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When Hermione opened Stories & Sweeties, there hadn’t been any competition on the block. She’d been once one of a kind. A sweets shop and a bookstore was kind of the dream. She’d put together what she loved the most and what she’d gone to pastry school to do. She’d experienced more success than she could have imagined.
Then a sweets store opened in the same block across the street and suddenly she was losing clientele. More specifically female clientele. Saccharine Spirits was a bar and sweets store combo and she’d expected some loss of clientele. Who wouldn’t want to be able to get a little tipsy while enjoying a sweet treat? But she hadn’t anticipated the large exodus of female patrons. Then she met him. The owner.
Draco Malfoy was undeniably handsome. He was impossibly tall and his lean muscles were obvious underneath his well tailored clothes (who wore a three piece suit to sell sweets and booze?). His eyes were a striking and intense silver and his hair was a perfect platinum blonde. Suddenly it all made sense. All the women (and some men) were drawn to Saccharine Sweets by him. It was really unfair.
He’d come by with a small basket of goods from his shop as a ploy “to get to know the neighbors.” She knew he was really just scoping out the competition. To be fair, she would have done the same. It was smart business sense to see who your competition was.
She worked hard on new, more exciting recipes for sweets and ran buy one get one half off on books, hoping to bring in more business. It helped a little, but business still wasn’t booming like it had been before. She also started getting weekly drop-ins from Draco Malfoy. He would prop himself up at the end of the counter near the espresso machine and made off-handed comments about how her flavors weren’t sophisticated enough. How her decorations could use work. She would glare at him as she worked on new sweets for the case. He was such a pompous ass. She tolerated it and focused on her own work. On making sure, she succeeded. She wasn’t going to give into his clear attempts to rattle her. Why couldn’t he just mind his business and stay on his side of the road? Didn’t he have better things to do than just stand around and bother her? He pestered her endlessly and she was one snide comment away from boxing him in the face.
After an extraordinarily slow evening at the shop and a long afternoon of Draco Malfoy leaning against her pastry case, Hermione closes up early and wanders across the road to Saccharine Spirits. She pushes open the door and is taken aback by the store. It’s sophisticated and dark. The bar is topped with black marble veined with silver on top of deep green counters. The case is flawless glass with gold metal. The menu boards are black with elegant cursive. The stools are wooden and the chairs scattered around are plush, velvet things that she could spend hours with a book in.
She weaves her way through the people gathered at the pastry case and takes a seat at the bar. She doesn’t see Draco anywhere. There’s a man with curly brown hair and his sleeves rolled to mid-forearm making drinks further down the bar. There’s a dark skinned man with a buzzcut serving drinks to a table of women and a pale woman with a black bob putting together a box of sweets for a well-dressed couple.
Then the doors to the kitchen open and out comes Draco Malfoy. He looks just as handsome as ever. His sleeves are rolled up to above his forearms, revealing intricate tattoos and muscle corded arms. It was really unfair that he was so handsome. It might be a bit easier to completely hate him if he were ugly and didn’t make something deep within her that she had tucked away long ago stir with longing. He has a tray of sweets in his hands and moves to the case, restocking it. She watches him as he carefully restocks. He takes care to arrange everything to look as presentable as possible. He bragged about his training enough for her to know that he trained in France at the top pastry school and it explained the meticulousness of his pastry case. She was no slob, but he was a perfectionist when it came to his case. She watches him and then he catches her when he’s on his way back to the kitchen.
A wicked smirk graces his lips when he spots her and it makes her skin burn with anticipation. Anticipation of what she didn’t know, but anticipation nonetheless. She lowers her eyes, hoping he would just go back to the kitchen. Move on and ignore her. She wasn’t lucky enough for that. His tattooed arms and those ringed fingers appeared on the counter in front of her. When she gathers the courage to look up, he’s leaned forward on the counter, examining her. Her cheeks flush at his intense gaze and she curses herself.
“Fancy seeing you here, Granger. About time you came to check out the competition…” he drawls.
She rolls her eyes at him, “Only fair considering you’re always haunting my shop. Figured it was my turn to pester you.”
“Well if you’re going to pester me, the least you could do is try something. See what exactly you’re up against,” he tells her. “Chocolate or fruit?”
She has to take a minute to process his question, “Chocolate.” In her opinion, the true test of a pastry chef was their chocolates. If they couldn’t get chocolate right, nothing else mattered. Nothing would measure up.
“Coming right up.”
He moves to the pastry case with a small black ceramic plate in hand. She watches as he stands there, chatting with the black haired woman as he makes careful selections. He comes back with a plate of chocolates. She easily spots two types of truffles and the other two she can’t quite place. Given the sea salt on top of one, it’s probably chocolate with some kind of caramel involved.
“Well Granger, we have two classics. A milk chocolate truffle and a dark chocolate espresso truffle. A sea salt caramel square and a ruby chocolate truffle,” he says. “Let’s start with the milk chocolate.”
She goes to pick up one of the truffles and he pushes her hand away, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Let me, eyes closed please.”
She scoffs, “In your dreams, Malfoy. I’m not letting you feed me and make me look like an idiot.”
He tilts his head to the side, a hand pressed to his chest in exaggerated offense, “I would never, Granger. I respect my sweets more than that.”
She rolls her eyes at him, “I guess if there’s anything I believe it’s that.”
She closes her eyes and opens her mouth tentatively, waiting for him to place one of the chocolates on her tongue. She hears the clink of metal against the plate and then there’s the not too sweet, smooth taste of milk chocolate on her tongue. She closes her mouth around the sweet and fights the urge to moan. It was the perfect milk chocolate truffle and she’d never been a huge fan of milk chocolate. This one was impressive though. She hated to admit it. She hated to admit that he was good at his job.
She finishes her bite and a glass of water is slid into her hand. “To cleanse your palate.” His voice is deep and rough, sending shivers down her spine. She opens her eyes and raises the water to her lips. She sips from it slowly and sets it down.
“It’s…good,” she murmurs, not willing to admit to exactly how good the chocolate is.
Draco lets out a chuckle and shakes his head, “If you say so, Granger. We both know that’s not a completely accurate description. Eyes closed, you still have more to try.”
She sighs heavily and closes her eyes to try the rest of the chocolates.
The dark chocolate truffle is rich, but just the right amount of bitter. It was a perfect balance and once again, she hated to admit it. The ruby chocolate truffle is just as perfect as the last two. She couldn’t be more angry about it. Surely one of them had to be disgusting or at least not perfect. It really only made her hate him all the more.
“Last one, Granger,” he murmurs.
Hermione takes one more sip of water and closes her eyes again. She opens her mouth a little and feels his forefinger brush against her bottom lip. She takes the bite he’s offered her and she can’t help the moan that slips out as the salted caramel and dark chocolate practically melts on her tongue.
He was just so unfair. This just wasn’t fair at all. She could literally scream from frustration. She finishes the bite and opens her eyes. Malfoy is leaning on the bar, his eyes focused on her. His gaze is intense and she feels her skin heat from her cheeks and across her chest. She swallows hard and sucks in a shaky breath. That gaze was just too intense. She scurries off the stool she’d chosen and grabs her bag.
“I…thank you. That was…thanks,” she says in a hurry. She weaves her way through the crowd of people and out of the shop. She’s gotta go. She can’t do this. She couldn’t be attracted to her rival. This wasn't even a bittersweet development. Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.
“This is a fucking disaster,” she curses, hurrying down the road to where she’d parked her car. Tonight she would run away. She would deal with this later.
Much, much later.