Free Where My Heart Breaks by Ivy Sinclair Page A

later.”
    “Kate?” Millie paused, and I waited for her to spit out whatever was on her mind. “Be careful, okay?”
    I sighed. Just like that, she managed to kill the mood and put a damper on my merry spirits. “It’s just a cup of coffee, Millie. C’mon. Even I can handle that without anything crazy happening. Besides, Reed was very clear on that front. We’re friends. Nothing else.”
    “Okay,” Millie said. “Call me when you get back.”
    “Bye, Mom.” I emphasized the maternal term and hung up. It occurred to me that I hadn’t spoken to my own mother since arriving at the Willoughby. That was definitely all right with me.  
    I didn’t plan on being back that early. I might just be having coffee, but surely I would be out and away from Willoughby for at least a few hours. If Reed was truly my friend, he owed me that.   He might not know it yet, but as my one and only friend in Bleckerville, it had just become his responsibility to make sure I didn’t die of boredom that summer.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    I pulled up outside the building that housed Java Joe’s and stared. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it wasn’t anything this cute, especially with a name like Java Joe’s. I expected a vanilla kind of store front in an old strip mall, but instead found that the coffee shop was the lower level of an old Victorian style row house. A white picket fence surrounded the front yard, and I could see that several tables sitting on the front lawn outside were already occupied. It was comforting to know that regardless of where you lived, caffeine remained a staple.
    I parked in the small lot next to the house and saw Reed’s blue pick-up truck already parked in one of the spots a row over. The butterflies in my stomach were back. I took a calming breath and then grabbed my purse and Lula’s ragtag copy of Where My Heart Breaks off the passenger seat.
    “Stop being a ninny. It’s just a cup of coffee, for Pete’s sake,” I said to myself as I got out of the car in an attempt to calm my nerves. My shoes felt as if they had lead in them. I was terrified of making an idiot of myself. “You’re acting like the guy offered to take you to Paris.”
    “Anybody I know?” Reed’s voice behind me stopped me in my tracks.
    I wanted to sink into the ground and disappear. I reminded myself that this was one of the reasons why talking to yourself out loud was a bad idea. Right after having people think you are crazy.
    I turned slowly and found Reed standing there smiling at me. He had changed into jeans since I last saw him. His face was clean-shaven. I also noticed that he was wearing a pair of wire frame glasses and carrying a computer bag. Those two things gave him a completely different look. Instead of rough and tumble bad boy, he was now transformed into smoldering academic guy. Either way, he looked completely lickable.
    “Hey,” I said. “I thought you were already inside.” I thumbed toward Java Joe’s hoping that he’d forget all about the fact that he heard me talking to myself about him.  
    “No. I thought I’d wait out here and walk you in,” Reed said.
    It had been a long time since a guy had done something so chivalrous for me. Even just as a friend. Before he disappeared for good, Trevor only came around when he needed to swipe some more of my anti-depressant pills or borrow money. That, and to tell me what an ugly, useless woman I was and how I’d never amount to anything.  
    “That was really thoughtful.”
    “I’m a thoughtful kind of guy,” Reed said.
    As I fell into step next to him, I wondered what to make of him. Reed had so many facets to his personality that I was starting to get dizzy. Did he cultivate the bad boy image to keep people at arm’s length, or to give the outwardly appearance of what he thought people expected from him? I hoped to get to know him better and figure it out.
    “So do you live in town?” Before I left the Willoughby, I wrote down several questions