Chapter Five
Leah flattened the wheat bread dough onto the flour-dusted table, pressing out the air bubbles and then folding it into itself, shaping it into loaves. It was one of her favorite things to do, working with bread dough, molding it with her hands. She felt so lucky to be able to bake for a living, a job that basically involved doing kindergarten crafts all day. Playing with dough, painting on cookies, mixing cinnamon and sugar with her hands, sifting the white and brown together like she was elbow-deep in a Zen garden—she had to have the most fun job in the world.
Today, though, she couldn’t stop glancing at the back door. She’d propped it open, telling herself that it was to keep the kitchen cool and not that Hamilton hadn’t stuck his dumb dimpled head into the bakery for four days and she was trying to bait him into it. Even on Sunday morning, after she’d made his cupcakes and waited for him, feeling stupidly giddy, he hadn’t shown. She’d stretched out the time it had taken to mix the sourdoughs for the next day, every imagined sound making her look at the door, heart lifting with anticipation. As the minutes and then hours passed with no sign of him, she’d been tempted to go upstairs and knock on his loft door, but that had felt so desperate, so needy, that she’d ended up leaving the box of cupcakes on the bottom step of the staircase. With her largest Sharpie, she’d written “Anthony Fitzgerald Hamilton III” on the top of the box in slashing letters, relieving a tiny bit of her annoyance. When she’d arrived on Monday, the box had been gone.
Now, it was Wednesday, and Hamilton was not only MIA, but he was also ruining her joy in shaping loaves. Even when he wasn’t around, he was keeping her wound up. With a huff that sounded loud in the quiet of the bakery, Leah popped the last loaf in the pan and put them aside to proof. Grabbing a bench knife, she started scraping the table, creating a pile of leftover flour. It made her think about Hamilton’s reluctance to dispose of his perfectly created flour heap. Stop. She shut her brain down in mid-thought. That was enough stewing about Hamilton. It was more than obvious that her fascination with her landlord was not reciprocated, and that was just fine. Having any sort of relationship with him beyond their current landlord/tenant/one-time cookie-making partners was a recipe for disaster.
With a firm sweep of the bench knife, she dumped the flour into the trash can.
Turning toward the hand-sink, Leah saw someone standing just inside the back door. Startled, she jolted back a step.
“Sorry if I frightened you.” Jude put his hands up, as if showing her he wasn’t armed. For some reason, the gesture wasn’t very reassuring.
Leah took another step back, and her lower back bumped against the table. “Jude. What are you doing back here?” Her gaze darted toward the clock for a brief second before returning to Jude. “We don’t open for another hour.”
“I know. The thing is, I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I feel so badly about our argument. Before I left my place this morning, I didn’t even think about what time it was or if you’d be open.” He gave her a little grimace-and-shrug combo that she thought was supposed to be charming, but it wasn’t. Her creep detector was blaring so loud that she didn’t think she’d find anything he did charming. “I was thinking about it, lying in bed and stewing, and I knew I had to talk to you. I couldn’t let it go one more day. When I got here and saw the closed sign on the door, I figured I’d wait until the bakery opened. Then I saw the back door was open, so I thought I’d see if I could catch you.” He smiled. “Plus, I was hoping I could grab a croissant while it was still warm.”
There was so much wrong with what he’d just said, including the part where he’d just lied, since the back door opened into an alley. There would’ve been no way for Jude to see from either the parking lot or the street that she’d propped the door open. She wasn’t going to debate the details with him, though. She just wanted him to leave. Immediately. “I can’t talk to you right now. I’m baking. You need to go.”
His smile faltered. “It won’t take long. I just want to explain why I was upset when—”
“Jude.” Irritation erased some of her unease, and she took a step toward him. “Stop. I’m not talking to you now. I don’t talk to anyone who just drops by the kitchen. I’m on a very strict schedule on Wednesdays. If I don’t stick to it, then I can’t get the bake done by the time I open, and I don’t have Q to man the front while I finish up.”
“This will be quick.” He took another step into the kitchen, and alarm flared in her.
