✔️ | 🎄 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓 (Second Chance Series)

| coffeehouse

Memories from the past year haunted Jim when he was downcast. After Caroline slipped out the door, his smile became forced, and his focus was elsewhere as his mood soured.

Jim shudders, contemplating shattered glass skittered over the road like a spilled sack of diamonds and didn't catch Caroline striding back in ten minutes later. Sharing a knowing grin with Sarah, she saunters toward the bar. With a thunk, she slaps a palms onto the counter, and his heart leaps at the sound of her lilting voice. "One tequila shot!"

"Stop!" He laughs, knowing there's no way in hell he can serve her a drink before she turns twenty-one in a few years. The glass of ice clinks as he raises it to her eye level,. "Water on the rocks?"

"Yes! Make it a double, handsome!"

His grin tips up in the corner as she watches him steadily fill the cup with water, then slides it across the counter. He nudges a cup of lemon wedges toward her. "Really, though, can I get you anything else? Bad day?"

When he smiles at her, resting his elbows on the bar, her heart skips a line of beats.

"Oh!" She straightens, realizing she's been ogling and tilts her head with a bashful smile, willing herself not to be embarrassed. "My car won't start."

"Do you need a jumpstart?" Your vehicle, your heart, I'm here for whatever you need.

"Yeah! That'd be terrific. My plan was to warm up before calling a tow truck with the bar phone, but we could give it a go together. If not, I can probably get it towed and just call my dad."

"I'm off at eleven," he says, checking his brown-banded watch. "Can you wait for me?"

"I can wait for you," she answers, swiping the taste of lemon off her generous lower lip with her index and middle finger.

As he steps back to the opposite counter, his insides burn and he can't stop his widening grin, failing to recall the sizable mirror posted above the numerous glass bottles.

While twisting her fingers, Caroline grins, too. The bar is too rowdy for them to chat while he works, but the heated glances they steal every few minutes is thrilling.

First counting out his tip money faster than he's done anything in his life, Jim slips to the back to snag his coat. His heart thrums as she loops her arm through his, chirruping about the frigid air as they wander toward her vehicle.

The ice was their friend and foe for what happened next.

The world tilts sideways as Caroline slips, yanking Jim down with her. Wind is knocked from his body as he lands hard on his back. "Anything broken?" he asks when he can breathe again.

She rolls over to get on her knees, then promptly slips back to the icy pavement, her elbows and knees crashing on him like a barrage of snowballs. He groans, clutching her elbows as she rolls on her side on top of him, laughing uncontrollably.

"Hey, are you okay?" she asks between tears, touching a gloved hand to his face.

He gives into the laughter. "Yes, but get up slowly, please."

****************

"You can stay in the car, sweetheart," he offers, shedding his long jacket to work more freely.