“What about it?”

  “You said there weren’t any coffeehouses around here.”

  “But that’s an old-timey diner. It’s not a coffeehouse. That’s the kind of place where the coffee sits on the burner all day and gets that weird taste.”

  “What? That’s not true. Have you been in there?”

  “No.” She looked at him. “But you can just tell. Are you worried about that place? It won’t be any competition for us, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He couldn’t fault her for saying so—that was his assumption, too. “You’re right, it probably won’t. But it doesn’t help when this ginormous coffeehouse”—he put finger quotes around coffeehouse—“blocks the street on a Saturday to hang its sign and no one can get into the parking lot of that little place.”

  Harper’s brows knit. “I am so confused. Why are you making a big thing out of that diner? Do you go there or something?”

  “It’s not a diner, it’s a coffee shop. A dated coffee shop, I will grant you, but it is a coffee shop.”

  “Okay,” she said defensively, throwing up her hands in surrender. “It’s a coffee shop.”

  Jonah suddenly sighed to the ceiling and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He was going about this all wrong. “I am worried that the old coffee shop will be no competition for you—but you will be great competition for it.”

  She looked across the street at the Lucky Star Coffee Shop again, and the windows that still bore painted Christmas scenes. A snowy hill dotted with Christmas trees in one window. A reindeer leaping in another, and of course, Santa with his bag of toys slung over his shoulder in the last. She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Not necessarily. I guess it depends on what type of business they have, doesn’t it?” She turned away from the window. “When we opened our store in North Austin, Summer Moon had to move its location to Burnet Road.”

  Jonah’s brows dipped. “And that’s okay with you?”

  “Is it okay with me?” She dragged her fingers through her hair. “It’s not okay with me. I mean, I feel bad for them if that’s what you’re asking. But we live in a capitalist society, and people vote with their dollars.”

  “Vote with their . . .” His voice trailed away. “What about the people who work there?”

  “Jonah . . . this is starting to feel like some weird morality test. I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s always been survival of the fittest when it comes to business. Particularly this kind of business. It’s supply and demand, and I’m not saying it won’t survive, I’m saying it depends on a lot of things. But this coffeehouse,” she said, gesturing grandly to the store they were standing in, “is the one that concerns me.”

  He looked across the street. “You know what’s so funny? I’ve been saying the very same thing.”

  “To who? About what? Will you please tell me what is happening right now?”

  “I’m sorry.” He touched her cheek. “I’m being a jerk.”

  “Yeah, you kind of are.”

  His gaze moved over her gorgeous face, her hair falling around her shoulders. He thought of the magic of tonight and still couldn’t believe this had happened to them. That he would meet the first woman to excite him in such a unique way and she would be his competition. It was unfathomable. “Okay, here goes. I’m helping my parents out, right?”

  She nodded.

  “A family business that we’ve had for generations. My grandparents, and then my parents, and my aunt and uncle, and my cousins. All of us have a stake in it.”

  “Okay.”

  He pointed to the Lucky Star. “That’s the business.”

  It seemed almost as if Harper was on some sort of time delay. It took a few moments of blinking and gaping at him, as if the words had landed in her brain and were struggling to arrange themselves in some meaningful order. She slowly turned her head to look at the Lucky Star with its cheerful holiday window displays. She didn’t seem to be breathing. “Harper?”

  “That is your parents’ business? When you said mom-and-pop, I thought you meant a bodega!”

  “Yeah, well, I thought you were a financial advisor. When I said mom-and-pop, I meant a small, family-owned business. A mom-and-pop coffee shop.”

  She gaped at him, wide-eyed. “You thought I was a financial advisor? How did you get that idea? I work for StreetSweets!”

  “Who?”

  “StreetSweets! It’s a company that specializes in upscale food trailers and coffeehouses. Your parents own the Lucky Star?”

  He nodded. “My life has been spent in that coffee shop.”

  “Oh my God.” She stacked her hands on top of her head and turned away from the window. “How could this have happened?”

  “I’m asking myself the same thing,” Jonah muttered. “How in the hell.”

  “This is bad,” Harper said.

  Jonah pulled one of her hands off her head and held it. “Listen, Harper. Deja Brew is a great place. You’ve done an amazing job—it’s innovative and it’s going to be a huge hit. You should be proud.”

  “Thank you. I am proud. But . . . but I don’t know what to say. What can I possibly say? No wonder you were acting so weird. I would be, too, if I were in your shoes. This is a disaster, Jonah!”

  “It’s not the greatest thing. I feel pretty certain you will put us out of business.”

  “No,” she said, and looked to the window again. “Don’t say that. There has to be a solution.” She looked at him, as if she was hoping he would suddenly have one and present it to her. “Right? We have to figure this out. I mean, everything is going so great.”

  “I know. And I hope there is a solution.”

  His answer deflated her. She faced the window. Jonah did, too, and they stood shoulder to shoulder, silently staring at the Lucky Star.