“No.” Although she tried to make the word as forceful as possible, there was a slight waver to it—one she hoped he missed. “Please leave. Now.”
All traces of his earlier friendliness were gone, and his mouth set in a mulish line. “Why won’t you let me explain—”
“Leah asked you politely to leave.” Hamilton’s bass voice cut through Jude’s tenor. Stepping into the kitchen, Hamilton managed to maneuver his impressive bulk so that he was between Jude and Leah.
After her initial start, Leah felt a rush of relief, edged with irritation. If he hadn’t been such a white whale for more than half a week, she wouldn’t have tried to set Hamilton-traps that involved leaving the back door open. Pushing aside her illogical thoughts, she leaned to the side, peeking around Hamilton so that she could see Jude. When she got a glimpse of his mulish expression, she braced herself.
“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Jude asked, making Leah sigh. Apparently, he wasn’t going to take the easy route and just slink out of the kitchen. She kissed her smooth Wednesday routine goodbye and resigned herself to running back and forth between the kitchen and the front once she’d opened, at the mercy of both customers and the timer. “This is between me and Leah, so move aside.”
“This is my building.” Hamilton didn’t raise his voice or change his inflection at all. In fact, he sounded a bit like a robot, like the voice of her GPS system in her car. It was surprisingly intimidating. “You were not invited to be in here, and you have been asked to leave several times. If you do not, I’ll be forced to call the police and report you for trespassing.”
Jude’s face turned white and then dark red, and Leah held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t make a bigger mess of things than he already had. “You think you’re a big, important rich guy, don’t you?”
“I think that I’m the owner of this building and I’ve repeatedly asked you to leave.” Hamilton pulled out his cell phone.
As soon as Jude saw the phone, he took a step back and then another. “I can’t believe you’re siding with this asshole,” he snarled at Leah. Whirling around, he disappeared through the doorway. Hamilton followed, with Leah trailing behind, barely pausing to pull off her apron.
Standing next to Hamilton, she watched from the open exterior door, squinting against the rising sun, as Jude stalked down the alley and disappeared from view. A short time later, she heard a car engine roar to life—Jude’s Jeep, she assumed—and slowly fade to silence as it drove away. Leah looked up at Hamilton, who was eyeing her, then the propped-open door, and then her again.
“I know.” She groaned, pulling out her cell phone as she moved back toward the kitchen. “I’ll keep both of the doors closed and locked like a good little tenant from now on. In my defense, though, Jude did not reveal the depths of his craziness when he was buying croissants from me.”
“What are you doing?” he asked, closing and locking the exterior door behind them before following her down the short hallway to the kitchen door.
“Calling the cops.”
“I don’t believe he’s coming back, at least not this morning.”
“Probably not. Stupid phone.” She poked at the main button, trying to get it to turn on. “I’m reporting this in case I have ‘stupid whore’ spray-painted on the front of my bakery tomorrow. My roommate Annabelle had a stalker while we were in school, and I learned that it’s always a good idea to document these sorts of things, even if they seem minor at the time.”
Hamilton tapped her shoulder with his phone, offering it to her, but Leah waved him off. “Mine’ll work. It’s just a little sticky sometimes.” The screen finally lit up, and she unlocked it. “That’s what happens when I have doughy fingers and give in to the urge to check my texts.”
His appalled expression would’ve made her laugh if she hadn’t been so annoyed by Jude’s behavior. “You got dough on your phone?”
“Either that, or I’ve just had it sitting around the kitchen too long, and it’s gummed up with flour. The stuff is always floating around in here—oh, hello! Yes, I’d like to report a trespassing incident. It’s not an emergency, and the trespasser has already left, but I’m worried that he might cause trouble in the future.”
As she gave the dispatcher her information, Hamilton put on an apron and hairnet before heading to the hand-wash sink. Her last responses were slightly distracted.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she ended the call and slid her phone into the back pocket of her jeans.
“Someone coming?” he asked, rather than answering her question.
“Yes. They’re going to call me when they get here so I can open the front door for them. What’s with that?” She waved her hands, indicating his aproned and clean-handed form.
