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Gus fell back a few steps, disciple making room for his master. Zac and Luke continued to watch the spectacle.
Well.
This wasn’t at all awkward.
“I’m fine, Bodie. Welcome back to Carmia. What can I get you?” She half expected him to order a cup of whole roasted coffee beans and a spoon. He was that primal.
“Double espresso.”
“Coming up.” Grateful for the reprieve, she moved back to the gleaming espresso machine, which worked so much more smoothly than hers back in New York. Eva had dubbed her finicky machine the Beast. “So how have you been?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Busy. Too busy. Nice to have a few weeks off now.”
“Yeah?” She packed the ground espresso into a solid puck and hooked the portafilter into the machine. “What are your plans?”
“Don’t have any. That’s the best way to live. Moment to moment. Know what I mean?”
Finally, someone who spoke her new language. She smiled over her shoulder while the machine buzzed. A few months ago, she would have been horrified, imagining that a lack of planning would automatically equal chaos. Now she embraced the concept wholly. Lately, she’d even been doing crazy-impulsive things, like taking walks when it was dinnertime. Just because she felt like it!
Yeah, okay, she was still a beginner when it came to the whole spontaneous thing.
“So, Chris...”
Something in Bodie’s tone made her body tense and her heart skip a beat. The espresso machine shut off abruptly, thrusting them into silence.
“Yes?” She picked up the cup and turned to find Zac, Luke and Gus still watching.
Argh!
“Since I’m back and free for a while...” He put both hands on the counter and leaned forward. His muscles bulged, his eyes held hers.
Chris swallowed. Holy—
“I’m thinkin’ you and me have something pretty powerful between us.”
The counter?
She couldn’t get the joke out. She was swimming in a sea of hormones and freaking out. In her hands, his espresso cup rattled against its saucer before she could make her hand relax.
“Huh.” That was the best she could do. This mental meltdown was not okay—this was no longer who she was, and this was not where or how she wanted to be.
“So I was wondering—” he reached over and touched her cheek, making her skin tingle and causing her to nearly drop the cup “—if you wanted to have dinner sometime.”
2 (#ulink_e30a7142-181b-589a-a40f-45cc86fdb740)
IF ONE MORE guy asked Chris out, Zac was going to get up from his table at Slow Pour and land an uppercut to his jaw. Then he was going to punch Gus and Bodie retroactively, because that was the kind of mood he was in.
What the hell? Before the holidays, he’d left for Connecticut, where he and Luke had grown up, because Luke was in trouble—again. Zac had wanted to try to set his little brother on a straighter path, but he’d also needed to get away from Chris, to get over himself and stop the stupid mooning.
Nice idea. Didn’t work. In Connecticut he’d discovered he could moon long-distance just as easily as he could in California, plus he was reminded of how much he didn’t like winter. He’d gone through that misery annually growing up, and he didn’t want to do it again.
So he’d come back. Luke needed a change of scenery, needed to get away from his substance-abusing East Coast friends to live a cleaner, better life under his brother’s watchful eye.
Luke had been a little surprise package who’d come into the world a week before Zac turned twelve. Three years later, when Luke was a toddler and Zac was in his first year of boarding school, their mother had succumbed to cancer. Their father had done his best to raise Luke on his own since then.
Losing their mother had sucked, to put it mildly. Zac had done most of his grieving on his own while he was away at school. Their already distant father hadn’t been in any shape to be a good parent, so Luke bore the worst of the tragedy. Zac had done what he could to help when he was home, but that wasn’t often. He had two regrets in life: one, that he hadn’t been there more for both Luke and his father, and two, that he hadn’t made a pass at Cynthia Baumgehen in college the night they were alone in his room.
Today, the minute he’d laid eyes on Chris, in spite of her weird haircut and new piercings, all the feelings he’d spent the past months trying to suppress had come roaring back. Standing there, overwhelmed, he’d remembered his regret over the missed opportunity with Cynthia and had experienced a big what-the-hell moment. So he’d asked Chris out to dinner, only to see her falter and hem and haw. And then he’d had to watch her get the same freaking offer from three other guys, including his own brother, for God’s sake. As if Zac was no different from a delinquent kid and brain-dead surfer meat.
Apparently he was smart not to have made a pass at Cynthia all those years ago. She probably would have turned pale and thrown up all over herself.
