19. Shelby
There’s an older man standing in the doorway of the Rusty Dinghy’s kitchen, wringing his chapped hands, staring at me from where I sit in one of the booths on the far wall. Every time I look up and smile, he darts off like a scared animal.
Yesterday, Lana told me about Mac’s dishwasher. “Chip doesn’t talk much; doesn’t read, for that matter. But he’s probably the sweetest man you’ll ever meet.”
“Hard to beat Mac,” I said. I immediately worried this was too intimate. But I’d been thinking about how the day before, Mac came home saying Nate’s former bully had come by the bar that evening for dinner with his mom. He and Nate had gone out for ice cream after. He came home and told me all about it, looking the happiest I’d ever seen him.
But Lana had nodded. “Okay, fine. My boss is pretty great under that crusty exterior. Just don’t tell him I agreed with you.”
Today, I set down my pen as Chip gnaws on his nail in the kitchen doorway. “Chip,” I say. “You’re supposed to be pretending I’m not here.”
I already told him this yesterday. And the day before. This time he nods, then cringes like he wasn’t supposed to nod and scurries off again.
I have to fight a laugh. He is, in fact, extremely sweet.
Today’s my third day on the “revamp the Rusty Dinghy” project, which I’ve dubbed R2D2 in my notes, just because it was shorter than Rusty Dinghy 2.0 and it made me laugh. Deanie told me over text that means I’m an absolute dork, which, fine. Deanie and I have been texting all morning about work things—only because I asked. But now I’m sorry I did, because being dragged back into the drama of my business is making my anxiety start to ramp up.
My phone buzzes again, drawing my attention from the kitchen door.
DEANIE: I swear I’m going to need danger pay to keep your location hidden, Bryony. Clientzilla is threatening to take her private helicopter to roam the coast looking for you.
On top of the anxiousness of thinking about work, seeing my name on her texts makes a sick feeling curl in my stomach. All of it combines to give me a sobering reminder of how I felt before I got to Redbeard Cove.
SHELBY: I’m sorry. Do you want me to come back?
DEANIE: Fuck no. I’m just saying. You’ll be there for her launch, right? That’s the carrot I keep holding out for her.
The launch is at the end of July. Plenty of time.
SHELBY: I’ll be there.
DEANIE: That’s all I needed to hear. Now tell me about your hot roommate. Did you bang him yet?
I shake my head, laughing softly to myself. Deanie knows I would never consider sleeping with him. That’s why she’s making the jokes. But she doesn’t know how I’ve broken my cardinal rule of letting myself get sucked in.
Because every time I see Mac, every time I speak to him, I find it harder and harder to squash that burst of warm, feel-good endorphins he makes explode in me. I can’t hear my name come out of his mouth without a fluttering in my stomach.
I can’t fall asleep without his face appearing before my eyes, his scent swirling in my intake of breath.
“You okay?”
Mac’s voice cuts through my thoughts. I clap my phone face down on the tabletop.
He has a bar towel over his broad shoulder. He’s holding a plate of quiche, his big hand practically swallowing the little dish. He sits in the booth across from me, setting the plate down.
Heat rushes through me. I was daydreaming about him in his bar. While I’m supposed to be working for him. And not daydreaming about him.
“Fine,” I say, my tone perfectly clipped. Luckily I’m well-schooled in looking like I’m totally fine on the outside. “And you’re supposed to be pretending I’m not here.” He brought me lunch yesterday too, only he didn’t sit with me at the booth.
“Kind of hard when you write something down in that notebook any time anyone sneezes.”
“I’m taking notes! I don’t want to miss anything.”
“Well, I figured all that note-taking might be making you hungry. Again.”
“That’s not fair,” I say. I told him yesterday there was no need to feed me. But he knows the quiche is my favorite item on the current lunch menu. “How am I supposed to enforce the rules about ignoring me with Chip when you’re here very much acknowledging my presence?”
“You’re right. I’ll take it back.” He moves to get up, his hand going for the dish.
“No!” I exclaim. “Not the quiche.” I scrape it across the table to my side. “Wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”
Mac’s eyes twinkle. Then he says, “I’m afraid Chip’s a lost cause, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my mouth stuffed. God, this is good.
“He’s smitten.”
I swallow. “What? With who?”
“With you,” Mac says, like I’m dense.
I laugh. “He is not.”
“You really can’t tell?”
I follow his gaze to the kitchen door again. Chip’s back, his eyes narrowed at Mac.
