Just This Once by Evelyn Jeannie Hall

Thirteen

The next day sucked donkey balls for Lacey. She was out of her mind exhausted, and she thought she’d seen the guy she referred to as the O.D.D. or Obnoxious Donut Dude in her line again. The customer had come into the shop earlier that week and insisted that Elizabeth’s fresh-made batch of chocolate glazed donuts were inedible.

Lacey had eaten one of those bad boys herself before they’d opened, so she’d known better and refused to back down. The guy had shown his displeasure by throwing his donut on the floor, grinding it into the knotted pine flooring as if stomping out a fucking cigarette, and leaving it all for her to clean up.

What a colossally epic douche-prick.

Luckily, she’d been mistaken because as the line went down one by one, Mr. O.D.D. douche-prick’s sneering face didn’t show up. Maybe she hadn’t seen him in the first place, and the outline she’d detected had been of someone else. Or maybe even that had been a figment of her imagination.

Her consciousness did that to her sometimes, gave her a false image of something when she was under a lot of stress. She figured this must be the case this time, too, when she saw Zane standing in front of the counter, all chiseled dark handsomeness and a familiarity that had her heart fluttering as if to flee her chest.

“Hey, Lacey,” Zane—it really was him—grinned at her benignly. “Nice to see you again.”

She almost questioned him about his awkward weirdness when Elizabeth stepped out from behind her.

“Zane,” she called out, her arms carrying some of the old dusty ledgers left in Mr. Farawinder’s office. “What a lovely surprise. Did I forget something? Do you and Lacey have a tutoring session I missed?”

“Naw. Just finished with a client over here who had a special dilemma. Normally, I don’t make house calls, but I decided to make an exception. Then, since I’m already in the neighborhood, I figured I’d offer Lacey some bonus time with me after she gets off.”

“Aren’t you going above and beyond,” Elizabeth said, seeming distracted as she shuffled her collection of ancient paperwork while Lacey shot him a stink eye. Was he kidding? “I wish I could stay and wait on you, but I have an appointment with the graphic artist designing the new sign.”

Lacey felt all her organs squirm like lizards as she glanced at the cupcake shaped clock. Her sister had informed her that she’d need to leave early today, but in Lacey’s sleepy haze, it’d slipped her memory. The last customer vacated the shop, which meant only she, Zane, and Elizabeth were on the premises.

“Order whatever you’d like,” her younger sister told him. “It’s on the house.”

“That’s extremely kind of you, Elizabeth. How about a coffee with a dollop of cream?”

“Coming up.”

Lacey prepared his order, feeling like she was on pins and needles. As she handed it over, Elizabeth aimed for the exit, a thick notebook replacing the ledgers she’d been carrying a minute ago.

“Thanks for stopping by, Zane. And Lacey, thank you for covering for me.”

“Anytime,” she answered, even if it’d been a long day that wasn’t over yet, and having her steady hookup’s presence around her sister put Lacey on edge. Even though they had their cover story of her lessons with Zane—she’d only studied with him in insufficient spurts despite her finals coming next week—she felt like him going off script was risking more than they should. The second Elizabeth vanished from sight, Lacey turned on Zane, demanding the truth. “Why are you here? And don’t make up some bullshit story about your fake client and my tutoring session.”

“But there is a client,” he corrected her, his expression earnest.

“Oh.” She felt like such a dumbass. Of course, he wouldn’t come all this way to banter with his fuck buddy.

Next came one of his smoldering expressions where he quirked up the corners of his lips and promised her filthy, filthy things with those obsidian eyes of his. “It’s you.”

“I’m not your client.”

“Okay, busted. I wanted to see you.” He lowered his voice to an almost inaudible level even though no one else had come in. “Preferably naked.”

“It’s not Friday night,” she hissed at him.

“Since when has that held us back?”

The man had a point. Their Friday nights had long since stretched into Saturdays, Saturday nights, and Wednesday evenings.

“Elizabeth knows you’re here.”

“Yeah,” he wrinkled up his handsome face as if she’d lost all her marbles. “So?”

“And we don’t close for another forty minutes.”

“I’m a patient man, Lacey. I can wait.”

