by Alisha Rai
When she neared, he glanced up at her from behind the book he held, a thick biography, and as those black eyes pinned her she tripped on . . . well, she wasn’t sure what she stumbled on. Air? Could one’s feet fumble over the strong breeze from an AC vent?
With some fancy juggling she managed to salvage the coffee, though it sloshed over the sides of the mugs.
The plate, however, flew right off the tray. It could have crashed on the floor or clattered onto the table. But no.
It landed in his lap. Facedown.
Just a plate.
And a croissant.
And jelly.
And butter.
Her smile gone, she groaned and set the tray down on the table. “Yikes, I’m so sorry.” She reached for the plate, but caught herself. A few months ago, she would have cracked a joke and helped him clean up, but she couldn’t possibly now. What if she, like, touched him? She’d die.
His reflexes were quick, and before she could act, he scooped the food and plate off his lap. “Don’t worry about it.”
Katrina grimaced. “I was going to ask if you wanted to stay awhile.” There were few things in life that were certain: death, taxes, and Jasvinder Singh’s sense of responsibility. He was her employee, so she could technically tell him that they would be staying, but their relationship had never worked like that.
The doors might remain locked for another twenty minutes, Mona and her the only ones in here, but Jas wouldn’t leave her alone in public. Hell, it had taken all of Katrina’s negotiating powers to get him to sit out here during her therapy session. He’d wanted to stand outside the office door, and had only acquiesced when she’d told him that would make her too self-conscious to talk.
He arched a perfect eyebrow at her. “We can stay.”
“You’ll probably want to go home and clean up.”
Mona popped up, holding a small bowl of water and a towel, as well as a new croissant. “Here you go.”
“I can clean up here.” Jas accepted the items. “Gracias, Mona.”
Mona said something to Jas, too fast for Katrina to catch. Her Spanish skills were limited, and Mona and Jas were definitely advanced-level. Jas’s family was mostly Punjabi American, but he had a Mexican grandparent or great-grandparent, if she remembered correctly, and had grown up in a multilingual community where English, Punjabi, and Spanish were spoken fluently.
Jas chuckled at Mona’s comment, but flushed. Without being asked, he translated once Mona winked at her and left. “She said it was a good thing it wasn’t the coffee that landed in my lap.”
Knowing Mona as she did, she assumed the woman had cracked a ribald joke. Katrina puffed out her cheeks. She’d have to download that language app again.
“See?” Jas blotted his thighs. “Good as new.”
She’d take his word for it. There was no way she was going to inspect those finely clad appendages for leftover jam and butter. “Okay, sure.” She picked up his mug and handed it to him. “Speaking of coffee, here you go.”
“Thanks.” Their fingers brushed as she passed the warm ceramic to him.
Katrina indicated a table across the café. “I’ll be over there.” It was common for them to sit separately. She liked the routine of the same spot, and he preferred to be able to see the whole room.
She stuck the hand he’d touched into her sweatshirt pocket as she walked away. Her fingers brushed the stone she always carried with her. She’d found it on a walk a few years ago and decided it was a perfect fidget stone, smooth and a good size for her small hand. She ran her thumb over the dip in it, the cool rock grounding her.
But it couldn’t get rid of the tingles racing up her arm.
One might call them zings.
She settled into her seat and pulled a baseball cap and a book out of her bag. She adjusted the cap on her head and knocked the brim down lower over her face. She wasn’t a celebrity anymore, but the café would start filling up soon and it calmed her to have the illusion of anonymity.
She opened her book and stared down at the page, thinking of what Andy had asked her just before she’d left.
Is there anything else going on that you want to talk about?
I can’t stop thinking about my bodyguard, and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s the only eligible bachelor in my life, or because I’m genuinely in love with a man who sees me as nothing more than a responsibility he takes very seriously.
She cast a glance at Jas. He’d returned to his own reading, but she knew he was entirely, fully aware of his surroundings. He hadn’t been a military man in over a decade, but he always had that air of hyperarousal around him. Something else they had in common. She hated being startled.
As if to taunt her, he slowly scratched one perfect eyebrow, and another zing ran down her back, to the hand he’d touched. She refocused on her own book, and curled her fingers into her palms.
Yes. Something else is definitely going on, damn it.
Chapter Two
AS LUNCHTIME APPROACHED, more of the red-cushioned chairs in the café became occupied by locals, students, and tourists. Occasionally Katrina glanced up to people-watch. Since so much of her brain was occupied with her crush, she couldn’t help but notice the couples in the room. The two giggling college girls who walked in holding hands, wearing goofy smiles. The older couple at the counter, familiarity in the way the two men stood and chatted with each other. The newlyweds in the corner, rubbing noses and cooing. The young parents who sat nearby, harried and yawning while they passed their chubby baby back and forth so they each could eat.
It was almost too much to bear. She tried to get lost in her book and nearly succeeded until she heard footsteps pause next to her table.
“Excuse me?”
She used her finger to hold her place and casually glanced up.
Her finger slid out of the book. The thriller was no longer the most thrilling thing around.
