Page 10

Chapter Nine

T he coffee is divine . It's smooth, and bitter in a floral, almondy way that sits beautifully on the tongue, thick on the finish, and fills my stomach with sunlight. Coffee is already the nectar of the gods, but this is a fucking delight.

"It tastes normal to me," Dav says the next morning, over his own cup.

"You have no palette then," I accuse. "This is magic ." I slurp down another hot mouthful. I don't care that it burns my tongue. Feels good. Feels right .

"My palette is perfectly refined." He flicks his forked tongue out at me.

"Then maybe it's because you spent yesterday breathing fire and it's screwed up your tastebuds, but believe me, this is incredible."

I toss the rest of the coffee in my mug down my throat, and top myself up. It doesn't even need milk, or sugar, or anything fancy.

It's…

You know what it is?

This is finally a coffee that tastes the way coffee smells.

"So you like it, then?" he teases.

I shoot him my biggest, dopiest grin. "Keep making it like this, and I might just have to marry you," I say before my brain can throttle the conduit to my mouth.

Dav twitches once all over, like he's been shocked by a live wire, and then sends me a super-fake smile. "No, you wouldn't."

He retreats to the kitchen.

Well.

Huh.

That… happened.

Not sure what else to do, I stay on this side of the door to get the front in order, and drink the whole carafe of our test batch by myself.

Beanevolence goes through about two kilograms of coffee each day.

These are individually roasted to different strengths.

Each pot of drip coffee is ground as needed, but as the espresso takes more time, we do it by the jar.

There's three long glass tubes attached to the wall of the bar-back with copper striping for the unground beans.

Clear glass isn't preferable for storing beans, but as we usually use it all up within a day, the sun doesn't have the time to do any damage.

And they look damn cool, like a mad scientist's lab.

There's even a copper hand crank at the bottom of each tube to dole out the beans in pre-measured batches.

So, Dav has a lot of beans to work through to get us up to snuff. That's the excuse I give myself, anyway, for being too cowardly to go into the kitchen and apologize for… whatever it is that offended him just now.

Around noon, he comes out front anyway, red-faced and winded.

"Yikes," I say. "Need a drink?"

"I've had quite enough coffee."

"Water, I meant." I set down the box of sweetener packets.

I had been refilling the jars on the table where customers can personalize their drinks.

Hadi provides four different kinds of sugar, including a rotational seasonal special.

Personally, I do not get the appeal of dehydrated strawberry sugar in coffee, but it's a hit in July.

"The water from the bar sink is drinkable. "

I turn away quick when he helps himself to a glass.

His waistcoat is missing. His top three buttons are undone.

His face is lightly sheened with sweat and there are a few dark-red curls of chest hair peeking out of the vee of his shirt.

His Adam’s apple is lickable . I want to find out what dragon sweat tastes like.

He's endearingly, temptingly rumpled, his hair product melted away, leaving it floppy and damp.

There's a peek of dusky rose nipple as he raises his arm and I just, I just want to bite it .

Those bare forearms, the flex of strong fingers around the glass—I remember the feel of them through my shirt—I want those arms to hold me down—I want—

Shit.

Shit .

A loud noise startles us both, and Dav whips his head around to track it, slit pupils narrowing, predatory and hnnnnnnf that's sexy . Of course, he's looking right at me, because the noise was me dropping the box.

Welp.

Yeetus yeetus, time to self-deleteus.

"I'll help—" Dav starts.

"No, I'm fine." I start scooping the packets back into the cardboard box. "Just, stay over there." I add, and okay, that might have come out a bit desperate, but the front of my jeans is not currently fit for public viewing and the last thing I want is to make Dav uncomfortable again.

I pop back up, box held in front of my fly.

"I, ah, bathroom." I leave the box on the station and dart for the gent's. I splash cold water on my face and the back of my neck until everything calms the fuck down.

When I get back, he's buttoned his shirt and waistcoat, cool and collected again. Thank fuck. My nerves would not have been able to take it.

"Now what?" he asks.

"Huh?"

"I finished. Should I do more?"

"Uh. Wow, yeah, that was fast. Okay. I guess I can show you how to make batter?"

"So long as you promise not to burn them." He twinkles out a smile.

Sassy-Dav has started to resurface, and I like the bitch.

Am I forgiven, then?

"Shut up," I snipe playfully. The kitchen is heavy with dragon-generated heat, and I prop open the back door to clear out the last of it. "I'll make you bake them, instead."

