Always & Forever: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection, Books 1 - 4)

by Brenna Jacobs

  After grinding the medium roast, he pulled a clean mug off the top of the espresso machine and started the drip for the Concrete Blonde café au lait. The woman on the other side of the counter gave him a condescending smile, and he was sure it was something to do with his hair.

  Ivy had convinced him to tousle up his look, so here he was, untucked, collar-free, and appearing about a week past prime haircut time. He’d decided he would never tell her that he’d paid a significant amount of money to have someone create this look. He avoided touching his hair, knowing that he’d probably brush it over to the side and manage to look exactly like himself again. No good. He needed to play a part, and the part had hair requirements.

  Elizabeth finished helping a customer and washed her hands at the sink. Wiping her fingers on her spotless apron, she said, “Excuse me,” in a way that made Bentley suspect that she might hire a hitman to take care of him. She was so polite to the customers, but her face was bare of emotion or expression when she looked at him.

  He was confident it wasn’t only him. He’d seen the way she glared at Ivy—a completely different kind of disdain. With him, it was like the jury was still out, but Ivy had been found guilty of all of it, whatever it was.

  At the same time, Elizabeth gave every customer a small gift of attention that looked totally sincere. Bentley wondered if it was real. Did she actually hate this job, and the only saving grace of it was the moment a new person came in and spoke an order across the counter? It worried him that people might hate this job. He felt responsible. Which was both silly (because he was the new guy, learning to froth milk with a wand) and obvious (because he was, even if they didn’t know it, their boss). Was Elizabeth Grant simply a master of manipulation? Did she know precisely how to work the emotional state of everyone in the room to her benefit? Was she carefully pulling strings to make Ivy feel like the pitiful, unfit serving girl, and Bentley like the new kid who needed to earn her respect (which clearly wasn’t happening quickly), and every customer like the salvation of her day, leading to excellent tips?

  Who could even unravel something like that? Elizabeth wasn’t talking—at least not to him. He’d have to guess. Maybe he should have pursued a degree in psychology.

  Or not.

  He put the copy of InConnect Magazine on top of the pile at the register, hoping that nobody would move it until Ivy came in. The cover, with the stock avatar graphic and the headline “Wonderkid Inventor of Superstore that Feels like Original,” caught his eye every few seconds. He worked hard to look like he was ignoring it.

  Lexus had written the cover article under a pen name and submitted it to the magazine. The editorial board had been thrilled to get it – Titus Cameron didn’t give interviews. Ever. They’d snatched it up and run with it after only minimal fact-checking with the board. Her clear bias didn’t hide well, and he couldn’t pretend to mind. Any good press at this point was going to help his bids for more franchise openings.

  So why did he care that Ivy saw the article? It’s not like she’d know it was him.

  Unless he told her.

  No. He’d never tell. He shouldn’t. And he couldn’t, not until the board said it was time.

  When Ivy arrived at the shift change, he gave a casual wave and refilled the pastry shelves, pretending he didn’t care if she noticed his slightly disheveled, rumpled look. He wished he didn’t care.

  But he cared. He wanted her to notice that he’d taken her advice. He wanted her to say she liked it.

  As soon as Ivy put on her apron and was ready to take orders, Elizabeth clocked out. Bentley waved goodbye and tried not to notice that Ivy’s hair picked up the funky lighting in a way that looked like the light was emanating from the purple strands of her hair. How did she do that? He could stare at that hair all day.

  But he shouldn’t.

  When there was a lull in the crowd, she picked up the InConnect magazine and started flipping through it. He couldn’t stop himself. “Anything good in there?”

  She shrugged and tossed the magazine back down on the counter. “I only read the ads.”

  “Any good ads?”

  She looked at him like he was moving quickly toward insanity.

  “Never mind. I’ll look myself.” He picked it up and flipped to the creased spread where the article about him began. Leaning against the counter in a carefully casual manner, he pretended to read, waiting for her to ask.

