Single Dad's Barista Read online

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue

  Single Dad’s Barista

  Mailing List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Single Dad’s Barista

  Amelia Wilde

  Contents

  Single Dad’s Barista

  Mailing List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Claim Your Free Book

  Single Dad’s Waitress

  Single Dad’s Barista

  He’ll give her more than just a sip.

  My first and only goal moving into this small town is to crush the local competition with my brand-new coffee shop.

  At least, that’s my plan when I move back to Lakewood with my baby daughter. Step One: Open my new shop. Step Two: Dominate.

  The other shop in town will go down the drain like a melted frozen mocha on a hot day, and I don’t care.

  Until I meet Ellie Collins, the barista working behind the counter at the coffee shop across the street.

  I catch her twerking when she thinks nobody’s watching...and once I’ve seen her drop it low, I have to have her in my bed. Or on the counter. Or the floor.

  We’re supposed to be enemies. In the light of day, our businesses are locked in a battle to the death.

  But at night, I can’t stay away…

  Single Dad’s Barista is a steamy full-length single dad novel with adult language and an HEA that will have you buzzing with love like a piping hot mug of your favorite coffee drink.

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  It might get a little wild on my mailing list, but I promise you’ll love it. Join now and get a free copy of my full-length bad boy novel Hate Loving You! Click the link below or paste it into your browser and tell me where I should send it.

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  To caffeine and kisses. :)

  1

  Ellery

  Listen, this isn’t going to be a popular statement.

  Let’s get it out in the open.

  I hate coffee.

  After a day in the shop, I can get used to the smell. But the taste? I’ve tried a hundred different roasts, it’s all bad.

  I’m also not a morning person, which probably won’t be as controversial. I loathe the predawn hours. Nobody should ever be awake for them unless they’ve stayed up all night at a great party. I did not stay out all night for a great party. I went to bed early because I had to be up early. Them’s the breaks when you work at the only coffee shop in town.

  You think my life doesn’t make sense? You don’t make sense. Also, you’re right.

  The damp summer air settles over my shoulders like the hands of a customer who wants to ask me on a date but shouldn’t. I shrug down into my hoodie once more. It’s soft and comfortable, like a bed. I would give anything to crawl back into bed. But the shop opens in half an hour, and I’m the only one to run it, so all naps are postponed until further notice.

  I take a final cleansing breath of the lightly scented air in my car. It’s creepy out there, and dark, so I remind myself again how much I love and adore my aunt and uncle, Lakewood’s beloved Lisa and Fred.

  One, two, three. I grab the handle and jump out like I’d jump into the lake if I was the kind of carefree person who’d leap in like that.

  They’ve been waiting for me, the regulars. Their early morning lives are so devoid of other rituals that all they can do is get into their cars and cruise down the silent streets of Lakewood toward the shop. Sharks. Sharks in the night who’ve scented blood. Coffee blood.

  Maybe not sharks. I’m still half-dreaming.

  In my wildest dreams, Medium Roast is a well-maintained paradise. By paradise, I mean that it’s stocked with all the things you need to run a coffee shop. Top of the list? Coffee. If you give a barista coffee, she’ll ask you for some decent to-go cups in different sizes. If you give her those to-go cups, she’ll ask you for lids to match the cups. Then you can laugh in her face, because what kind of coffee shop has all those items at the same time?

  Not Medium Roast.

  I know what you’re thinking. How could a coffee shop run out of coffee?

  It’s not a riddle, but I still don’t know the answer. It’s probably filed away with the answer to how could I end up running a coffee shop in Lakewood instead of doing literally anything else with my life?

  I love Medium Roast. I love it almost as much as I love my aunt and uncle. I’d do anything for them, which is the truth behind the question. I run this shop because I owe them one. I owe them several. What’s six months of putting off my illustrious career as a photojournalist to keep this store above water for my favorite relatives? Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.

  Not like I can pursue that career. Not after what happened. Not now, at least.

  Across Main Street a car’s headlights flick on, illuminating the empty spots in front of him. Lou Brewer is parked in front of the storefront that’s been under construction at least six times since I was in school. A fresh round began a few months ago. He’s not here to rubberneck at the new drywall.