“I was going for a run.”
“Uh-huh.” When he didn’t elaborate, she squinted and eyed him up and down. “You might get some weird looks if you go running like this.”
“I can’t go now.”
“You can’t?”
“Of course not.”
There was a long pause, and Leah tried to wait him out, but patience had never been one of her strong points. “Why not?”
“I can’t leave you here alone.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact way, that it flummoxed her for a moment.
“Why not?” she repeated, not caring that she sounded like a curious first-grader. “The doors are locked now, and I’m here alone every morning.”
“What if he comes back?”
“Jude isn’t coming back. You said so yourself. If he does, then he’ll be met by two locked doors—three if you include the front—and, if he times it perfectly and karma is feeling spunky, possibly a cop or two.”
He looked at her impassively, as solid and unmoving as a tree.
“Fine.” Leah firmly squashed the excited wiggle in her belly. “If you want to work, then you can work, but I’m not making cream-filled cupcakes this week.”
His face actually fell. He quickly recovered, smoothing his expression into its normal placid, slightly above-it-all lines, but she couldn’t erase that crushed look from her mind.
“Maybe Friday,” she said, mentally cursing herself for being a huge, marshmallow-like softy. “But not before then.”
“Friday’s fine. Payday traditionally lands on Fridays.” He gave her a sideways look, just a spare glance, and that look and his pathetic attempt at a joke was so adorable that she couldn’t even stand it.
Tearing her gaze away from his face, she almost stomped to the walk-in cooler and grabbed a container of dough she’d made earlier that morning. “Throw some flour on the table, then, and let’s make some cheddar-basil bread loaves.”
They worked their way through the cheddar basil and then the oatmeal bread and were halfway through the cinnamon raisin when Leah’s phone rang.
“I bet the cop is here,” she said, moving toward the swinging door even as she answered. “Hello!”
“This is Officer Castillo—”
By the time he said his name, she’d already made her way around the counter and had seen his uniformed figure through the glass front door. “Yes, I’m right here.” She opened the door, and he lowered his phone, slipping it into the holder on his belt. Standing back, she held the door open so he could come inside. “Why don’t we talk in the kitchen? The lights are on back there. I don’t like to turn the front ones on until we’re open, or I get people knocking on the door, begging for coffee and pastries.”
“That’s fine.” He smiled, and Leah blinked. Even with only the security lighting on, she could see that the man was very pretty. With his sharp cheekbones and eyelashes for years and square jaw, he looked like a police recruitment poster—or a cop-costumed stripper.
“Wow,” she said before she could stop herself. “Uh...you were really quick, I mean, getting here.” Her face heated a little at her extraordinarily awkward attempt to wiggle her way out of her potentially embarrassing moment, but she told herself to chill. After all, the guy looked really, really good. He had to be used to women getting all tongue-tied and flustered around him.
He looked past her and gave a slight nod. Following his gaze, Leah turned to see Hamilton had followed her to the front and was leaning against the counter. Glancing back and forth between the two men, Leah resisted the urge to fan herself. Normally at this time of day she was the only one at the bakery. Any guys were strictly imaginary—or Q, who didn’t count, since he was basically a baby, although he’d protest that designation. Now the hotties outnumbered her.
“This is Hamilton,” she said, breaking what could very easily turn into a stare-down. Although she understood Officer Castillo’s reasons, since she assumed that cops had to throw dominance around left and right in order to do their job, she wasn’t sure why Hamilton was getting all testosterone-y. “Anthony Hamilton. He owns the building and lives upstairs. Let’s go in back so we can actually see.”
Castillo broke the staring contest to smile at Leah, and she stared. He really did have an awfully pretty mouth. Immediately after she had the thought, she was horrified at herself. Pretty mouth? Was her brain a backwoods hillbilly? “After you,” he said, interrupting her self-castigation.
On her way back through the kitchen, Leah eyed the wheat loaves. The dough bulged over the top of the pan, faint stretch marks etched in the sides. After quickly but thoroughly washing her hands, she poked at one of the loaves. When the dent from her finger didn’t disappear, she slid the pans into the oven. A quick glance at the other loaves showed that they weren’t quite ready to be baked, so she turned back to the two watching men.
