“I don’t belong to people who lick me.”
She blinks at me.
Just once, but she does.
And it’s enough to take me back to my hotel in Hawaii where she did so much more than just lick me.
It’s damn cold in here, and I’m sweating.
“Go sit,” I tell the dog.
He stares at me forlornly for a beat too long, but then he ambles back across the kitchen to collapse dramatically to the floor inside his doggy house.
I look down at my fur-covered pants and stifle a sigh. Then I look up and find Sabrina righting the stepstool.
“What are you doing?”
“My job,” she answers cheerfully as she climbs onto the damn thing and reaches to put another large stainless steel bowl on the high rack.
“Stop.”
“Gotta get done.”
I stroll back to her side, take the bowl, and put it up high myself. “Ask for help with the high shelves.”
“I won’t sue you if I hurt myself while I’m doing something stupid.”
“And you were going to be right back.” Fuck. I did it again.
I brought up Hawaii again.
“Would you have still spent that whole evening with me if you’d known who I was?” she asks.
“Irrelevant. You’re not who I thought you were.”
“People are complicated. I can be who you thought I was that night and also be who I am today. Just like you can be the guy who was randomly in Hawaii on Emma’s wedding day after buying Chandler’s café, which prompts a lot of questions, by the way, and also be the funny, kind, supportive person who helped a stranger having a bad day out of the goodness of his own heart.”
“Digging for gossip?”
She hands me another bowl to put up high. “I was born exactly in that spot where you’re standing. Jitter’s doghouse? That little nook used to have a table where I’d do my homework while my grandma kept an eye on me when my mom was working. And she does work at a salon down the street. That dent in the wall next to the stove? My cousin Lucky’s head print. He and Chandler were fighting over who got the last blueberry muffin and Chandler shoved him into the wall. Grandpa took blueberry muffins off the menu to punish them both, and Grandma never made another batch for either one of them. She did, however, make them for me and Emma and Laney whenever we’d sweet-talk her into them, which we generally only did when one of us had had a bad day.”
I almost smile despite myself, because Mimi would’ve done the same.
Also, I love the idea of Chandler Sullivan being punished.
But I don’t smile, because Sabrina hasn’t earned my smiles again.
She points to the desk before going back to the dishes. “There are marks on the wall under the bulletin board where Grandpa tracked my mom and uncles’ heights while they were growing up. My uncles had a mashed potato fight once fifteen years or so ago and there are probably still spuds behind the stove. I can tell you why those six floor tiles by the back door are different, why we don’t have a more efficient coffee roaster, and who’d come back to work here and take this place to the next level with both our food and our coffee game now that Chandler’s not involved anymore, but I’m off gossip. However, I’m not off doing whatever it takes to save my family’s café. So if there’s something you want to tell me about why your face twitches like that every time someone says Chandler, now would be a good time. I can help you. We can help each other. But only if you trust me.”
Heat creeps up my neck again, but this time for an entirely different reason.
Trust her.
I trust exactly two people. Zen and Mimi.
I’m not putting my hard-won Super Vengeance Man suit in Sabrina’s hands.
Not when she ghosted me. Not when she shares genes with Chandler Sullivan. And not when I’m rapidly picking up on the clues that she’ll do anything she can to save this café.
“Maybe it’s always been a dream of mine to run a kombucha bar in the mountains,” I say.
“Big change from running your own research lab.”
The heat gets hotter. “Doing a little googling?”
“No, I’m awful at it. I have friends that work computers much better than I do and who have made it their current life mission to help me.” She hands me another bowl, this one soaking wet.
I grab the towel she was using. “Find anything else interesting?”
“I’m sorry about your dog.”
My shoulders hit the ceiling tiles. “Off-limits.”