Love and Lattes Read Online Free Page B

today—at one. I need some sleep." Julia yawned and stretched.
    "How can you sleep at a time like this?"
    "'Cause it was kind of a long night, that's how. Please go away so I can sleep."
    Tali shook Julia's shoulder. "Only if you promise to tell me everything later."
    "No deal, but you still need to leave."
    "Bitch. You won't tell me anything?"
    "Nope. Now go." Julia laughed at the disbelief on Tali's face. She wasn't used to being told no for anything, but Julia wasn't interested in sharing this experience with her, now or ever. Some things were too good to share. Chase was definitely too good to share.
    "Huh? He must be some kind of crazy good in bed if you're not even going to tell me. Now I really want to know who this mystery lover of yours is." Tali narrowed her eyes and stared off into space.
    "Okay then. While you try to figure out my mystery man, can you go think in your own house so I can be conscious for class?" Julia rolled over onto her side facing the wall, hoping the gesture would reinforce that Tali needed to leave now.
    Julia heard her friend huff and the bed shook gently as she stood. "Fine. But I better get to meet this mystery guy if you go out with him again. Got it?"
    Julia yawned. "Got it." She waited until she heard Tali walk out the door and into the hallway before speaking again. "Oh, and Tali," she called, "he was crazy good."
    She laughed at the sound of the front door slamming.

    * * * *

    Julia stood on the sidewalk as the warm spring sunshine beat down on her sensitive post-winter skin. After her excitement with Chase a couple of nights before, she'd been playing phone tag with him. Every time she was free to call him, his phone would go directly to voice mail, and every time he called her back, she was in class.
    If the messages he left were any indication, he wanted to see her again just as much as she wanted to see him. If only they could speak long enough to arrange a date. A real date, not a bar date followed by the best night ever. Although a repeat of that night would certainly make her girly bits happy. She flushed at the thought of another night with Chase in her bed.
    Again today, Chase would have to wait. While she'd love nothing better right now than to grab an iced caramel latte and go sit in the park with her cell phone and talk to him all day, she couldn't. Today was her first day as the new stock girl at the neighborhood's local bookstore, Bloom's Books , which meant there was no time for lounging around in the park.
    The bookstore was housed in a beautiful brownstone with rich, red bricks and dark framed stained glass windows. At one time the building had been home to a wealthy family, but now the bookstore was the hottest spot in Meadow Ridge to grab a fancy over-priced coffee and gossip about the comings and goings of the neighbors. It was the kind of place she'd gotten used to avoiding, like the dentist's office. But, if she wanted to be able to pay Tali rent, she would have to suck up her dignity and get to work.
    Just about the last thing she wanted was to work in a place where she was likely to become the subject of more conversation between the Louis Vuitton handbag carrying upper crust and the Hermes handbag carrying upper-upper crust. If one thing brought everyone in the Meadow together, it was gossiping about someone else—especially if that someone was an outsider like Julia.
    Julia hadn't grown up in the Meadow, which meant almost every person living in the elite upstate New York suburb seemed to feel justified looking at her as if she were a parasite. The homes were historical and prestigious—definitely somewhere a girl like Julia wouldn't normally be privileged enough to live. Unless she was a live-in nanny, of course, but that was different. Servants were acceptable additions to any home. As hard as she'd tried to find another solution to her housing needs, she hadn't been able to find anything suitable in her price range—cheap. When her friend Tali suggested