“Sorry.” Pulling a sheet pan off of the speed rack, she held it out toward Officer Castillo. “Sundae cookie?”
He eyed the chocolate, pecan, and caramel cookies with interest but didn’t take one. “Maybe later. Don’t want to get chocolate smears on my notebook.” He smiled, holding up his small notebook, and her gaze was drawn to his pretty mouth again.
As she moved to put the pan of cookies back, Hamilton cleared his throat. Confused, she looked over her shoulder at him. He was scowling, even more dramatically than usual.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You didn’t offer one to me.”
“Sorry.” She held the pan toward him. “Would you like a sundae cookie?”
“I’ll have one after we’re done here.” He gave Castillo a look that Leah couldn’t interpret. “When we have our coffee break.”
“Seriously?” she grumbled, sliding the pan back into the rack and regretting that she’d even offered the cop a cookie in the first place. “Why did you make me ask if you were going to say no?”
“It’s polite to offer.” He had a strange expression. If Leah had seen it on anyone else, she would’ve called it a pout. Hamilton, however, was too uptight to pout—at least she’d thought he was.
“Whatever,” she said under her breath before turning to Castillo, who appeared to be amused. She was glad that someone was. “What do you need to know?”
“Full name?”
“Leah McAllister Bautista.”
“Birth date?”
She rattled it off. They went through a number of questions like that until he had all of her personal information.
“What happened this morning?”
Leah explained what happened, from when Jude had appeared in the bakery to his angry departure.
“What’s his last name?”
“Whittier, I think?” Leah tried to picture his signature on the credit card receipt. “Maybe Whitman or Whitmore. I can check it before you leave.”
“Check it?”
“He always pays with a credit card.”
Castillo scribbled on his pad in the sideways manner of a left-hander. “Always? He’s been in your shop before, then?”
The understatement made her give a short laugh. “You might say that. He comes in every single day.”
Glancing up from his notepad, Castillo raised an eyebrow in a way that she wished her face could do. When she tried, all she managed was to either appear startled or slightly deranged. Seeing Castillo do it so perfectly made her decide to try practicing the single-eyebrow raise again. It was just such a good look.
When the silence stretched, Leah realized she’d been focusing on his eyebrow while he’d been trying to get her to elaborate. “He’s been stopping by the bakery every single day we’re open—so, Monday through Saturday—for over six months. Since he pays with a credit card, I can print off a report for you to get exact dates.”
“If you would, that could be helpful.” Castillo flipped the page in his notebook with his thumb. “Does he always buy something when he comes in?”
“Yes, and it’s always the same—a small drip coffee and a butter croissant.”
“How long does he usually stay?”
“Too long.” At her grumbled words, Castillo looked at her sharply. “Sorry. I’m just annoyed. It was such a productive day until he barged his way in here. He usually stays an hour or two, depending on who’s in the front.”
“Is that a long time?” Before she could answer, Castillo gave her a rueful smile. “Sorry. I have no idea. If I want something from a bakery, I come in and get it, and then leave.”
Leah tilted her head and considered the question. Jude hadn’t really stayed longer than some of her other customers. There was one student, Malia, who stayed all afternoon on Mondays, from noon until Leah kicked her out at closing time. “Not really. He’s just persistently chatty. Plus, he comes every day. That’s unusual. There are a few daily regulars, but they’re like you. Get in, get coffee and a scone, get out. Not many people can spend hours every single day hanging out here, as awesome as my bakery is.”
“He’s a predator.” Hamilton’s voice surprised her. After demanding to be offered a cookie he didn’t even want, he’d been quiet.
“Jude? A predator?” She made a skeptical sound. “I got more of a weird and lonely vibe from him—until this morning. This morning, he seemed weird, lonely and aggressively petulant.”
Castillo’s pen paused as he looked at her, and his eyebrows did that very interesting thing they did. She really needed to learn that. “Aggressively petulant?”
