Page 31 of Love to Hate You

“Closer to seven, but I was giving you the friends and family discount.”

How was that possible? They did the same thing, worked in the same industry and she was living in an nine-hundred-square-foot apartment above her shop with her sister and he was living in the lap of luxury.

She made a few swipes on her phone and his immediately pinged.

He pulled it out of his back pocket and lifted a brow. “Are you sending me an arrow on your dating app? You know you can just come out from behind the screen and ask me out.”

She snorted. “There is RoChance I’d ever date you. Plus it’s just pinged because we’re in the vicinity of each other. And an algorithm never lies.”

She ignored the ping of the app as he grabbed an open bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio and poured them each a glass. He handed one to her and lifted his in toast. “I don’t know. This feels kind of date-like. You, me, wine, cooking, flowers. Screams romance.”

He’d bought the flowers for her? She didn’t know how she felt about that—or about the way her heart melted a little.

“If you check your phone, it was your money arriving for your part of the groceries, not an arrow. I guess there is something to bulk pricing, but I’d rather be broke than sling Big Box–priced books that hurt the author’s bottom line to the masses.”

Her barb didn’t even phase him. “Give yourself a raise.”

She choked on a laugh. “With what money?”

This gave him pause. “You have nonstop customer flow. How is that possible?”

Her hackles rose and she felt a defensive prickle at the base of her neck. Along with some embarrassment. She wasn’t the best businesswoman, but she was the best woman to run her grandmother’s bookshop.

“Some of them are regulars,” she admitted, pulling out the pasta board. “I encourage them to come in for the coffee and a read.”

He turned off the water which he was using to fill up the pasta pot. “Hold up, love, you’re saying that you let them sample your products for free?”

She floured the cutting board and started separating the yolks from the whites. “It’s called community.”

She looked up and he was helping. They were actually working in tandem. Then he broke the moment when he said, “It’s called bad business. Here, scoot over.” He bumped her with his hip and took over kneading the pasta.

“You think you can make a better linguini than me?”

“My last name might be Kingston, but my mum is Italian and my nonna taught me my way around a kitchen. And Jesus, how did you manage to get flour all over the counter? You haven’t even started cooking.”

Her cheeks heated with embarrassment, but her tone was all sass. “Cooking is an art. It’s about going with your gut.”

“Cooking is a science. It’s about following the instructions.”

“Instructions are for amateurs.” She picked up a glass bowl filled with chopped parsley and took a pinch to inspect. “Oh my god, it’s all the same exact size. Even your cooking skills are starched.”

“At least my result doesn’t resemble a flour bomb exploding in the kitchen. I keep it nice and tidy.”

Maybe it was the pompous look on his face, or that he would choose to wear slacks and loafers on a family vacation. Or maybe it was because she’d had a lifetime of her family calling her Pig Pen for the little messes that she left in her wake, but something in her snapped.

“Flour this,” she said and picked up a palm full of flour then blew as hard as she could.

A white cloud the size of the Dust Bowl exploded into the sky, and when the air cleared Wes looked like a ghost with flour all over his dark hair. His shirt was dusted and his face was puckered. He looked like a pissed-off Pillsbury Doughboy.

Then the most miraculous thing happened: he threw his head back and barked out a laugh. A laugh that came straight from the belly. A laugh she’d never heard from him before. A laugh that was contagious, because no matter how hard she tried to hold onto that anger she couldn’t help but laugh back until they were both clutching their sides.

Their eyes caught, and something freeing and bright passed between them, and she wanted to capture it and hold onto it for a rainy day. Or the next time he did something to piss her to high heaven.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still chuckling. “I went a bit far.”

“You think?” He stuck out his hand. “Truce?”

She took it. “Truce.”

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