Page 1 of Right With You
CHAPTERONE
Elise
How does this man eat donuts three to five days a week and look like that?
The thought wasn’t new. I had it approximately three to five days a week, every time Jean-Luc Doux entered my donut shop, ordered a plain glazed, and sat with a book at a small bright white table to eat it.
No coffee from next door. No milk. Not even water.
Just a donut. Like a monster.
Well, to be fair. Donut and a book.
A book he read using glasses he slipped on surreptitiously and tucked away again before he stood up to leave, usually ten minutes after arriving. The titles were usually in French with unfamiliar covers, which only heightened the air of mystery he carried.
Today, he waltzed in looking as impossibly handsome as always. His dark brown hair styled in a careless sort of mess that somehow still looked polished, his facial hair the perfectly short length so it wasn’t quite a beard nor quite stubble, and his gray-green eyes set against the dark fringe of his lashes and brows. He wore a simple-looking jacket of plain black and under it a cream-colored Henley-style shirt with the top button undone, which seemed rather French of him. Not that I knew what was or wasn’t French, but his style always looked a touch more careless and yet composed than his friends and coworkers at Saint Security.
Sometimes, I imagined he was a famous pop star hiding out in the safest place he could find. Other days, I wondered what it’d be like to discover he was on a secret mission from the government. Still other times, I fantasized about discovering he was some kind of fairy lord who ran a secret realm everyone assumed was bad but was actually an equitable and lovely place.
Lovely little fantasies that don’t mean a thing.
I had a rich inner life, one might say. I’d never been a quiet person, but these last few years, I’d drawn inward, where it was safest. I had an outlet with my closest friends in some ways, but otherwise, I tucked myself away and focused on work, which suited me just fine.
“Hello there. What can I get you?” I asked, as I always did, because I was a normal person and not someone who let how severely beautiful this man was, or how often I imagined secret lives for him, show through our interactions. My secret world would remain secret, please and thank you.
Predictably, a dramatic pause followed. He read the menu as though he’d never been in before, then eyed the sign for specials.
I braced, knowing what was coming.
His gaze shifted to meet mine. My stomach swooped, but I pasted on a smile. We’d been through this dozens of times now.
Keep calm.
“One plain glazed today.”
Ah, the plain glazed. Definitely his favorite, if I had to guess, though he did sometimes opt for our specials or the daily. I often changed the flavors when feeling inspired or during the height of tourist season, but now that the ski season had ended and we’d entered the shoulder slow down, I’d eased off.
Maybe that was also due to my total lack of inspiration, my complete exhaustion, and a general sense of impending doom, but who wanted to think about that? It was so much easier to imagine fantastical scenarios where this beautiful man and his friends were secretly actual superheroes destined to save the world from alien invaders.
Or whatever.
“One plain, gotcha. Anything else I can get you?”
We didn’t offer much beyond donuts, except bottled water and locally sourced milk that came in adorable glass bottles. Since we were directly next to Joe, an amazing local coffee shop, it would be silly to compete. Most people brought coffee here and settled in with a donut or vice versa.
Not this man.
“No, thank you.”
I ducked my chin in acknowledgement, ignoring anything happening in my chest cavity or stomach because there should be no flutters or flips. An attractive man buying donuts was not uncommon around here. Silverton had something that lured men of a certain age and sexiness to the area, and one need only look at the roster of former military guys working for Saint Security to confirm it.
Add to that the plethora of other handsome men floating around and it was simply ridiculous.
Cut to: a film titledThere’s Something in the Waterwhere we find out there’s literally something in the mountain run-off that pulls men via their genetically near-perfect makeup here.
Sadly, it had also pulled men like Callum, my garbage pail ex, so… they’d need to work on that in storyboarding.
Despite the silly theories and logical banishment of such things, little zings and flares of heat still popped up whenever I saw Jean-Luc Doux, aka Cookie, much less sold him a donut.
