Page 17 of The Coppersmith Farmhouse (Jamison Valley 1)
figured it would take for Jess Cleary to willingly talk to me, let alone buy me a frou-frou coffee. Before I could ask, Maisy came bounding around the corner.
“Hey, Jess!”
“Maze,” he said before taking a drink from his own cup.
His was labeled Black. Not surprising that Jess was the type of man who went to a coffee hut where you could get any number of delicious, complicated caffeinated concoctions and left with a plain, black coffee.
“Are you here to question John Doe?” Maisy asked.
“Yep. Meeting Sam here in a little bit. Thought I’d come early, bring Georgia some coffee. Visit with her before we get the okay from Carlson to head upstairs.”
“Sweet,” she said before disappearing behind the corner. Where she was going, I had no clue. She was supposed to be sitting with me, reviewing the patient chart layout. But now that she’d abandoned me, I was stuck here with a Jess that wanted to “visit.”
“Coffee’s getting cold, Georgia.” He leaned on the counter with his forearms.
Forearms that were tanned and sinuous. Forearms that I really wanted to touch, with veins I really wanted to trace as they snaked their way across the muscle.
Forearms I should not be thinking about.
I needed to focus. My mission? Get Jess away from my ER counter.
“Did you poison it, Sheriff?” I asked, grabbing my cup.
He chuckled but didn’t answer.
The sheriff probably wouldn’t poison me and more caffeine was a necessity, so I took a healthy pull.
Bliss.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
I had no desire to feel indebted to Jess but also didn’t want to be rude. I wasn’t a rude person, normally. Something about him brought it out in me.
“So why the coffee, Sheriff? And how did you know what I liked?” My curiosity was piqued.
He smirked and took a drink from his own cup. What he didn’t do was answer me.
“You do realize a smirk is not an answer.”
Still no response.
“Seriously, what’s going on?”
He sighed. For once, his beautiful eyes weren’t glaring at me. They were kind and gentle. He could melt me with those eyes.
Damn.
“I made some wrong assumptions about your relationship with Ben. Been an asshole this week. Sorry.”
Yep. Hell had frozen over. Why wasn’t it on the news?
In less than twenty-four hours, Jess had changed personalities. He’d been utterly mean to me last night, and now here he was being nice, buying me coffee and making apologies.
I appreciated his admission but I wasn’t going to let down my guard. One apology wasn’t enough to erase the way he’d treated me. To make me think he was as wonderful as everyone professed him to be.
“Would you mind expanding a bit on these assumptions? I’m interested to know what type of relationship you thought I had with an eighty-one-year-old man.”
His answer was a wide smile filled with perfect, straight white teeth.