"They may actually be edible, then."

Making sure he can see me reaching, I pinch his arm.

"Owww," he complains theatrically. "How cruel."

I'm sure the recipes for the baked things must be written down somewhere, but I talk him through from memory. Once the scone batter is in the fridge, the basic oat muffin batter gets portioned into four bowls.

"Blueberries in this one, the whole basket," I tell Dav, "Raisins here, bananas and peanut butter there, then chocolate chips here."

Dav frowns. "Should you be handling those?"

"I'm not anaphylactic."

"Still, it's a shame," Dav says, popping one of the chips in his mouth. It's organic and made small-batch from an ethical-labor, sustainable farming operation. "Chocolate is one of my favorite things about the New World."

" 'The New World'?" I huff. "D'you still call historic Toronto 'York', too?"

The corner of Dav's mouth twitches down. "Only when speaking of His Excellency’s territory."

"His… Excellency. Right," I say, blind-sided by the reminder that the man standing beside me is hundreds of years old. And in every culture in the world, dragons are chieftains, or tribal leaders, or autocratic royalty like the Russian Czars and our own British Empire monarchs.

I have no business getting a crush on a man who, for all I know, may be an actual prince. That's one step too close to taking draconic romance novels seriously, thanks.

"What did you do to it?" Hadi asks, glaring at us over the rim of her mug. Her lips and hijab are both a vibrant crimson this morning, and it just makes her look more annoyed.

"Who says we did anything?" I offer what I hope is an endearing smile.

So basically, totally confessing.

"Do not bullshit me about my own coffee."

I sigh and give up on the smile. It felt tight and weird, anyway.

"Dav has some… expertise, and suggested a tweak. Don't you like it?"

"I fucking love it, that's the problem," Hadi says, turning to Dav.

He's buttoned all the way up today, in black trousers and a waistcoat, with a shirt in a burnt orange that matches the Beanevolence logo. He's wearing an honest-to-god pocket watch, with the fiddly little chain and everything. I feel like a slob next to him.

Dav had proudly presented the first cup of coffee he'd made all by himself to Hadi when she'd come in to oversee the installation of the oven this morning.

The two gals in the back doing the installation were both given coffees too, and I can hear the one saying "Holy shit, this is good," through the door.

"Why is it a problem?"

"Because you changed something. Colin, the key to building a customer base is consistency . Can you honestly tell me you can do this every time?"

I look to Dav, who gives a little contained eyebrow wiggle that I interpret as an 'of course'. Then I look back to Hadi. "Yes."

"Even when the new roaster arrives?"

Dav and I exchange another look. Busted. We didn't think of that.

"Look, show me what you did different, and I'll see if I can adjust the machine."

"Ah," Dav says, and spending two days with him has made it much easier to read his body language. His face stays serene, but his posture seizes up like a soldier called to attention.

"He can't," I say, jumping in before Dav feels the need to lie. "That's, um, kind of a dragon secret?" I make up on the spot.

"Is it?" Hadi asks Dav.

"Yes," he says, calmly and firmly. "My apologies. As I am already here daily, I'd be happy to volunteer my services to roast your beans, even after the roaster arrives."

"I can’t afford another employee right now."

"I believe I said 'volunteer'," Dav points out.

Hadi heaves out a sigh, hands on her hips. "If today goes okay, if people like it, then we can talk." She flicks one of my ears. I duck away because ow, and also, I don't like it when people point out my stupid jar-handles. "Don't change anything else, okay?"

"Okay," I promise, flattening my hair over the sides of my head.

She goes into the kitchen. Before the door closes, the installers clamor for a refill of the cups I’d sent them in with.

"C'mere." I lead Dav over to a table far away from Hadi's ears, where I'd been writing a sign when she’d arrived.

It reads COFFEE IS ON. BEVS ONLY UNTIL 2PM, which is when we expect the oven installation to be complete and safe to turn on.

As I tape it to the window beneath our 'Closed' sign, I ask: " Is it a dragon secret? "

"In a way," Dav says. His hands are folded behind his back as if awaiting a commander's inspection. "It's only that it's…"

"What?" I prompt, lowering my voice and stepping close. His eyes pop wide before settling on my face, and I realize I forgot to ask before getting into his personal bubble. He's prickly about that.

"I… it's simply that…" he licks his lips, nervous, and I fight to keep my gaze up on his eyes instead of his mouth. "It's unseemly ."