Tangled Hearts (Passion in Paradise) (3 page)

“Next,” Melody heard a
bored voice call from behind the counter. 

Relieved to find that
while she’d been staring at the other occupants of the coffee shop, she had
moved to the front of the line without realizing it, Melody smiled at the
pretty blonde that was waiting for her to order.  “Hi,” she greeted the younger
lady, silently noting that the other woman barely looked at her.

“How can I help you?”
the barista asked with a brusque voice that clearly indicated she had better
things to do with her time than be pleasant to her customers.

“I’ll just take a
regular coffee,” Melody quickly ordered, already reaching inside her purse for
her billfold.  Honestly, she was as ready to depart this coffee dungeon as the
server was to see her go.

“Ma’am, we don’t have
that.  Can you be more specific?” the coffee snob behind the counter asked 
Melody impatiently, her blue eyes rolling as she locked gazes with the  barista
waiting on the woman to  Melody’s left.

Melody felt her own
face growing hot as she heard the patrons behind her muttering about her
holding up the line.  “What do you mean you don’t have coffee?  I can smell
it.  All I want is a regular sized coffee flavored coffee.  You’re the keeper
of that coffee.  Please get me a cup of it.  This isn’t a difficult order,” she
argued stiffly as she frowned at the young woman that stared disdainfully at
her from across the counter. 

The barista heaved out
an irritated breath before speaking.  “We
do
have coffee, ma’am,” the
server snapped.  “We just don’t have
regular
coffee.  See,” she said,
jabbing her finger toward the menu hanging over her head, “Nowhere up there
does it mention a regular coffee.  Like the sign on the door says, we’re a
specialty
coffee shop.  Now, would you like a latte?  An espresso?  A cappuccino?  A
Frappuccino?” the barista questioned rapidly, her eyes shooting daggers at
Melody as she drummed a sharp beat against the counter with her bright pink
painted nails.  “And what
size
do you want?  We have short, tall,
grande, venti, and trenta.”

“Now, you’re just
trying
to be a smartass, aren’t you?” Melody asked under her breath as she struggled
to hold her frayed temper in check.

“And ma’am, if you
could decide in the next year or so, that’d be good.  In case you missed it,
there’s a lengthy line behind you,” the woman lectured snottily as she tossed
her long ash blonde hair over one shoulder.

Blinking, Melody felt
her blood pressure begin to skyrocket into the stratosphere as she met the gaze
of what she would now forever refer to as the Coffee Cunt in her head when she
retold this story.  “Are you kidding me?” she breathed, unable to believe the
nerve of the witch standing in front of her.  Had being passably pretty
suddenly become a license for rudeness when she wasn’t looking?  Was this Hanna
Montana wannabe actually trying to coffee shame her in front of all these
customers?  And why was she actually still standing here taking this abuse,
Melody asked herself silently as the buzzing in her ears intensified.   Holy
crap!  She wondered if this was what a stroke felt like!  Wasn’t she still too
young for that?

“Listen up, Beachfront
Barbie,” Melody heard someone say above the buzz in her ears.  “Both the lady
and I will take a tall Americano, and you can strike your shitty attitude from
both our orders unless you’d like me to have a short, but informative
conversation with your manager,” a deep, raspy voice threatened from behind her
as a long red flannel encased arm reached past her shoulder with a twenty
dollar bill dangling from its blunt fingertips.  Flapping the money at the now
embarrassed barista, a growly male voice demanded, “Take it, girl.”

Swallowing a giggle at the
flustered look on the woman’s face as she ripped the twenty out of her
unexpected savior’s hand, Melody bit her lip as she watched the girl make
change with a few jerky movements.  Melody waited until the server had dropped
the change into the still outstretched hand before turning to thank the Good
Samaritan behind her. Unfortunately the mountain of a man standing behind her
never gave her the opportunity to speak.

“Lady, you need to grow
a fuckin’ backbone,” the towering giant snarled as he glared down his nose at
her.   “Honest to Christ, do you let everybody walk all over you or is this
bitchy piece of work back there special?” he asked, jerking his stubbled chin
toward the fuming barista who was currently engaged in preparing their coffee. 