And while he was ranting, who or what had taken the spark out of Chris? She was like an overdecorated shell of her former self. Eva told him Chris had taken a month of classes at the Peace, Love and Joy Center. That was fine, and he had respect for the practices of yoga and meditation—many of the Eastern philosophies of life made good practical sense—but he didn’t understand why she had to look deflated and blank and suck air before answering a simple question. Chris Meyer was a high-energy, exciting woman. If she was trying to change that about herself, she would only succeed in driving herself crazy.
Well, fine, then, she’d go crazy. He’d stand by and watch. Not his problem.
“Uh, Zac?” Luke sat across the table, Zac’s laptop open in front of him. Supposedly he’d been looking for job opportunities in the area, but Zac was pretty sure his brother had also been taking in the three-ring circus unfolding in front of them nearly as intently as he had been.
“What?” He had no idea what his brother had been saying.
“I asked whether you thought Chris would give me a job at Slow—”
“No.” Zac closed his eyes, regrouping. Who was going crazy? “I mean, I think she has all the staff she needs.”
“Uh-huh.” Luke was looking at him suspiciously. For all the stupidity he’d demonstrated in his own short life, he was annoyingly perceptive about other people’s. “So do you think she’d go out with me if I—”
“No.”
Luke raised his pierced eyebrow. “You were in a great mood earlier. What the hell happened?”
“Sorry, man.” Zac rubbed his chin, glancing over at Chris, who was smiling up at Bodie as if he was her best friend. “I’m just...” Damn, that sweet, sunny smile pissed him off. If Chris was going to go for someone besides Zac, at least she could find a guy with a brain and respect for women. Bodie was so in love with himself he had no room for anyone else.
“Oh, I get it.” Luke had followed his gaze and was now smirking triumphantly. “All is clear to the amazing Luke.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her.” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder toward Chris. “You’re into her. And it’s driving you crazy that she might be into Mr. Canned Beef over there.”
“That’s not what is bothering me.”
“Yes it is. Don’t BS me.”
Zac took a deep breath. Early on in this intervention, he’d promised his brother total honesty as the only way they could trust each other. He hadn’t counted on the promise backfiring like this. “Okay, okay. Maybe you’re right.”
“I’m right.”
“You’re right, fine. Don’t push it.” He jabbed a finger at his brother. “And don’t ask her out again.”
“Message received.” Luke held up his hands in surrender. “Your turf, I get it. I’ll stay away. After all, blood is thicker than semen.”
“Oh, jeez.” Zac grimaced. “Do you have to say that stuff?”
In spite of his crappy mood, he was glad to see Luke laugh. The self-conscious tough-guy image got hard to take after a while. When Luke smiled he was Zac’s kid brother again.
“If it’s any consolation—” Luke motioned to Bodie contemptuously “—that guy’s got nothing on you.”
“Yeah, thanks.” The compliment pleased him, but he would’ve preferred to hear it from Chris.
“So? What are you going to do about it? What’s your plan?”
“My plan?” Zac let his hand drop to the table. “I’m going to go back to work, and help you find a job around here, and I’m going to keep you out of trouble.”
“Dude. I meant about her.”
“Nothing.” Zac stood and set his coffee cup on the tray for used dishes, only slightly gratified when Chris glanced over distractedly. At least she was keeping track of him. “Let’s go.”
“Nothing?” Luke got to his feet. “What kind of geek strategy is that?”
“Mine.” He led the way out of the shop, not looking at Chris again, not wanting to see her going all dewy-eyed over Mr. Canned Beef, as Luke had appropriately named him. That kind of torture Zac could do without. He’d thought he was so smooth asking her for a date. He was never using the phrase Dinner sometime? again.
“Are you going to ignore me for the rest of my life?”
Zac made a sound of frustration and stopped among the shaded tables and coffee-sipping patrons outside the store, swinging around to face his brother. “No, no, I’m not. I’m sorry.”
Luke peered up at him. “She’s got you, huh?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Liar.”
Zac shook his head and kept walking. “You’re pissing me off.”
“Yeah? Where are we going?”
“Home to pack up dinner, then we’re going to the beach to eat it.”
“Beach in February. Cool.”
“I’ll give you about ten days to figure out why I moved to California.”
They passed a woman wearing tight jeans and a low-cut top with a push-up bra. Luke turned, lowering his sunglasses for a better look. “Dude, I figured it out already.”
