 of Halloween Town

Thom hurried over to her before she could bury her hands in his fur. Felony gave him a side look that clearly said, “See how into me she is, man?”

Behind Poppy’s back, Thom, because he was mature, showed him his middle finger. Felony gave him the doggy equivalent and lifted his top lip. Then, because he was a complete poser, he howled again. Thom grabbed Poppy’s arm and pulled her up before sticky hands met dog fur.

“Do you want to bake or cuddle the psychopath?” Thom hoped that she’d choose the latter and that she could move on from baking. Because God, that pie looked dangerous.

Poppy smiled at him, and his heart, stupid thing, rolled over. “Bake.”

Shit.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if I won the bake-off with Grandma’s recipe? Wouldn’t she be proud of me?”

Thom knew there was more chance of earth being sucked into a black hole than that happening but chose to stay quiet. “I really think you should work from a recipe, Pops.” He remembered Grandma M. had a pile of exercise books where she scribbled down her recipes and asked Poppy what happened to them.

“I think I have them somewhere,” she answered him. “But this is under control.”

He’d never seen anything less controlled, but … okay. The coffee machine stopped grinding the beans, and life-saving liquid streamed into their cups. Releasing Poppy, who went back to her bowl of horrible, Thom remembered the shower incident. “By the way, did you think about showering this morning?”

Her head jerked up, and her cheeks turned pink. “I woke up and saw that you were dead to the world, I thought I’d let you sleep. I quietly brushed my teeth, pulled on your shirt and came downstairs. Why? Do I smell?”

He laughed, then shook his head. Mmm. What was more likely, Poppy forgetting that she’d turned the shower on, or the shower coming on by itself? “When I woke up, the shower was running.”

She rubbed her hands together to release the crumbs from her hands and they spun off in a hundred different directions. He watched as a thick clump landed near Fel’s nose, who sniffed it, looked at Thom, and nudged it away; a clear indication that it offended him.

“Maybe it was a ghost who turned the taps on,” Poppy mused, using the back of her wrist to push a strand of hair out of her eyes. Thom pulled a coffee cup out from under the spout, took two scalding sips, and sighed. Walking the cups back to the table, he looked down, wondering where he could put them. There was no space, and even if there was, he suspected Poppy would knock it over within a minute or two.

She nodded at the cup and pursed her lips. “Gimmee.”

Well, that was one option. “Careful, it’s hot.” Thom blew on the surface, held the cup to her lips, and tipped it gently. Poppy sipped and then pulled back. “Ugh, no milk. Or sugar.”

He nodded to the empty packet of sugar on the table. “You used it all. And didn’t I ask you to pick up milk yesterday?”

She pulled a face. “Sorry, I forgot. Give me some more.”

“Your wish is my command, Duchess,” he dryly stated, but helped her take another sip.

“Life would be so much easier if you just treated me like one all the time, Sheffield,” she said, her eyes laughing.

“You’re enough of a handful without the title,” Thom told her, bending to kiss her nose. Then, because he was in the vicinity, he moved his mouth to her lips, sinking into her coffee-tinged warmth, loving the way she tipped her head to the side so that he could deepen the kiss. As he kissed Poppy, in the disaster zone that was his normally bare but neat kitchen, he realized that for the first time in, God, forever, he was happy. Properly happy. This time, happiness wasn’t accompanied by a presentation, a meeting, by a task, by something he had to do or be. It simply was.

Poppy in the kitchen, his douchebag dog, a mess to clean up … it was simple but profound. And it had nothing to do with expectations or emotional transactions, tit-for-tat. It felt … God, great. He was pretty sure that, if he tried, he could find a better word, but great worked. Fucking great worked even better.

So, if he was feeling so damn happy, why did he also feel like a bullet train speeding toward a bricked-up tunnel?

Poppy pulled back, grinned at him and he took in her flushed face and laughter-and lust-filled eyes. “You’re distracting the baker, Sheffield. If my pie is a disaster, I’m going to blame it all on you.”

That would take a serious amount of self-delusion, but … whatever. “I need more,” Poppy told him, her hands in the bowl and her eyes on him, trying, and failing at multitasking.

“Kisses or coffee?”

“Kisses, then coffee.”

He bent down to kiss her again, despite knowing something drastic was going to happen shortly—the bowl would fall off the table, or she’d knock something over—but he didn’t care. He was kissing Poppy on a cool fall morning in a disaster zone, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

From a place far away, Thom heard a distinctive sound, a cross between a burp and a plop. He opened his eyes and saw that Poppy’s were still closed. He was still holding both coffee cups. He pulled back to see the filling in the pie … bubbling. Frowning, he watched as a bubble rose, then another.

“What’s the matter?” Poppy asked, looking a little dazed. He liked that he could make her look like that, but … what the hell was going on with that pie?

“Pops, I think there’s something wrong with your pie.”