I'm on break, leaning against the counter behind the soda machine and stirring a drink, more ice than soda, when the bell above the door chimes. "Back to work, Sean," my boss Chad tells me.

Ignoring him, I glance at the customers. Three friends--a Romano from the pizzeria down the boards and with him a couple. The girl is pretty in her bikini top and shorts but the guy, with his arm draped around her shoulders, is only the sexiest boy I've ever seen. I told myself I wasn't going to do it again, fall for someone in the summertime, but before his ice blue eyes even glance my way, I'm gone.

"Welcome to the Good Shoppe Lollipop," Chad announces. I groan into my drink; I hate the name of this place. "What'll be tonight, guys?"

I watch the stranger with his arm around the girl as he looks over the menu. His neck curves gracefully, his Adam's apple a fleshy knob I want to suckle. I can imagine what it'd feel like to trail my fingers down that smooth throat, to brush that short blonde hair up from his nape and kiss behind his ears. I'm going to have wet dreams about him tonight, I just know it.

"We're thinking," the Romano kid says, leaning over the ice cream case. Tony, I think it is. Big and burly, head full of dark curls. Nothing like the lithe blonde and his girl. When he sees me staring, Tony asks his friend, "Hey Andrew, what was that thing you wanted to try?"

His name is Andrew. He looks at me dead on, then clears his throat and shrugs. "Something warm and sweet," he says, his gaze burning into me. "With lots of cream." He turns to Chad. "You have anything like that?"

God.

Chad frowns at the menu. "Well..."

If he tells them about the hot fudge sundaes, I'll just die. Warm and sweet, lots of cream. And he's already got a girl? Damn.

"How about a hot fudge sundae? Perfect way to end a perfect day, don't you think?"

I roll my eyes. Of course, I have to work for Mr. Comedian. Andrew stands there smiling because he knows he wasn't talking about the sundaes, and he knows I know he wasn't talking about ice cream ... hell, from the smirk on her face even his girl knows what he's talking about, and if I wasn't already hiding in the corner behind the soda fountain, I'd sink into the floor and just disappear.

My knees are weak from that pale gaze, that deep voice, and any moment now I could melt away like chocolate. I imagine myself as chocolate beneath his hands, melting into his touch, moaning his name, his lips like cherries on my skin, his tongue a swirl of sensation across my body. Tony's as oblivious as Chad. "Fudge sounds good."

Andrew shrugs as I shake ice from my drink into my mouth. "Maybe I'll go for something hard," he says. The ice cracks loudly between my teeth when I bite down on it.

Tony frowns. "You want something warm and hard?"

Damn it to hell, I'm blushing, I know it, flushed and red--I'm not prepared for this. Any other night I'd flirt back; it's summer and there are a million guys on the boardwalk, but this one makes me ache as if I'm waking from a good dream, one I don't want to lose in the daylight. If he didn't have a girl with him, if the Romano kid wasn't here, if Chad wasn't here, maybe I'd flirt back. If I could even look at him and remember how to speak.

Tony squints at the menu and has the audacity to ask, "You want a Popsicle or something?" Looking around Andrew, he asks the girl, "You want to split a sundae with me, Lori?"