  “Yeah, I see you,” I grumble under my b
reath, and reach into my purse for the keys to the shop.

  The morning standoff begins.

  The regulars, out there in their cars, stalking the perimeter, want me to open the shop early.

  I want to open the shop at six-thirty. That’s what the sign on the door says.

  They never want to respect the sign. That’s what coffee does to you. Eventually, you need it so much that you’re willing to park in front of a shop and watch a woman inside try to brew coffee in the dark. Turn the lights on early? Oh, no. That’ll have them over here even faster.

  I lock the door behind me and take five big, deep breaths. Might as well get the acclimation process over quickly. Okay—it’s not so bad when it’s in the air and the bags of roasted beans. But late at night, when I get a whiff of it in my hair despite having washed it twice after I close? Gross.

  First, grind the beans, shattering the silence of the shop. Outside in their cars, the regulars are probably sniffing the air. It’s coming. They sense it.

  Tip the grounds into the filter. Filter into the brew basket. Turn it on.

  My aunt and uncle would have thrown the doors open early. I’m a good person, but here in Lakewood, they’re revered as saints. You’d have to be one to let people into your shop at the asscrack of dawn because they flick their headlights on and off a few times.

  I dig my phone out of my purse and perch it on the counter, in a back corner where I can still see it. Six twenty-eight a.m.

  The coffee starts to come through the filter, layering Medium Roast with that freshly brewed scent. I can see the appeal. I, too, am addicted to things. Like Netflix, library books, and never knowing quite how to act.

  The car’s headlights go back off. Six-thirty, on the dot, that’s when Lou’s hand will be on the handle of the door. Walt O’Hannigan, who’s probably locked and loaded for his daily gossip rounds, will be right behind him. And Mary Marshé will be here either before or after her yoga class. Probably both.

  It’s time.

  I spin a portafilter into my hand and lift my chin, stalking toward the door with my head held high.

  For one more moment, it’s dark. I breathe it in.

  We are all frozen, waiting for the battle horn to sound.

  I bring my hand up, flipping on all the switches for the lights and the signs. Light explodes out onto the sidewalk. I’m the first shop on Main Street to open on the last day before all the tourists start arriving for the summer.

  Let the onslaught begin.

  2

  Dash

  I clear my throat and start singing The Song again. How many times has it been? Enough times that my voice is going hoarse, that’s how many times. The past is nothing but Baby Beluga. The future is nothing but Baby Beluga. It is all Baby Beluga, all the way down.

  That’s mainly Rosie’s fault.

  I’m half-kidding. Nothing is truly her fault. She’s eleven months old, which means that things like fault and responsibility don’t apply. She can’t help it if her little brain won’t relax unless someone is singing a pleasant song about a newborn whale.

  That song is sending me into an early grave. I used to think it was fine. Have you heard kid’s music in your life? The obnoxious shit, not Baby Beluga. After that, Raffi seems like an angel sent to heaven. But today, I’ve had enough of the song. Especially the line about whether your mama’s home in the warm water or whatever. It makes me fucking furious, which is not something I’m going to add to the song. Still, Rosie cries if I skip the line, so I sing it every time, even if it makes my blood boil.

  We’ve been driving for six hours. It’s taking forever to get to Lakewood, the town of my grandparents’ birth. It’s also where I’ll get to build a second life.

  I hope.

  Rosie missed her first nap and then her second. When she started screaming, I had to break out the big guns. How long has it been? I’ve lost track of time in the endless loop of my solo Raffi sing-a-long.

  Wait.

  It’s quiet.

  How long has it been quiet? I have no idea. I’ve been caught up in the rage that comes around every ninety seconds at that stupid line. My heart goes to my throat. Nobody ever told me that a moment of quiet out of a baby can inspire enough panicked energy to power a city.

  One look in the rearview mirror and my body sags with relief.

  Rosie has fallen asleep, her head resting on the side of the seat, chubby cheeks pink.

  I don’t know when, but I can stop singing. Finally.

