Chapter 9
Maisie
Don’t cry. They’re just clothes, so don’t you dare cry.
But they’re not just clothes.
I stand beside an oversized brown box, nearly full to the brim, wiping the tears rolling down my cheeks with the paper towel Elias pressed into my hand.
“Thanks.” I give Elias a watery smile.
I already had a near breakdown thinking that Elias would hit me or scream at me for breaking the egg the way Derek would have. But Elias had been so sweet. He’d broken through my panic by breaking an egg and reassuring me it was okay. That no one was going to punish me for a mistake.
Elias shrugs as if it’s nothing, but it’s not nothing to me.
“Thank you, Nico,” I say once I’ve gotten control of my tears. “You didn’t have to do this for me. No one did.”
Nico pats my arm, and unlike at the diner where I would dread his friendly pats on the arm that I never did tell him made me want to run, I don’t recoil or lean away. He did something so incredible for me that even my subconscious knows I don’t need to be afraid of him.
“I was just the delivery guy,” Nico says, his expression sheepish as he scratches his jaw. “I may have tucked a few bits in there for you.” He lifts his hands, palms toward me. “Not much. Very little. Just…”
I smile, blinking back tears when he starts pulling items from the box and proving his idea of ‘very little’ is not even close to being little at all.
Elias subtly passes me another paper towel once I’ve soaked through the first, and I take it with a grateful smile, trying not to stare at his bare chest the way I keep wanting to.
“You have a mix of different-sized clothes in here,” Nico says, recapturing my attention. “Cheryl at the boutique next door to your apartment donated a bunch of clothes as well.”
Cheryl should hate my guts after my ex nearly burned down her store while he was trying to kill me.
As Nico digs through the box, pointing out which local brought what and showing me the strawberry or vanilla toiletry products so I can decide which type I like best, Elias quietly gets to work making breakfast for us.
By the time Nico is waving goodbye with a firm reminder to rest for however long I need it, that my job isn’t going anywhere, Elias has bacon and pancakes with a glass jar of Canadian maple syrup for us on the table after carrying the box up to my room while I walked Nico to the door.
Elias had asked Nico if he wanted to stay for breakfast, but he refused. He had to get back to the diner to help Winston before the lunchtime rush hit.
“Sorry, I meant to help with breakfast,” I say, taking a seat at the table.
“I was trying to impress you before, if you couldn’t tell,” he says, taking the seat beside me.
“The locals were really generous in giving me so many things.” They had no reason to help, but so many of them did.
Elias hums. “This town is full of good people. We all like it here.”
He takes a sip of his orange juice and digs into his breakfast while I pick at mine. “Wyatt said you had a job offer in Florida.”
“Yeah.” He avoids my gaze. “It’s up in the air right now.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
He shakes his head. “That’s a conversation for another time.
We can all talk about it over dinner one night, but for now.
” He points his finger at my plate. “Eat up, and I’ll show you the house.
Maybe we could watch a little TV in the living room before I drive us into town for a late lunch at the diner with the others. ”
“That sounds good.”
I should go upstairs, change out of Elias’s shirt, and dig through the box to pull out some proper clothes. There were some pretty cotton dresses that felt great against my skin when I picked through them.
But I’m in no hurry to change. And if hanging out today might involve snuggling on the couch with Elias, and he might hug me again, I’d like that so much better with fewer clothes between his hands and my skin.
When he tucked me against his chest before Nico arrived, it had felt like a homecoming.
Like a safe, warm place, I never wanted to leave.
Even now, I don’t just smell his scent on me.
Molasses and dark chocolate have imprinted on me.
My mind is reliving his hands on my bare ass, and the sexy groan he’d growled right into my mouth when he says, “Maisie?”
I jump. “Sorry?”
He looks concerned, then his eyes dip, take in my red cheeks, and, with how hot my face feels, they're definitely red. A hint of a smile curls his lips. As if he knows my thoughts weren’t on something sad or painful, but something hot.
He touches his lips to mine. “Eat, baby, and let me take care of you today, okay?”
Call me weak for not thinking too long or too hard before I agree, but being taken care of feels too damn good to refuse. “Okay.”
Breakfast goes down far too easily.
Elias touches his toes against my ankle, and when I don’t move my foot away, he leaves it there, his foot against mine, his elbow occasionally brushing my shoulder as he eats.
