6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Maeve

M y manager informed us that Reynolds had reached an agreement with the company that had sued him.

The cafe would stay open until the end of the month, which would give him time to wrap up all his loose ends, and allow us to either apply for benefits or find new jobs. Then it would close forever.

Since I didn’t have any means of communicating with Taran, I had no idea if he’d even tried to save the cafe.

Probably not. I knew it. It’s always so much talk and so little action .

I knew what I would have preferred if I’d had a choice. To never return. To rip the plaster off quickly. Anything would have been better than having to serve customers who all expressed how sad they were about the cafe closing.

Kat and her colleagues, Mason and Hector, had come in earlier, all three looking as if someone had died.

I feel that.

I was so sure I’d seen him for the last time, that it took me completely by surprise when the tall Dragon, wearing his usual corset, entered a few days later. On top of feeling like shit about losing my job, I’d been beating myself up for being too chicken to ask him for his number before he’d left last time.

“Maeve, hi. How are you?” he asked in his deep voice, soothing a bit of the anxiety I felt.

“I’m okay. Thanks for asking, Scales.”

There, I said it. I have nothing to lose.

Taran grinned at me, pitching his split tongue behind his fang and looking at me for a moment as if he was trying to decide where to take a bite out of me first. It should have scared me to have a Dragon scrutinising me like I was a snack on two legs, but God damn me, I could get used to it.

Once he had ordered his Brewce Lee, he leaned in a little.

“Do you think you have a moment? There’s something I wanted to discuss with you.”

“With me?” Is it about you eating me? Now? “Of course. I have”—I checked my watch—“half an hour until my shift ends. Maybe then?”

“Perfect. So I’ll see you in a bit?”

“See you in a bit, Scales.” I pressed my lips together to hide the grin that tugged at them every time I called him that.

Sue me. I wasn’t going to work here for very much longer, so in a little under two weeks, he wouldn’t be a customer anymore. I’d been granted another chance to flirt with him, and I was determined to use it.

Perhaps today I’ll be brave enough to ask him for his number.

“Dragons are so weird,” my colleague Beryl muttered once Taran had taken a seat at his usual table in the corner. He loved that spot. It allowed him an undisturbed view of the counter and to watch the people on Finnegan Square.

“What makes you say that? Taran’s a lovely person,” I said without taking my eyes off him.

“You just think he’s hot. Who can blame you, though—I wish I looked like that in a corset,” he grumbled as he emptied out the dishwasher and placed cups and plates back on the shelf. “And I don’t know…they’re all tall and mysterious…”

“Oh, Bee.” Flinging an arm around my colleague, I squeezed him to my side. I hated how self-conscious he was. Standing a little over 5'5", he was lithe and agile, like a gust of wind that had taken human shape. You could find no other being who was as much the opposite of the massive Dragon sipping his coffee, but Beryl was beautiful in his own way with his hair like spun silver, stormy grey eyes, and delicate bone structure.

“You could totally rock a corset. I bet Taran can recommend a mean corset maker. Want me to ask him?”

My colleague shrugged it off, but near the end of my shift, leaned in and muttered, “If you wouldn’t mind asking him.”