  Without the song, the car seems deathly quiet, so I risk turning up the radio, just a little. The moment I do, Rosie snuffles in the back. So much for the alternative pop station, whatever the hell that means.

  We’re forty miles out from Lakewood. That means I have forty miles to stew about this unholy situation with Serena. We were always a mismatch. She had her head in the clouds, and I had mine in the office at the software development company. I thought things would change once Rosie was born. What a stupid assumption. Serena was never going to stop looking for the next shiny object.

  She found the ultimate shiny object in Pine Deep, the man with the dumbest name in all of America. Pine Deep. Jesus. I can’t think about it without wanting to smash whatever comes to hand.

  That’s the bitch of it all. We were opposites. We were different. But that was supposed to make our love stronger. Instead, I’m left hating a man named after a tree, a hollow emptiness in my chest that aches around the edges all the time. Anger is the only way to survive.

  Anger, and coffee.

  The coffee shop in Lakewood wasn’t my idea. It wasn’t even my grandfather’s idea, and he’s the one who willed me the downtown property. It was my grandmother’s idea entirely. They never got around to it before she died, which means it’s time to get my revenge.

  Did I say revenge? I meant a clean break. I’m leaving my old life behind and building something from the ground up. Renovations have been going on all spring. We should be able to open in a week or two and make my grandmother’s dream of owning a cute little café in downtown Lakewood a posthumous reality.

  My dream is to wring a fortune—or at least a nice living—out of the burning rubble of my marriage. Irony of ironies: Serena and I loved to visit coffee shops. We even signed up for classes together to learn how to make all of it at home, but the shop still lured us in.

  That was all before Rosie was born. And before she fucking cheated on me with Christmas.

  I’ll be damned if I let her take coffee from me. I camped out in so many cafés during college that my dorm room was almost an afterthought. There’s a lot to love about it—the harsh whine of the espresso grinder, the smell of the fresh brew, the ready access to boiling water should an idiot named Pine come in and try to convince me that my wife would be better off without me.

  God, what a jackass.

  I shake my head, trying to rattle away the thoughts as we pull off the highway. The outskirts of Lakewood are pastoral and lovely, with cottages dotting wide properties on the lakefront. We’re going to spend the summer in one of them. The owners keep one cottage for personal use, and the other—across a massive lawn, with its own separate section of sandy beach—will be for me and Rosie. In September, we’ll move into my grandfather’s old house. Renovations are everywhere. My entire life is under construction.

  But we’re not going there yet.

  We’ve been on the road all day, and before I do anything else, I need a coffee. It’s the only thing that will wash the taste of thinking about Serena out of my mouth.

  I know exactly where I’m going to get it.

  I’ve taken a few trips to Lakewood since I got the notice about grandpa’s property. I know as well as anyone else that there’s only one coffee shop in town. I intend to be a loyal patron...right up until I put it out of business.

  Does that make me a monster?

  Rosie wakes with a snort. In the mirror, I can see her rubbing her eyes with her tiny fists, getting her bearings...and opening he
r mouth to cry. As exhausted as I am—by the drive, by all of this—my heart twists in my chest at the sound.

  I clear my throat. What’s another thirty rounds of The Song in the grand scheme of things? Nothing, that’s what.

  “Don’t worry, baby, I’m still here,” I tell her, and then I sing.

  3

  Ellery

  “There were no streetlights, Evelyn! Not a single streetlight! We relied on common sense.”

  Morris Townsend bangs his cane on the floor of the shop, voice trembling with passion. He’s going to spill his coffee all over himself if he keeps this up. Morris is loyal, that’s for sure, but he’s also a human hazard. Also, he can’t hear—not me, and certainly not himself.

  “I can’t imagine—”

  “There are no words to do it justice,” he shouts over the rattle of the air conditioning unit. It’s installed in one of the front windows, and it leaks. I empty the tray beneath it a hundred times a day at least. “The weather was so much nicer.”

  I follow his gaze out the front window. It’s another lovely day in Lakewood. The sun is gentle, second-week-of-June light. Nothing like the harsh heat of August. I don’t know what Morris is seeing when he looks out there.