Page 34 of It's a Brewtiful Day

I pitched forward a touch, quickly swallowing my food. “Are you one of the volunteers?”

“No, thanks to my sister, I was supposed to be running the event tonight.”

Shut the front door. “Let me guess, your sister is Alice?”

“You know her?” There was a sharp head tilt.

The fox part and connection to Alice were still throwing me for a loop though. Why did she callhim Fox? Her last name was Shepherd.

“What’s your last name?” I eye him suspiciously, but a hint of a laugh was tickling at the back of my throat.

“Fox.” Because of course, it was. Alice was married. D’oh.

“Shut up.” The laugh escaped—a low throaty sound that sprung to life. “I was supposed to be this mystery person who shows up to help you.”

He started laughing too, a richly deep and intoxicating sound. “Alice told me she had a bonus volunteer who was going to reach out after the session. You must beMiss Spice?”

Chapter Seven

The laughter grew, and the more I thought about the situation Alice had tried to plan for us to meet, it seemed like greater forces than her were at play.

I wiped a tear from my eye. “She called me Miss Spice?!”

His smile stayed put even as his warm laugh settled. “Yep. Never put Sage and spice together.”

“Because no one would ever accuse me of being spicy.”

“That’s not true.” His head tipped down and a shy smile took center stage. “What I can’t figure out is why she called me by my last name and not my first?”

“Well, then I guess she was just being sneaky. She wanted us to get together.” If only Alice knew how fate had intervened before she had.

“And she thought the best way would be foryou to voluntarily meet me and we could talk about astronomy?” He shrugged, and his gaze flew to the tray of food when his stomach rumbled.

I reached for the other half of the banana bread slice and held it out to him. It wasn’t nearly as good as Cassie’s. A tad dry, but in the moment, it tasted amazing. “Have something.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“It’s not stealing. Remember, I’ve got an itemized list. Just dig in. You know you want to.” I winked and watched as his hand hovered over a couple of the treats before he decided the bear claw was the best option.

He took a significant bite and moaned.

The sound stirred something deep inside me and set off a cascade of pleasant emotions.

His finger ran along the outer edge of his lips. “So tell me, what do you know about astronomy?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“And yet Alice wanted you to help out?”

“My sister, Cassie—Alice’s cohort in romantic crime—said I didn’t need a Ph. D. in rocket science to help out since all I’d be doing is directing people onto a bus or something.”

With the banana bread slice gone, it was time to taste something different, and I reached for a chocolate donut, bending the lone version of it in half in case Elliot wanted part.

He chewed the rest of his bear claw while still talking. “That may be true, but if you knowsomething, you can get someone else excited about it. The passion rubs off.”

“I don’t have a lot of passion for anything,” I said off-the-cuff.

“Really? We both know that’s not true. What about the Little Free Library? And all the fun things you do with books?”