I stare at my computer screen, watching the minutes turn as one of my buyers on the other line drones on about something I should be paying attention to.
It’s been two days since the walls came crashing down between Pippa and me. Our encounter in her cafe, in the gallery, has been playing over and over again in my head, despite the mountain of work I’m supposed to be getting done.
“How does that sound?” Leo asks, pulling me from my thoughts. I sit up in my chair, running a hand down my face because I have no fucking clue what he’s talking about.
“Run it by me again,” I clip.
If Leo suspects I haven’t paid attention to a word he’s saying, he doesn’t say so. Instead, he takes a deep breath and rehashes everything I’ve missed while I’ve been daydreaming about the sounds Pippa made while coming undone under my tongue.
“So to sum it up, I think the best plan of action would be to move the Franklin piece to a later show at the Sutten location—or wait until winter and do it in Manhattan—and we add these new pieces from the inn owner to the Sutten Collection. An entire show dedicated to the people of Sutten. It’s a genius marketing move, Mr. Hunter.”
I grunt. I wish the idea was my own and not Pippa’s.
“How soon can we get it all together?” I push all thoughts of Pippa to the back of my mind, needing to have this conversation with Leo. He’s been my best buyer from the moment I could afford someone else seeking out new talent other than myself. He’s a loyal guy—something I appreciate immensely—and he has a superb eye for spotting the next big thing.
I manage to keep her from my thoughts long enough to iron out some details for the next show. I’m surprised by how excited I am for this one. It is panning out to be the most unique exhibit I’ve ever done. It’s new and fresh and something I hope pushes this new venture to the next step.
With Leo no longer on the other line and Trisha back in Manhattan, I’m left in the silence of my office. It’s too quiet here. In New York, you can hear the bustle outside the windows. Even into the early hours of the morning, you can hear the thrum of bass from the clubs down the street. You can hear laughter from the sidewalks as people walk home. The sound of honking taxis. None of that is here in Sutten. It’s truly silent. Maybe it isn’t like that during tourist season, but right now, you can hear everything—and that everything leaves me alone with my thoughts.
Suddenly, I’m really wanting a coffee. I look at my coffee cup from earlier, the hot pink lid taunting me. It’s barely noon. I don’t need another coffee, but Pippa hadn’t been at her shop this morning. And I hate to admit it, but I need an excuse to stop by to see her. I’ve been thinking about her leaving the gallery. She told me I had to work for it—and it’s the only thing I can think about.
I want to work for it, a realization I don’t care to dwell on.
It wouldn’t hurt to stop by the coffee shop again. We are next-door neighbors, and she makes the best coffee in this town. It makes total sense for me to drop in. It’s better than texting her, something I’ve thought about doing numerous times as I look at the one text we’ve shared in our thread. The photo of her in the lingerie. The photo that sent me spiraling from the moment I saw her. Even though I didn’t want to admit it then, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get her from my mind after that. And after tasting her, I know I’ll do anything to experience more with her. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d work for her. I look forward to biding my time and winning her over.
I sigh, scrubbing my hand along the stubble on my chin. It’s out of character for me to chase a woman, but I can’t help it with her. She gets on every one of my nerves, but I can’t stop.
It’s the very reason I find myself stepping through the hot pink door of her cafe. My eyes immediately travel around the space, looking for her in the group of people. It’s busy, some eyes catching mine as I search for her familiar gaze. I don’t find her at the tables, and when I look at the counter, she isn’t there either.
“Here for another?” the girl behind the register asks. She’d been the one to help me this morning right when the cafe opened.
I clear my throat, stepping up to the counter. “I was working late last night.”
“Same thing from this morning?”
Movement catches my attention from the corner of my eye. Looking over, I hope to find Pippa walking out of the swinging doors to the kitchen but instead find another face that isn’t her.
“Sir?” the barista pushes.
I focus back on her. “Yeah. That’d be perfect.” I scratch my chin, trying to think of a nonobvious way to ask where the hell Pippa is. “So.” I clear my throat, making things more awkward and obvious. “Where is the owner? Pippa?”
The girl smiles—Lexi from her name tag. She grasps the counter, leaning over it slightly. “Why are you asking?”
“I’m just used to seeing her every day.”
She nods her head, her eyes narrowing on me. “Right. No other reason at all you want to know?”
“Nope.” I cough, looking around to try and avoid her knowing stare. It’s hot against my skin, even as I pretend to look at a prepacked bag of coffee beans to avoid it as long as possible.
“She’s always complaining about you,” she states, humor in her voice.
My eyes snap to her. “Why do you say that like it’s a compliment?”
