L. Marie Adeline- S.E.C.R.E.T

around the walls and glass, giving the Café the feel of a lonely painting. Will was
staying at Tracina’s to help her get around, so his reassuring presence wasn’t felt
upstairs. I didn’t mind. I had a couple of good books on the go, and was even boldly
using my free time to scribble some thoughts into my fantasy journal, which was the
only homework S.E.C.R.E.T. had asked me to do.
That’s actually what I was doing at the bar when the door chimes alerted me to what I
thought was a late-night customer. But it was the pastry delivery man, odd because
normally those guys made their drop at the crack of dawn, when Dell was around to
sign o on the waybill. I had sent the cook home hours before, since the only things I’d
serve after 7 p.m. were coee and dessert, and only to people who were wrapping up
their meal. I turned to watch as a young man in a gray hoodie pushing a dolly stacked
with pastry boxes walked right up to me without saying a word.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sliding o my stool and hiding my journal behind my back, “but
aren’t you a little late? Don’t you normally come in the mor—”
He moved past me, removed his hoodie and shot me a smile over his shoulder. He had
close-cropped hair, a chiseled face with dark blue eyes and forearms covered in tattoos.
In my mind I saw a freeze-frame of every high school bad boy who’d made my heart
ache.
“I’ll just put these in the kitchen. Meet you there?” he said, holding up his clipboard.
I had a feeling I was going to receive a lot more than two-dozen beignets and a tray of
Key lime tarts. Seconds after he punched open the doors to the darkened kitchen, I heard
a crash that made me glad Will wasn’t upstairs. And the cacophony didn’t happen just
once. It was in stages. First a crash, then a series of bangs, then another metallic
nightmare.
“Oh my God!” I yelled, inching my way to the kitchen door, behind which I could hear
groaning. “Are you okay?”
I shoved the door open and felt a body, his body, move a little. I felt along the inside
wall and hit the uorescent overheads, and there he was lying on the oor, clutching his
ribs. Pastries of various pastel hues were smeared across the floor, leading to the walk-in
fridge.
“I seriously screwed this up,” he grunted.
I would have laughed, but my heart hadn’t calmed down enough.
“Are you okay?” I asked again, gingerly approaching him like he was a dog that had
been hit by a car and might run away if I moved too fast.
“I think so, yeah. Wow, sorry about the mess.”
“Are you one of the guys from … you know?”
“Yeah. I’m supposed to ‘take you by surprise.’ Ta-da! Ow,” he said, grabbing his elbow
and collapsing back on the floor, a box of pecan pie his accidental pillow.
“Well, you did take me by surprise, in a way,” I said, laughing at the mess he’d made.
From the looks of it, his dolly had careened into Dell’s steel-topped kitchen island,
sending all the pots and pans suspended over it crashing to the floor.
“Want some help?” I asked, extending my hand. What a face. If a bad boy could also
be angelic, he would look like this. He was twenty-eight, maybe thirty, tops. He had a