If Love Had A Price

“One large no-foam latte, half skim, half-whole milk, with split quad shots—two shots decaf, two shots regular—two packets of Splenda, and four small sprinkles of cinnamon. One avocado toast with the toast slightly burnt at the corners and exactly one avocado’s worth of topping. No egg, extra chili flakes, and a medium sprinkling of salt. Oh, and one blueberry muffin with not too many blueberries. Or too few.” The bleached blonde rattled off her order in one breath without looking up from her phone.

Kris’s eye twitched. In her four days as a server at Alchemy, she’d received some balls-to-the-wall orders, but this one took the cake. What was the point of putting skim and whole milk in your coffee? To say nothing of the other arbitrary stipulations.

How about I add three shots of spit to your ridiculous latte and you shove it up your ass?

Kris opened her mouth to say just that before she caught Nate’s subtle headshake out of the corner of her eye. He knew her well enough by now to catch her before she reamed a customer out.

She took a deep breath and forced a tight smile. “You got it.”

She rang up the blonde’s order and started working on the latte. Out of spite, she used all whole milk and left out the skim.

It was petty, but Kris never claimed to be a saint. It wasn’t like the woman would taste the difference. Kris was pretty sure people came up with these ridiculous orders just to make baristas’ lives miserable.

After less than a week dealing with this kind of bullshit, she had a healthy, newfound appreciation for those who worked in the service industry. The adage, “the customer is always right” was so freakin’ wrong.

“I’m impressed.” Nate reached across her for the vanilla syrup, his forearm brushing against her chest as he did so. Heat sizzled in her veins, and she side-eyed him, certain he’d done that on purpose. The twinkle in his eyes confirmed her suspicion. “I thought you were going to tear her a new one.”

“I wanted to.” Kris added the cinnamon sprinkles. “But Liza is still pissy about the time I called out that asshole for lying about his order.”

The jerk had sent his burger back three times—claiming it was too rare, too well-done, too salty, though he’d miraculously scarfed down half his food each time—before Kris lost her shit, the jerk lost his shit over her losing her shit, and the cafe manager lost her shit over the entire situation.

So yeah, Kris was already on thin ice. She wouldn’t have cared, except Nate had recommended her for the temp position and she didn’t want to get him into trouble. She may be leaving for Seattle soon, but he depended on this job.

He’d talked to Elijah’s father on Monday, and she’d started work Tuesday morning. Liza, the manager, hadn’t been thrilled about taking on someone with zero service experience, but Kris was decent at her job—unless the person on the other side of the counter was a jerk.

She was still learning the ropes on the whole “customer service” thing.

Kris plucked a blueberry muffin from the pastry case and dropped it onto a small plate. It was late Friday afternoon, and the cafe’s earlier craziness had died down to a manageable four tables plus the occasional takeout order.

Thank God. She was looking forward to a long, hot shower followed by a longer, hotter session between the sheets.

She’d officially moved into the Reynolds house the same day she started at Alchemy. As Nate had predicted, his family welcomed her with open arms and, in Skylar’s case, a hug and a squeal that they probably heard across the Atlantic. Nate had offered to sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room during her stay, but she’d shut that down quick. She didn’t want to displace him from his room. He wouldn’t let her sleep on the couch either, so they shared his bed.

No one said anything about the sleeping arrangements. Nate and Kris were adults in a relationship, and Michael and Skylar weren’t idiots. They had to know that if a couple lived under the same roof, there’d be shenanigans, even though Kris tried her best to be quiet.

She’d also convinced Nate to accept rent for housing her until she left L.A. He’d refused at first, but caved after she made it a non-negotiable for her moving in. Once he did, she packed her bags, slapped a quick note on her nightstand for Risa or whoever to find, and split. She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered with the note at all—her father hadn’t reached out to her once since she walked out of their big, cold Beverly Hills mansion.

“I’m still impressed by your restraint.” Nate leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Remind me to show you just how impressed I am when we get home.”

Kris almost spilled the piping-hot latte on herself.

“You’re incorrigible,” she said, but she was grinning.

This was the best part of the job—whenever she and Nate had the same shift, it was like an extended foreplay session. He didn’t even have to touch her to turn her on.

“I try my best,” Nate drawled before a new customer snagged his attention.

“You two are disgustingly couple-y.” This came from Elijah—Kris had stopped calling him Blue Hair, partly because Nate had asked her to and partly because Elijah had re-dyed his hair a hot pink—who returned from his trip to the backroom with a carton of oat milk to replace the empty one sitting on the counter. “This is a professional workplace.”

“Please. Don’t think I don’t know what you do in the employee bathroom during your break.” Kris kept her voice low so only Elijah could hear her.

His jaw dropped. Paired with his fuchsia hair, it made him look like a surprised anime character. “C’mon Kris, you know I was joking,” he complained. “Why you gotta call me out like that?”

