Before That Night: Unfinished Love Series: Caine & Addison, Book 1 by Violet Duke Read Free Book Online Page B

to just remain in the friend zone. With her life, she couldn’t possibly date him.
    So the man was ridiculously good looking, and criminally sexy. They could still be ‘just’ friends. She’d been doing it for a month now, after all.
    By the time she closed her eyes for the night, she was pretty sure she had herself convinced.
    Convincing the man who had practically devoured her with his eyes while he’d been drinking her special blend, however, was a whole different story.
     
    * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
     
    THE FOLLOWING NIGHT , Addison brewed double the amount of her special personal blend and waited for Caine to come in…so she could serve him Joe’s usual bland cup of coffee and see how he reacted.
    She expected a response of near biblical proportions.
    It was her way of re-amalgamating their ‘just friends’ friendship.
    And have a little fun in the process.
    Uneventful as her day-to-day life was, this little tiger-poking stunt she was planning was basically the highlight of her week. All morning, she’d been chuckling to herself imagining his face when he took his first sip. Which would lead to her wondering if he’d just glower at the green pot and make polite, teeth-grit demands that she pour him the good stuff, or if he’d simply stomp back behind the counter to pour himself a mug.
    Her money was on the latter.
    While he was pretty much like a big, gruff, usually-only-mildly-grizzly teddy bear with her, she’d heard him alpha out a few times outside of the walls of the diner and use his intimidating-as-hell cop voice on a few occasions.  She'd even seen him take down a tweaked out, knife-wielding guy in ten seconds flat once. 
    The man just wasn’t a guy you messed with.
    ...Which just made the whole thing she was planning so much more fun.
    Only problem was, he didn’t show up.
    The next night? Same.
    For a month, the man had come in for dinner nearly every night, and somehow, without her even noticing it, he’d become a mainstay in her day. The sneaky bastard. He’d been charming and unassuming the entire time. Friendly. And aside from the occasional innocuously pervy, mostly rather clever, and always darn funny comment he’d sneak in here and there, he’d never once hit on her.
    She liked him.
    Even more astonishing was the fact that she liked that she liked him.
    Thus, it was strangely unsettling to not be able to chat with him, or at least see him. Though it took her a lot of heavy introspection to admit it, her days felt just a tiny bit incomplete without him in it. And that was insane, really. They barely knew each other. Yet, somehow, the sneaky man had found a way past her defenses and into her life.
    Unbelievable.
    Sure, she’d known all the other diner workers for a lot longer, and saw them in larger doses every day. But she never truly considered any of them a true friend the way Caine was. Mostly because she never felt comfortable sharing her life with any of them.
    Caine, on the other hand…
    You trust him.
    It was true. She did. Of all the people in her life, if she had to pick one person to have watch Kylie and Tanner, there was no doubt in her mind that she’d pick Caine. And it wasn’t because he was a cop. She trusted him despite that.
    Figured the universe would deem it fit for her to start liking and trusting a man whose actual job it was to stop women like her from breaking the law.
    In spite of all that, by the time Day Three rolled around, with still no sign of Caine, Addison flat out started to worry. She’d even volunteered to run a big lunch order over to the station to see if she could catch him.
    Nothing.
    That is, until she was wiping down the counter before closing on Day Four and saw something a little off about the collage of Easter eggs she and the kids had drawn to put up on the wall nearest the register. It took her a minute to realize what it was.
    There was an extra egg in the basket.
    In the big easter egg basket with the eggs that had her name,