“Excuse me?” Melody
squeaked, unable to believe she gone from being sniped at by the shop’s witchy
employee to being reprimanded by a redneck version of the Incredible Hulk. 
Even harder to believe was the fact that she found her panties dampening the
longer she stared into a pair of faded blue eyes that would have made Cool Hand
Luke jealous as hell.  Well, fuck that, she mentally castigated herself,
unwilling to let herself be drawn in by a set of pretty eyes.  She needed
another man trying to judge her like she needed a hole in her head – especially
an asshole with a savior complex.  “I don’t think I heard you right.  Are you
actually standing there giving me shit?” she asked on a low hiss, her eyes
shooting daggers at him.  Mentally, she imagined one of those knives burying
itself in the center of his forehead.  She might need to look into some anger
management classes at some point, she acknowledged silently to herself.  She
was pretty sure her mind had taken to using a severely unhealthy coping
mechanism when she started fantasizing about murdering perfectly handsome
strangers.  Even if those handsome strangers DID have it coming.

“Nope,” the giant
denied with a quick shake of his closely shaved head.  “Just tellin’ shit like
it is.  Since you don’t look hearing impaired, I think you heard me just fine,
Princess,” that gruff voice continued to needle her as he bent his head
slightly to stare down at her.  “A little thing like you shouldn’t let people
walk on them.  Ever.  Because if they see you’ll let ‘em do it once, they’ll
never fuckin’ stop,” he explained, imparting his redneck wisdom like it was
gospel.

“Thanks for the life
lesson, Paul Bunyan, but if I need any further fortune cookie wisdom, I’ll just
order Chinese for lunch,” she muttered to him as the barista pushed their steaming
coffees across the counter at them, offering them both a pissy look before
jerking her chin at the next customer.  Picking her cup up, Melody moved to the
side as she turned to face her present nemesis fully.  Dressed in a red flannel
shirt open at the collar to reveal a smattering of slightly greying chest hair
and rolled up to his elbows, Melody tried to ignore how well defined the
muscles in his forearms were.  Hell, there wasn’t anywhere he wasn’t muscled if
she was honest about it. Swallowing hard as her gaze continued to slide down
his body to find him wearing a pair of faded Levi jeans that hugged his legs
like a second skin, she knew she was in trouble when her nipples tightened
behind her lace bra.  Damn, but this man was positively edible.  And let’s face
it… she’d been on a rather restrictive diet for the last several years. 

“You ‘bout done undressing
me with your eyes?” the man asked with a glimmer of knowing amusement shining
in his clear eyes. 

Blinking quickly,
Melody stiffened as she offered the man a shocked stare.  She judged the blunt
bastard to be closer to forty than thirty, and by the look on his face, he was
getting ready to say yet another offensive thing to her.  “First, I was
not
undressing you with my eyes, you egomaniac!”

The Paul Bunyan
lookalike scoffed.  “Really?” he asked with a smirk, one inky eyebrow shooting
up as he eyed her doubtfully.  “’Cause from where I’m standing and the way
those pretty eyes are dilating, I think I should be about half naked in your
mind by now.”

“You are out of your
mind, but no!  You’re fully clothed in my imagination and everywhere else!  Listen,
you’re built, honey, but I’ve seen way better,” Melody retorted quickly as a
departing customer stepped around them with a grumble.  She really wasn’t sure
what the proportional response was to this kind of thing, but she was going to
make it her mission to get the last word as she narrowed her eyes at the man
and took a deep breath.  “Look, mister, you appear to be a few years older than
me, and I’ve been taught to respect my elders.  Unfortunately, you are making
that very hard right now.  Good manners indicate that I should say a pretty ‘thank
you’ for the coffee you bought me, but I think I’ll just pay my own way and say
this.  It’s a good thing you’re pretty, you flannel wearing fuckwit, because
your manners suck
almost
as much as our friendly neighborhood barista’s
do!” she informed him in a sugary sweet voice before shoving the five dollar
bill in her hand into the redneck asshole’s shirt pocket.  “You have a nice day
now,” she added before turning on her high heels and stomping out of the coffee
shop, her much needed coffee in her hand.

