LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      HE WAS PERFECT in every way.

      Clara Campbell didn’t even bother to hide the look of longing she knew was currently etched on her face. Asher was facing away from her anyway, working on making a cappuccino behind the bar—for her—so he wouldn’t notice if she spent a little while admiring the elegant way he moved while he steamed the milk.

      Okay, maybe most people wouldn’t be applying words like elegant to the process of steaming milk. But in her mind, Asher could do no wrong, and everything he did was poetry. Including his work as a barista at Copper Ridge’s newest artisan coffeehouse, Stim. Which was little more than a hole in the wall in the building down near the sea that used to house Rona’s diner.

      The diner had closed a few months back and had since been bought, gutted and remodeled to fit several new businesses that were geared toward the influx of tourists that had been passing through Copper Ridge, Oregon, in increasing numbers over the past few years.

      It was perfect for Clara since Stim sat along the coastal highway, right at the turnoff she took to head inland to Grassroots Winery, where she was working part-time—and it gave her an excuse to see Asher every morning.

      Too bad she didn’t like coffee.

      But sacrifices had to be made for love.

      And she did love him. Well, as much as you could love a guy you hadn’t so much as gone on a date with.

      She’d met Asher at an open-house event the winery had hosted as something of a relaunch of the brand, when Lindy, the owner, had officially gained full ownership after her divorce.

      He’d walked into the converted barn, where Clara was serving drinks, and it had been like a light shone down on him. Even in the crowd of people he stood out to her.

      From there she’d found out where he worked and developed a fake coffee habit. Which made her sound a little like a weirdo as things stood now, but would be a charming story to tell later if things worked out.

      “Here’s your cappuccino, Clara.” Asher turned and passed the coffee across the counter. There was no lid on the white paper travel cup yet, which gave her a moment to admire the heart he’d traced into the foam. Okay, it was kind of a fern. But like...a heart-shaped fern. And either way it made her own heart skip a few beats.

      “Thank you,” she said, doing her best not to blush when she looked directly at him in all of his man-bunned glory.

      He was lean and rangy, wearing a T-shirt for a band she’d never heard of and would probably hate if she did. But she liked the look of the shirt, so she didn’t really care about the band. Plus, it was nice to listen to him talk about music and how every popular song had the same three chords. Sure, afterward she got into her truck and put on the popular country music station, but he was passionate. She liked that.

      Even if her tastes were regrettably mainstream.

      She loitered at the edge of the counter for a moment. She was running early for work. She’d built in extra time for this stop, so she could afford to linger a little.

      He lifted his brows, his dark eyes questioning. She would answer any question he wanted. “Did you need anything else?”

      You.

      “No.”

      “Okay.” Then he turned around and began cleaning up the drink station. She let out a long, slow sigh. She really didn’t have a reason to linger.

      Slowly, very slowly, she added one sugar packet to her coffee. Then another one. Then a third. All while watching Asher. She wasn’t going to drink the coffee so it didn’t really matter what it tasted like. And since she wasn’t going to drink it, she wasn’t going to stir the design away either.

      Reluctantly, she covered the coffee with a white to-go lid then turned to walk out the door. She didn’t make it very far, though, because she ran right into a brick wall.

      Well, it wasn’t really a brick wall. It just felt like one. Large, hard and uncompromising. But breathing. Which brick walls definitely didn’t do.

      “Clara Campbell. Fancy meeting you here.”

      Clara blinked and stared up into Alex Donnelly’s forest-green eyes and felt a strange response that seemed to originate in her stomach and travel upward to her chest, where it twisted, hard and sharp.

      After looking at Asher, his understated physique and much softer brown gaze, the sight of Alex was jarring. Too intense. Too masculine. Too a lot of things.

      His dark hair wasn’t military short anymore. It was long enough to hang into his face. He pushed it back off his forehead and again, something twisted, low and deep inside of her.

      And then it wasn’t only his features that seemed too sharp. It was seeing him at all. She had been studiously avoiding him ever since he had moved back to Copper Ridge. If ever she’d caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, she’d gone the other way.

      The last time she’d seen him up close had been at Jason’s funeral.

      Pain washed through her, canceling out all of the good Asher feelings from only a moment before.

      No wonder she’d had such a strong, immediate response to the sight of Alex. The man was dragging a bunch of her baggage in with him. Another thing she liked about Asher. He was separate from her life. From her pain.

      Alex was all wound up in it.

      “Hi, Alex,” she said, clutching her coffee cup tight, the warmth bleeding through to her palms. Which she was grateful for at the moment since her stomach had gone ice-cold at the sight of him.

      “I’ve been meaning to stop by,” he said.

      “That’s really okay,” she said, and she meant it. More than okay. Jason’s death meant that she was alone. Both of her parents were already gone. They’d had children later in life, and when her mother had gotten sick, her father had done everything he could to make his wife comfortable as her health declined. She’d died when Clara was twelve. And there had been no amount of preparation that could soften the blow. No amount of expectedness that could have made it feel less like a giant, ugly hand had reached into their life and wrenched the beauty out of it, leaving nothing but a dark abyss.

      Their father had thrown himself into work. Into the ranch and into drinking. He’d tried to be there for his kids, but it had been too hard for him to look at them sometimes. And Clara could understand. It had been hard to look at him too. Hard to look at him and see the grief, stark and horrible on his face.

      And then he’d died of a heart attack when Clara was seventeen, the stress of caregiving and loss too much for his body.

      And now Jason.

      A black sense of humor honed out of necessity—since a good portion of her life had been very dark indeed, and she’d had to find ways to laugh—forced her to wonder if she should look out for stray lightning bolts.

      Whatever the reason—hex, divine intervention or plain bad luck—the Campbell family hadn’t been very long-lived.

      So now Clara was alone. And really, she wanted to get to the business of being alone. She did not want to deal with Alex’s dutiful presence. Because that’s all it would be. He and Jason had been in the military together, they’d been friends and brothers in arms.

      She had a suspicion Alex had even been there when her brother was killed. So of course the guy felt some sense of... Something. A desire to make sure she was okay. The need to check on her and the ranch, and whatever else.

      But

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