“That’s because he made up an entire relationship with you in his head. That’s what stalkers do. When you told him to leave this morning, it didn’t fit with his fantasy Leah, so he became angry,” Hamilton said, his voice so low it sounded like a growl.
“One, that’s gross that you think I’m in Jude’s head like that, and two, Fantasy Leah sounds like a perverted Barbie doll.”
Hamilton looked at Castillo. “He leaves when Quentin Banks—her employee—comes in. Q is sixteen, but he’s big and looks older. The other day, Jude took off after I came up front.”
“That’s true.” Leah didn’t want to downplay the Jude situation, but she thought Hamilton was exaggerating her importance to Jude. “He’ll stick around when the teenage girls are here after school, but he bolts when Q arrives. Well, except for Saturdays, but Jude usually doesn’t try to bother me on Saturdays. He just lurks in the background.”
Castillo took this in with a neutral expression, although his pen was flying over his notebook page. “Where does he work?”
“I’m not sure.” Leah tried to remember but came up blank. “He just got a promotion, and he mostly works from home, but for the life of me I can’t remember what company—or even what industry. Sorry. Jude’s a very boring conversationalist. I mostly clean or do the books or something while he jabbers on.”
“He ever threaten you? Make you uncomfortable?”
“Not until this morning.” She didn’t even have to think about that before answering. “I would’ve remembered if he had. Threats and discomfort aren’t boring.”
“True.” Castillo gave her another smile as he flipped his notebook shut. His teeth were impressively white against his tan skin. He glanced toward the back door. “Keep that locked from now on, especially when you’re here by yourself.”
“I will.” Leah had already learned her lesson. No amount of Hamilton pop-ins were worth an unexpected visit from Jude. Besides, Hamilton was her landlord. He had a key. “Even if it gets to be five-thousand degrees in here.”
“Is the air-conditioning not working?” Hamilton asked, frowning.
“It is.” Waving toward the oven, Leah gave a shrug. “It’s just the nature of the beast. The oven’s on for four or five hours a day. Kitchens are going to be hot.”
“Call if he shows up again.”
That sounded awkward. “Even if he comes in the front and just wants a croissant?”
“Yes,” Hamilton said, making the cop give him a sideways glance.
“If he makes you uncomfortable, then call.” Castillo held out a business card. “I can come talk to him, even if he’s not trespassing. If he continues to bother you or if he gets more aggressive, I’d recommend getting a restraining order. Do you live close by?”
“A half mile or so north.” She took the business card from Castillo, and their fingers brushed. Hamilton made an odd, growly sound, but he didn’t say anything when she looked at him curiously.
“Do you drive to work?” Castillo asked.
“No, I walk. Unless I’m feeling lazy.”
“How early?”
“Three or so.”
Castillo grinned at her. “We have a similar schedule. I’m on the midnight-to-noon shift.”
“Twelve hours?” Leah’s shifts were even longer than that, but it was baking—and the place was hers. She couldn’t imagine doing police work for that long.
“I get four-day weekends, so it’s worth it. Back to your situation, you might want to drive for the time being.” He started toward the front. “Don’t hesitate to call if anything seems off. I’d rather respond to a hundred false alarms than show up too late when you really need me.”
“I will.” Grabbing a couple of sundae cookies off the parchment-lined sheet pan, she held them out. “Don’t forget your cookies. Would you like some coffee for the road, too?”
He gave her a friendly smile as he accepted the cookies. “That would be great. Thank you.”
Hamilton was right on her heels as she followed Castillo to the front, and he leaned against the counter behind her as she logged in to her register and found Jude’s last purchase. “Whittier,” she said triumphantly once she found it. “Judah L. Whittier. I actually remembered it correctly.”
As Castillo scribbled it down in his notebook, Leah poured him a coffee. Popping a top on the to-go cup, she turned to hand it to the officer, but Hamilton was in the way. She attempted to give him the Castillo eyebrow raise, but he just looked annoyed and a little puzzled.
Not wanting to get into the reasons for his weirdness—his more-than-usual weirdness—she wiggled around him so that she could give Castillo the coffee. As she handed it over, she noticed that his hands were otherwise empty.
