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tank top with a pink Hello Kitty across the chest. I brushed my
teeth, washed my face, and walked back down the hall to my bedroom
when I bumped into Bryan.
    “Sorry,” he said, then glanced at my
tank top, and lingered with his eyes a little longer than he
should. I didn’t mind, but when he realized what he was doing, he
looked up. “You like Hello Kitty?”
    “Uh, yeah,” I said, thrown off by
his remark.
    “That’s really cute.” His lips
quirked up.
    “Really?” I couldn’t tell if he was
putting me on.
    He nodded. “Yeah. Definitely. Hello
Kitty is totally adorable.”
    “Wow. Nate never told me his best
friend was such a huge fan of cartoon cats.”
    “I’m personally a bigger fan of
Bucky from the comic Get Fuzzy.”
    “I love that crazy
Siamese.”
    “I defy anyone who doesn’t find cats
amusing to read that comic.”
    “That is an awesome challenge. Let’s
make posters and start a campaign.”
    “I’m so on it.”
    “I’ll even break out my Get Fuzzy
tee-shirt when we start planning a march to the
capital.”
    “Generally speaking, I’m good with
all cartoon cats, especially when cute girls wear them.”
    Then he walked off. That was all he
said, and I was left alone in the hall, my mind buzzing, my skin
tingling. I didn’t fall asleep right away. I replayed our
conversation. We’d hit it off, right? I wasn’t imagining it. There
was something in that kind of instant repartee, wasn’t there?
Especially when I thought of that last moment — cute girls, cute
girls, cute girls.

 
    Chapter Two
     
    The next morning I probably spent
more time in front of the mirror adjusting my hair and touching up
my lip gloss than I usually did. Then I walked into town and
stopped at the local cafe for my usual.
    After I left, I was surprised to
find Bryan waiting outside Mystic Landing. He had a cup of coffee
in his hand, and the ends of his dark hair were still wet. I was
near enough to breathe in that clean, freshly showered scent. “I’m
a morning person too. Hope you don’t mind if I share the morning
shift with you. Nate’ll sleep past noon anyway.”
    “Not at all,” I said as I hunted for
the keys in my purse.
    He tipped his forehead to my drink.
“Must have just missed you at the cafe. Coffee, too?”
    I shook my head. “Caramel macchiato.
Only frou-frou drinks for this girl.” Then, I leaned in closer to
him and dropped my voice to a faux whisper. “I even got an extra
shot of caramel.”
    He pretended as if I’d just the most
scandalous thing in the world. “So decadent.”
    “And you?” I asked, because I had a
theory that you could tell a lot about a guy by his coffee drink.
Any guy who ordered soy, chai, or more foam was going to be
high-maintenance. If a fellow asked for the water to be extra hot,
he was destined to be cold and emotionless because the water at any
coffee shop is already scalding; if you needed it hotter, you had
no feelings. When boys wanted herbal tea, I’d run the other way
because that meant they’d be far too interested in yoga, new-age
crystals and feng-shui’ing my life. I had no problem with those
things, but their collective by-product was often not enough
showering, and I was a big fan of the just-showered look and
smell.
    Then there was the man who ordered
just coffee. Simple, straightforward, knows what he
wants.
    Bryan tapped the top of the plastic
lid on his cup. “Coffee. Just coffee, nothing more. I like my
coffee the way —”
    I held up a hand. “I don’t want to
hear one of those customary guy jokes. I like my coffee the way I
like my women — hot, strong, with cream.”
    He narrowed his eyes at me. “I
wasn’t going to say that.”
    “Oh. Sorry. How do you like your
coffee then?” I turned away and slid the key into the
lock.
    He lowered his voice, and spoke in a
dark and smoky kind of whisper. “The way they drink it in Paris.
Black.”
    It was a good thing my back was to
him. Because something about the way he said