we can make it there and back by the end of the day.”
“Sounds good,” I murmured. “Is he feeling bad right now?”
“No,” Booth admitted. “He’s actually eating his weight in buffalo wings.”
I snickered. “He so got that from me.”
“Yeah.” Booth chuckled. “That’s all you.” He paused. “Listen, Delanie. I just want you to know that you’re doing a good job as a mother. I have had him just as much as you lately, and I didn’t catch it either. I’m sorry that I made you think that this was somehow your fault.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Booth.”
We hung up, and instead of going back into the tattoo room, I decided to visit the cookie place next door.
I’d never needed something sweet more in my life.
Wandering next door, I opened the beautiful pink door and walked inside, instantly having the smell of cookies assault my nose.
I groaned and looked around, loving the pink fifties-style diner chairs and tables. Half of a fifties-style pink Cadillac served as a counter where there was a very darling looking young woman standing behind it with a smile on her face.
“Hi!” she chirped, her face welcoming. “Can I get you anything?”
I looked at the display cases and rubbed my hands together in anticipation. “I don’t even know where to start.”
She grinned, smile widening impossibly farther. “I actually have a sample pack. You choose five different types of cookies, and I give you small samples of each. They’re actually the cookies that I break getting off the pan. I wondered what in the world to do with them. I mean, just because they’re broken doesn’t mean that they aren’t still good. Then I realized that I can just sell them in chunks and pieces as a sampler. They’re honestly my best seller because some people just like you come in here and have no idea what they want.”
My eyes widened at her lengthy response.
And then I thought, Wow! That’s genius!
I’d have to remember to tell my sister all about this place. She should sell a variety pack as well.
“I’ll take the sampler for now, then,” I said. “Do you have chocolate milk?”
She pointed to the display case that was built into the Cadillac’s door. “There should be some right in the door.”
She was right. Using the actual door as the cooler’s display door, the window to see inside—how the hell I’d missed that, I didn’t know—presented a plethora of drinks, ranging from Cokes all the way to chocolate milk itself.
“Yessss,” I hissed as I grabbed one and set it on the counter. “Now, I do want to get one actual cookie right now. Do you have any hot, straight out of the oven?”
The woman smiled. “I do.”
So that was how Bourne found me.
I was gorging myself on cookies and chocolate milk, and licking my fingers clean of sugar and chocolate, when he came in.
He looked all around the building until his eyes settled on me in the corner.
He grinned when he saw the large platter of cookie remains in front of me.
“You got the sampler?” he teased.
I nodded my head. “I did.”
“Which one was your favorite?” he asked, hands in his pockets and eyes on me.
I licked my fingers clean, and his eyes flared.
My grin kicked up the corner of my mouth as soon as I pulled my fingers out.
“Probably the chocolate chip,” I admitted. “But that was the only one that she had hot. So… I’m not sure if I can say that it was the real winner here. Maybe if some of the others were hot, too, they might’ve won.”
He walked up to the counter and wrapped three in a pink napkin for, whom I assumed, was Asa. He shoved them into his pocket, then came back with one on a tiny pink plate. A macadamia nut one.
“You like macadamia nuts?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded. “They’re my favorite.”
Interesting. I never would’ve envisioned him as a fancy kind of guy.
I would’ve thought chocolate chip or sugar.
Plain and simple.
I was beginning to see that Bourne was neither plain nor simple.
He was complex and exciting.
I swallowed hard and finished the last cookie remnant on my plate—a snickerdoodle.
I moaned.
“This one,” I said. “If it was hot. It’d be the one.”
“You gonna finish your chocolate milk?” he asked.
I pushed the half-empty bottle toward him. “That was my second bottle anyway. I don’t think I can physically fit anything else in my stomach right now.”
He took a small swig and went back to eating his cookie.
He ate it in three large bites.
“You