The man looming above her was so breathtakingly attractive she had to battle a sudden urge to scrub her eyes like a cartoon character of old.
The stranger had the jaw of a Disney prince, with a cleft in his chin to match. His unzipped red sweatshirt revealed a soft blue-gray shirt that matched his eyes, and his auburn hair was artfully tousled.
He held an absurdly tiny espresso cup in his big hands. “Hi. It’s so crowded in here today.”
Her back was against the wall, so he must be talking to her? “Um. It is,” Katrina agreed.
He gestured to the seat across from her. “Is this taken? Do you mind if we share a table?”
“Oh.” She glanced around. The young woman sitting at the table next to her, a leggy blonde in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, gave her a curious look before leaning forward to whisper something to the dark-haired man she was with.
Katrina’s gaze skipped over them to meet Jas’s. He’d placed his book facedown on the table, and he was making no secret of the fact he was watching carefully, his face hard and suspicious.
When Katrina had first started coming here, she hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone other than Mona and her employees. It had taken her a while to get to a point where she hadn’t felt nervous about a stranger sharing her table, especially when it was crowded.
Having panic disorder meant she could have an attack at any time. Sometimes anxiety or her PTSD triggered it. Sometimes she couldn’t tell exactly what pushed her body into it. Between years of therapy and meds, she’d learned how to occasionally catch a warning.
Katrina often felt like she had a perpetual scanner checking her vital signs. Heart rate, breathing, headache, adrenaline surges. It ran in the background like a sleeping computer program.
Jas started to rise, and she gave a barely perceptible shake of her head. He paused, then sat down, though he kept his attention on them. “Sure, no problem,” she said to the man.
She continued her internal check as the man sat down, the same way another person might check their pulse.
No alarms going off. Was t
here anything else, though?
She searched for anything other than appreciation of his beauty, but there was . . . nothing. No interest, no zing. Only the same detached interest she felt when she swiped through hundreds of men’s profiles on her app.
This could be your meet-cute, though. Give it a chance.
Her romantic side perked up a little as she envisioned this story playing out on a movie screen, like it was happening to someone else. Sharing a table in a crowded café was the cutest of meet-cutes! Maybe only matched by bumping into a man in a grocery store and having him pick up the peaches knocked out of her basket.
Or the croissant knocked into his lap.
Nope, she was not thinking about the croissant.
The man gave her a smile so perfect, even she, a smile expert, was impressed. “Hey, new seatmate,” he said.
“Um, hello.”
He scooted his seat closer to the table. “I’m Ross.”
She angled her baseball cap down. “Hi,” she repeated.
“What’s your name?” he prompted, which was an utterly reasonable thing to ask.
“Kat.” Only her inner circle of friends and staff knew her full name.
“Pretty name.” His grin widened. He produced a paperback from his sweatshirt pocket. A sci-fi novel, if the cover was anything to go by.
“Thanks.” She tugged on her T-shirt. If this was a meet-cute, she wished she’d worn something a little more attractive and form-fitting today.
“Thank you for letting me share your table.” He shifted, and before their knees could bump under the small table, she pulled her legs back instinctively.
Fool! You were supposed to let them bump.
“No big deal.” Since she’d lost the bump opportunity—the bumportunity—she ought to say something clever. Damn it. She shouldn’t have gone down the meet-cute alley in her brain. She was feeling too much pressure now.
You’re good at talking to people, at evaluating them. She’d never been a shy person, even if life had made her wary.
She slid her hand into her pocket and caressed her fidget stone. “Do you live around here?”
Ross put his book on the table. The spine was cracked.
That’s not a deal-breaker for a meet-cute. Still, she protectively cupped her own carefully intact book spine.
“No, it’s my first time in Santa Barbara.”
“Oh, you’re a tourist.” Her shoulders lowered, some of the pressure relieved. Meet-cutes didn’t happen when someone was on vacation.
Her inner romantic, that bitch, squinted at her, and quickly filled her brain with the fifty-seven and a half romantic comedies that started exactly that way.
“Kind of. My mom just moved here. Thought I would make sure she and her golden retriever are settling in well.”
Most people might be more touched at the man’s care for his mom, but she perked up for another reason. “Golden retriever?”
“Yeah.” He unlocked his phone, scrolled, and turned it around to face her. “That’s her. Well, my mom and Sandy.”
She ignored the mom, and zeroed in on the dog. “Oh my God. She’s so cute.”
“She knows.” He swiped right, and a helpless noise of adoration escaped Katrina’s mouth. “Yeah, she’s even cuter dressed up.”
She grinned at the pup in a tutu. “What a beautiful creature.”
“Inside and out. Her sister was my dog, actually. She passed away last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, though sadness tinged his eyes, turning them a darker gray. She swayed toward him, eager to ease the upset. Katrina pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned it on. “Here’s my cat. Her name’s Zeus.”
He visibly cheered as she showed him a few pictures of her tuxedo cat. Jas had found the cat for her at the humane society, so she wasn’t actually sure what breed she was, but Zeus had a nice hold on her heart. “Gorgeous.”