“Because I think she likes you.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, fighting the urge to say the first thing that popped into my head—she definitely seemed to like me when her fingernails were scraping my scalp, her moans echoing off the walls of this very shop as she screamed my name. I want to look back at the door, to close my eyes and remember having her pinned against the windows. What it felt like to spread her thighs open and have her completely bared to me.
“You good?” Lexi asks. Her eyes are lit with mischief as she beams at me. She’s clearly having too much fun pestering me about Pippa.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat again, looking over my shoulder to see if there’s anyone behind me in line. There isn’t, giving me time to aim more questions in her employee’s direction.
“Her complaining about me makes you think she likes me?” I feel like I’m in middle school again. I want to ask does she like me or like like me like a goddamn twelve-year-old. “That doesn’t make very much sense.”
“It does if you know Pippa. She gets bored easily, needing…” She pauses, her eyes traveling to the ceiling as she thinks for a moment. “Well, she needs fire, you could say. Something that keeps things interesting.”
“Complaining about me keeps things interesting?”
“Yesterday, I opened the cafe for Pippa. She’d texted me saying she’d been out late and needed help.”
My eyebrows draw in because this conversation has taken a turn I wasn’t expecting. “Okay?”
“The front door was unlocked. Which was unusual because Pippa always locks it when she closes. She sometimes forgets to do other things, but locking the door is never one of them.”
The girl points to a security camera in the corner. It looks down at me, a light flickering.
My cheeks heat. Shit. Am I about to blush? Prickling sensations run down the back of my neck as I pray that this conversation isn’t going where I think it’s going.
“I checked the camera, wanting to make sure no one had broken in. It didn’t look like anyone had, but I wanted to be sure.”
Holy fuck. Did this girl, who can’t be much older than eighteen, see me feasting on her boss’s pussy?
I’ve never blushed in my life, but I think I might actually be blushing from embarrassment. My entire face feels hot, the feeling running down my neck as well.
“Oh,” I mumble, having no idea what I’m supposed to say in this situation. I’m a grown-ass adult—I shouldn’t be fumbling over words right now—but I’m stuck visualizing all the dirty things this girl could’ve seen.
“Don’t worry. I figured out pretty early what was going to happen. I stopped it before I saw too much.”
I let out a sigh of relief. Thank god.
“So where is she?” I ask, changing the subject. Now that I know she hasn’t seen anything, I want to never speak of this moment again. It’ll haunt me wondering what she did see and at what point she stopped the replay.
Maybe I need to find a way to get that security footage. I don’t want anyone else getting a hold of it. It’d also be hot as hell to go back and rewatch.
“She’s sick today.”
“Sick?” I don’t like the thought of her being sick. Is she alone without anyone to take care of her?
“Yep. Which she must really be feeling like shit because she never calls out of work. Even when her mom passed, she showed up to work most days.”
My skin prickles with the need to show up at her house just so she’d have someone there for her. This girl has a point. Pippa doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d miss work unless she really wasn’t feeling well. What if something bad has happened and no one is there to help?
It doesn’t take long for me to decide the right thing is to go check on her. I have no idea where she lives, but I bet Lexi knows.
“Where does she live?” I ask, pulling my phone out so I can plug the address into a maps app.
This makes Lexi smile. I’m tired of all her knowing smiles. It’s like she knows too much. Which maybe she does, depending on how far she got into the security footage.
“How do I know that you aren’t going to stalk my fun and amazing boss?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not the stalker type.”
“Tall, dark, handsome with a mysterious and arrogant air to him? I think that’s the dictionary definition of stalker.”
“Pippa and I haven’t quite had the time to exchange addresses yet, but I can assure you she wouldn’t consider me a stalker.”
“What if she doesn’t want me to give you her address?”
Does everyone in this town like to argue?
“Fine,” I clip, looking back at the menu. “I’ll take the same thing as this morning, and then I’d like to add a specialty drink that helps with sickness.”
“That’s on our secret menu.”
“Make it a large, please.” Pulling my card out, I hold it between us. “And maybe add whatever food item you have here Pippa likes best.”
She stares me down, but I don’t back down under her gaze. Eventually, she must deem me trustworthy because she shrugs and pulls an additional cup from next to her. I’m waiting for her to finish writing on the cup and let me pay when she grabs a napkin and begins to write Pippa’s address. With a sigh, she slides it across the counter.
“If I get fired, you owe me a new job.”
I laugh. “You won’t get fired. Thank you.”
She snatches my card from me and runs it through their machine. “Don’t mess it up with her. She’s just now smiling after her mom.” Her tone got serious quickly. The joking tone to it is completely gone.
“I have no intentions of hurting her.” My intentions are exactly the opposite. I want to make her feel good by plucking orgasm after orgasm from her until her body is completely spent from pleasure.
