My Delivery Driver is a Billionaire in Disguise

6

Sophia

Emma didn't let it go for the rest of the morning.

"You like him," she said again, tying her apron behind her back like she hadn't just dropped a bomb on my entire day. "I knew it. I called it the first week he started showing up."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, even though my ears were burning.

"Sure you don't." She grabbed a rag and started wiping down a table that was already clean, clearly just looking for something to do with her hands while she grinned at me. "You get this look on your face every morning around seven. Like a switch flips."

"It's called being a decent person to a customer, Emma."

"Uh huh. Is that why you save him the good croissant every day?" She raised an eyebrow, and I realized I had never actually told her about that. She must have noticed on her own.

I didn't have a good answer, so I busied myself restocking the napkin dispensers instead of responding, which only made her laugh harder.

By the time the morning rush faded into the slower stretch before lunch, I had mostly managed to push the conversation out of my mind. Mostly. It kept creeping back in anyway, little flashes of Noah's smile, the way he leaned against the counter like he had all the time in the world, the sound of his laugh when I told him a bad joke.

I told myself it didn't mean anything. He was a nice guy who happened to deliver to my shop. That was all.

The next morning, when he walked in right on schedule, I found myself watching him a little more closely than usual, maybe because of Emma's teasing, maybe because some small curious part of me had finally decided to pay attention to details I had been ignoring.

"Morning," he said, setting his phone down on the counter to read off the order like always.

"Morning." I reached for the croissant I had set aside, sliding it toward him. "Same as yesterday, I'm guessing? Muffins and scones?"

"You're getting good at this," he said, taking the croissant and unwrapping it with the same easy familiarity he always did now.

While I packed the boxes, I found myself asking a question that had been sitting in the back of my mind for a while, one I hadn't quite worked up the nerve to ask before.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"What did you do before this?" I kept my eyes on the muffins, trying to sound casual. "Delivery work, I mean. Nobody just wakes up one day and decides this is their dream job. Everyone's got a before."

He paused for half a second, so brief I might have missed it if I hadn't been watching him closely. "Nothing exciting," he said. "Bounced around a bit. Different jobs here and there."

"Like what?"

"Office stuff, mostly." He shrugged, reaching for his coffee cup like he needed something to do with his hands. "Nothing worth talking about."

It was such a vague answer that it almost worked. Almost. But something about the way he said it, too smooth, too rehearsed, made a small flicker of curiosity spark in the back of my mind. I let it go for the moment, though, because pushing felt rude, and honestly, plenty of people didn't like talking about old jobs. I understood that better than most, given how much I avoided talking about the years before I took over the bakery full time.

"Fair enough," I said, sliding the last box across the counter to him. "Not everyone wants their whole life story told over pastries."

"Something like that." He seemed to relax slightly once the subject shifted away from him. "What about you? Ever think about doing anything besides this?"

"Never seriously." I wiped my hands on my apron, thinking about it anyway. "I mean, I looked at other paths growing up. Thought about culinary school somewhere fancy, maybe traveling first. But this place always felt like where I was supposed to end up. Like it chose me as much as I chose it."

"That's rare," he said quietly. "Most people spend their whole lives looking for something that feels like that."

I smiled, about to respond, when he reached across the counter to grab one of the boxes, and his hand brushed against mine for just a second. It was brief, barely anything at all, but it was enough for me to notice something that caught me off guard.

His hands were soft. Really soft, in a way that didn't match the job at all.

I had spent enough years around bakery equipment, ovens, mixers, heavy trays, to know exactly what hard, physical work did to a person's hands over time. My own hands carried faint burn marks along the wrists, small calluses from years of kneading dough and gripping hot pans. Dan, before he got sick, always had rough, weathered hands from years of lifting heavy delivery bins in and out of his van, the kind of hands that told a story just by looking at them.

Noah's hands looked like they had never done a single day of physical labor in his life.

I didn't say anything right away, but the observation settled somewhere in the back of my mind, sitting there quietly, refusing to be ignored the way his vague answer about his old job had been easy to brush off just moments before.

"You okay?" he asked, noticing my hesitation.

"Yeah, sorry." I shook my head slightly, forcing a smile. "Got lost in thought for a second."

He studied me for a moment, like he could tell something had shifted, even if he didn't know exactly what. "Everything alright?"

"Everything's fine," I said, though the small flicker of doubt refused to fully disappear. "Just a long morning."

He seemed to accept that, gathering the boxes into his arms the way he always did before heading out. "I should get moving. Don't want to be late on my first real delivery day without Dan breathing down my neck about timing."

"Go on then," I said, waving him toward the door. "Wouldn't want you getting in trouble."

He gave me a small smile before stepping out, the bell above the door ringing behind him like it always did, marking the end of another morning that had felt just a little too normal to actually be normal.

I stood there for a moment after he left, staring at the spot where he had been standing, turning the conversation over in my mind. Office stuff, he said. Nothing worth talking about. But office jobs didn't usually give people soft, uncalloused hands like that, not unless the office happened to be somewhere far more comfortable than any cubicle Dan had ever described working out of.

I told myself I was overthinking it. Maybe he just moisturized more than most guys. Maybe there was a perfectly boring explanation hiding behind those vague, deflecting answers.

But as I turned back toward the oven to start the next batch, I couldn't shake the small, quiet feeling settling low in my stomach, the sense that Noah was carrying around a lot more than a simple delivery route, and that whatever it was, he had absolutely no intention of telling me the truth.