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“Natalia, this is my very best friend, Blanca Corzo.” Sam pointed toward the back of the store. “And that’s her lovely wife, Greta. They do a lot with LGBTQ+ youth including providing safe spaces like the bookstore.”

“That’s very honorable,” Natalia replied, a light inside her dimming. “A lot of kids really have nowhere to go.”

Blanca put her hand to her chest. “Too many.”

“Good thing there are people in the world looking out for them,” Sam said, attention bouncing between Blanca and Natalia.

“Two trailblazing members of the community in my little shop.” Blanca lifted her camera. “I have to get a picture.”

“You have to, huh?” Sam raised her brows to signal that she knew what Blanca was doing and wasn’t amused.

“Imagine all the IG clicks.” Blanca grinned. “You know how hard it is to get organic traffic these days? Especially for a little mom and mom shop like ours.”

“Expert use of guilt as a negotiation tactic,” Natalia said with the hint of a smile hovering at the edges of her lips. “Who could say no to that?” She moved closer to Sam, her arm snaking around her waist, before Sam accepted that the photo was happening.

As the taller one between them, Sam curled her arm around Natalia’s upper back. It was impossible to resist taking a deep breath. To breathe her in greedily, her perfume triggering memories of Natalia’s body on hers. Of the sound of her sultry voice cursing and groaning.

“Say cheese!” Blanca pointed the camera at them.

Sam smiled and wondered whether Natalia had changed her stoic expression. She doubted it.

“Thanks.” Blanca smiled. “Can I offer you anything to eat? We have some bubbly for after the reading, but I can break it out.”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Natalia’s tone was almost warm.

“We should get started, Sam,” Blanca said before slipping away.

“I’ll let you get to it then.” Natalia took her book back. “I don’t want to distract you?—”

“Well, it’s far too late for that, isn’t it?” Sam leaned in closer, wishing she could taste her lips again. She wouldn’t be able to think about anything else tonight.

“I’m sure your powers of concentration can do better than that.” Natalia’s voice was too low, her mouth so tempting.

“Am I to believe that you came all the way here just for me to doodle in your book?”

“Far be it from me to tell you what to believe, Dr. Reyes.”

Sam’s adrenaline spiked. Natalia made everything so difficult and exciting. “Why don’t you stay for the reading? Let me take you somewhere after.”

“I just had parking lot hotdogs for dinner a few weeks ago,” she replied cooly.

Sam laughed, giddy and electrified in Natalia’s presence. “I’ll have to come up with something else then.”

“How will I get through this reading with that cliffhanger?” Natalia walked toward where a few dozen chairs were mostly filled.

Sam tried not to ogle her swinging hips like a creep, but her gaze got away from her before she could correct it. When she looked up, Greta and Blanca were staring at her from the other side of the store. Two sets of eyes silently begging for gossip. Sam gave them a noncommittal shrug before starting for the podium. The reading had just become a thousand times more difficult.

CHAPTER 12

“Why did you bring me here?” Natalia crossed her arms over her chest and regretted having left her blazer in the car on the chilly night. The strip mall a few miles from the bookstore was empty and devoid of life. Not even a single food cart was stationed in the vacant lot. “Apart from your fondness for parking lots.”

Samantha ran her fingers through her hair. She’d cut it a little different from the last time she’d seen her. The sides were tighter, and the top was longer and bordering on platinum. It added to her devil-may-care persona when she swished it to the side.

“Did you come here tonight to see me for personal or professional reasons?” she asked instead of answering her direct question.

Natalia never thought she’d wished someone was a little less direct. There was no point in lying. “I came here to talk you out of making the mistake of walking away from something life changing. Not just yours?—”

“That’s what I thought.” She stopped in front of a storefront, dark and motionless. “This was the first place in Miami my family ate something that wasn’t handed to us in a greasy paper bag.” Her brown eyes, bright and mischievous, left Natalia and landed on the closed fruteria. “Sitting together on a cramped picnic table covered in graffiti and eating chicharrones was the first time I believed we might find something close to a life here. Something normal. Before that day, normalcy seemed impossible. I thought we’d never have a home. Never fit in. Never leave that damned Orange Bowl.”