I never thought of breakfast as intimate. In my mind, that was a candlelight dinner with roses in small glass vases. But this meal is… sweet. Romantic and intimate with a man who cooked it for me to impress me, and who keeps finding innocent reasons to touch me.
As we eat, Elias tells me about the farmhouse they rented.
“We bitched and moaned about it being thirty minutes out of town at first,” he explains, “but there weren’t that many motel rooms left since we got here from our last job in Arizona after everyone else. But we looked at this place and just about fell in love.”
It’s a family home that I wouldn’t have thought four big construction workers would opt for over something simple and easy to maintain. And they have been maintaining it. There’s no crap tossed everywhere, and all the cabinets were clean and well-ordered when I had a peek in them earlier.
Derek expected me to clean up after him, cook all his meals, and practically be his mother.
It’s why I went on strike from cooking after he went to jail, and I hightailed it out of Oregon.
Microwave meals and easy dinners became something I reveled in.
I ate out of the container, ate standing up, left dishes in the sink in my motel, and let myself do all the things that I could never do with Derek watching and judging my every move.
After we’ve eaten, Elias is grabbing my plate and empty OJ glass before I can lift a finger. I watch him with a smile, cradling my mug of hot coffee between my palms as he fills me in about his life in Missouri with his three older sisters and construction worker father.
As I watch him, I remember how good it felt when he held me in his arms, my pebbled nipples against the hard warmth of his chest, his deep, drugging kisses, and his knowing touch as his strong, firm fingers played with the globes of my ass.
He’d been lifting me onto the counter before Nico arrived. My thighs had been spreading on their own, with no prompting from him. We would have fucked on the kitchen counter, and despite my insistence on not wanting a relationship, I hadn’t done a thing to stop him.
I got used to being alone. I thought after leaving Derek and the divorce was final, that I’d stay alone, but being in a man’s arms had felt so good. And not just when he was kissing me. When he was hugging me to comfort me.
“You’re tempting me to kiss you again, beautiful.”
Elias’s soft words startle me. Good thing I’d finished my coffee, or I’d have spilled it all down myself. “Huh?”
I’m not sure when he finished cleaning up from our breakfast, but the counters are clear and everything put away. He leans against the sink, arms folded over his bare chest, studying me with hooded amber eyes.
“How am I doing that?” I set my empty mug down, playing coy.
“There’s a look in your eyes that says you like what you see.”
“I do like what I see,” I tell him shyly.
He uncrosses his arms and offers me his hand. “Come here, beautiful.”
Curious if his gruff order will lead to another kiss or a hug, I get to my feet and walk over to him.
Widening his stance to make room for me between his muscled thighs, he wraps his arms around me, tucking me against his chest and kissing the corner of my mouth. “You are free to touch or kiss anything in this kitchen.”
“Even if that thing includes you?”
He grins down at me. “Especially if that thing includes me.”
He follows his tempting words with a kiss so distracting that I’m ready to crawl into his lap and let him do anything he wants to me. That’s how my body feels when he touches me.
Like it’s his.
Like I belong to him.
And that’s dangerous.
I ran from Derek. He found me. The fire he set in my apartment is a warning I can never let myself forget. Elias could pay for protecting me with his life. I can’t let them do that.
I pull away from Elias when it’s the last thing I want to do. “Can you show me the house now?” I pretend I don’t see the tiny furrow between his brow.
Reluctantly, he takes his hands off me, and I edge away from him with a firm mental reminder that it might feel good when Elias touches me as if he knows exactly what I like, but it isn’t safe to let myself give in to my wants. Derek could kill him trying to get to me.
“Sure.” He straightens. “There’s a workshop out back. Wyatt is private about who goes in there, but I can show you all the rooms in the house.”
“What kind of workshop?” I ask as he leads the way out of the kitchen.
“Uh...” He scratches the back of his neck.
The action makes his pecs pop and causes my pussy to tighten. After a heated look at my breasts, he refocuses his attention on my face, and I cross my arms over my chest, pretending my nipples didn’t just pebble right in front of him.
He continues, “He’s pretty private about that too. He’ll tell you about it, though. Just ask.”
I doubt that. But I smile as if I believe him and let him show me around the gorgeous farmhouse they call home.