14. CASSANDRA

I’ve walked through the front door of Patty’s more times than I can remember over the past few months, but it’s never felt like this before.

My senses are on high alert, as if I’m walking into a den of arms dealers in Libya instead of a Midtown treat shop. I brace for the scent of sweat and distrust and catch a sultry whiff of freshly baked brownies for the fudge delight platters.

Tricia is behind the till, chatting with an elderly lady who’s picking up a red velvet ice cream cake. Suddenly I envy Tricia’s simple life: her biggest challenge today will be making sure the single-serving cups she’s catering for a kid’s birthday party don’t melt.

I, on the other hand, have to keep someone from handing me a brass key. And keep my virginity intact for as long as possible, of course.

When I say it that way, it sounds ridiculous. If only it was. I checked my Cayman account at midnight last night and the balance was $250,000 USD.

Shit, as they say, just got real.

I take a seat at my usual table, managing to return Tricia’s welcoming smile and wave. She disengages from the cake lady and brings me my usual double espresso.

“Howdy, partner,” she says, plopping down across the table from me. As always, her blonde curls are constrained in a hair net and her face is dotted with patches of powdery white flour.

“Thank you for bringing me the water of life,” I say, raising my cup in salute. The concentrated coffee stings the back of my tongue with bitter goodness, as it always does.

In almost every respect, this is exactly like every other day that I’ve come into Patty’s since Tricia and I first met. Except, of course, for the fact that I’m now being stalked by a bunch of billionaires who want to crawl on top of me, and if I don’t fend them off for two weeks, my dreams are going to go up in smoke.

Other than that, everything’s just fucking peachy.

“Guess who came in just before you did,” Tricia says, eyes shining. Her smug grin says she’s got a secret she’s dying to share. “Go ahead, you’ll never guess in a million years.”

I can’t help but smile back. Trust Tricia to distract me when I need it the most.

“Let me think,” I say, rubbing my chin. “Was it that UPS guy whose butt you always stare at?”

“Like I’m the only one,” she says. “We both know that thing is hypnotic, like a cobra’s stare. No, I’ll give you a hint: it was somebody famous.”

“Man or woman?”

“Woman.”

“Young or old?”

“Young.”

Hmm. Nothing on the menu at Patty’s is less than three hundred calories, so that rules out supermodels.

“Singer or actress?”

Tricia frowns for a second. “Sort of both. Mostly actress.”

That rules out Miley Cyrus; she’s “mostly singer.” Who else is on the list of dual threats these days? Selena Gomez? Singer. Hailee Steinfeld is mostly actress. Jennifer Lawrence sang in that Hunger Games movie. None of those are pinging on me, though.

Tricia looks at me triumphantly.

“You’ll never guess,” she says. “Want me to tell you?”

“What did she buy?” I ask.

Her eyes narrow. “A gallon of Fudge Fantasy. Why?”

A face flashes in my mind. It’s only going to be an educated guess, but I’ve learned to trust my instincts over the years. They’ve kept me alive more than once.

“Anna Kendrick,” I say, taking another sip of my espresso.

Tricia’s face drops for a second, then contorts into a mask of frustration.

“How do you do that?” she yelps. “I never get one over on you!”

“It’s obvious,” I grin, pretending I was way more confident than I truly had been. “I happened to read once that her favorite food is Taco Bell. Any woman who eats at Taco Bell on a regular basis isn’t going to be afraid of Fudge Fantasy. Did you get any selfies with her? Pics or it didn’t happen...”

Tricia brightens again and comes over to my side of the table with her phone out. She flips through a half-dozen shots of her with her arm around Anna Kendrick’s neck. To Anna’s credit, her smile seems genuine.

The bell over the front door jingles, signaling the entrance of a new customer. I don’t jump and spin to see who it is, because that would be a dead giveaway that I’m paranoid. I’ll check out the new arrival with a casual glance in a few moments.

“She said Elizabeth Banks told her about us,” says Tricia. “I’ve talked to Elizabeth lots.”

Her eyes light up suddenly and I can practically see the light bulb over her head.

“What if we could get them to do a commercial for us when we go national with Tricialicious? That would be amazing!”

I chuckle. “Slow down, Turbo. Let’s make sure Anna doesn’t get sick from all that fudge first.”

She drops into a pouting pose and sticks out her tongue. “Killjoy.”

Now I’m full-on laughing. “Okay, okay,” I say. “It’s actually not a bad idea. We’ll have a pretty substantial marketing budget when we’re ready to launch next year. I’ll see if I can track down their agents and see if they might be amenable.”

“See?” Tricia says. “That’s what I mean when I say you’re the smartest person I know. That would never have occurred to me.”

“Of course it would have.”

She gathers up my empty cup and stands. Just before she goes back behind the counter, she leans down beside me and nods her head toward the window, where I heard the new arrival sit down a couple of minutes earlier.

“Whoa,” she whispers. “If you think UPS guy is hot, check that out.”

I grin and turn to my right to see who could possibly have taken the place of the man in the brown shorts in Tricia’s eyes. The first thing I notice is the chiseled torso under his white tee-shirt and the sleek, powerful legs protruding from his tight gym shorts under the table. I can’t see his butt, but I’m quite sure it would put our delivery driver’s to shame.

The summer glare through the storefront window is strong, dimming the features of his profile a bit a bit. As if to rectify the situation, he turns and looks in my direction.

Our eyes meet and suddenly my world turns inside out. It’s a face I know as well as my own. The chin is a little wider than the last time I saw it in the video two nights earlier, the hair a bit longer and a shade darker.

But there’s no mistaking those smoky gray eyes.

I’m looking at Carson Drake. And he’s looking at me.