“I wasn’t calling you out.” Kris glanced at the open window looking into the kitchen just as the cook slid an avocado toast sans egg onto the ledge. The orders from the computerized register fed straight into an electronic screen in the kitchen, eliminating the need for staff to run back and forth. “That would be unprofessional, and I’m such a nice coworker.” She flashed a sweet smile.

Elijah stepped back. “Don’t do that. You freak me out when you act all nice and innocent.”

“Good. Now get out of my way. I have an order to fill.”

Relief spread across the pink-haired boy’s face. “That’s more like it.”

Kris’s amusement faded when she carried the food out to the blonde, who peered at her coffee and demanded to know why there wasn’t more cinnamon.

“When I say four small sprinkles, I mean four. Not three. Not three and a half. Four. And the coffee’s cold.” The blonde pushed the mug away like it was a dead rodent. “Remake it.”

Really? Let’s see how cold it is when I throw it all over you.

Kris drew in a deep breath. “Of course,” she said through gritted teeth. Her hand trembled with rage as she took the latte back to the counter; some liquid spilled over the side and pooled on the small saucer plate.

“I can make it,” Nate said, surmising what had happened in zero point five seconds when he saw the coffee and Kris’s face. “I’ll bring it out to her, too.”

“No, I’ll do it.” Kris bared her teeth. “I’ll add a special seasoning.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He took the mug from her and nudged her toward the register. “I got it. Seriously.”

She relented, mainly because Nate was already making a new latte.

“How do you do it?” she asked, watching him pull the decaf espresso shots first. “All these terrible customers all the time.”

“Not all the time. Some are great, most are neutral. They come in, pay, get out.” Nate pulled the regular shots next. “There’ll always be shitty people who look down on you or blame you when something goes wrong because you’re the easiest target, but that’s expected when you work in the service industry. You just gotta put up with it, especially since waiters depend on tips for a living.”

Kris’s brows drew together. She’d always known that being a service worker was no walk in the park, but there was a difference between abstract knowledge and firsthand experience. Her stomach clenched when she thought about how much shit Nate, Elijah, and the rest of the staff at Alchemy had to put up with regularly.

Even though Kris was also a waitress at the moment, she had an out. Sure, she was cut off from her funds, but her family was still rich, and her dad would eventually forgive her. She was his only daughter, and if she turned on the charm and remorse, she could get him to relent—she just didn’t want to, because she was pissed at him.

Kris had the privilege of walking away from this job whenever she wanted, but most service workers didn’t. She could lash out at customers because their tips didn’t mean much to her in the long run—though they helped her chip in for groceries and rent during her extended stay at the Reynoldses—but for some people, tips meant the difference between putting food on the table and starving. That meant they had to put up with even the shittiest of bullshit from the shittiest of customers.

She watched Nate take the latte to the bleached blonde, who examined it with a critical eye before she deemed it worthy of drinking.

“You’re a saint,” Kris said when Nate returned to the counter.

A wicked smile slashed across his face. “I enjoy sinning far too much to be a saint.”

“Really?” She leaned against the counter and positioned her body in a way that showed off her curves. She suppressed a smile when heat flared in Nate’s eyes. “I don’t believe you. You’ll have to prove it.”

“Oh, I will.” Nate lowered his head so he could whisper right in her ear. “Starting in an hour, when the cafe closes and I have you bent over the table in the backroom with my cock buried in your tight little pussy.”

Heat bloomed in Kris’s chest and spread through her limbs, and she had to clench her thighs against the rush of moisture flooding between her legs.

Nate’s filthy talk had ruined more than one good pair of underwear.

His green eyes gleamed with a mixture of heat and amusement at the flush on her cheeks and chest. “New customer,” he said in a normal voice. “We’ll pick this up later.”

Great. Now Kris was going to be turned on and squirming for the next—she checked the clock—fifty-six minutes. More, if you counted the time it took for Elijah to vacate the premises. Thankfully, he was the only other person on shift this afternoon.

Kris’s clothes already felt too tight and scratchy against her sensitized skin.

I’m going to get you back for this, she mouthed at Nate.

Nate, the sexy, infuriating bastard, merely chuckled in response.

Kris fiddled with her bracelet and tried to push the dirty images of what would happen in the backroom in an hour out of her mind. The last thing she needed was to fucking moan in the middle of a coffee order.

She faced the new customer, bracing herself for another ridiculous drink order, but her shoulders relaxed when she saw who it was. “Hey, Gemma,” she said. “What can I get you?”

Gemma smiled. She was the regular Kris had spotted at the cafe throughout the summer, and though they hadn’t talked much before, they’d struck up an easy camaraderie since Kris started working at Alchemy. Sometimes, when Nate wasn’t on shift and Gemma was the only person here during the slow after-lunch hours, Kris would swing by her table and chat about random things—books, movies, Gemma’s cat Smokey, the abomination that was skim milk—to alleviate her boredom.

