Page 9 of Can’t Help Growling in Love (Harmony Glen #9)
Chapter
Seven
ASHER
You, too. Look, my colleagues are loving Dracula . Tia thinks it’s hilarious—she’s a vampire .
Attached to June’s message is a photo of the nurses’ station.
A tall Black woman on the left and a shorter white man on the right are leaning toward a small speaker on the desk, as if listening intently.
I like this snapshot of June’s work life, but I enjoyed her selfie more, not that I can tell her that without sounding like a creep.
I already nearly fucked up our first live interaction. I shudder at the memory of how betrayed she’d seemed when she realized I saw her but didn’t walk over to say hi.
I think she forgave me for being an idiot, but I can’t tell.
She didn’t say anything about wanting to see me again, and I didn’t want to presume.
But I thought about her throughout my shift, to the point that I almost missed my time slot for the Nightly News.
It would have been bad, too, because Stella had asked us to keep the programs going as usual until she finds a buyer for the station.
Last night’s meeting had been sad, if expected.
“I understand you’ll want to find new jobs,” she told my colleagues and me. “But as long as we’re running, I can keep paying you, so you’re welcome to stay on until the end.”
Marcos told her he’ll have to start searching for a new job soon to cover his expenses, but Natalie and I assured her we’d stay with the station until she calls it quits.
Stella got emotional at that and ended up pulling the other two in a hug.
Knowing I dislike having people in my personal space, she pressed my hand lightly between her warm, dry palms, and thanked me for everything.
It felt strange, having herthank meafter everything she did for me, and I told her so, but she insisted I would have achieved everything I have without her. It was a lie, but I let her have the last word because she looked like she might cry, and I didn’t want to upset her more.
The fact is that I haveput my life together.
I don’t have to work at the station nowadays—my narration work would cover all my expenses and leave me a tidy sum to save up every month.
My agent sent an offer to narrate a nature documentary into my inbox just this morning, and the proposed payment for that one had me raising my eyebrows in surprise.
I won’t starve because Stella is selling the station.
But I will lose the few connections I managed to make here in Harmony Glen, and not having to go into the studio every day will upset my routine.
This means I’ll have to build new routines before the sale forces me to change my life. That’s why I’m dressed and ready an hour before I’d usually leave for work, and why I put on a fresh pair of black joggers and a leather jacket instead of my oldest sweatshirt.
I’ve decided to visit Cool Beans every day before my shift begins as a way of getting myself out of the house for something that’s not my job.
The fact that I met June there yesterday has nothing to do with it.
I snort, then scrub my hand through my short hair. Leo wouldn’t want me to lie to myself, so I suppose I should admit it—I’m hoping June will come in for coffee again.
If she doesn’t, I’ll look like a fool sitting at the crowded coffee shop on my own, hogging a table, but I’m prepared to take that risk.
Just as it did yesterday, noise assaults me the moment I cross the threshold.
Most tables are full, and there’s a group of teenagers in the line in front of me, chatting loudly, debating their drink orders and playing videos on their phones.
Feeling like an old man, I try to remember if I was ever like this—before I enlisted in the Army at eighteen.
I don’t remember being this free, this casual, but maybe my memory is faulty.
A trio of guys put their heads together to watch something on a phone, and I decide that I definitely never had that.
Being an Army brat is difficult for anyone, but I was never good with people.
It made sense to keep to myself whenever we moved and I had to change schools again.
It was easier to not make friends. And if the other kids thought I was a weirdo, it didn’t matter, because we’d relocate again a couple of years later, and I left them all behind.
Before moving to Harmony Glen, I’d never lived in one place for longer than three years.
Putting down roots here, buying a house instead of renting, renovating the interior to suit my needs—it was all an attempt to build a new life for myself.
In part also to defy my father’s expectations of me, as Leo so eloquently put it.
I didn’t like to think that way. I just wanted the security of knowing exactly where I lay my head to sleep each night.
The teenagers place their orders, arguing loudly over whether the diet caramel syrup still has calories or not, and shuffle off to a booth by the windows, crammed closely together. How do they stand it, touching each other all the time?
