Page 40 of The Pumpkin Spice Cafe

She should call 911, right? That’s what you were supposed to do when your life was very clearly in danger. But was it, really, though? She didn’t want to cause a whole big to-do if there wasn’t anything going on. The whole town already knew about her almost decapitating Logan, she didn’t really want to add fuel to the gossip fire.

She crept back to the window.

He was gone.

She pressed her forehead to the cool glass and peered left and then right down the alley. Nothing. Maybe someone was just cutting through.

She still held her phone clutched in her sweaty palm, Logan’s words ringing in her ears. She could text him.

It was 2.23am. What was she going to say – ‘Hey, sorry for waking you but there may have been someone walking through the alley?’ No. No, nope. That was not the Jeanie she was shooting for these days.

Laid-back Jeanie would look for the perfectly reasonable explanation here. A law-abiding citizen of Dream Harbor was simply taking a shortcut through the alley on their way home from their respectable law-abiding job – probably as an ER nurse or something brave and noble like that.

She tossed her phone back on her bed to prevent herself from doing anything rash. She would not wake up the sexy farmer to alert him about nothing.

No one was trying to murder her.

Unfortunately, her racing heart did not want to hear about that. It wanted to keep her up for the rest of the night.

It was only 11.30pm in California. She fished her phone back out of the blankets and tucked herself in.

She texted Ben.

Hey, you up?

Her brother responded almost immediately. She could picture him tucked into his own bed; his California king-sized mattress half covered in his pack of rescue dogs. He had three, which Jeanie felt was far too many dogs, but Ben claimed there was no such thing.

I really don’t want to receive ‘u up?’ texts from my sister.

Jeanie laughed out loud, startling the cat all over again. Casper jumped down from the bed with a long-suffering sigh. Or at least she imagined he sighed. It was impossible to tell with cats.

Shut up. I almost got murdered.

Again? Why is that always happening to you?

Don’t know.

What happened this time?

I think I heard breaking glass and then I saw someone possibly but probably not lurking in the back alley.

Jesus, did you call the police?

Jeanie paused, her fingers hovering over the keys. She could lie, but then she would inevitably feel guilty about lying and confess to it at the most inopportune time, like in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner.

Um ... no.

WHY NOT?

I didn’t want to seem hysterical.

Damn it, Jeanie. You need to stop with this crap. You are fine. A pain in the ass, but otherwise fine.

Nothing happened! And the person is gone now. I don’t want to waste town resources.

And what about the broken glass?

I’ll check in the morning. It was probably nothing.