He gave her a sheepish smile. “The cookies were really good. I’m going to have to come back for more of those when you’re open.”
At the mention of “open,” Leah glanced at the clock and groaned. She only had fifteen minutes before people would be coming in for their morning coffee and pastry fix. “Today is going to suck.”
“Could be worse,” Castillo said as he headed for the door.
Leah couldn’t argue with that. Having to run back and forth between baking and helping customers was a minor complaint. “Thank you for coming, Officer Castillo.”
“Thank you for the cookies and coffee.” With a lift of his coffee and another smile, he left the bakery. The door had barely closed before Leah was charging toward the back.
“How long can you stay?” she asked, checking the oatmeal bread as she passed it. It was almost ready to bake. “I will put extra cream inside your filled cupcakes if you can stick around until seven.”
“I can stay until seven.” The steady, even way he answered calmed her, and she took a deep breath before letting it out in a rush.
“Thank you. For that, you can have two sundae cookies and as much coffee as you can drink.”
He gave her a strange look, one she couldn’t interpret and didn’t have time to puzzle out, so she ignored it. For the next hour, they shuffled bread and pastries through the oven, with Leah running up front every time someone walked in and the doorbell sounded. At six-fifty, she gave Hamilton a gentle shove toward the front, following close behind him.
“That was less hellish than I expected,” she said as she handed him a coffee spiked with enough sugar and cream to kill a horse. “Thank you for staying. You’re a quick study.”
“It’s not hard to do it right,” he said, taking a drink and getting that blissful look she loved. “If you weigh the ingredients correctly, mix it correctly, bake it for the correct amount of time, and wait until it is the correct temperature, it will turn out well. Baking is all about math and science and following directions.”
The front was empty of customers for the moment, and there were eight minutes left on the chocolate croissants currently in the oven, so Leah leaned against the counter and allowed herself to breathe. “It’s not all math and science. There’s art in there, too.”
“Decorating cookies, you mean?” He bit into a sundae cookie, and his eyes rolled back for just a fraction of a second. That tiny expression of ecstasy made Leah flush with unexpected heat. Tipping her head down to hide her red face, she ordered herself to get it together. She needed to stop having these horny reactions to Hamilton, especially when he was blissing out over food.
“Sure,” she said, dragging her brain back to their conversation. “But there’s also knowing when to break the rules to create a better product. Or, with bread, knowing the best moment to put it into the oven so that it’s not over-or under-proofed. That kind of thing isn’t math. It’s instinctual.”
“It’s experience, not instinct.” He took another bite of cookie and chewed silently, swallowing before he spoke again. Leah almost laughed. God forbid that Anthony Fitzgerald Hamilton III would talk with his mouth full. “It all comes down to the correct formula and methodology. Getting sloppy in the name of art won’t make anything better.”
“Art isn’t sloppy.” He gave her a look, and she amended her statement. “Okay, sometimes it is. In baking, though, it doesn’t need to be sloppy. Look at the beautiful cookies you made. Those weren’t sloppy, but they were definitely art.”
He bit into his last cookie, and Leah reached over to break off a piece and shove it in her mouth. His expression was so aghast that she burst into laughter and had to put her hand over her mouth so that sundae cookie crumbs didn’t spray everywhere. She had a strong feeling that Hamilton would not appreciate damp cookie crumbs dotting his face. That image made her laugh harder until she almost choked.
Finally, she got herself under control and took a sip of her coffee. Hamilton was studying her with an odd look on his face, and his unreadable expression reminded her of her earlier confusion. “Sorry. I’m better now. So, Officer Castillo seemed nice.”
Immediately, his eyebrows lowered, and his lips dropped into a frown. “He doesn’t need to be nice. He needs to take care of the Jude situation.”
“He can’t be both?”
“No.” His scowl deepened. “If he’s flirting, he’s distracted and not doing his job.”
“Flirting?” Leah was glad she didn’t have any coffee in her mouth at the moment, or she would’ve done a spit-take. “There was no flirting.”