Honest to God, it was
like she actually
attracted
assholes, she thought grumpily as she pushed
past the door into the parking lot.  Did she have some kind of moron magnet
welded to her ass, she wondered.   And dammit, she’d had more than enough of
dickheads that thought it was okay to treat her like shit.  As of this moment,
she consciously decided that she wasn’t going to take it any longer.  She was
going to stand up for herself if it killed her.  There was definitely no way
she was going to let some countrified Hercules get the better of her.  Sure,
he’d had a somewhat menacing vibe going for him with those thighs the size of
tree trunks and arms that looked like they could bench press a Buick, but she’d
been in a crowded coffee shop surrounded by plenty of witnesses.  She could
afford to be brave.  There was something to be said about safety in numbers and
all that, right?

“So, the shy little
kitten actually has some claws on her, huh?” a voice that Melody was quickly becoming
way too familiar with called from behind her.  “I’m impressed, Princess.  I
didn’t think you had it in you.  For a few minutes there, I wasn’t sure you had
any spark in you at all.”

Turning to look at him
over her shoulder, Melody shook her head.  “Oh, I’ve got spark alright.  In
fact, I’ve got a freaking flame thrower burning.  And I swear, if I have to,
I’ll chuck it at your head.  Don’t you have anything better to do than harass
innocent women in desperate need of coffee?” she huffed, lifting her chin
defiantly.

“Harass seems like a
mighty strong word, doesn’t it?” the man asked with an amused grin, his perfect
white teeth glinting in the sunlight.  “Seems to me like you’re getting bent
out of shape over nothing.  I was just trying to offer you a little friendly
advice back there.”

Melody turned to face
him and offered him an incredulous look.  “There was nothing friendly about
your advice.  You were both rude and obnoxious.”

 “I was both honest and
blunt,” he countered, taking a sip of his coffee before curling his nose and
frowning.  “I bet that bitch spit in it,” he complained.

“I wouldn’t be
surprised,” Melody returned as she offered her own cup an uncertain look. 

“Fuckin’ cunt,” the man
growled as he tossed his cup into the trash can in the center of the lot.

Melody’s eyes widened
at that curse.  It wasn’t that she didn’t agree.  She did.  But men around her
simply didn’t talk like that in front of women. Not around here, at any rate.

“What?” he growled when
he noticed Melody still staring at him with barely concealed dislike.  “She
was
a cunt.  I don’t exactly think that’s a debatable issue, is it?”

“Yes, but you don’t
need to use that word out loud,” Melody retorted, frowning at him as she
continued holding her coffee, thankful that it at least provided some warmth to
her cold hands.

“Why not?  It’s the fuckin’
truth.”  The giant declared with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

“You can
not
be
from around here,” Melody returned with a shocked shake of her head.  “There’s
no way on Earth.”  The man really didn’t have an accent, but his attitude did
not scream Southern Gentleman, that was for sure.

“You’re right about
that, Princess,” he replied with a smug grin.  “I’m what I’m betting a little
Southern Belle like you would call a
Yankee
,” he remarked, drawing out
the word with a thickened southern accent.

“No, I wouldn’t call
you that,” she denied with an arch look.  “I’d just stick with calling you
‘asshole’,” she added informatively. 

The giant in front of
her chuckled as he jammed his huge hands in his jeans pockets.  “It’s honestly
been a long time since I called anywhere home, but I was raised in Philly until
I was eighteen.”

“I’m surprised.  I
really would have taken you for a redneck.  At any rate, don’t mothers in
Philadelphia teach their children manners?  The c-word is off limits in polite
company, City Boy,” Melody shared tersely.

“Well, if I ever meet
my mother I’ll ask her all ‘bout that, Sweetness.  Until then, I suppose that
I’ll have to take your word for it,” the man sneered, his eyes glittering.

“Pardon?” Melody asked,
confused.

“I was a ward of the
state, Princess.  An orphan.  Don’t have a mother.  Never did,” he elaborated
harshly, the muscle in his jaw flexing as he glared at her.