“She is. Very cuddly. A dog is next on my list.”
“I got Sandy and her sister at a shelter a few years back. You can find the sweetest dogs there.”
“That’s my plan. Sometimes I scroll through the adoption websites.”
“I heard someone say that pet adoption websites and real estate sites are like dating apps for married people.” His gaze dipped to her left hand.
She resisted the urge to touch her bare ring finger. She’d taken off her wedding ring ages ago. “I’m not married.”
“Cool.” He cocked his head. “Significant other?”
Her cheeks heated. She might be naïve, but she couldn’t tell herself he wasn’t interested now. “No.”
His eyes warmed. “Me neither. What do you do? For a living?”
She hesitated. The phrasing was odd, because she had the privilege of not needing to really do anything for a living.
It was a circumstance that filled her with a vague sense of guilt. She’d been a regular middle-class kid growing up, with a regular divorced single mom, and would have stayed middle-class had it not been for a freak series of events: her mother’s death, her father taking custody, an agent discovering her in a mall, being catapulted into the kind of circle that would lead her to marry a rich, childless jeweler, his death, her own interest in investing and growing the nest egg he’d left her.
That wasn’t to say she didn’t work. She worked on herself, her businesses, her charitable donations, her cooking, and an ever-changing selection of art, crafts, research, and books. She picked one at random. “I make jewelry.” Her latest interest, one she’d picked up a little over a year ago in a nostalgic mood for her late husband.
“Oh. Wow, that’s so cool. An artist, huh?”
She lifted a shoulder. A therapist had suggested she try painting a few years ago, and she’d cycled through a million different forms of art since then. She parroted his question back at him. “What about you?”
“I used to coach rugby. Now I’m a nutritional coach.”
Rugby. That explained the thighs.
“Hey, do you mind watching my stuff for a minute? I need to use the restroom.”
“Sure.”
He rose from his chair and she tried to avoid checking out his aforementioned (in her head) massive thighs as he walked away.
She snuck one peek, though. Okay, well. It wasn’t news that she could feel lust over a pair of well-formed legs. It didn’t rise to the level of a zing, though.
She waited a second or two and got up as well. Katrina caught the eye of the blond ponytailed woman at the table next to her, no easy feat, since she and her companion were sitting silently together, furiously typing something on their phones.
Writers, she bet. “Do you mind watching our table for a second?” There was no real need, Katrina wouldn’t go far, but she didn’t want someone to poach it.
The woman nodded. “Of course.”
She walked to the counter and grabbed an extra couple of napkins. A large shadow fell over her. Jas leaned on the counter and signaled to the waitress for a refill for his empty cup.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “He had no other place to sit. He’s not bothering me.”
She got a barely audible grunt in return. Grunts were one of Jas’s favorite methods of communication, and she’d learned to decipher them the same way someone else might learn to decipher Morse code. This grunt was a satisfied grunt.
The grunts weren’t as sexy to her as his eyebrows, but they were still pretty cute, damn it.
She glanced up at that rope sign. Happiness is a radical act.
Focus on the new guy. Find a zing there.
She made her way back to the table. “Thanks for holding it,” she said to the blond woman, and got a wave in return, the lady not even looking away from her small phone screen, her thumbs moving at the speed of light.
Definitely a writer. Bet she’s in the middle of something juicy.
Katrina sat down and returned to her thriller. A few minutes later Ross returned. He placed a plate with a giant coo
kie on it between them. “I went biking this morning and worked up an appetite. Please help me eat this.”
She never turned down a good cookie. “Happy to assist.”
She was careful not to let their fingers brush as they demolished the cookie. Despite her brain urging her to let it happen, the bumportunities were bump-blocked by her own instincts.
Ross sat back. “The weather’s so nice today.”
Mona had all of French Coast’s windows and doors open, and the salt-tinged air was perfection. “It’s nice most days. Have you been to the beach yet?”
“Not yet. That’s on the agenda for tomorrow. I didn’t bring my flip-flops today.”
She named a popular park. “If you want to see the sunset tonight, you can see it from there. The view’s incredible.”
He smoldered and leaned over the table. She hadn’t been on the receiving end of a smolder in a long time, but this was most definitely a smolder of the highest caliber.
And like most smolders in the past, she was left cold. It was a sad day when a grunt could make her heartbeat accelerate, but a perfectly good smolder barely caught her attention.
“The view’s good from here too.”
She stifled the sudden urge to laugh. Were this a book or a movie, she might have sighed, but in real life, the line was cheesy and heavy-handed. “Uh, you mean the décor? Yeah, we call rope art beach chic over here.”
“Partially,” he said, the smolder turning down to a simmer. “Hey, you know of any good pizza places around here? No chains.”
The subject of food was never cheesy. Unless there was literal cheese involved. “There’s a place around the corner from here.” She gestured. “I order delivery from there a lot, and love it. I’m pretty sure they have a nice place to eat in.”
“Perfect.” He crossed his arms over the small table and leaned forward. This time, she forced herself to keep her body still. They touched, his forearm against hers.