“Hey, welcome to Cool Beans. What can I get for you today?”
The nervous barista from yesterday is absent today, and I blink at the peacock woman standing behind the counter.
Her blue hair is stunning, as are her feathered arms and teal eyes.
She raises her eyebrows at me, as if annoyed at my hesitation.
I don’t blame her—the line behind me has reached the front door, and she doesn’t have time for inefficiency.
“Uh, a latte and two of those, please.” I point at the display case to show her the exact same cupcake that the little girl chose yesterday. The frosting is pink, yellow, and blue, and the sprinkles are glittery silver, so I hope to hell they’re actually edible. “Yeah, those rainbow ones.”
She doesn’t comment on my choice of pastries but seems relieved I’ve made my decision. “For here or to go?”
“To go,” I say, just in case. If June doesn’t show in the next fifteen minutes, I’ll take my order and escape to eat both cupcakes as a consolation prize.
I wait by the counter for my coffee, then snag a small table in the middle of the room when a trio of elderly women get up and shuffle toward the door. I’d sit on the patio outside, but I don’t want to miss June.
Waiting is pure torture. I’m at least twenty minutes early considering her arrival yesterday, and I really should have thought this through.
I’m facing the front door so I can monitor the customers coming and going, but that means there are people behind me, as well as the bathrooms and the service exit behind the counter.
My Army-honed instincts are screaming at me to get the hell away from here and into a more secure position, but I sit tight, shoulders hunched, and try to focus on my phone.
June hasn’t posted anything since yesterday, and she hasn’t sent me any new messages since I woke up. Not that I was expecting her to. But it has me wondering whether I’m being a creep again, haunting her favorite coffee shop in the hopes of running into her.
“Excuse me, are these seats taken?”
A human woman approaches me, several years older than me, and frowns at the two empty chairs at my table. Her meaning is clear—I’m a single customer occupying a table for three.
“You can take one,” I tell her. “I’m waiting for a friend.”
She purses her lips, then carries the third chair away. I duck my head to project an unapproachable vibe, hoping others will leave me alone. Is it bad manners to drink coffee on your own in a café?
“Asher?”
A soft voice has me looking up again. June is standing in front of me, her pink helmet dangling from her fingers.
Her hair is loose today, tumbling around her shoulders, windswept and messy.
A few strands stick to her forehead, which bears a slight imprint of the helmet.
Her brown eyes are wide with surprise, and there’s that flush again, brightening her cheeks.
She has freckles. I don’t know how I missed them before. They’re sprinkled across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks, tiny brown dots I want to trace with my fingertips.
Is she annoyed that I’m here? Or happy to see me? Or maybe she’s just flushed from riding her bike.
I stare up at her, unable to speak. Maybe I’ve run out of my social battery already, having talked to both the barista and the stranger who commandeered one of the chairs. Or maybe June is entirely too pretty for me to handle, and the sight of her has fried my brain.
She chose her purple raincoat again, even though the weather is dry, but underneath it she’s wearing mossy green leggings that hug her legs perfectly, showing off the soft swells of her thighs.
And the scent of her… I inhale carefully, not wanting to overwhelm my senses because I don’t know if I can keep it together in here, where there are already so many scents competing for my attention.
Fuck . The first sweet whiff has my body singing with recognition. She smells like rain and caramel, fresh and decadent all at once, and it’s all I can do to stay in my seat. I want to lick her skin to find out if she tastes as good as she smells.
I lift my gaze up to her face again, my face flaming with embarrassment. “Um. Hey.”
I swallow thickly, moving my legs so she won’t see I’m half hard already.
I really shouldn’t have worn these godsdamned sweatpants.
I always put on sweatpants for work because shifting into my half form in jeans is uncomfortable as fuck.
But this soft fabric leaves nothing to imagination, and I can’t believe I’m tenting my pants just from smelling her.
Then June smiles at me, and I forget all about my body, because she draws me in effortlessly, commanding all my attention.
“Hey, I was hoping I’d see you again.” She pushes her hair behind her ear, and it produces another whiff of her scent. “Are you on another coffee run for your boss?”