~*~
Of all the people Leah expected to find in the coffeeshop when she walked in that evening, her boss wasn’t one of them.
She halted just inside the door, bell jangling behind her, brought up short by the sight of Ian standing in front of the counter, taking an obvious, though thankfully appreciative, look around the shop, as elegant and well-dressed as ever, hair so deeply auburn it was nearly brown in the soft lighting. The big guy she’d pegged as a bodyguard before stood to the right of him, and a slender, equally elegant young man with dark hair and glasses on the left.
Both of Leah’s parents stood on the other side of the counter. Mom looked a little awestruck. Dad looked mistrustful.
“Bruce, you’re too intimidating,” she heard Ian say as she approached. He waved at the big man. “You may wait outside.”
The guard – Bruce – nodded and turned obediently.
Ian glanced after him, and caught sight of Leah, his smile immediate and sharp. “Miss Cook. There you are. I was just introducing myself to your parents.”
“That’s…nice. You can just call me Leah,” she said, faintly, too stunned – and slowly filling with worry – to be anything like eloquent. “Um. Mr. Shaman. Did you come for coffee?”
“Of course. And, I must confess, a bit of business.” He touched the arm of the man beside him. “My husband, Alec. Alec, darling, this is my new accountant over at the in-town office.”
Alec smiled warmly, and offered his hand right away. “Lovely to meet you.” He was American, but something about his voice told her he’d picked up on some of his husband’s speech patterns, the way he pronouncedlovely.
“Hi,” she said, stupidly.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cook,” Ian said, turning back to her parents. “I was wondering if there was somewhere we might talk privately.”
~*~
Practice with Elijah gave Carter a chance to burn off some of his nerves and focus on something else for a little while. But by the time he parked his bike in front of Cook’s Coffee, his stomach was full of butterflies again.
“Idiot,” he chastised himself, as he unsnapped and hung up his helmet, but he was smiling. He took a moment, standing on the sidewalk, to try and scrape his sweat-damp hair into some kind of order and get his wide, stupid smile down to something pleasant and normal. He even scoped his dim reflection in the shop’s windows. He was wearing workout gear, but, to be perfectly honest, it showed off his physique, and he was hoping that was a point in his favor.
Inside, Leah wasn’t at her usual table, but at the register, an apron hastily tied over her work clothes, her gaze nervously darting toward the hallway that led back to the Employees Only section of the shop.
“Everything okay?” he asked, as he approached.
She sent him a fast, distracted smile. “Maybe. I hope.” She leaned over the counter and whispered, “Ian’s here. He wanted to have aprivatediscussion with my parents.”
Carter bit back a wince. Ghost was nothing if not efficient. “Yeah. About that. I talked to Ghost about the club maybe stepping in and buying the building.”
“Uh, Ghost isn’t the one who showed up.”
“I know. He thinks Ian ought to buy it.”
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
“Finances, I think. I dunno. He and Walsh and Ian are the only ones in the know about money stuff these days.”
She let out a breath and nodded, slowly. “Okay. Well…that’s still a good thing, right?” She propped her hands on her hips and glanced up at him for confirmation. “Ian’s in tight with the club, Ian has lots of money. Ian camehere, to talk to my parents first, which shows that he cares what they think, right? So this is good.” She nodded again, like she was trying to convince herself.
“Probably, yeah.”
“Probablydoesn’t make me feel any better.”
“I thought you were the one who said you liked Ian. That Ava and I were overreacting when you got a job with him.”
“I did, yeah…but now I’m working for him, and my parents are going to be paying him rent, maybe, if this works out, and that’s just a whole lot of fancy British man in my life, suddenly. I don’t know how to feel about that.”
A thought occurred – a spark of something that felt dangerously like jealousy. “Wait. You’re not into him or something, are you?” Maybe her nerves were about infatuated intimidation, and he really didn’t want to think aboutthat. “You know he’s gay, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, he’s here with his husband, you goober. I’m worried about the fact that this fancy British man is really rich and powerful, and I have no idea if we’re on his friend list, or his People To Use list.”