When I look at him, he gasps and ducks from view.
“Mac.” I give him a look. “He’s just nervous. I told everyone yesterday that a business is all about people, and that I’d be watching the staff, the most important people of all. Not testing them. Not critiquing. Just observing and learning.”
He raises a single dark brow. Ugh, even his eyebrows are hot. “Shelby, are you telling me you really don’t know what a man who’s obsessed with you looks like?”
Nerves spasm in my belly.
As I chew and then swallow the quiche, that old, insecure feeling clawing at me. Then I dab my mouth with the napkin. “No, actually. I’ve never had that experience.” I try not to let the emotion sound in my voice, but I’m not sure I’m successful. I set the napkin down. “How do I know what that looks like?”
I’m being sarcastic, but Mac, I realize, is fully serious.
His eyes freaking smolder as he stares at me, dropping from my eyes down my face, landing on my lips.
“It looks like a man who can’t tear his eyes away from you,” he says.
As if on command, my own lips part for a moment before I remember myself and snap them shut again.
“Like a man,” he says, lifting his hand up to brush his fingers against my cheek, “who looks for any excuse to touch you.”
“Mac,” I croak, laughing nervously as he scrapes his thumb against my cheekbone.
Then he pulls his hand away. He leans back in his seat but holds his thumb out so I can see. There’s a flaky piece of pastry there. “Quiche,” he says.
Heat floods my cheeks. I clear my throat, more than once, willing my heart to quit slamming against my ribs like a damn timpani.
“Oh.” Before I can think of something infinitely more clever to say, Mac picks up my pen, holding it in front of me with a sexy-ass smirk. “You want to write any of this down?”
I snatch the pen from him.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
The front door opens just then. I glance up to see a group of beautiful women filing into the bar. They look to be around my age—mid to late twenties—with long hair, tight jeans, and high-heeled boots. They’re composed and graceful and everything I’m not.
That old, tight feeling floods back. It intensifies when Mac glances over his shoulder at them. But Mac only gives them a passing glance before pointing his chin at Lana.
When he turns back, his expression almost looks irritated. Like he wishes they hadn’t come in and interrupted the moment.
“Well, guess you better get back to intimidating my staff,” Mac says with a wink and a sexy little grin. “Enjoy the quiche.”
“Thank you,” I say, a little too squeakily. I clear my throat.
When he’s gone, I touch my cheek where his hand was.
The women at the table lift their glasses, and it takes me a moment to realize they’re toasting me. “Damn, girl,” one says.
I grin, lifting my own water.
But after taking a sip, I hold my pen over the paper.
What the hell was that? I write in my notebook.
That night, before Nate comes down to the table for supper, I ask Mac how it’s going with him. They’ve been out together for the past three nights, and I’ve been dying to check in with Mac about it. This is the first moment we’ve had alone, if you don’t count today at the bar. Which I don’t. I can’t think too hard about it, or I’ll lose my ability to speak around Mac altogether.
Mac tells me, glancing toward the stairs every now and again. I smile when he finishes. “That explains why Nate seems to be a little lighter on his feet heading to school this week.”
Mac nods, looking hopeful. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.”
A beat passes, then Mac says, “I’m sorry. I wish those girls could see you now.”
I laugh. “They’re probably doing just fine.”
“Yeah, but you’re doing better.”
“Am I?”
Mac frowns. “Yes?” He says it like I’d be crazy not to believe it. “You run your own multi-million-dollar business.”
“Two million in revenues is barely multi-million.”
Mac folds his arms.
“Okay. Fine.” I am proud of that. “I just don’t feel like I’m in with the big boys yet.”
“You are a big boy. Take it from a literal big boy.”
I snort-laugh. Then I ask, “Did you look me up?”
“Of course I did. I don’t just let anyone give me advice.”
I don’t remind him that he gave me the job on the spot.
Mac pulls the food out of the oven, testing it by popping a perfectly roasted carrot into his mouth.
“Nate!” he hollers. “Dinner!”
I can’t help staring at Mac’s lips as he blows on another carrot. The shape of his perfectly bowed lip through the dusting of his mustache hair.
He pulls the carrot back. “Open up.”
I oblige, and he tosses the carrot at me. I have to dip, but I catch it. It’s hot on my tongue.
“Good girl,” Mac says.
My heart nearly stops. I think of the letters on Chris’s shirt. I’m not sure if it’s him realizing he said those words or his eyes on my mouth as I pull my tongue back into my mouth, but when Nate comes barreling down the stairs a moment later, he turns around fast.
