Page 51 of Common Grounds

I stand quickly, almost knocking over one of the cups on the counter in my haste to shove my laptop in my bag.

“Where are you rushing off to?” Trevor asks. He’s smirking, which only makes his godly cheekbones stand out more. His arms are folded over his chest, giving me an excellent view of both his pecs stretching his shirt and his forearms, bare to the world like some kind of softcore porn and—fuck—get me out of here.

“I, uh… I have this article to write, and I feel like I’m not going to get anything done here with Cass the Enforcer hanging around, so…” I shrug helplessly.

“You haven’t tried the other two drinks yet.” He deflates a bit, and he looks so much like a puppy I need to leave at home when I go to work that my heart skips a few beats in my chest.

This is why I need to go. And, incidentally, why I’ve never gotten a puppy. Which I told him the night we met, and the memory of that has me going all gooey inside. Again.

But he’s right. I promised I’d taste test, and I haven’t, so I slink back into my seat and grab the other iced cup. I take a sip and scrunch up my nose. “That tastes like a piña colada.”

Trevor laughs as he comes to stand on the opposite side of the counter as me again. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like that one. It’s an iced coconut banana oat milk latte.” He fills a glass with water and sets it in front of me. “To wash out the taste, if you need.”

I shake my head. “It’s not bad. It’s just not my thing.”

“Oh, I love piña coladas!” one of the newcomers exclaims. Trevor fights a smirk that seems to say, Of course she does. I have to look away from him to keep from laughing. “Can I have one of those?” she asks.

“Of course,” he says, and it’s laced with the tiniest bit of sarcasm. I catch it, though, so I take a quick sip of water to keep myself from falling out of my chair.

Trevor makes another drink like the one in front of me and delivers it to their table as I finish the water. He told me to try these drinks in this specific order, so there must be a reason. I want to wait until I have his attention again to try the last one. When he comes back, I tick up an eyebrow at him.

“This last one looks a little frilly,” I say skeptically, swirling a finger in the whipped cream topping.

He hums. “I took a risk with that one,” he admits.

“The piña colada wasn’t a risk?”

“I figured someone would like it, even if it wasn’t you.” He barely resists glancing over at the table where the two women are trading sips of their drinks and cooing over them. Loudly.

I tip my head to him in concession. He certainly wasn’t wrong. “Okay,” I say. “So, what’s special about this one, then?”

“It’s special because it’s for you.” His voice is low and raspy, and the warning bells are starting to ring in my brain. They’re telling me to get out of here before I find something else to fall for about this man, but the way the edges of his eyes crinkle at me again has me pinned to my seat.

“Why’s that?” I manage to ask, though my voice is barely a whisper.

He runs a hand along the back of his neck as if he’s embarrassed to say it, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “Well, you always order hazelnut lattes. That tells me you like some flavor, but not too much. Sweet, but not too sweet. It’s kind of a soft flavor, though it’s edgier than a basic vanilla. Unique, in a way, but not flashy.”

“This is definitely flashy,” I wipe the whipped cream off on a napkin. Licking it off my finger feels a step too far given I’m pretty sure we have an audience. The whole shop has gone quiet aside from the soft, folksy music that’s always playing.

“Just try it,” he urges.

I bring the cup to my lips and breathe in. A soothing, floral scent greets me before my tongue darts out to taste the whipped cream and the coffee underneath.

“Oh,” I breathe, setting the cup down carefully. “This is amazing.” I wipe my lips with the back of my hand, ensuring there’s nothing lingering there to embarrass me. “What is it?”

“It’s a honey lavender latte with oat milk and cinnamon and lavender-infused whipped cream. I thought you might like it. It’s floral, so not at all like hazelnut, but the honey adds a little earthy sweetness.” He shrugs, as if that can’t clearly express exactly what he was trying to do, but he also isn’t sure how to convey whatever it is he’s trying to say.

“It’s wonderful,” I assure him. And then, because my stupid heart doesn’t know what’s good for it, I say, “It’s maybe my favorite drink I’ve ever had.”

“We’ll talk about the cost-effectiveness of having all those ingredients just lying around later,” Cass mumbles. A smile stretches slowly across Trevor’s face, twisting one corner of his mouth up a little more than the other, the imperfection making his features even more attractive without trying.

I can’t look away. But I have to. Those warning bells are sounding at full blast. I take another sip of the lavender latte for lack of something better to do, but that’s perfect, too. And it’s something he did just for me. Because he thought I’d like it. I can’t escape him right now, and I need to.

“That one, for sure,” I say, pointing at the latte. I glance at Cass, whose eyebrows are pinched together slightly in concern. Now, I need to get out of here before she outs me for my inability to keep it together around this man. “Actually, can he afford to do all of them?”

“Can he afford not to?” Cass asks. “He needs something to set him apart from the competition. We’ll just have to figure out what we can take off the menu to make room for the cost of ingredients.”

“I’d come here solely for the piña colada latte,” one of the other women chirps.

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