Page 26 of Brewing Up My Fresh Start (Twin Waves #2)

Her lips are soft and eager, and when they part under mine, I lose whatever remains of my mind.

This isn’t gentle or tentative—this is years of suppressed hunger finally breaking free.

Her hands slide up to cup my face, a slight tremor in her fingers, and she melts against me like she’s been waiting for this as long as I have.

I’ve kissed plenty of women, but never with this sense of coming completely apart, never with the feeling that I could spend forever learning all the ways Michelle Lawson can wreck my carefully ordered world and still want more.

Never with a seagull providing live commentary.

Frank gets bored with our display and hops down to investigate Michelle’s purse with the focused determination of airport security.

When Michelle breaks the kiss, we’re both breathing hard. Her forehead rests against mine, and her eyes are wide with shock and want.

“Oh,” she whispers.

My chest heaves like I’ve run miles. Every nerve is lit, every wall I’ve built flattened. For once, I don’t feel locked up at all—I feel wrecked and alive, like kissing her rewired me in ways I can’t undo.

“Yeah,” I agree, because kissing Michelle has reduced my vocabulary to caveman basics.

From behind us comes the sound of Frank discovering an emergency granola bar. The crinkling wrapper provides oddly festive background music to our romantic crisis.

“We just...” She touches her lips, looking dazed.

“We did.”

“That was...”

Crash. Frank has attempted granola bar surgery and knocked over Michelle’s coffee mug in the process.

A laugh bubbles out of Michelle, slightly hysterical. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“The kiss or Frank’s hostile takeover?”

“Both. Either. All of it.” But neither of us steps away. Her hands are still pressed against my chest, fingers spread over my heartbeat. “This changes everything.”

Fear knots low in my gut—not of her, never of her, but of what this means. Business and survival have always been simple: numbers, deadlines, permits. This is chaos I can’t blueprint or control. And I don’t want to.

“Everything,” I agree, brushing that rebellious strand of hair behind her ear. Finally. “Your committee is expecting you to stop my development.”

“They are.”

“And I’m supposed to be convincing the town to accept progress.”

“You are.”

Frank squawks triumphantly from near the register, having successfully opened the granola bar through sheer destructive determination.

“So this is...”

“Terrible timing with a side of property damage,” I finish.

She laughs again, and the sound goes straight to my chest where it tangles up with feelings I’ve spent seven years avoiding. “Why do I get the feeling timing has never been our strong suit?”

“Seven years of morning coffee orders suggest you might be right.”

She shakes her head, gold flecks catching the afternoon light. “All this time, I thought you were just another customer.”

“All this time, I thought you were just making coffee.” I stroke my thumb across her cheek, marveling at how soft her skin is. “Turns out we were both terrible at reading the situation.”

Frank, pleased with his granola victory, hops back onto the counter and begins eating with satisfied munching.

“Any regrets?” I ask, needing to know before this moment shatters and we both remember all the reasons why this is impossible.

“About a hundred,” she admits, but her hands tighten on my shirt. “But not the one you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“That I regret kissing you.” Her voice drops to a whisper that makes my pulse spike.

“I don’t. I regret that it took us this long.

I regret that we’re supposed to be enemies.

I regret that your business partner is going to kill you for compromising the project, and I regret that we now have a seagull witness who’s probably planning to blackmail us. ”

Frank pauses mid-chew and gives us a look that confirms this is exactly his plan.

“Scott’s been predicting this disaster since I started coming to community meetings personally,” I tell her. “He’s going to take one look at me tomorrow and know exactly what happened.”

“Will that be a problem?”

The practical answer is yes. The smart answer is that I’m jeopardizing a major development for a woman who’s been fighting me for weeks.

But I’m standing in a coffee shop with Michelle Lawson in my arms and a deranged seagull eating stolen snacks six feet away, and suddenly none of that seems as important as it did an hour ago.

“Ask me tomorrow,” I say. “After I figure out whether I care more about disappointing Scott or disappointing you.”

Her breath catches. “Grayson?—”

Her phone buzzes against the counter, making all three of us jump. Frank nearly chokes on his granola.

Reality crashes back in, and suddenly we’re two people who just kissed our way into a situation that makes no professional sense, plus one well-fed seagull who witnessed everything.

She glances at the screen. “Jessica. She wants to know if I’m still here.”

“Are you going to tell her what happened?”

“Which part? The kissing or Frank’s complete takeover of my snack inventory?”

Frank preens proudly.

“That depends. Are you going to tell Scott?”

“He’s going to figure it out whether I tell him or not. Scott has supernatural abilities when it comes to detecting my poor life choices.” I gesture to my destroyed tie, the chaos around us, and Frank, who’s now using my shredded papers as napkins. “Plus the evidence is pretty overwhelming.”

“Is that what this was? A poor life choice?”

I study her face—flushed cheeks, mussed hair, lips still swollen from our kiss, Frank perched nearby like a feathered guardian angel of romantic chaos—and realize that for the first time in seven years, I don’t care whether this is smart or stupid. I only care whether it’s real.

“Ask me in the morning,” I say. “After we both figure out what this means and whether Frank plans to make this a regular occurrence.”

Frank squawks what sounds suspiciously like “absolutely.”

“Fair enough.” She steps back, creating necessary space, but her gaze never leaves mine. “But Grayson? Whatever we decide about the development, whatever complications this creates with the committee, whatever Frank decides to destroy next—I want you to know something.”

“What?”

“I’m glad we finally stopped pretending we didn’t want to do that.”

The admission hits me square in the chest, knocking the breath from my lungs. “Michelle?—”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she says quickly. “Don’t tell me this changes everything unless you’re prepared for it to actually change everything. But don’t pretend it didn’t happen either.”

I reach for her hand, threading our fingers together. “It happened. And tomorrow, when we both panic about what it means, I want you to remember something.”

“What?”

“I’d rather complicate everything with you than keep things simple without you.”

Frank squawks his approval, then hops to the window and somehow manages to unlatch it with his beak.

“Show-off,” Michelle mutters, but she’s smiling.

Outside, October air carries the salty scent of the ocean and the promise of storms. I sit in my truck afterward, engine running, trying to process the fact that everything just shifted in ways I didn’t see coming.

My phone buzzes.

Scott: How did the late meeting go? Any progress?

I stare at the message, then type.

Me: It’s complicated.

Scott: With the timeline or with the coffee shop owner you’ve been obsessing over for seven years?

Me: Both.

Scott: Remember we have deadlines and people depending on us.

The reminder should stress me out. Six months ago, it would have sent me into damage control mode. Now I’m wondering when investor expectations started mattering more than the way Michelle Lawson looks at me—like I’m worth fighting for instead of against.

Me: I know. We’ll figure it out.

Scott: We?

I set the phone aside without answering, because I don’t know what “we” means yet. I don’t know if Michelle and I are a “we,” or if tonight was just years of attraction finally boiling over into one lapse in judgment witnessed by a granola-stealing seagull named Frank.

What I know is that Michelle Lawson drives me absolutely crazy, and for the first time since my divorce, that feels less like a problem and more like possibility.

Tomorrow, we’ll figure out how to navigate “kissing your supposed enemy while a deranged seagull provides color commentary.”

Tonight, I’m remembering the way she said “good” when I told her she drives me crazy, and the fact that complicated doesn’t necessarily mean impossible.

The best things usually are complicated. And for once in my careful, controlled life, I’m ready for complicated.