Nevertheless, desire stirred within her, picturing them together again. On the counter. Against the wall. In her bed. She ran a hand over hot cheeks and pushed the fantasy away.
“How about we start with the basics?” Melanie said, keeping her focus on work, not the shirt and the memories it resurrected. And certainly not on Cade’s face, on eyes that still had the power to set her pulse off-kilter. “I’ll show you how to brew the coffee, then we’ll work up to cappuccino.”
“Before you know it, I’ll be a brewmaster.” He cocked a grin at her and she found herself returning the smile. He slipped behind the counter to stand next to her. A year ago, when Melanie had opened the shop, the space had seemed so much wider, particularly when it was just her and Emmie. But Cade made the place seem confined, too tight for two.
Or too tight for her and the one man she didn’t want to get close to, not again. Too close and she was risking another heartbreak. One was enough.
“Here’s our, ah, main coffee station,” Melanie said, clearing her throat and indicating a cranberry and black countertop machine with several spouts and dials. “We brew it here, put it in the carafes, then make a fresh pot whenever the coffee’s temperature drops below 150 degrees.”
“Doesn’t that waste a lot of coffee?”
“Not really. On a busy day, we can go through twenty pots or more.”
“Can’t you use the old coffee to make those iced things?”
“No, not unless you want to risk cross-contamination. For iced coffee, I have a special five-gallon brewing pot.” She opened the fridge and indicated a big white plastic container shaped like a coffee urn.
“Do you roast the beans yourself, too?”
She stepped back, surprised. “You’ve been reading.”
He gave her a grin as familiar as her own palm.
“You know me. I always do my homework.”
Except for with me, she wanted to add, but didn’t. Cade, who put thought into every decision from the brand of toothpaste he used to the car he drove, hadn’t quite applied those same principles when it came to that night twenty years ago in the back 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