“Why the long face, young alpha?” I looked over to see the odd little hippie guy that I’d seen at the park a while back. He was sitting on the ground beside the kitchen entrance of Sweet Ballz, idly strumming his harp.

“My name is Kent Hawkins, not young alpha, and I was just lost in thought. Tell me something. Have you ever said something to someone that you wished you could take back? Not because the words weren’t true, but because they didn’t need to be said in quite the way that you said them? Never mind. Scratch that, I’m not even making sense to myself this morning. I think I need some fucking coffee.”

I mumbled the last part under my breath as I jammed my key into the door and turned the knob. I guess the mention of coffee had sounded like an invitation, because the dude followed me inside. I looked at him with a lifted brow, but decided I didn’t really care if he joined me.

“Well, if I’m going to make you coffee, I should probably know your name,” I said with an almost friendly smile as I filled the reservoir on my coffee maker.

“Forgive me, Kent. I feel as though I’ve known your heart and soul for an eternity, but I realize now that we haven’t truly met on this plane, have we? I am Amor.”

He spoke quite seriously as he sat down on one of the stools that surrounded my workstation, that big metal butcher block style table that always seemed to be the hub for any visitors to this room.

I snorted at his hippy-dippy words while I scooped coffee into the filter. I definitely needed caffeine to deal with his kind of crazy this early in the morning. It’d been a week since my run in with Pierre, and I was still simmering. But underneath my ire was a thick, sludgy layer of guilt. I mean, sure the snooty assed omega had stolen my recipe, or at least copied the concept.

But still. I didn’t have any right to speak to him the way I did, let alone pound my fists on his counter like a caveman. I felt like I had a right to be pissed, but I still felt like shit for the way I’d acted that night.

I sighed heavily as I poured our coffee, serving it to my guest with a few of our PBF Ballz. The Peanut Butter Fudge Ballz were Milo’s original family recipe, and the core item on our menu. They were incredibly good, I had to admit. Sometimes, the time-honored recipes were the best.

“Oh, my goddess! What is this heaven that I just put in my mouth?” Amor asked around a mouthful of the confection. He hadn’t even swallowed the first before he was cramming a second one into his mouth. I looked away from that unappetizing view and took a sip of my coffee.

I drummed my fingers on the table trying to think of a way to get people’s attention back over here to Sweet Ballz, without resorting to lame ass flyers like Pierre had done.

It made zero sense to me why Tom and Milo weren’t concerned about the situation. I mean, the lost revenue had to be hurting Milo at this point.

“Boy, oh boy. If I’d known these were so good, I’d have been in here weeks ago. Especially after I made that money for passing out those flyers for that sweetheart Pierre over at The Salty Stix,” Amor said as he noisily licked his fingers clean after finishing his treat.

That sparked an idea. “Wait. You’re the one that passed out the flyers for Pierre? How much did he pay you for doing that, if I may ask?”

“$10 an hour,” Amor answered readily. “And it was an easy job too. All I had to do was put the papers under some windshield wipers and pass others out to the friendly people walking around town. I like meeting all the different hearts that make up a town, so it was a perfect gig for me.”

My fingers drummed faster on the tabletop. “So, if I offered you a similar job, you might be interested then?”

“Absolutely. What did you have in mind, Kent?” Amor asked as he slurped noisily at his coffee. Ignoring this dude’s atrocious table manners, I explained my hastily thought out plan.

“How about I give you a few dozen of these PBF balls to pass out as samples? I already have a bunch of them in little individual bags left over from the holidays. All you have to do is sit within view of the shop, so that you can point people our way. Then give them their sample and wish them a nice day. I’ll give you the same $10 an hour that Pierre did.”

“That sounds like a good day’s work, I’ll do it,” Amor agreed.

I hopped up, suddenly energized far beyond the magical reviving powers of caffeine. Nope. Right now, I was running on revenge—not that I intended to tell my peace-loving pal here that little tidbit. I pulled the four dozen or so individually sealed PBF Ballz from the freezer, and set them aside to thaw.

“You can either hang out here and drink coffee while I start my day, or come back at 10 o’clock to pick these up, they should be thawed by then. Either way, I need to get started working. I actually have an order to fill, for a change.” I shook my head with disgust at how slow it had been lately that I was excited by one big order.

Thank goodness for Valentine’s Day. Which reminded me that I needed to order some more of the pink Himalayan sea salt so that I could start putting our Valentine’s Day gift boxes together. I had a feeling they’d be pretty popular.

* * *

“Why are you so happy?” Tom asked when he arrived for work. I was all but whistling as I whipped together a fresh batch of Plum Cordial Ballz for one of the Valentine’s Day gift boxes. “After the way you’ve been moping and slamming around here ever since The Salty Stix opened up? What happened, did you finally get some new medication? Or did you get laid? Either way, it worked,” Tom asked with a smirk.

“No, I didn’t get laid, not that it’s any of your business. And it’s not so much a fact of me getting medication… As it is that I’m giving Pierre a taste of his own medicine.” I spoke happily as I continued to roll out my candy.

“Oh, snap. What the hell did you do now?” Tom’s hands went to his hips as he stared at me intensely, his foot tapping while he waited for my response.

“Nothing bad. I merely hired that hippie dude to pass out samples of our PBF Ballz. He should be out on the street right now, in fact,” I said with an innocent smile.