* * *
THEY’D FINISHED DINNER—Zac in an only marginally better mood—and were sitting next to a bonfire on Aura Beach when Zac’s phone rang, making him tense and then instantly exasperated. When was he going to stop hoping that it was Chris calling? Chris texting? Chris emailing? He really needed to figure out a way to get this woman out of his head before he became unhealthily obsessed.
Yeah, probably way too late for that.
He hauled out his phone and broke into a grin when he saw who the caller was. Jackie Cawling, a friend from his years in the Peace Corps, in his late twenties. They’d both been assigned to Kenya and had dated for a year or so—long-distance, since their towns were miles apart. After their assignments ended, they’d realized their attraction had mostly been based on each other’s familiarity in a strange land, and they’d parted pleasantly. Jackie was still traveling, had never settled down and probably never would. Every now and then she’d call, occasionally even show up, and then disappear until the next time he heard from her.
“Jackie! Where are you calling from this time? Italy? China? Australia?”
“Much more exotic.”
“Bali? Cook Islands? Venus?”
“Even more out there. I’m in Los Angeles. I have a few weeks with nothing to do before I start a job on a llama farm in Peru and I’m sick of the city and craving the mellowness of the Central Coast. Want to see me?”
“Absolutely.” He couldn’t stop grinning. “You need a place to stay? My brother’s here, but he would love to sleep on the couch.”
“Hey.” Luke was indignant. “She better be totally hot.”
Zac covered the phone to whisper, “Incendiary.”
“Yeah?” Luke’s eyes lit up. “Couch works for me.”
“Thanks, Zac,” Jackie said. “It’d just be for a day or two. I have a friend with a cabin in the middle of nowhere on the beach just up the coast from you, and I’ll want to hang out there and do my hermit thing for a few days. Then I have some buddies I’m seeing in Santa Cruz and blah, blah, blah, on up the coast. I plan to hit Carmia on Saturday. That’s the seventh, I think. That okay?”
“That’s great.”
“Awesome. I can’t wait to catch up. You finished your master’s yet? Wait, of course you have. Last time we talked you were about done. So, doctorate now? Where are you applying?”
“Stanford, MIT, Columbia and Penn.”
“Oh, my—” Her familiar deep laugh made him smile. “What, you’re not trying any good schools?”
“Nah, wasn’t up to it.” He leaned back on the blanket, feeling much better. Jackie knew him about as well as anyone did. Kind of hard to play mind games or hang on to fake attitudes living in a remote African village. “So what about you, Jackie? Where have you been? What have you been doing?”
“I’ll fill you in when I see you, at great length. In fact, I look forward to staying up all night over cups of coffee the way we used to. However, I need to know now, since I am a gossip slut, is there a potential Mrs. Zac?”
He snorted. “That remains to be seen.”
“Ooh, I’ll want details.”
“Nothing to tell yet. Why, is there a Mr. Cawling?”
“Nope. Only temporary relief now and then for me. I won’t get married until I’m too old to travel. Then I’ll find you wherever you are and propose.”
“That sounds like a deal. I’ll see you Saturday, Jackie.” He hung up, warmth spreading through his chest, and felt himself finally starting to relax. Jackie was unique: a strong, confident woman, comfortable in her own skin, generous and dedicated to helping make the world a better place. If he had half a brain he’d fall for her instead of being crazy about a woman who had no idea who she was.
At least Jackie’s timing was perfect. He could use a friend, and he could definitely use a distraction.
* * *
SUMMER WIPED DOWN the counter at Slow Pour, even though it was already clean. Not much going on this morning. A couple of chairs taken, not exactly a rush at the counter. The café was doing well overall, maybe even a little better than when Eva had been here, but there would always be quiet times. Thank goodness.
If you asked her—which no one had and no one probably would—Summer would say that Chris was sorta losing it. She was still acting calm, certainly calmer than when she’d arrived back in October, all wound up. It had been fun watching her slowly relax over the next little while under the influence of Central California.
Then she’d discovered the Peace, Love and Joy Center and had made a typical newcomer mistake, thinking she had to totally submerge herself in their let-it-be philosophy, instead of just taking from it what worked for her. It was hard watching Chris’s constant struggle to battle her real nature. And also kind of funny, though it wasn’t very nice of Summer to think so.
