A Dragon's Fortune - Sam Burns

1

Finn

At some point in the very near future, I was going to have to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. But right that second, I couldn’t choose between the table by the window and the one closest to the coffee bar, so any bigger decisions would undoubtedly crush me.

There were cafes closer to campus, but Honey Bunny was the best place in the world to get a coffee. The drinks were every bit as good as the ones in specialty coffee shops, and the place always smelled like cinnamon and fresh-baked cookies. When Wallace and I had picked our apartment, proximity to the bakery had definitely factored.

For me, at least. She’d been way more interested in moving close to the ice rink. Thankfully, we both got our way.

And there I was, stuck and blocking the door, weighing my options in the half-filled dining room.

Pros of sitting near the window: it was more secluded, I could watch people on the sidewalk, and it was always a little cooler than in the back where the ovens and magical kitchen contraptions were. Ovens, I understood, but some of the things these bakers used looked like medieval torture devices.

Between the bar and me, there were a couple at a table splitting a fruit tart, a girl who looked like she was also a student with a latte bowl and a croissant shoved to the edge of the table beside her laptop, and an old man reading a paper.

“Finn?” Wallace raised her eyebrows, and I sighed. I had to pick somewhere—and it was completely up to me. She wasn’t staying.

Decision time.

Pros of sitting near the bar—okay, pro. There was just one: Hot Baker.

He was magnificent—all dark hair, gorgeous scruff, eyes like melted chocolate. He was tall, his jawline square, and I don’t know why, but his hands just did it for me. He kept his nails short, but his fingers were wide, the tendons stood out on the backs of his hands when he tapped my order on his point-of-sale system. All that kneading dough had made his hands gorgeous. And everything I liked about them—about him—was perfectly reasonable and not at all weird and specific, thank you very much.

More than a year of coming to Honey Bunny, and I’d never gotten up the courage to ask the guy’s name. He owned the place, was there almost all the time, but he only came out from the back in the evenings after sending the rest of the employees home.

Clearly, that meant the best time for me to hunker down and do my homework was late in the evening, when he was out of the kitchen and I had half a shot of catching his eye.

I’d been trying to flirt with him for ages, but he either didn’t notice or wasn’t interested. I’d almost convinced myself it was the latter. After a while, a guy could get a little down on himself, you know?

But the way he bit his lip and looked away on the rare occasion when I actually caught his gaze? That made it seem like maybe there was something else going on that I didn’t understand, and I was absolutely willing to put in the work to figure it out.

That, alone, made my decision for me. I adjusted my messenger bag and lifted it off my shoulder, dumping it on the round table nearest the coffee bar and bakery case. Just because I had work to do, didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy a little eye candy too.

“How much more do you have left?” Wallace asked as I dug my laptop out of my bag and set it on the table. She propped her knee on the chair across from mine. The only thing that betrayed her impatience as she stretched out her calves was the slightest thinning of her lips.

She wanted to get out on the ice, skate, and I didn’t blame her. I’d give just about anything to escape the mountain of work on my plate.

In fact, there was nothing in the world better than skating with Wallace. We’d been figure skating partners for years, but since we’d started college, I’d been spread a little thin.

“Ten pages?” I grimaced.

I’d been working on this paper for weeks. Hell, I’d known it was due all semester. It didn’t matter. Per usual, I was hunkering down to finish the thing at the last minute.

Half the time, if I did get a head start on my homework, I ended up throwing