Groaning, he rolled out of his warm bed and got in the shower. If Doris needed to go badly enough, she’d see herself out. Otherwise, Titus would shoo her out as he was leaving.
He raced through his morning routine and checked to see if his beard needed trimming, but it still looked tidy. Then he went to the kitchen to have cereal. People would probably be shocked if they knew what he ate, left to his own devices. But Titus had met a lot of people like that in culinary school. They cooked fancy food all day for other people, then they went home and ate ramen.
“Not yet,” he told Doris as she bounded in the pet door. “It’s too early.”
The dog gave him a soulful look, licked her chops, and then stared pointedly at her food bowl. Knowing he was a soft touch, he fed her a cookie and then filled two compartments in her dish and set the timers. This was a fancy food-giving device. One side opened at eight in the morning, and the other popped open at two. Titus was always home early enough to give Doris her dinner. He’d read so much about dog care before adopting her, and it was supposed to be better to give them smaller meals more often. Her water fountain was full, but he plopped some ice in it because he spoiled this pup rotten.
“Go back to bed,” he told her.
Of course, she didn’t listen. Instead, she watched him make a sandwich and even begged in classic Doris style. She rolled over and showed her belly, head lolled to the side like she was literally dying from lack of lunch meat. Laughing, he gave her a slice and put everything away.
Titus got to the bakery five minutes later than usual, so Stan was sitting in his car, listening to some audiobook. Titus could hear that it was about unleashing your inner potential as he went by. The older man got out of his car and waited for Titus to unlock the door and turn off the alarm. Then he came inside and headed straight to the kitchen without even a “good morning.” That was typical, as Stan wasn’t the chatty type this early.
The morning passed in a flurry of baking, and before Titus knew it, lunchtime finally rolled around. He sent Stan and Maya to eat at noon because he had to go at one. Titus didn’t like working the front because the minute Maya left, there was always a swarm of customers. One of them was a cute guy, unmistakably flirting, and if Titus didn’t have plans, he might see where that went. But today, Danica was waiting for him, and he didn’t want to mess it up. He was cranky when he finally got to leave at 1:05, and he wanted to sprint for the park bench, but rattling around the box might destroy the tarts.
What if she already left? He was only ten minutes late, but he never did this. When he got together with Dante, Miguel, Trevor, and Calvin, he was always first to show up and would sometimes end up holding down a table for half an hour while everyone else trickled in. Some of the friends he’d made in high school had moved, but at least he still had the core group. Miguel had married his high school sweetheart, and Dante had tied the knot after college, so he’d lost touch with them a little, though it was better now that Dante was divorced. Well, not better for Dante. Trev and Cal were single like him, and they made up the larger part of his social circle.
I’m trying to expand my horizons. Taking a chance on Danica.
Nerves insisted that she’d bail if he was late. He settled for speed walking, but worry tugged at him until he saw her, waiting for him on the bench.
Thank goodness.
His chest eased. Already, she had become important to him, although really, he didn’t know if they could even be considered friends, let alone anything else. She stood and took a few steps toward him, and the apparently reflexive response reassured him.
“I thought maybe something came up.”
“Just the usual run on sweets as soon as Maya went to lunch. It’s like they know I’m not great on the customer service end. I would’ve texted you if an emergency called for a sudden change in plans.”
Amusement glittered in her eyes, her mouth curved in a private smile, but she didn’t let him in on the joke. “You’re here now. That’s what matters.”
Chapter 5
Danica couldn’t stand how freaking adorable it was that Titus had no idea that half the people who worked downtown waited until Maya went to lunch to storm the bakery, hoping for a glimpse of him. Normally, she’d suspect false modesty, but he truly seemed clueless about the connection. It absolutely wasn’t a coincidence.
“Thanks for waiting. I’m the punctual one normally.”
“Not a problem. Here, I made the lemon kale pear juice I told you about yesterday. I hope you’re feeling brave.”
“It’s very…green. That probably means it’s good for me, huh?” He didn’t look enthusiastic as he took the bottle and sat beside her, closer than yesterday. Not near enough to touch, but there wasn’t room for their lunches between them this time.
“Yes. But it’s also delicious, I promise.” Unwrapping her cheese-and-lettuce sandwich, Danica stole a glance at Titus, wondering if he was up for a fling.
With Gram in town, even casual dates would be…challenging.
She’d watched Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with Clem when it first came out, and they’d laughed at the stuff the writers had gotten wrong. One thing they had right was that the mundane population could never know about witches, a policy instituted after the Great Purge. Now, all babies were ensorcelled, and if they communicated “I am a witch” via any medium to a mundane, it triggered an alert, and the council descended. There was no hidden witch school, and the elders were casual about most things, but they enforced that rule strictly. Witches who broke that tenet had their minds wiped, and the mundane was usually transmuted into an animal so the secret could never get out.
That was why it was so difficult for a witch to marry a mundane and why Gram felt that it was a terrible life, and it sapped magic too, at least for the Waterhouse witches.
Such strict enforcement had kept them safe for years. People thought the world had gotten more logical, more rational, so mundanes imagined they’d grown out of the witch hunts. We’re better than that, they wanted to believe. Not prone to mass hysteria or putting stock in superstitious nonsense. Truth was, witches had simply gotten better at hiding.
We don’t serve the Dark Lord either. Such nonsense.
In fact, they were descended from Aradia, a goddess who gave magic to her followers, different gifts for different lines. Mundanes had managed to get a glimmer of the truth, but they always dragged Lucifer into it, possibly because the idea that a goddess could have accomplished anything on her own troubled them.
Sighing, Danica took a bite and stole a look at Titus’s unbelievably perfect profile. The slope of his nose was a thing of beauty, such a weird trait for her to notice.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Danica nodded. To keep from lying to him, she chose an alternate truth. “Remember the day we met?”