Page 2 of Unlucky in Love
Then he pulled away. Hard. Like she’d burned him.
“Taylor,” he said, voice sharp. He stood like the couch had turned into lava. His eyes were hard, his jaw tight. “You’re just a kid. Don’t do this. Don’t embarrass yourself.”
The words sliced through her.
He left the living room like the place was on fire. Like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
She had kissed him. He had rejected her. And she would never forget it.
She would never fall for Ryan Carter again.
Chapter 1
Taylor
The morning rush at Bean There was in full swing, and Taylor Pierce was operating on autopilot. She knew every order by heart, every customer by name, and exactly how much whipped cream old Mr. Hollis liked on his hot cocoa (too much—his cardiologist would not approve).
“Extra whip?” she asked as she slid the mug across the counter.
“You’re a mind reader,” Mr. Hollis said with a wink, fishing two crumpled dollar bills from his wallet.
Not a mind reader. Just a barista who had been serving the same dozen people in this town every day for the past nine years.
The bell above the café door jingled and in breezed Emma Williams, Taylor’s best friend, soulmate, and occasional life coach, with a baby balanced on one hip and a diaper bag that looked like it could double as a carry-on for a cross-country flight.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Emma said, catching Taylor’s raised eyebrow as she juggled baby, bag, and stroller. “Some of us didn’t get three uninterrupted hours of sleep last night.”
“Some of us,” Taylor said, grabbing the stroller before it toppled over, “also didn’t decide to marry a man who thinks three babies in five years sounds like a fun challenge.”
Emma grinned. “Give him time. He’ll beg for mercy before we hit three.”
Taylor smiled, but there was a flicker of something sharp underneath it. Emma had built a whole life, husband, baby, cozy little house on the edge of town, while Taylor was still here, behind the same counter, serving the same coffee to the same people.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love the café. She did. She’d worked her way up from part-time barista at seventeen to full-on manager by twenty-five. Bean There was hers to run now, in all its chipped-wood-counter glory. But sometimes, when she was locking up at night and staring at the travel map pinned above her desk, she wondered if this was it. If her life would always be measured in cappuccinos and foam art.
Emma deposited the baby into the stroller and leaned against the counter with a sigh. “So guess who’s back in town.”
“Who?” she asked, sliding a latte toward the next customer in line.
Emma’s smile was mischievous. “Ryan. He got in last night. Didn’t I tell you he was thinking about moving back?”
The hiss of the espresso machine covered Taylor’s sharp inhale. She busied herself tamping grounds into the portafilter, willing her hands not to shake. “Oh. Nice. Vacation?”
“Not exactly.” Emma hesitated, adjusting the baby against her shoulder. “You know he became a Marine after college. Several deployments. It was intense. And then there was this incident—” She shook her head. “Something went wrong. Badly wrong. Hewon’t talk about it, but I can see it written all over him. He’s not the same.”
Taylor’s chest tightened. The Ryan she remembered had always been larger than life. Teasing, confident, unshakable. A protector by nature. What could possibly have knocked him down hard enough to send him running home?
“He just needs space,” Emma added gently. “Time to breathe. Time to figure out what’s next.”
Taylor forced her expression back into place, tamping the espresso so hard the handle squeaked. “Well. Everyone needs a change of pace sometimes.”
Emma gave her a look, one of those best-friend stares that saw far too much. “You okay?”
“Of course.” Taylor pasted on her customer-service smile, sliding a cappuccino across the counter to a waiting customer. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Emma leaned in, her voice dropping, the way it always did when she switched from best-friend mode to truth-teller mode. “Taylor, you’ve been working in this café since…forever. You know everyone’s coffee order, their birthdays, their gossip. But when was the last time you did something for yourself? Really for yourself?”
Taylor kept moving, pulling shots, steaming milk, sliding orders across the counter with mechanical precision. “Running this place is for myself. It’s my job.”