“I don’t know about this,” she protested, despite her core heating up at his nearness. God, that’s all it ever took. She shifted her stance as he raised his eyebrows at her. He knew what he was doing to her, the bastard. “And my economics final is next week. If I get a bad grade, it’ll reflect poorly on your tutoring skills, don’t you think?”

“Are you questioning my skills?” his eyes continued to blaze at her like a bonfire.

“Yep.” She tried to make herself bluster that out, but it sounded more like a squeak instead.

“Do you have your notes with you?”

She blinked. His features had become as businesslike as if he’d simply turned off the fire on a stove with a flick of his wrist. How could he do that when she was so riled up she could’ve humped his leg? “In Elizabeth’s office.”

“Sweet.” And with that, he disappeared into the office and returned with her notes, which he’d already begun flipping through like he was her professor. A sex-on-a-stick professor, unlike the faceless disembodied voice who led her online sessions through a series of PowerPoint slides narrated in a droning monotone. She fantasized what it would be like to hear Zane’s voice instead of her stodgy instructor’s.

Ooh, that sounded titillating.

Of course, it might not be the best of ideas. She’d never earn her degree if she had to go hunt down her dildo every time she had class. She dragged herself back to the present.

“How did you even know where to look?”

“Guessed they’d be in your gargantuan purse. They were.”

“You dug through my purse?” she asked in disbelief. Weren’t most men afraid of the multi-dimensional black holes they thought existed in women’s handbags?

“Yeah. You want to study or not? Thought I could grill you between customers.”

An image of him sitting her on an empty, unlit grill as he licked her core came to mind. No, stop it, for God’s fucking sake.

“Fine with me.”

So that was what they did. For the next thirty minutes, Zane asked her question after question, praising her when she got it right, correcting her when wrong, and even giving her hints when she struggled to answer at all. It annoyed her how good at everything he was. Well, sort of.

“Once you close up, I’ll take you to the new Paleo place a couple blocks down the way since it has a menu I can eat any item from.”

Also, she kept forgetting about his diabetes thing. “I don’t know why you’re tempting fate.”

“What do you mean?”

“Showing up here like this out of the blue. Elizabeth’ll probably puzzle it all out now.”

“Your sister will puzzle out that we’re bumping uglies because I came by for a coffee and an impromptu study date? Isn’t that a bit paranoid of you?”

She glowered at him. In the past, no one would’ve ever accused her of paranoia because she hadn’t believed in worrying. Now, not only had she been accused, she’d been downright guilty of it. Ever since she’d had her aggravating revelation about certain burgeoning feelings towards him, she felt like she might as well be wearing a neon beacon flashing, “Hey, look at this chick! She’s boinking her brother-in-law’s best friend in every position conceivable. Also, full disclosure: she’s totally in love with him.”

Up until this disconcerting realization, she’d been able to compartmentalize everything into neat and tidy boxes. She’d relegated Zane to the “pleasure box”—no pun intended—but right now, he was invading her “work box” as well as her “family box.” Him showing up here unannounced genuinely messed with her feng shui. As well as her brain synapses and hormones.

Not to mention her damn heart.

It occurred to her that she hadn’t only been hiding from her sisters and Benji. Right now, she also wanted to hide from Zane.

“Maybe I am being paranoid, but—”

Before she could finish her thought, a group of women stormed in with about five thousand screaming toddlers. By the time Lacey had fulfilled their monstrosity of an order—though five thousand may have qualified as slight hyperbole—it was past time to lock up.

“Zane, will you flip the open sign around and secure the bolt on the door?”

Without a word, he did. Lacey went through the required procedure, counting down the register, sealing up the few items they had left for the one-day old sale rack tomorrow, and doing a general clean up. She’d pivoted around after locking the money away in the safe, only to discover Zane looming over her.

“In a free market, production is determined by what?”

He was close enough all she could take in was his distracting sandalwood and cotton scent, but somehow, the answer came to her, anyway. “Uh, market forces?”

His grin filled his face as he stroked his goatee. “Excellent job. That’s the last one.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” He traversed the distance between them.

“Then what are you—” she began, when his hot mouth interrupted her with a searing kiss.