Apple Cider (Cupid's Coffeeshop Book 9) by Courtney Hunt

Author:Courtney Hunt [Hunt, Courtney]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

The following drizzly Tuesday, Harper skipped her morning jog to head to the grocery store. In addition to her usual haul, she piled the ingredients for vegetable lasagne into her cart. She had a new recipe she wanted to try. The fact that Cooper might possibly stay for dinner when he picked up Noah had nothing to do with it.

“Almost nothing, anyway,” Harper muttered to herself as she sorted through the zucchini to find the freshest one. They’d had a lovely time last Tuesday, lingering a bit over the meal and chatting while the kids ate dessert. But, in the intervening week, their only contact had been nothing more than brief waves across their lawns. Cooper could have his pick of any woman in town, and maybe he just wasn’t interested. “Maybe he is. Just have to stay positive.”

“Talking to yourself is a bad sign,” a female voice next to her said. Harper looked up to see her neighbor from across the street, Lisa. Her adorable daughter, Olivia, sometimes played with Layla, but Harper had never warmed to the mother. Probably, it was because she was one of the biggest gossips in town, which in a town like Ashford Falls was really an achievement. No doubt it would be all over town that Harper chatted with the produce at the grocery store before lunch. Lisa peeked into Harper’s cart. “So, lasagne, huh? Cooper coming over again?”

“Layla loves lasagne. I’m going to shred this zucchini into it and help make sure she gets her veggies.” Harper gave Lisa a tense smile. For all Ashford Falls’ booming growth as a far-flung commuter suburb of DC, it was still a small town. Everyone knew everything about everyone, and Lisa loved being the one to tell them.

“Cooper loves Italian food,” Lisa smiled at her, with rather more teeth than seemed strictly necessary. Belatedly, Harper remembered Lisa bearing casseroles to Cooper’s door for months after he moved in. “At least, he always seemed to enjoy my stuffed shells and my meatballs.”

“He and Noah seemed to enjoy my chili,” Harper said, not sure why she felt competitive about it. “I add a dash of cocoa powder—”

“You’re going to be babysitting Noah every Tuesday, then?”

“Just being neighborly,” Harper answered brightly.

“That’s so sweet,” Lisa said, in a tone Harper thought was anything but sweet. Harper maneuvered her cart around Lisa and made a beeline for the checkout. She imagined feeling Lisa’s steely stare all the way to her car.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand Lisa’s irritation; most of the single moms in Ashford Falls had made fruitless overtures toward Cooper and were frustrated with his lack of reciprocal interest.

When she’d made her offer to meet Noah at the bus, Harper really hadn’t been making a move on Cooper; she just understood what it was like living with the patchwork of childcare single parenting brought. She wanted to help, even if he did have to be her secret crush.

Still, she couldn’t deny she’d really enjoyed eating dinner with him last week.

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