  She wasn’t asking.

  He might wait all day.

  “Must be a good story,” she said finally, and he tried not to jump out of his skin.

  “What makes you think so?” he asked.

  “You haven’t turned a page in many minutes.” It wasn’t a leading statement. It didn’t invite anything but discomfort. She either thought he couldn’t read or that he wasn’t trying.

  “It’s about Velvet Undergrounds.” He pointed to the article, as though maybe she thought he meant something else.

  “Yeah? What’s it say?”

  He ran his hand along the crease of the binding again. “Mostly it’s talking about the founder.”

  She interrupted with a sage nod. “Right. The mysterious Titus Cameron.”

  He’d been hoping up until this moment that he’d misremembered how contemptuous her voice could sound.

  Trying to force a casual laugh always backfired, but Bentley tried anyway. “Yeah, he’s mysterious all right. But you’ve met him, haven’t you?” Knowing the answer didn’t help him sound any more sincere. He kept the magazine in front of him, open, for protection. Who knew what she’d say? Or throw.

  She shook her head, and he watched her hair swing. “Nobody’s met him. I started here when the shop opened. We’ve had a couple of official visits from old men in suits, but not the man himself.” Her voice had become a snarl again. Bentley wondered if she’d sound like that every time she talked about Titus.

  “I bet that’s not even his real name,” she said, leaning into the pastry shelves to rearrange blueberry scones. “Who even names people Titus, anyway?”

  “I think it’s a cool name,” Bentley said, hoping to come off as casually interested instead of deeply offended. He’d studied name trends for months before he’d chosen Titus Cameron as the pseudonym for the company founder. And it was a cool name. He’d field tested it in six markets.

  “Fine, but you’re named after a car,” she said.

  “So are my sisters.” He didn’t know why he shared this piece of trivia with Ivy, but she was frazzling him. He was on edge.

  “Really?” she asked. “Is your dad in car sales?”

  “Nope. Hotels.”

  “And your sisters’ names are Mustang and Tacoma?” Ivy said, trying to keep her smile down.

  He shook his head.

  She twisted a ring on her finger. “No, that wouldn’t match with Bentley. Oh, I know. Bugatti and Ducati.”

  His laugh was the most natural sound he’d made in weeks. “Okay, that’s probably the best idea ever, but Ducati makes motorcycles, not cars.”

  “That’s a terrible reason to not name your sisters Ducati and Bugatti. Especially if your last name is Lamborghini or Maserati or something.”

  He laughed again. She was giving him more reasons to like her every time he saw her.

  She wasn’t finished. “And honestly, I think you should be impressed with me for even coming up with those words. This whole category of transportation is a little outside my paygrade.”

  “Really? You don’t drive a Lamborghini?” he teased. The bell signaled a customer.

  “I have a bus pass and a second-hand bike for trail riding.” She turned to the counter. “Help you?” she said, and he was pleased to see that she was still smiling from their exchange.

  Hoping Ivy would keep talking to him, he glanced at the article again. Too bad a steady stream of customers followed the first. He followed her around hoping to be useful, while staying enough out of her way to not be annoying. He could imagine learning her systems to th
e extent that they could work seamlessly, passing grounds and mugs and milk between them effortlessly. Today was not that day. He got out of the way and went to wipe down tables.

  He stopped at a table that had mugs and crumbs and spoons littered across it. He tossed the dishes into his plastic bin and looked at the room from this angle. There was a photo in the InConnect article of one of the Velvet Undergrounds locations. It was literally impossible to tell which one, since they were so carefully crafted to look exactly the same. He’d tested that too. As it turned out, consumers loved the idea of a fresh, new, funky, independent shop; but not as much as they loved the consistency of a familiar chain. He’d taken both those ideals – the funky and the familiar – and combined them into this perfect blend: the shop that looked like an original but felt like every consumer’s very own.

