I took a bite, too, not even caring that it was so hot it nearly seared my tongue.
“Good?” she asked, more of that humbleness riding free.
“Best thing I’ve ever tasted.” That was from Ezra.
A giggle escaped from her, and she shook her head. “You say that every time you come in here.”
“That’s because it’s true, each time better than the last.”
“The pressure,” she deadpanned.
I turned my eyes up to hers. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Dakota. Not one damned thing.”
Twenty minutes later, I was swiping a napkin over my mouth and slumping back in the booth.
Knocked the fuck out from everything that was Dakota Cooper.
My stomach overfull, but I couldn’t help but indulge in whatever she fed me considering I could never take a bite of what I was really hungry for.
She cleared our plates, stacking them high in one hand, before she pulled the bill from her pocket. She set it facedown in front of me before she grazed a gentle brush of those fingers across my shoulder.
Sparks lit.
A faint glimmer.
A glow of what could never be.
“You guys have a great day,” she said, cinnamon eyes jumping around to land on each of us.
“Bye, Dakota. See you soon,” Caleb and Ezra both said.
I turned over the slip, pulse catching when I read what was on the other side, her swirly handwriting woven deep into the paper.
I shouldn’t be surprised. Shouldn’t take it as something it was not.
But it never failed to stab me in the guts.
Love is on the house.
SEVEN
DAKOTA
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I didn’t whirl around or gasp with the gravelly voice that hit me from behind. Why, when I already knew he was there? That dark intensity wisping through the air and curling over me like a blanket.
Both comfort and something so utterly uncomfortable I wasn’t sure I could ever make sense of it.
I already knew he’d come, the way he always did, so I chucked him a saucy grin from over my shoulder where I was bent over the front of my desk, my laptop shifted around so I could look up a sales order to check for when it was scheduled for delivery.
“Working,” I told him, and I tried not to get hung up on the way he had a shoulder leaned against the jamb of my office door, every sinewy inch of him cocked in an easy casualness that still looked like you might get electrocuted if you got too close.
His edges so sharp they could cut with a glance.
Not that or the way his gaze seemed to snap up from where it’d been locked on my backside. I just hoped my dress wasn’t hiked up so high that my underwear was showing.
He scoffed, stuffing those tatted hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You have to stop doing that.” It grated from those plush lips.
“And what would that be?” I asked, shifting around and propping myself against the wood of my desk.
He pushed off, coming closer, the ground doing that trembling thing as he took a step my direction, then another until he was right in front of me.
Towering tall.
Sweet severity dripped from every inch of his flesh.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he grumbled, though there was a softness to it. “Thinking you have to comp my meal every time I come in.”
My head barely shook. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Something flashed through that gunmetal gaze.
Something stark.
Potent.
“We are like family,” I rushed to clarify, holding back the automatic response that I really wanted to give.
The truth that this restaurant wouldn’t exist without him.
But every time I brought up the money, he got angry and insisted it was mine.
A gift.
But there was no way I wasn’t paying him back. It just didn’t feel right. I was getting close to being able to.
He exhaled a short breath, and he angled in closer, his whispered words breezing across my face. “Yeah, we are. But that doesn’t mean you need to be tossing out what you have to offer for free. You worked hard for this place, and I want to support it.” He hesitated for a beat before he muttered, “I want to support you.”
Did he have any idea how much he’d already done that?
That I could never ask him for more?
“And maybe I just like feeding you.” Somehow my voice had gone choppy where I was pinned to my desk with an inch separating us, shallow as I stared at him as he gazed down at me.
His gaze drifted, landing on the metal box I kept on my desk. My nickname was etched on the lid, and I wondered if it made me pathetic that it was my most prized possession, every recipe I’d ever created tucked inside like a treasure.