His smile was slow, eyes sparking with mischief. “Cold brew, huh? But is it from coffee beans harvested by baby foxes at the stroke of midnight on the summer solstice from atop a mountain in Costa Rica? Because I have standards.”

She gave a dramatic sigh. “Baby-fox coffee is so over. We’re using armadillos to harvest beans now. We’re calling it grumpy cowboy coffee.”

He chuckled and motioned as if he was tipping an invisible cowboy hat her way and then lowered his feet to the floor. “Well, thank you kindly, ma’am. I appreciate the hospitality. And for the record, I do actually prefer cold brew. Don’t judge me.”

“Judging,” she said, pulling a lemon kolache out of the bag and taking a big bite. “So, find…interesting in…umbers?”

Ash gave her a bemused look and set the papers down. “I’m assuming you’re asking me about the sales numbers. I don’t translate kolache dialect well.”

She rolled her eyes and kept chewing but waved her hand in a gimme motion.

“Right. Well, top headline is that the sales on my books are dismal,” he said with faux dramatic gravitas. “A book about manure sold more than mine.”

“That’s shitty.”

He paused, gave her a look. “Really?”

She shrugged. “You walked right into that one. Or stepped into it, as the case may be. Not my fault.”

“Anyway, my local author status is clearly not moving any extra books—even with the prime cover-facing-out shelf space the Lowells have given me up front. My self-esteem has taken quite the hit.”

Kincaid licked a bit of lemon curd off her fingers. “First of all, are you really a local author? You use a pen name, and you don’t advertise where you’re from.”

“True.”

“Also, maybe you should write some stories where everyone doesn’t die at the end, and they’ll move more copies,” she said, pointing her kolache at him. “You’re probably bumming people out.”

Ash’s gaze, which had drifted to her mouth—probably because she had lemon curd somewhere it shouldn’t be—flicked up to hers, surprise there. “You’ve read my books?”

“Uh… I…” Shit. Things she didn’t want him to know. That she had still paid attention to what he was doing even after everything had happened between them. “I read the first one. The Lowells gave me an early copy, and I knew they’d want to discuss it. I’ve seen some of the reviews of the others.”

He smiled between sips of his coffee. “So you hated it.”

The writing had been fantastic. A page-turner of a thriller. Great characters. And the setting had brought Madrid to life on the page. But… “I didn’t…hate it per se.”

He laughed. “Per se?”

She tried to think of a polite way to phrase it, but that wasn’t her strong suit. Her real opinion jumped out of her mouth before she could edit it. “Ash, you killed off the love interest. And the pet bird. What is wrong with you? Are you trying to make people throw your book against the wall?”