Page 8 of Sweets and Sycamores

The hypocrisy of that thought hit him in the head like a hammer when he realized he might have given her the exact same look last night.

He didn’t know the Witch either, but she was his employee now.

And didn’t he deserve the benefit of the doubt, as a born and bred citizen of Sycamore Falls?

Dom hiring someone should be a vetting card.

If people were suspicious of his employee, weren’t they suspicious of him?

All this time, Alecsandra served the bags and packages he handed her with a smile on her face.

He didn’t know if it was genuine or fake, but he leaned toward the latter because surely she noticed the long, rude looks aimed at her.

Yet she greeted everyone politely, asked if they needed anything else, and wished them a good day, that smile not faltering once.

His fourth customer was the first to alert him to his behavior.

“Is everything okay, Dominic?” Anna O’Brien asked, batting her eyelashes at him with exaggerated worry in her blue eyes.

She wore her long, black hair in a sleek ponytail and visited the bakery every morning without exception, making her Dom’s Sweets’ most loyal customer.

Anna had had an obvious crush on him since before he’d left Sycamore Falls to join the Order, and he tried to be polite while keeping his distance.

The last thing he was interested in was a relationship, especially with one of the town’s sweethearts.

“Yes,” he barked.

“Are you sure? You look more bothered than usual.” Anna chuckled. The scrutinizing look she fixed on the Witch was different than the others, and Dom did his best not to roll his eyes to the back of his head.

“I’m fine,” he said and heard the bite in his tone. The people in line behind Anna made faces at him. Had he been glaring back at his customers? Dominic cleared his throat awkwardly, then asked, “Do you need anything else, Anna?”

“Ah, yes. Coffee to go, please. Also...” She twirled the end of her ponytail. “Are you free tonight?”

“Not tonight.”

Dominic turned to Alecsandra, who was packing Anna’s order of croissants and blueberry scones. “Can you make—” Her terror-filled eyes shot up, as if he punched her in the stomach.

So the coffee machine was off limits, too. Great. Dominic needed to sit her down and figure out what he had to teach her. And while he was at that, he should ask a couple hundred questions that he didn’t get to ask in the middle of the night.

Why was she here? Why did she leave Pearls Fields?

How long was she here for? What was her power?

Were the people in Sycamore Falls right to be so wary and unwelcoming?

He hadn’t spent much time around Witches during his thirty-five years of life, and the ones he’d met had been…

all right. Not dangerous, but not exactly innocent either.

Except the one that made Witches the sworn enemy of the town.

Maybe he should get some answers before glaring at his customers on her behalf.

“Never mind, I’ll do it,” he mumbled. Dom noticed the coffee machine was almost empty. “One second, Anna,” he addressed the customer before running to the back to get a coffee pack.

When he returned, he found Alecsandra standing in front of the coffee machine, two different-sized to-go cups in her hands, a wide smile on her face.

A very different smile from the one she used with his customers.

Her brown eyes were hopeful and expectant, and as much as Dom didn’t know about her, he couldn’t deny that she seemed willing to do the work, to learn.

What if it was Mia?

Fucking Brandon. He’d messed with his head, and now Dom couldn’t get rid of the made-up version of his baby sister being in the Witch’s place.

What if Alecsandra also had a brother? He should find him and kick his ass for letting her roam the world by herself.

The simple thought made his blood boil, and he sighed through his nose as he snatched the cups from the Witch’s hands.

“Give me those.”

Allie felt her smile melt. Did she pick the wrong cups?

She thought the morning was going well. Ever since the oven debacle, she hadn’t made another mistake.

Except for the fact that she didn’t know how to operate the coffee machine, which wasn’t exactly a mistake, she did everything Dominic asked.

She worked quickly and carefully, and even smiled at all the customers who scowled at her in return.

Not the first or last time she would get this treatment as a Witch; Allie was used to it.

People had a hard time trusting Witches, and for valid reasons.

Besides their usual devious powers that let them into people’s minds, they’d had a reputation for being cunning and manipulative for centuries.

Allie couldn't break that belief with a simple smile.

But she wasn’t here to make friends or to change the folks’ minds about Witches.

She was focused on her goal, on practicing her magic and going back to her coven in a few weeks.

The bakery job was a means to an end, and she needed to treat it that way.

And if this “means” was to last up until the very end, she needed to become good at it.

Packing and serving was easy, as she had to pick between a paper bag or a box based on the order’s size.

Or plates for eat-in customers, which they’d had none of so far.

The prices were listed on the inside of the display case under each product, and she had always been good with math.

Allie made no mistakes with the totals, even when an order contained multiple products.

What had pissed her boss off in his short trip to the storage room?

She wanted to watch him make the coffee, but she had a tingling sense running along her spine that she should move away and give him space.

After all, she was a stranger who came to him in the middle of the night looking for work and a place to stay, and couldn’t even make coffee.

They didn’t know each other, and he owed her no kindness or courtesy.

Allie stepped out of Dominic’s way and let him handle the to-go coffee while she took the next customer’s order, plastering that fake smile back on her face.