of his car.
Heck, neither had she. In those days, they’d thought of nothing but each other. Nothing but the feel of his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, and the sweet release from the thunderstorm continually brewing between them.
“Uh, no, we don’t roast our own beans,” Melanie said, returning her mind to the subject at hand. “I’d like to get a roaster, but I don’t have the room for it.”
“Unless you buy the space next door.”
“Right.” Melanie turned away from Cade’s intent gaze and reached for one of the bags of coffee beans, imported from Columbia. “We grind the beans in—”
“Here?” Cade asked, reaching for the grinder at the same time as she did. Their hands collided, sending a rocket propelled grenade of attraction through Melanie. It was a hundred times more intense, a thousand times hotter, than anything she could remember with Cade, as if the time apart had intensified his appeal.
Sexual appeal, she reminded herself. Not marital appeal.
And yet, she didn’t pull her hand back right away. She looked up and their gazes met, held. Want tightened its grip on her, holding her captive to the spot. To Cade.
“Melanie,” Cade said in the same soft way he used to, as if they were lying together in the dark, not standing in a brightly lit coffee shop on a Sunday morning.
Oh, how I miss him, she thought, the arrow of that lonely, disappointed pain piercing through her. She missed the Cade he used to be, the marriage she had dreamed of having.
Then he leaned down, slow, tentative, his gaze never leaving hers. The heat between them multiplied ten times over with anticipation. With a craving that had never died, despite the year apart.
Kiss me. Her mind willed him to read the unspoken words, to hear the message throbbing in her veins.
He reached for her chin, his large hand cupping her jaw. A tender touch, filled with all the things that Cade never said. “Melanie, I—”
Suddenly she couldn’t hear him talk about work. Couldn’t bear to hear him disappoint her, to shatter her fantasy that someday, Cade would put her—and their marriage—at the top of the list.
Melanie jerked away, then pushed the button on the grinder, pulverizing a lot of innocent coffee beans. “This, ah…” Her mind went blank.
“Grinder?” Cade supplied, withdrawing and giving her a knowing smile.
“Yes, thank you.” Melanie shifted to business mode. Treat him like a customer. Treat him like anyone other than the man you pledged to love forever. “This grinder will take the beans down to grounds in less than thirty seconds. Grind them too long and the grounds become dust. Too short and they’re chunky. Grind size can really affect the finished product, so you want this setting right here,” she said, pointing at a number on the grinder’s dial,
“and then the beans are the perfect size for the filter.”
Yet, even as she explained the pros and cons of different grind sizes, she was aware of Cade. A few inches away, close enough to touch, should she have that desire.
Heck, she had that desire. Always had it. She simply knew better now than to let her hormones make all the decisions.
Twenty minutes later, Cade was brewing his first latte. He’d picked up the intricacies of coffeemaking quickly, as she’d expected. He was a smart man, one who paid attention to the details.
It was the big picture he so often missed.
“You did great,” Melanie said, taking a sip of the small latte breve he’d made. “And you added caramel,” she said with a smile, noting the flavors that slipped across her taste buds.
“If I remember right, it’s your favorite flavor.”
“Cade,” Melanie began, intending to tell him to stop trying. Her mind was made up, and there would be no undoing the divorce. Regardless of what might happen in one day, or one night, she had nineteen years of mistakes to look back on. Leopards didn’t change their spots and career-driven husbands didn’t change into family men.
The bell rang, ushering in the first slew of customers. Before she could finish the sentence, she and Cade were busy filling orders and dispensing caffeine. For his first day, he kept up surprisingly well, only looking to her for help a couple of times on a complicated order.
She and Cade slipped into a rhythm, maneuvering around each other in the tight space with ease. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought Cade had been here forever.
“You did great,” Melanie said after the last customers had been served and the door stopped opening. The sun was beginning its late afternoon descent, telling her it was nearly closing time.
“Thanks.” He leaned back against the counter and took a long drink of ice water. “I’m not used to moving so much, though. Guess all those years behind a desk are catching up to me.”
Cade was still trim, a man who worked out three mornings a week, rising at four to fit in a trip to the gym before work. He’d kept the same routine all of their married life, jogging in those early days when they couldn’t afford a gym membership. She bit her lip instead of telling him he looked as refreshed as the minute he’d stepped in the shop today, as he had the day she’d met him. As sexy as the day he’d told her he loved her. The day he’d asked her to marry him.
“How long until the next rush?”
Melanie glanced at her watch and for a second couldn’t read the numbers. She redoubled her focus.
“Anytime now. It won’t be long before the study groups and coffee dates head in.”
“I never thought this would be such a busy place,” he said.
“Yeah.” Melanie didn’t add anything more. There was no sense in reopening an old wound.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have supported you when you said you wanted to open this place.”
Melanie stared at Cade, stunned into silence. The man who rarely admitted fault, had just apologized? And over the last straw, the one that had made Melanie finally realize she was being suffocated by her marriage?
Enough avoiding the subject, Melanie decided. “Are you trying to convince me we should get back together? Is that why you’re working here? Why you apologized?”
He gave her a grin she could have drawn in her sleep. “Would that be so bad?”
“Yes, Cade, it would be.” She lowered her voice, then waited until the final customer had left the shop before continuing. “It’s over between us. Don’t read anything into this—” she gestured toward him and the coffeemaking “—or my attending the reunion. We made a deal, plain and simple.”
“That’s all it is? A deal?” He took a step closer, invading her space, once again making her nerves hypersensitive. “Nothing more, Mellie? If so, then I have a deal for you. A very different kind of deal.”
Heat and desire wrapped around his words, awakening senses that had been tamped down for