I swallow hard, my heart pulsing in my chest.
A few minutes later, Mac dishes out the food, which smells incredible. It’s a roast with sweet herbed vegetables.
“Nate,” Mac says. “Shelby’s successful, right?”
He’s still on about that. It’s like he won’t let go until he’s convinced I believe it. He won’t let me meet his eyes.
“I dunno,” Nate says. “She’s got fancy clothes.”
I laugh, both at that observation being Nate’s signal that I’m successful, and at him calling my clothes fancy. “What are you talking about?”
“Those inside jackets,” Nate says.
“Blazers,” Mac says wisely. He cuts into his slice of roast. “You dress like those women in the Sears catalogs.”
“The Sears—” I nearly choke on my caramelized parsnip. “Do they even make those catalogs anymore?”
“They did when I was a teenager.” Mac’s lips twitch, like the Sears catalog was something salacious.
I have to stifle my laughter.
Just then, an alarm blares from Nate’s room. “Crap,” he says. “Forgot to save my game.” He dashes up the stairs.
With Nate temporarily gone, I lower my voice and say, “You know, I heard this comedian once who talked about how he used to spend…special time with the Sears catalog since he lived in a small town. He said the store that sold the dirty magazines knew his parents, so he couldn’t go in and?—”
I cut myself off, because Mac’s chewing his food with a knowing smirk.
“Oh my God.” I laugh. “Really? The Sears catalog was your porn?”
“Absolutely.”
I crack up then, laughing so hard I have to take a swig of my wine to get my food down.
“What’s a Sears catalog, anyway?” Nate asks.
Mac does choke then. Neither of us noticed him come back downstairs.
I slide Mac’s glass of water toward him, praying Nate didn’t hear the part I said a moment before. “Uh, well, before the internet,” I say, “people used to?—”
Mac’s eyes go wide.
“People used to order clothes from a book that came in the mail.”
“Oh God,” Nate says with a look of horror on his face. As he bends down to shovel food into his mouth, Mac gently shoves my foot under the table.
Pinching my lips to keep from laughing, I shove him back. Then he hooks his leg around mine, his big socked foot warm against my ankle.
This time he doesn’t let go.
Heat rises in my cheeks. If I try to get away, I’ll bang my leg on the table and Nate will see we’re foot wrestling.
So I stay like that, even though my nerves are suddenly popping like firecrackers at being so close to Mac. We’re literally entangled.
“So,” Nate says as he pushes his empty plate away from him. “Are you leaving tomorrow?”
The mood around the table immediately sobers. The question’s for me. We told Nate my stay had been extended a couple of days earlier in the week. He’d been happy about it.
I remember when Nate asked me something similar not so long ago, like he wanted me to leave.
Now both father and son look at me, waiting for my answer.
I swallow like there are rocks in my throat.
“Actually,” Mac says, his eyes on his food as he spears another bite. “I think Ben said something about those guys doing something to the plumbing. It’s going to take him a few more days to get it fixed. Possibly a couple of weeks.” He glances at me. “You could stay there, but…I think it’s going to be loud. Workers all over the place. They’ll probably have to cut open some walls.”
“Can you stay a little longer?” Nate asks, his eyes full of hope.
My chest squeezes. This boy. He’s going to break my heart before his father does.
I’m shocked at my own thoughts.
Mac meets my eyes again. “Can you? Or are you sick of us?”
Sick of them? I can’t think of any place I’ve ever felt more at home. Even as a kid.
I look between father and son, both of them watching me with an intensity that crowds my chest in the best possible way. Growing up, my parents were rarely home. Dinners were cold and quiet, the walls stark. As an adult, my condo in Vancouver is comfortable. But it’s only me there. I’ve never lived in a place where my heart jumps when the door opens. No place has been filled with laughter and amazing food. Nobody there has left a bell in my room for when I feel scared.
Nobody acts like they’re all tough and unfeeling but then foot-wrestles me under the table.
“No,” I say softly. “I’m not sick of you.”
But I hesitate as I think about Diane and how she said she took the ATV crew because she needed the business.
“They’ve got insurance,” Mac says, reading my mind. “They’ll be okay.”
Relief melts my last reserves. “Okay, then,” I say. I smile. “Thank you, Mac.”
Mac grunts. But when his foot brushes mine again under the table, neither of us moves apart.