Kiss Across Chaos (Kiss Across Time #10) - Tracy Cooper-Posey Page 0,6

slow down. Brody and Veris would be able to hear every thudding beat. They could probably smell her distress, too.

And really, what was she panicking about? It was clear that Aran didn’t come home for family visits very much at all. It wasn’t just today. She hadn’t seen him here for years, even though she was a frequent visitor herself. Aran lived his life in Washington and she would be way over on the other side of the river. And she was housesitting, which implied she stayed in the house and watched it.

Slowly, her heart calmed. Her breathing deepened. She made herself relax.

She could still enjoy this long stretch of solitude and get some serious writing done. What had she been panicking about?

And why?

Chapter Two

By December, Jesse was going stir crazy. Her bag of coffee beans was finished. It didn’t help that the owners of the house she was sitting were health nuts and the only coffee-type substance in the house was some disgusting plant extract thing. The convenience store two blocks over didn’t know what coffee meant, either, but their black-smelling sludge at least had caffeine in it.

The sludge got Jesse through to December fifth. She was deep in the guts of the next book and didn’t want to break off, but by the fifth, she could feel the pressure to breath air that hadn’t passed through a furnace filter. She needed to move. The daily isometrics and exercises weren’t enough. She knew the signs. Rafe’s insistence that she monitor her wellbeing was ingrained, now.

When she got up from the dining room chair and had to pause while the dizziness passed, she knew her instincts had been right. Time to get going. A good long hike and fresh air. She could think about the next act in the novel while she was moving.

She did some quick research and found a French-style patisserie in Annandale with over a hundred five-star reviews. The patisserie was one-hundred-and-eighty degrees away from downtown D.C., although she wasn’t sure why that comforted her. She let the puzzle go, for there were too many storylines running through her brain and she didn’t want to mentally drop out of the novel too much, or she might lose track of characters and story arcs.

It was a good long hike to the patisserie in air that had a bite to it and made her nostrils sting. After a while she warmed enough so the chill in the air was merely pleasant.

It was a shock to find the patisserie jammed full of customers. It was an authentic-looking bakery, with green awnings and little round tables inside, black and white tiles on the floor and the divine smell of fresh, still-warm bread wafting from the door every time someone opened it, which was frequently.

Jesse pushed open the door and stepped in, her mouth watering. Beneath the strong scent of hot bread, she could also smell really good coffee. Espresso. She sighed and scanned the racks of bread loaves behind the counter, and the pastries and croissants behind the glass cases while she waited her turn to be served. She also kept an eye on the tables. The store was on a corner, and the tables ran around the corner, too, which made watching all of them a challenge.

She bought an espresso and a flat white, and three croissants, then snagged a table around the corner just as the three people rose and dusted off breadcrumbs. She settled in with her tablet and stylus to mind-dump thoughts about the book while she drank—finally—excellent coffee.

The croissants weren’t right. Jesse chewed her way through half of the first, disappointment touching her. Real French croissants didn’t taste like this. These were only sort-of right. Close, but they were missing…something.

She was really here for the coffee, though, so she drank both cups and ordered more and returned to the table, still mired in story problems.

She only realized she had lifted her head up from the tablet and was staring at nothing, thinking, when her gaze was caught by movement. There was movement everywhere in the café, but the silhouette that snagged her attention and yanked her out of the story was tall. Wide shoulders. Strong. She tended to key in on physical strength. She’d spent years professionally interested in strength and stamina and sizing up the most dangerous person in the room was still automatic.

She refocused. The man—it was usually a man she mapped in her mind as the one to watch, although not always—the man