Page 57 of The Offer

He brushed at the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Why can’t I stop crying these days?” she grumbled.

“Is Kevin making you cry?” Jan asked as she approached the tent. “Need me to call Calvin to beat him up?”

“Calvin?” Dan balked as he trailed closely behind his wife. “What about me?”

“You can barely lift a crate of jam, my love. We need arms. And Calvin has those.”

“Tyler might have him beat,” Jess teased. She wiped at her tears and tied her denim apron. “And no, he did not make me cry. He makes me smile.”

Kevin grinned from ear to ear, and if she wasn’t mistaken, his cheeks were painted pink.

The rest of the festival went by in a blur of sticky pastries in paper bags and boisterous laughter—mostly from Dan and Jan. The strawberry danishes were gone in a couple hours, and the raspberry croissants an hour after. Jess had to run back to the bakery and grab extra inventory to sell to the hungry summer people in Haverport who, even after they had their fill of fried clams and funnel cake and freshly squeezed lemonade, couldn’t resist heading to the beach or Hillside Park with paper bags full of pastries.

Tired and pink from the sun, Jess finished up taking down the booth with Dan and Jan while Kevin attempted to close another sale.

“Aw, you guys are out of croissants?” the young woman pouted. She brushed her curly hair over her shoulders, blinking her long lashes slowly up at Kevin. “You sure you have none left for me?”

Dread coiled around Jess’s ribs as she watched Kevin grin at her. That’s my grin.

She shook her head and snapped her attention back to the table she was folding. Her grin? Since when did she own anything of his? Since when did she get jealous of a girl flirting with Kevin? It was a rogue thought that needed to be squashed like a bug.

He laughed, low and deep. She hated how much she loved that sound. She hated that it wasn’t directed at her.

“Um, Jess, we don’t have any extras, right?”

“No,” she snapped, not looking in their direction. “All out. Sorry.”

“Maybe you could make it up to me then?” said the curly-haired woman. She lifted a finger and traced it down the tattoo on Kevin’s arm.

Jess was five seconds away from standing up and breaking that delicate finger.

Kevin stepped away from the woman’s touch. “Sure, stop by the shop sometime and you can have any pastry you want, on the house.” To Jess’s surprise, he turned to her. “We still have that thing tonight, right?”

Jess shook her head. Unbelievable. “Yes, we do. We should probably get going soon.”

The woman frowned, grasping the handlebars of her new bike. “Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be at Wilson’s Pub later with some friends.”

“Thank you for the invite, but I committed to something with my friends months ago. Sorry.”

Jess chuckled, then lifted the table and walked away. She heard him jogging up to her.

“What’s so funny, Jessica?” He grabbed the other side of the table and helped her lift it into Jan’s car.

She put her hands on her hips. “You know you’re not invited to the bonfire. It’s a Scoops tradition, and you’re not a Scooper.”

“Oh come on, I’m an honorary Scooper,” he said. “Pleeeeease!”

She scowled at him. “If you go, you have to eat the biggest slice of the cake.”

Kevin grinned, and she relaxed. Yeah, that was her grin. She wanted to put it in her pocket and keep it for herself. “I have been hearing about your gross cakes for years, I desperately need to try one. I’ll beg on my knees if I have to.”

It was a long-standing tradition with the Scoopers to have a beach bonfire the night of Haverfest, and as a special treat to the people who worked the gruesome shift that day, they had to watch the rest of the Scoopers eat the weirdest ice cream cake in their honor. Tonight was her fifth year of making the cake, and she had something extra devious up her sleeve.

She smirked. “Begging on your knees wouldn’t hurt.”

Kevin kneeled on the pavement in one swoop.