Page 3 of Lady and the Butcher

“You know me so well.”

He leaned against the counter next to me, picking up a jar of whipped belly butter and sniffing it. “Smells like a spa and a forest had a baby.”

“Good. That’s the brand.”

We stood in comfortable silence for a moment, watching a pregnant couple wander past the front window, pausing to point at a swaddle set shaped like tiny oranges.

Then he said, more gently, “You doing okay?”

I hesitated. “Define ‘okay.’”

He gave me a look. “That’s not a great sign.”

“I’m fine. Just tired. I spend twelve hours a day talking about birth and nipple trauma. It’s a lot.”

“Are you still dating that Pilates guy?”

“Um, no. He believed in semen retention and called orgasms ‘vibrations of the ego.’”

Stephan choked on his laugh. “Jesus.”

“Yeah. We didn’t last long.”

“Well,” he said, nudging me. “You should come to the party. You might meet someone.”

I rolled my eyes. “Stephan, I’m literally surrounded by the consequences of sex all day, every day.”

He raised a brow. “And?”

“And I haven’t had any in months. It’s like working in a chocolate factory while on a juice cleanse. You smell it. You see it. But you’re just out here chewing kale and pretending it’s fine.”

He grinned. “Maybe Saturday will help.”

“Maybe.”

But in the back of my mind, I thought of the letter.

Of the whisper between customers last week.

Of the name I wasn’t supposed to know?—

Alpha Mail.

“You’re unusually smug today,” I said, trying to sound bored as I straightened a stack of burp cloths.

“That’s because I’ve been overseas for eight weeks working my ass off in a country where the water pressure could flay skin,” Stephan said. “Now, I’m home, I smell like actual soap, and I’m not waking up to the sound of jackhammers and jackals.”

“You missed your Amazon Prime account, didn’t you?”

“Deeply. I had to ration deodorant. I’ve been through things.”

I looked him over again as he leaned into one of the display shelves. He had the kind of build you got from hauling gear and climbing rebar, not from gym selfies. A little too tan, a little too scruffy, a streak of drywall dust still clinging to the hem of his jeans. His hair was dark, wavy, perpetually windswept, and his beard had just enough salt to give him that rugged, I-build-bridges-and-break-hearts look. Charleston moms probably threw themselves at him at Trader Joe’s.

“You don’t look like you’ve been suffering.”

“Because I handle my needs,” he said with a cocky smirk. “Unlike you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Why aren’t you sexually frustrated? Seriously. What are you, just out here scratching the itch like it’s a bug bite?”