  His disappointment was nauseating him. This was so unfair. He didn’t know where to go from here, what that meant for either of them. But he didn’t want to lose her over this. She glanced uncertainly at him. “Is this going to be a problem? I mean, it’s a problem, obviously. But is it going to be a problem for us?”

  He slid his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side, squeezing affectionately. “I’m crazy about you, remember? That hasn’t changed one bit. This is just a weird coincidence.”

  “It’s mind-blowing. But . . . can’t there be room on this street for both of us?”

  Jonah really wanted to believe that, but his head wasn’t allowing it.

  “Maybe?” Harper amended.

  “Maybe.”

  One of the Christmas trees near the door of the Lucky Star rolled off the pile and onto the sidewalk.

  She put her arm around his waist and leaned against him. “I’m so sorry, Jonah.”

  “Don’t say that. We’ll be fine. This will all be fine.”

  And then Jonah set about trying as hard as he could to believe those words.

  Thirteen

  How. How? How was it possible that the beautiful, unique woman he’d clicked with right away after a couple of years of not clicking with anyone could be behind Deja Brew? How was it that the woman he’d casually thought might be the one for him would also be the woman to put his family out of business?

  “Un-freaking-believable,” he muttered. He opened the door to his house, waved at Harper one last time. They’d decided to skip the pizza and call it a night, as the discovery had put a damper on the day. Personally, he needed to absorb the body blow of finding out he was in competition with her, with so much riding on the outcome for both.

  He watched her pull away, then walked into his house.

  He was so stupefied by the day that he forgot his huge, clumsy dog was waiting for him, and was assaulted by Truck’s attempt to hug him and lick him at the same moment when he stepped through the door. When he managed to thwart the attempt to lick his face, Truck instead leaped in a big circle of glee, and sent all of this week’s mail flying from the console, where Jonah had put it earlier. “Come on,” he said, and grabbed a leash and strapped it onto Truck’s collar.

  He walked Truck down the street (or rather, they meandered along, as every bush and every crack in the sidewalk required serious investigation and a lifting of the leg) while Jonah tried to wrestle with the notion that Harper was Deja Brew.

  On the one hand, he was still experiencing the glittery, bone-deep elation from having found someone with whom he’d connected right away, and of having some pretty amazing sex. On the other hand, he felt incredibly sad, as if he’d been robbed of it all. As if Deja Brew were a battle-ax that had crashed through the bubble he and Harper were living in.

  He kept thinking about what she’d told him—how work always came first, how she lived her life, achieving a goal and moving on to the next. Her goal in making Deja Brew a success included the demise of the Lucky Star.

  But that was irrational thinking, wasn’t it? This thing with Harper wasn’t over; there was no reason for it be over. She wasn’t intentionally trying to put him out of business. No one could expect any relationship to be free of obstacles and some hardships. Things happened, worlds collided, paths intersected.

  Maybe he was looking at this all wrong. He ought to think of this as a great proving ground for the two of them—if they could weather this, they could weather anything.

  And then again, maybe not. Because this was one gigantic roadblock and he didn’t have any idea how to hurdle it. Just continue seeing her all the while knowing that her store would probably hammer the last nail into the Star’s coffin? Stop seeing her because of it? Was he being too pessimistic? Was there really no way to see this as a glass half full?

  “Jesus, I’m making myself crazy,” he said to Truck.

  But even as he and Truck made their way around the block, he knew that there was one thing he was probably ninety percent certain about, and that was the financial impact of Deja Brew on the Lucky Star. Numbers didn’t lie. The trend in daily receipts didn’t lie. Deja Brew was going to end them if he didn’t figure out how to turn things around and get more people in the door. Which meant he was going to have to root for the home team and hope his girlfriend lost.

  She was his girlfriend, wasn’t she?

  Yes. She was. He didn’t need to slap a label on them, but he was going to anyway. Harper Thompson was his girlfriend, the Lucky Star be damned.

  * * *

  Jonah spent a restless night that made him late to work the next morning. When he came in, Amy was behind the counter in blue-and-white-checked cat-eye frames and a purple pinafore. Her dark red hair was wound into two knots at the top of her head, which had the effect of making her look a little like Minnie Mouse.

  “Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” she sang at him as he walked into the main dining room. She poured a cup of coffee and slid it across the counter to him.

  Jonah gratefully took it. “Thank you and hello, Amy. How was your weekend?” He lifted his hand to Robert and Lloyd. They nodded. “Coffee good and hot today,” Lloyd said, holding up his cup.

  “My Saturday was fine. I had to work, but who cares,” Amy said. “What we all want to know is how was yours?”

  He sipped his coffee. It needed a little cream for his tastes. “Who is ‘we all’ and why do you ask?”

  “Why do I ask?” she scoffed. “You had a date. I cleaned out the old fridge in the back room here.”

  He sipped again. “Do you have any cream back there?”

  She picked up a pot of cream and set it on the counter. “You’re being awfully coy.”

  “I’m not being coy.”

