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Chapter One

Miles

“You’re going to have to stop drinking coffee,” advises ible script for soet rid of the hives I know the drill This is the third tih this

“I’ve had coffee for years and never had hives Are you sure this is the problem?”

“According to your log, you get the syle coffee black The caffeine builds in your systeion triggering your allergic reaction The positive is that this isn’t a serious condition and it’s easily treatable The negative is that you should stop drinking caffeine”

“I hate tea That’s like flavored piss,” I grouch I’ ure out so else to order

“Not having drunk piss, I wouldn’t know” He gets to his feet “Racquetball this weekend?”

“After I stop at The Daily Drip” I shove the script into rab my coat

“I’ to have to check out the coffee joint hly of it”

Alarmed, I turn away fro the building and de to my place—at least not until I have my objective secured “My visits there are part of a feasibility study to see if the foot and street traffic can sustain my new business plans”

The doc frowns “You’re doing hands-on feasibility studies now? I thought you’d s from your office in the sky”

I had h a rocky period about four years ago It was utter chaos in the office with no clearour size about every three months I had quality people quit because ere a hted, we had a billion dollar IPO, and now I sit, as the doc says, in an office in the sky twiddling my thumbs

I around with nothing more than a prayer and a few hundred dollars required years of hustle and working eighteen hours a day Sitting in h-rise, watchingcontracts for new businesses left me bored Moapps My friends roped me into a half dozen double dates before I told everyone that I was going to enter the priesthood

I wasn’t even joking I’d looked into it Maybe devotion to soe my slump

In the end, I didn’t need a dating app, the lists of eligible women, or the church I found the cure at The Daily Drip

The Daily Drip is a coffee shop and not the citified kind It has plants hanging fro Each table is different and so are the chairs The , usually with a lot of hearts and flowers adorning each item The wooden countertop is filled with ho as the place is, the thing that keepsback is Eden She’s not the owner of The Daily Drip, according to the corporation papers I pulled Her dad owns it, but I’ve never seen hi there is a stock boy who I think is her brother It could be a cousin I haven’t been able to ferret that detail out yet Sure, I could hire a private investigator ould report back with everything from how much debt Eden has to where she likes to spend her off hours, but where would be the fun forto The Daily Drip every day and observing her I like gathering each piece of evidence and co under the ferns, drinking the coffee IEden co drinks, taking h She could be doing anything, and I would want to watch

Souys stream Netflix My favorite drama unfolds at The Daily Drip There are first dates, breakups, business deals, backstabbing, and bonding Overseeing it all is Eden, a raven-haired goddess with a predilection for candy apple red lipstick and glittery barrettes I’ve ordered a half dozen of the hair things off the internet thinking how pretty they would look against the veil of black silk that hangs around her face Currently, they’re sitting in the top drawer ofwith the perfuerie that I would like to see her wear, and a sixty-thousand-dollar oval dia That should probably be in a safe, but it needs to be in a handy place for when I ask Eden to marry ood opening