slice of Bakewell tart but feels it might undermine her professionalism, so orders a black coffee.
He looks up when she reaches his table. “You came.”
She looks down at him.
“Won’t you sit?” he asks.
Scarlet sits, annoyed that it’s now at his invitation. She sets her coffee cup on the table and eyes his half-devoured crumpets and jam.
Ezekiel leans forward. “I wanted to apologize for—”
“Ruining my life?” Scarlet snatches up the sugar pot, tipping a good amount of it into her coffee. “Destroying my livelihood?”
“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t. If your bloody Starbucks didn’t spring up on every corner, if they gave independent cafés a fighting chance . . .” Scarlet stirs the sugar into her coffee, trying to calm herself. “You go from café to café shutting them down, not giving a shit about the owners who’ve invested their whole lives—everything they own, all their time, all their hopes, into . . .”
Ezekiel waits to see if she’s going to finish her sentence, then pushes the crumpets aside. “You don’t have to sell, no one’s forcing you.” He meets her eye. “But if you’re thinking about it, even a little, I recommend you do it sooner rather than later. I’ve looked at your accounts and my company’s offering you more than the market value. That figure will drop, the longer you wait to make a decision.”
He sits back and Scarlet leans forward. “Have you ever had something you wanted, something you cared so deeply about that—that . . . you feel incomplete without it, like a piece of you is missing?”
“No,” Ezekiel says. “I can’t say that I have. It must be quite something.”
“Not if you lose it.”
He hesitates, as if contemplating the wisdom of what he might say. “But the café isn’t your something, is it? It’s your grandmother’s.”
Scarlet is silent. Under the table her left knee starts to shake. Her fingers twitch. She glares at the sugar bowl, then Ezekiel’s untouched coffee cup.
“You’re not drinking,” Scarlet says, still not meeting his eye.
“It’s too hot. I think the barista wanted to burn my tongue.”
“She probably had her reasons.”
Ezekiel grins, licking his spoon. “You’ve been telling tales about me?”
“It’s a small city.” Scarlet shrugs. “I can’t help it if word gets round.”
Her fingers twitch again, and suddenly Scarlet feels as if she has a secret, hidden like a chocolate in her pocket. She’s looking at his cup when it unbalances, tipping its scalding sweetness over Ezekiel’s hand.
He snatches his hand away. “Damn.”
Scarlet rights the cup, plucking wads of tissues to dam the expanding lake of coffee. “Sorry, I don’t know, I didn’t mean—”
He’s already standing. “You’re a liability,” he says, half smiling despite the pain. “At this rate, I’ll be hospitalized again before sundown.”
“Quick, run it under cold water.”
Ezekiel disappears and Scarlet stuffs the sodden tissues into the empty coffee cup. Surely the cup hadn’t tipped of its own accord? She’d brushed against the saucer and knocked it over. That’s the only sensible explanation. And Scarlet is a stickler for sense. Bread won’t rise without yeast and cups don’t fall unless they’re pushed. Likewise, she explained the incinerated moth and the sparks (static) and the light fixture falling onto Ezekiel Wolfe’s head (faulty wiring). But what Scarlet can’t deny is the surge of power she felt just before the cup tipped. As if her veins were copper wires humming with electric currents.
“Oh, don’t worry about me, I’m fine.”
Scarlet looks up. She’d entirely forgotten about Ezekiel, who’s now standing beside the table holding out his hand, a splash of scorching red flared across his pale skin.
“I’m sorry,” Scarlet says. “It was an accident.”
“I certainly hope so,” Ezekiel says. “But given the number of accidents that keep happening around you, I’m starting to worry for my safety.”
“I—I didn’t mean to.”
“Are you sure? You probably hate me enough to . . .”
Scarlet frowns. She certainly thought she hated him. But now that she hears the words out loud, and from his own mouth, she’s no longer sure. “I don’t hate you.”
Ezekiel smiles. “Look, do you fancy a walk? I think I need to stay away from hot beverages for a little while. We can talk about everything but with a view.”
Scarlet half shrugs, half nods. “I suppose so.”
“Well, try to contain your enthusiasm.” Ezekiel laughs. “Or I might get the wrong idea.”
The wrong idea? Scarlet thinks of how she felt the first time she saw him, of how she’s been feeling ever since, though she’s tried to deny it to