The thought threatened to sour the good mood she’d been brewing, her blood still thrumming from the sale, two of her good friends ready and raring to go for a girls’ night. Mary smiled absently and hefted the box of afghans back into the storeroom, where they’d wait until fall, when the colors were more appropriate.

She heard the bell on the door jingle and Via’s faint cry of “Tacos!” Smiling, she emerged from the room. But that smile immediately quirked into a look of confused curiosity.

“John?”

An annoyed, exhausted, semi-rumpled John stood in the front area of her shop holding an enormous sack of tacos.

Mary realized what had happened all at once. “Estrella, you didn’t!”

“Oh, she did,” John grumbled in that two-toned voice of his, a little more hoarse than usual.

“You sent a civil servant to pick up tacos for us?” Mary gave Estrella a hard time.

“He was a taco delivery boy before he was a civil servant, and my son long before either of those occupations. It won’t break his back to bring food to a group of pretty women.”

Aware of Fin’s and Via’s avid interest in the newcomer, which Mary was sure actually had very little to do with the tacos in his hands, Mary strode over to John, her hands out for the food. He handed it over and took a quarter step backward, like he wasn’t sure if, sans tacos, he was officially invited to be inside her shop.

“John, these are my friends Serafine St. Romain and Via DeRosa. This is John Modesto-Whitford.” She strode back over to the counter and could feel John hesitate before he followed her.

“You can call me Fin.” Fin waved her hand, but Via, having hefted herself off the floor at the arrival of the tacos, leaned over and gave him a handshake.

“Nice to meet you two. Hi, Ma,” John said, leaning down and pecking his mother on the cheek.

There really was something charming about a grown man kissing his mother, despite the fact she’d just cajoled him into delivering tacos.

Mary studied John as Estrella and Via fell into conversation. He really did look exhausted. He was still shaved and trimmed fairly immaculately, but his black hair had started to tumble forward out of its neat side part and onto his forehead. There were dark circles under his eyes. He wore his usual uniform of a white button-down, black slacks and wingtips, but the sleeves were rolled to the elbow and his midnight tie was loosened at the neck.

“Didn’t mean to turn you into a delivery boy,” Mary said in a low voice to John, hoping he could read the apology in her eyes.

He shrugged. “I often pick up food for my mother.”

“Did you really used to be a taco delivery boy?”

“Chinese food. And yes. Paid for a lot of my undergrad that way, actually.”