To her surprise, Kris enjoyed talking with Gemma. The other woman was warm and friendly; coincidentally, she was also Filipino, which Kris had learned when Gemma mentioned having family in Cebu. Kris was a third-generation Filipino-American—her grandparents had immigrated to America after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act abolishing quotas based on national origin—and honestly wasn’t that in tune with her heritage, even though there was a large number of Filipino-Americans in Seattle. Her father didn’t observe the same traditions her grandparents—both of whom passed away when Kris was a child—had, and though he spoke Tagalog, he’d never made teaching Kris the language a priority.

The few Tagalog words Kris did know, she’d learned from Rosa…and now Gemma, who’d taken to playfully teaching her a new word or two every time they spoke.

“Hi, Kris.” Gemma’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “Just a small chai latte to go today.”

“Sure.” Kris rang her up. If only all customers were like Gemma.

“How are you?” the other woman asked as Kris started making the drink.

“Good. Hanging in there.” Other than the fact that I’m not speaking to my father, and he’s going to marry the Stepmonster in a few months. Oh, and I’m broke and will have to leave the guy I love in one week. To add insult to injury, the heel on my favorite pair of Louboutins snapped the other day and I don’t have enough money to fix it, much less buy a new pair.

Kris said none of this out loud. As much as she liked Gemma, she was not in the business of spilling personal details to anyone outside her small, tight circle of trusted friends, which currently consisted of Nate, Courtney, and Kenji, her hairstylist in Seattle. Sometimes she talked to Farrah, Olivia, and Sammy, but they were still relatively new friends compared to her years-long friendship with Courtney and Kenji. And she wasn’t in love with them, which was the only way to bypass the history requirement.

Gemma’s eyes darkened with concern. “Forgive me if I’m overstepping,” she said softly. “But are you having issues at home?”

Kris’s hand stilled. “What makes you think that?”

The older woman hesitated. “I can tell you come from a well-off background, but now you’re working here…I’m sorry, it’s inappropriate of me to even bring it up, but I just want to make sure everything is okay. We all go through tough times, and I want to help.”

Suspicion oozed into Kris’s veins. Why would someone she barely knew want to help her? She and Gemma hadn’t exchanged more than a few words before this week, and while they’d clicked instantly, they weren’t close by any means. Not to mention, Gemma was asking awfully personal questions.

Then again, Gemma seemed like the type of person who’d feed the homeless and adopt stray animals in her free time. If Kris remembered correctly, she’d rescued her cat Smokey after finding it injured and abandoned on the side of the road.

Kris, however, was no stray animal, nor was she a charity case.

She was about to tell Gemma so when the bells above the door jangled. Kris’s gaze skimmed over the newcomer before his identity registered in her brain. When it did, her eyes snapped back to the man and her jaw dropped.

“Daddy?”

Roger looked uncharacteristically rumpled in jeans and a white shirt that needed a good ironing, ASAP. Kris couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her father in jeans. There were circles under his eyes, and his skin appeared pale and sallow beneath his tan.

How the hell did he know where she was? Or was this just coincidence? If so, it was a hell of a coincidence.

Gemma and Nate both stiffened.

Nate’s discomfort, Kris understood. But why did Gemma look like she was about to throw up?

“Kris. You’re here.” Relief cooled the tension lining Roger’s face.

“Yeah. Question is, what are you doing here?” Her defensiveness kicked in before she could stop it. She was still smarting from the way her father had dismissed her. Sure, Kris’s scheme to frame Gloria for infidelity had been shady, but she’d been right. Shouldn’t Roger have at least trusted her enough to investigate her claims instead of immediately assuming she’d lied? Kris was related to him by blood; Gloria had appeared on the scene less than two years ago.

Nate placed a steadying hand on the small of her back, and Kris leaned into his embrace, grateful for the support.

“I need to talk to you. A lot has—” Roger stopped and stared at Gemma, who’d turned her face away and was inching toward the door like she hoped she could escape before anyone realized she was still there. Kris didn’t think it was possible, but her father paled even more. “Gemma?” The name came out as a strangled whisper.

Shock slammed into Kris. Her eyes ping-ponged between her father and the woman she’d befriended over the past few days. They knew each other?

Gemma’s shoulders slumped in resignation. “Roger,” she .

“I can’t believe it.” Roger looked stunned. “You—how—”

“You know each other?” Kris was dimly aware that everyone in the cafe had stopped what they were doing to watch the unfolding drama, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “How?”

Gemma stared at her feet, her cheeks crimson and her knuckles white around her to-go coffee cup.

“She’s your—er, she’s your aunt,” Roger said, his face so white he resembled a ghost. “She died twenty-two years ago.”