Secret Admirer
As she stood to retrieve her mocha (soy, no whip cream) from the counter, Hermione quirked a brow at the blackberry danish plated next to it.
“I didn’t order this.”
Taylor, the barista, leaned out from behind the espresso machine with a wink and pointed tilt of his head to the side. “You have a secret admirer.”
Hermione surreptitiously turned in the direction of his nod to identify her benefactor, but the only people seated were a few men her father’s age arguing heatedly, a harried-looking woman staring morosely into her mug, and the platinum-head of her current coworker.
She must have just missed him.
Hermione gathered her items and went to join Draco at what had not too long ago become “their table” at the Atrium’s coffee cart. After several months of amicable teamwork, coffees delivered to her desk turned into his insistence that she take actual breaks—as if she had all the time in the world for such frivolous lackadaisical habits.
Annoyingly, these breaks resulted in an almost immediate upturn in her focus and productivity. She refused to correlate the two.
“Oh, good. You never eat enough.”
She scowled at his observation and bit into her danish with more ferocity than required. It was, frustratingly, delicious, and exactly what her stomach apparently wanted because a moan of satisfaction escaped before she could stop it.
“That good?” The prat had the audacity to smirk with his dimples on full display.
“It’s…not bad. Could be laced with poison, though.”
His eyebrows shot up in alarm at her statement, before he took a measured sip of his tea. “Is there any particular reason why you say that?”
“Apparently, I have a secret admirer who added this to my coffee order.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one to notice your appalling lack of awareness for your own wellbeing,” he mused, handing her a napkin as she finished the last bites of her pastry.
“Yes, well, if he keeps treating me to these I might just entertain the idea of a date. Maybe. Probably.” Hermione chased down the sweet blueberry notes with her semi-bitter dark mocha, missing the way Draco sat up taller in his chair. Circe, it’d been far too long since her last good shag.
Finishing up their drinks with some chatter about the upcoming weekend—yes, there was a poetry reading she planned to attend, no, she was not going to the Falcon’s game though she hoped they beat the Canons—they stood to make their way back upstairs. Walking behind her, Draco risked a glance over to Taylor and nodded his gratitude for the young man’s assistance. The next Ministry event was scheduled to take place only a couple of months from now and he fully intended to attend at Granger’s side. Not her on his arm like some adornment, but together as equals. Ideally, partners.
He just hoped the cart had a decent variety of baked goods to rotate until then.