  “Jonah!” She reached across the counter and tried to swat him, but he dodged her. “You’re impossible.”

  “Fine, all right, I had a great day.” He smiled.

  “You had a great day?” Jonah’s mother entered the room from the kitchen. She had anchored her hair in a top bun and used it to hold her reading glasses. She was wearing a dark blue apron that was covered with what looked like flour. “Good morning, my beautiful, wonderful son.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Jonah is dating someone,” Amy said.

  “Amy, for Chrissakes.”

  His mother’s eyes lit up like they did when she’d had a bit of wine “with dinner.” She stuck a pencil behind her ear, propped her elbows on the counter beside Amy, and fixed her son with a look. “You mean the person you dated once is now someone you are dating? Do tell, Joe.”

  “Okay. This?” Jonah said, gesturing between the two of them. “Is not going to happen. My life is not open to your casual perusal.”

  “When are we going to meet her?” Amy asked, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Do we know her?”

  “I have the very same question,” his mother chimed in. “When and who and may I say how happy this makes me? I was about to give up my dream of grandchildren.”

  “Mom!” Jonah protested.

  “I’m allowed to dream of them! So when are we going to meet her?”

  “Oh, let’s see,” Jonah said, pretending to think about it. “Can’t do it today, and Wednesday’s no good. How about never?” He picked up his coffee cup and started for the office.

  “Jo-Jo, don’t go away mad,” his mother called after him in a singsong voice. “We love you! We want to be part of your life! And we always love your girlfriends.”

  “Well,” he heard Amy say behind him. “We didn’t exactly love Megan.”

  Jonah stopped walking. He turned back and looked at his mother and Amy, still standing side by side. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing,” his mother reassured him, and put her hand on Amy’s arm. “It’s just that Megan had a way about her.”

  This was the first he was hearing that Megan had any kind of “way” about her, and it confused him. “What way?”

  His mother looked at Amy, who nodded encouragingly. Clearly, these two had discussed it. His mother said, “Just that there were times that she seemed to think her cotton was a little taller than it actually was.”

  Jonah had no idea what that meant and decided he wasn’t going to ask. Megan was the last person he had to time to think about this morning. “And that, ladies, is why I’m not bringing anyone around here.” He continued on to his office.

  “You’re so sensitive!” Amy called after him. “I thought you’d be in a better mood after your recreational Saturday!”

  “Go to work, Amy!” he shouted back at her, and to Robert and Lloyd, he rolled his eyes. “Family.”

  “Got that right,” Robert said.

  In his office, Jonah locked the door in case Amy thought she might pop in to grill him. He tried to focus on work and the many problems he had to tackle. The price of coffee had skyrocketed, and either they were going to have to switch to an inferior brand or find a different supplier. Burt had chased off the last of the kitchen help. Burt was a good guy, and no one could throw together sandwiches and salads like he could. But he didn’t like chitchat and he didn’t like people who used their phones too much, which to a guy like Burt, was anytime other than an emergency phone call.

  The truth was that Burt had done Jonah a favor. It was hard to keep staff in the kitchen under the best circumstances, as the jobs tended to be labor-intensive and paid only $10 an hour to start. Jonah would love to pay more, but until they started generating more business, they couldn’t afford it. His mom was helping out in the kitchen for now, which was great. But his mother was not afraid of Burt, and chitchatted the day away, ignoring Burt’s glower and not caring if he responded to her at all. Burt complained often to Jonah that his mother didn’t listen, and thought she knew how to run a kitchen, and had Jonah hired him to cook, or what?

  The situation had only gotten worse yesterday, apparently, when his mother and Aunt Belinda had proceeded with their idea of pie day. Which was par for the course—they never seemed terribly compelled to ever take his advice. They had made a bunch of pies to offer a free slice to anyone who came in for coffee. Jonah knew this because Amy had already posted it on the Facebook and Instagram accounts. Now Burt had two women in the kitchen with him and had sent Jonah a text this morning: We need to talk.

  Jonah had called him on the way into work and had assured him they wanted and needed him to make the food. Jonah promised he would talk to his mother about her chattiness but warned Burt it wouldn’t do any good. “She doesn’t think she’s chatty.”

  “Then she must be deaf,” Burt had said crossly.

  Jonah would talk to her, and his mother would try very hard to keep her comments to a minimum for a day or two, but she always slipped back into being her chatty self, and Burt slipped back into being his grumpy self, and Jonah was desperate to find someone to replace Mom before Burt quit.

  There was also the issue of what they were going to do to get customers in the door. He couldn’t imagine that the pie idea was sustainable for long, but he guessed they were going to give it a shot. He’d also thought about what Amy had suggested. There was no way he could compete with Deja Brew on the cool factor. So maybe they did need to cater to the other side of the coin. He’d toyed with the idea of putting a new burger on their limited menu that would rival any burger around. He made a note to talk to Burt about it.

  His phone pinged and Jonah picked it up—a photo of his Christmas trees was on his screen. They had been scattered up and down Mary Street.