His eyebrows twisted into a skeptical shape that was annoyingly close to Castillo’s expression from earlier. “There was flirting. You offered him cookies.”
“I offer everyone cookies.” She spread her arms out in a gesture that encompassed the world, or at least her corner of Denver, and she almost spilled her coffee. “That’s my vocation and my avocation. In fact, it’s almost a personal, irrepressible tic at this point in my life. I can’t not offer someone cookies, not when they’re sitting right there.”
His snort was either amused or disbelieving. “He gave you his phone number.”
“To call if Jude shows up again.” Her eyes rolled so hard she was surprised she didn’t lose them in the back of her head. “It’s his job. If that’s what you consider flirting, you must think everyone is coming on to you.”
“Not to me,” he muttered, his face turned down toward his coffee.
“What?” She wasn’t about to let him get away with such an intriguing and, at the same time, annoyingly cryptic comment. “Are you saying women don’t come on to you? Because I’m going to have to call baloney on that.”
“Baloney?” He looked a little bemused.
“Quit changing the subject to my adorable colloquialisms. Tell me about the flirting. Are you actually trying to get me to believe that women aren’t throwing themselves against you like those people in the Velcro suits?”
“The people in the what?”
“Never mind. I have a YouTube addiction. Ignore my simile and get back to the flirting.”
He shifted, his face back to its usual poker-like state. From his fidgety movements, however, it was obvious that he was ill at ease. “Women don’t throw themselves at me.”
“I don’t believe it.” The doorbell rang as a pair of twentysomething runners entered, wearing several layers that still managed to show off their sleek curves. Leah was impressed. When she dressed in layers, she tended to look like a grumpy snowman—well, snow-person. Both women immediately looked at Hamilton, and Leah smiled wickedly. This was a perfect experiment to prove Hamilton’s ridiculous hypothesis false. The majority of women had to flirt with him, or Leah’s faith in her gender was shaken to its core. After all, if someone could look at someone as beautiful and buff as Hamilton and not try to drag him to a cave by his short hair, that was just messed up.
“Good morning!” Leah said, sounding much too perky. “What can we get you?”
“Nonfat decaf latte, please,” one of the women said without dragging her eyes off Hamilton, whose gaze was firmly fixed on his own coffee.
“Same, but soy,” the other said, also looking at Hamilton like she wanted to have him for dessert.
Since they were out on a run, the women would most likely pass on the more sugary items in the bakery, but, as she’d told Hamilton earlier, Leah was hardwired to feed people, even strenuous exercisers. “Would you like a scone or a caramel roll with that?”
The women finally looked away from Hamilton in order to give Leah matching appalled stares. “Of course not,” the first one said. “Who would pollute their bodies that way? All that sugar...” She gave a tiny shudder.
Leah brushed off the sweets-related snub. After all, it was nothing she hadn’t heard before. It just meant more cookies for her and those who loved sugary things. She rang up the coffees and then busied herself making them.
“Excuse me.” The first woman’s voice was as sweet as the scorned caramel roll. Leah glanced up at her, but her gaze was fixed on Hamilton. “Do you go to Broadway CrossFit?”
He didn’t answer.
“Ham,” Leah said, handing the woman her coffee. “You’re up.” It was hard not to smile. She’d always figured that Ham was so rude to her because she annoyed him, but it looked as if that was just Ham.
He gave her a look that she chose to ignore.
“Are you a CrossFitter?” Leah asked, having an even harder time keeping her grin from peeking out. “That would explain so much.”
“No.” His answer was almost a growl, and Leah hurried to turn back to the cappuccino machine so she could hide her smile.
“Oh.” The customer gave a small laugh. “I thought I’d seen you there before. I’m there so much, it’s like my second home.”
Hamilton didn’t respond. When Leah glanced over her shoulder at him, he was staring at her back. She gave him a “what?” look, but he just scowled harder, so she returned to making the second woman’s soy latte.