  And it was working. He’d like to remind Ivy that Velvet Undergrounds was the fastest-growing food franchise in the western United States. She didn’t seem to care. He’d like to point out that there were shops in three Canadian provinces, Mexico, England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Guam.

  Yeah, that’s right. Guam. How could that not impress her?

  Guam was one of those fortunate accidents—his older sister, Mercedes, had thrown down a challenge: Name a country so far off the travel-magazine-destination that nobody ever goes there. Bentley had laughed it off and said, “Guam,” before he realized the point Mercedes was making.

  “Fine,” he’d said. “I’ll have a shop in Guam in nine months.”

  And he had—in six. And so it continued, franchise after franchise, selling overpriced coffee, opening job opportunities for many people just like he was now—looking for a few hours a week. People like Ivy, paying the bills. Making ends meet.

  At least, that’s what he assumed Ivy was doing. She never really said much about her life outside the shop. Maybe she also led some strange kind of double life, like he did. Maybe she also had a different world she moved in, like he did. Or maybe not like he did at all. His mind started spinning off in all directions. Maybe she was an amateur taxidermist. Maybe she was married. Maybe she ran an undercover weapons-smuggling organization.

  Maybe he was dreaming.

  New quest. Get Ivy talking. Prove he was interested in what she had to say. Listen to her thoughts and her opinions.

  But not about Titus Cameron. He didn’t need to hear Ivy’s disdain any more often than it happened accidentally.

  He cleared another table, then another. When he looked over to the counter, Ivy was scrolling on her phone, reading something that made her eyebrows come together. He returned to the counter and said, “Need a break? I can take over here.”

  She nodded and walked away without saying anything. He watched her stride to the door and leave the shop, and he waited more than seven minutes before she came back. Seven minutes and nineteen seconds.

  Why had she left? What was she doing out there in the hot afternoon?

  When she came back to the counter, Bentley was filling an order. She didn’t offer to help, but she slipped around him as he turned here and there setting things in the right places, so it made his work a little easier. He chose to take that as a positive sign. Because she was helping him, and because anything that made this work easier was a big deal. He’d had no idea how tricky it would be to keep all the drink names straight, how to hold three or four parts of an order in his head, or how to smile through it all when he felt sure he would mess it up. Coffee seen from the perspective of the boardroom was a significantly different affair than coffee from the percolator.

  He realized he envied Elizabeth Grant a little bit. She had the polished act of “I hate this work, but when YOU come in to buy a coffee, you make it worthwhile.” It allowed her to show her frustration in the seconds between every customer. She could let off the steam that Bentley felt he needed to keep hidden.

  Was it terribly sexist of him to see that act of annoyance as a cute feminine feature? There were a few men who could pull that off, but he wasn’t one of them. He didn’t want to look like a diva.

  As he handed a drink across the counter, Ivy met the next customer at the register. “Hi, there,” she said, leaning across the counter the way she had when he’d first come in. “What can I get you?” Bentley tried to catch her eye again, but she wasn’t looking at him.

  Bentley watched the high-school-aged kid on the other side, who looked like he was having the luckiest day in his life, shift his focus between Ivy and the menu. “Uh, I don’t actually know what I want. I mean, I want real coffee, but not something that tastes, you know, bitter like real coffee.” He made a face, either in response to the idea of drinking coffee that tastes like itself or at admitting he didn’t actually want what he was buying. “If you have that, I don’t know what it’s called.” His eagerness to look smart, to know something, to figure out his drink dilemma was all awkward and a little bit adorable, like a puppy that keeps tripping over its feet.

  “Sounds like the drink for you is either The Misfit or The Clash. Both of them give you a jolt, but really? They’re like warm ice cream. Lots of sugar. Lots of cream.” Ivy knew exactly what this kid wanted, and she made it okay for him to ask for help. She was exactly the kind of person he wanted working in every one of his shops. How fortunate that he’d landed in this one, where she was already doing her magic.