“Why do I have the feeling that this is going to backfire?” Tom said skeptically. “Listen, I don’t have time for drama today. Grazer called this morning, remember how there was a third kid fathered by Junior Dev? Well, the other kid’s omega father has finally agreed to let him meet his half siblings. So, no shit today about Pierre. I don’t have the mental energy for it. Now listen up, this is important, and why I need you to back off Pierre. We’re meeting after school at The Salty Stix.”

I stopped what I was doing, ashamed that my brain had been so occupied by my anger at Pierre that I had been out of the loop on such an important occasion for my friends. I knew that finding his daughter’s lost half sibling had been very important to Tom, and he’d been pushing Grazer to help him find her or him for the past two years. The police had found them three years ago when it all went down, but the other omega had left the country.

And when they’d found him, he’d had no desire in returning to Hollydale. Tom, however, had made it his mission to get the guy to change his mind. He’d written letter after letter, telling anybody who would listen that handwritten letters were harder to ignore, and trusting Grazer to get them into the other omega’s hands.

“You really found him? And he’s here in town now? That’s amazing, Tom. Although, I don’t know why you’d want to meet at Pierre’s place. I mean, our place is such a ghost town these days that you’d probably be guaranteed to have the dining area all to yourself. Why give that little shit more money?”

“Because that little shit is the missing omega. I just found that out this morning after he gave Grazer the permission to tell me. He doesn’t know that Cecil and I are the other two, I’m hoping it will be a pleasant surprise.”

My jaw dropped, and I sat there speechless as I stared at Tom in dismay. No matter how shitty Pierre had been acting as a new member of our business community, it ripped my heart out to know that he had been yet another victim of Junior Dev.

Tom walked over and pushed up on my jaw to close it, before softly kissing my cheek. He ruffled my hair and spoke quietly, his intense eyes staring into mine.

“I know that you take this loss in our recent sales personally, but I really don’t think that Pierre ever meant it in quite the way that you’ve taken it. Try and keep an open mind where he is concerned, m’kay? And for heaven’s sake, don’t pick any more fights with him. I want our kids to be friends, I don’t need to be in the middle of your little war. Got me?”

I nodded woodenly, my brain still trying to process all that Tom had just shared with me.

“All right, then,” Tom said with a brisk nod as he rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I’m taking off again, I just popped in, so I could share my news with you personally. Milo will be in after lunch to handle anything that might pop up. Now I have some shopping to do! I want to welcome Julian into our little tribe. Pierre, too. Which naturally means, all the presents!”

Knowing full well that interfering with Tom and shopping was a loser’s game, I just waved him off and let him go on his way. I’d just finished lunch and was working on a fresh batch of PBF Ballz when the door to the kitchen banged against the wall.

I looked up to see Pierre standing in the doorway glowering. His fisted hands were settled on his hips as he stood there in a wide legged stance, his eyes narrowed on me in a fierce glare.

“Are you seriously shitting me, Kent? You actually hired poor, sweet Amor to sit in front of my fucking bakery and pass out samples of your candy? Where’s Tom? I want to lodge a complaint about this bullshit.”

“Hold on, just back up a second. Putting aside the fact that you just barged into an employee only area without invitation, what the actual fuck are you talking about?” Despite my anger, I continued to methodically hand roll little balls of peanut butter perfection.

“I’m talking about the fact that my friend Amor was poached by you, and hired to sit at a table in front of my bakery and pass out samples of your candy. I don’t know how much simpler I can break that down for you.”

Pierre was vibrating with anger, his clenched jaw probably the only thing that kept his teeth from rattling against each other, given how tightly he was wound.

That got my attention. I set the last ball down on the tray, and took the empty bowl over to the sink as I spoke. “I didn’t tell Amor to sit in front of your bakery. I merely hired him to pass out samples, with the caveat that I wanted him to sit within view of our shop. I didn’t realize that he needed to be told that sitting in front of a competitor’s business wasn’t kosher.”

I dropped a batch of chocolate into the double boiler that I’d had waiting for when I reached this stage. Pierre wandered over closer as I stirred the chocolate and added a dash of vanilla and a pinch of cinnamon.

He stood there watching me for several minutes while I worked before he finally spoke again.

“Even if you didn’t tell him to sit in front of my bakery, it’s still kinda shady to have him anywhere near my business while he’s being paid to pass out your samples.”

I bit my tongue when I remembered my guilt at my last outburst to this infuriating man, instead skirting around him as I went back to my work area with my freshly melted chocolate. I took my seat and began methodically dipping PBF balls into the milk chocolate, then putting them on the already prepped wax paper lined tray to set.

Once I’d calm down enough to speak, I glanced over at Pierre, who was watching my every move with what looked like fascinated approval. I sighed softly and explained my thoughts.

“There’s nothing shady about hiring someone to stand out in front of my own business. I’ll take responsibility for not telling him to stay on this side of the street, even though it never entered my mind that I would need to tell him that in the first place. I won’t, however, take credit for him sitting on your property to do it. I mean, the dude’s spacey as hell, but even he should have enough common damn sense to know better.”

Pierre and I shared a long look, and he finally jerked out a nod. “Fine. I’ll take you at your word, but it best not happen again. I have a lot on my plate today personally. I didn’t need this kind of shit when I’m already busy dealing with my past coming back to haunt me.”

I didn’t dare tell him that I knew what he was facing, since Tom was planning to surprise him, and my allegiance was to my friend at this point. Still, I felt badly for what Pierre must be going through.

“Would you like to talk about it? I’ve often been told that I’m a good listener,” I offered quietly.

Pierre looked torn for a split second before shaking his head resolutely. “No, I’ll be fine. Just keep your word, and don’t be passing out samples in front of my shop again.” With that he spun on his heel and left.