“No, we’ll be back in an hour.” Susanne dragged Anja out the door, not giving her time to stop and commiserate with Uncle Norbert about the new direction she was steering the store in. She crossed to the other side of the street and carefully stepped over the Bächle with an extra long stride.

Anja laughed. “Still afraid you’ll end up married to a local?”

“No. Afraid I’ll end up with wet feet again.” For once, Susanne didn’t mind being laughed at since it seemed to shake Anja from the mood she’d been in. Hopefully, where she was about to take her would help even more. After all, Anja had said that food was her favorite coping strategy when she was stressed.

When Susanne stopped in front of the café down the street and held open the door for her, Anja paused next to her instead of entering.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Don’t thank me yet. We’re going to continue working in there.”

Anja’s eyes twinkled. “Well, we’re women so we can multitask. We’ll be able to work and eat cake at the same time, right?”

“Right.” With just a few centimeters of space between them, Susanne couldn’t help taking in every detail of Anja’s face—her slightly upturned nose, the curve of her lips, the dimple in her chin.

“What?” Anja asked.

“Uh, you’ve got a bit of ink there.” Susanne gestured.

“Where?” Anja ran her hand over her face as if she could find the ink stain that way.

“There.” Susanne reached out but stopped herself before she could touch her. Instead, she tapped her own chin.

Anja pulled a little bottle of hand sanitizer from the messenger bag she’d grabbed on the way out and scrubbed at her chin with a tissue. “Gone?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for telling me. I know you said we need to do more promotion, but wearing our inks on my face doesn’t seem like the right way to show them off.”

Susanne chuckled, glad to see that Anja hadn’t lost her sense of humor. She followed her into the café, past a glass counter with half a dozen different cakes and pies, to a small, square table at the back of the room.

Two glass doors to either side of their table led to a patio overlooking the Gewerbekanal—a canal that was a much bigger version of the Bächle. It gave this part of the city a bit of a Venetian flair, and Susanne could imagine how nice it would be to sit outside, right over the water, in the summer.

But, of course, she would no longer be here in summer, and that was a good thing, right? For a moment, she wasn’t so sure.

“If you’d rather go somewhere else…” Anja said, as if sensing her conflicting feelings.