  The kid nodded and his hair flopped into his eyes. “Yes. The Clash. It sounds better.” Bentley took note: it sounds better = kids think it’s cooler. Worthwhile product testing.

  Ivy nodded like the kid had made a very important choice. “Good call. I’ll get that made for you right away. Staying here or do you want to take it with you?”

  The kid checked his phone. “I think I have time to stay.”

  Ivy smiled like nothing would make her happier than having him in the shop for the few minutes it would take him to finish his drink.

  Bentley knew that would lead to a pastry sale. Maybe a T-shirt.

  Ivy was very good at this job. He tried to send her a smile, but she seemed to be avoiding his eye.

  Bentley took the order for the couple next in line. They were straight-up orderers: two Black Flags to go. They hovered at the counter, pointing out merchandise they liked, while he brewed and poured their drinks. As he pressed the lids on the cups and lifted them, he walked directly into Ivy. The cups met her on either side of her chin, and the lids only just kept the hot drinks contained.

  Ivy gasped and said a word that Bentley was positive was in the prohibited list in her contract. Bentley gasped and said a different word that was also definitely on the list.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, trying to check if she was hurt. He reached out with hands full of cups. Then with his elbow, reaching for her arm. He thought he was being helpful, but it was clear that he was wrong.

  “Get out of my way,” she said, trying to go around him. He went the same direction and they jigged inside the small space behind the counter.

  She backed away from him, hands up in front of her face. “Stop it. Go that way.” She pointed with her head, directing him to his customers.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, still holding the two cups in his hands. He couldn’t turn from her until he was sure he hadn’t hurt her, even though he was making a fantastic disaster of this.

  “I will be if you leave me alone.” There was no room for misinterpretation. She was not laughing.

  He nodded to her, went around to his customers, and handed them their drinks. They looked at the cups like they’d hoped for something better—maybe something not used as a weapon—but took the drinks and walked out.

  “They didn’t leave you a tip,” she said, rubbing her sleeve along her jawline.

  Was she teasing him? He watched her face for the hint of a smile. Couldn’t find one.

  “Hope that doesn’t make it hard to pay the rent this month,” she said. Then she turned away and scooped beans into the grinder.

  She kept bringing
up the money. He didn’t know it was so obvious that he had money until she mentioned it. The day he’d started, and now again today. As if he’d forget, or she would. He knew that people expected life to be simple for him. And of course, many things had been. He was good at school, at least the academic parts. His family’s money had made many things come easily for him: experiences, travel, daily comforts. But he’d always wished he could be more relaxed around women. In high school and college, his family money had put him in the path of other moneyed families, but their daughters were like Lex and Mercedes: Elegant. Effortless. Classy. And he was always too buttoned-up to be either urbane or relaxed. Now was his chance—the newly minted Bentley Hollis, untucked and tousled and cool.

  That wasn’t too much to ask.

  Bentley glanced at Ivy again, who was spending the break between customers picking at the polish on her nails. Looked like an opening to him. He would make spontaneous small-talk and she would be convinced that he was interesting and casually cool.

  “What are you doing after work?”

  She looked up from her hands with a horror-filled face. “Are you asking me out?”

  “No. No. Of course not.”

  Relief washed over her features. “Good.” Now she bent over to retie her Doc Marten combat boots.

  “I just wondered what kinds of things you do when you’re not here.”

  Oh, no. Stalker. He sounded exactly like he was planning to follow behind her car and watch her through windows.

  “I mean,” he stammered, “what do you like? What are you interested in?”

  She made a sound that could optimistically be called a laugh. “You’re not much good at chit-chat, are you?”

  His face flushed and the combination of embarrassment and desperation made his heart hammer. One more try.

  Maybe she’d accept an offering of vulnerability. “I just want to talk to you like normal people talk.”

  She shook her head. “No good. I don’t do your kind of normal,” she said. The door chime rang and she turned toward the approaching customer. “Hey, there. Know what you want?” she said, all traces of disdain gone from her voice.