“You should come by the gym sometime.” The woman was nothing if not persistent. Leah admired her confidence. If Leah had hit on someone who’d blown her off as completely as Hamilton just did, she would’ve curled up in a humiliated ball under the butcher-block table for a month, only emerging to renew her stash of cookies. “It’s an amazing workout.”
Leah felt a tug on her braid, so she turned her head. Hamilton stood right behind her.
“I have to go. When are you leaving?”
She grimaced. “Not until six-thirty. Today’s a long day.”
“Don’t leave until I get here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want you walking alone.”
Leah digested his words as she smiled at the second woman and handed her the latte. Part of her felt as if she should protest that she was an independent, self-sufficient woman and that she would be just fine walking the eight blocks to her apartment building. The other, larger part didn’t want to walk home in the growing darkness, expecting Jude to jump out at every corner. She could walk home by herself, and she would be fine, but she would rather have company. “Okay.”
He blinked, looking slightly surprised. “Okay?”
“Did you want me to argue?” The doorbell chimed as the two women exited. “Because I can. I’m quite good at arguing, actually.”
“I’m aware of that.” Instead of annoying her, his gloomy tone just made her laugh. “No, I don’t want you to argue.”
“Okay, then. I’ll see you tonight then.”
He didn’t head toward the kitchen, instead hovering by the pastry case.
Eyeing him curiously, she asked, “Don’t you have to get to work?”
“Yes.”
“So...”
“What?”
“Why aren’t you leaving then?”
“I’m going.” His gaze darted toward the pastries one last time, and the light bulb turned on over Leah’s head.
“Oh, did you want something to go? You don’t have to ask, you know. Feel free to take whatever. You’ve done enough work to earn a month’s worth of sweets.”
Looking pleased, he reached for a Danish.
“Can I ask you something?”
He gave her a sideways glance before refocusing on the pastry. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Too bad. We’ve bonded over frosting now. We’ve egg-washed croissants together. That’s a lifetime pass for question-asking.”
He paused with the Danish an inch from his mouth. “Sometimes you don’t make any sense at all.”
“Sure I do.” She watched as he took a bite. “Are you into guys?”
He choked on his mouthful of Danish. Recovering, he turned to stare at her. Even now, he finished chewing and swallowing before he answered. She was impressed by his ingrained manners. It was a constant battle for her to not be constantly spewing crumbs as she ate. “Why would you think that?”
“Because two fine specimens from the womanly team were just here, flirting with you, and you acted as if they were alien bug creatures.”
“They weren’t flirting with me.”
“They were.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Just because you say the opposite of what I say, doesn’t make it true.” His eyelid was starting to twitch again, and Leah felt the usual mix of guilt and evil satisfaction that she’d gotten under his skin.
“But it’s true because it’s true,” she said.
“You’re not making sense again.”
“I’m making a huge amount of sense. Those women were hot, they were flirting with you, and you were not having it. I mean, from the way they were tossing their hair around, you would’ve thought hair-tossing was an event at the Crossfit Games.”
“Fine.” He held up his hands, one still cradling the remaining half-Danish. “They were flirting. Why do you think I’m gay?”
“You didn’t even look at them, much less answer their questions.”
“I don’t know them.”
“That’s why you talk to people you’re attracted to. That way, you get to know them. With these two, it couldn’t have been more obvious that you weren’t interested, not even if you’d held a blinking sign above your head that said NOPE NOPE NOPE NOT INTERESTED in all-caps. Those women were hot, so I thought maybe they weren’t your type.”
“They weren’t my type, but not because they’re women.”
“What’s your type, then?”
He met her eyes for a molten second before looking away. “Not them.”
With a groan, Leah let her head tip back. “You can’t say that! Now I’m going to be dying of curiosity.”
Finishing off his Danish, Hamilton gave a small shrug. “You’ll live. I’ll see you tonight.” He headed through the swinging door into the kitchen. Leah started to follow him, determined to wrestle the answer out of him if she needed to, but the doorbell rang, signaling customers.
Swallowing her groan, she turned toward the elderly couple who’d just walked in and smiled. She’d see Hamilton tonight. She’d get the answer out of him then. As Q always complained, her nagging skills were on point.