Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
“ I ’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Nate watched Stella flailing her arms as she ran around the tiny office. She looked like a frantic bird about to take flight, and as fast as she was flapping her arms, he half expected her feet to lift off the ground. Like the Taylor Swift song that now played on her Bluetooth speaker said, she really needed to calm down. This really wasn’t a big deal.
“Stell—”
She shoved a wad of paper towels into his face, and the taste of blood and paper mixed in his mouth. She grabbed his forearm and walked him to her desk chair. It groaned under his weight as his knees rose to shoulder height. Except, his knees didn’t rise as much as his butt sank because this thing had the lumbar support of a beanbag chair.
She bolted out of the office and down the hall before he got the chance to tell her he was fine—or he would be, at least, once he got away from her. There weren’t many perks of being a werewolf, but being able to heal himself was a pretty good one. Not that it did him a bit of good right now. Not when he didn’t know how long she’d be gone.
While his brother had the power to heal others, Nate could only heal himself. That was why he was always trying to prevent disasters from happening. But there was no way he would have anticipated the wallop he’d just gotten at the literal hands of his boss.
So, he sat there, nose throbbing, wondering how long it took for a black eye to form. If the pain pulsing in his face was any indication, not much longer.
“Okey dokey,” Stella said as she returned, the high-pitched words contradicting her wide eyes and flushed skin. “Lower those tissues so I can fix you.”
“I’m really okay, Stella.” He looked down at the wad of paper towels in his hands, wondering if she’d handed him a wad of tissue paper for the way the blood soaked through the material and onto his hands.
She shook her head. “No, look at all the blood. I need you to tip your head up.”
He did as he was asked, though he was pretty sure leaning forward was the way to go. But again, he’d never let an injury last this long, so what did he really know? He played along because he figured the faster he complied, the sooner this would all be over. And he wanted it to be over, he thought, as he tipped his head back and closed his eyes. She sure packed a punch with her…well, punch.
“This will take care of it.”
He never really got a good look at what this was. But when she shoved this up his nose, and he felt the tickle of two strings on his upper lip, it didn’t take him too long to solve the mystery.
“Did you just—is there a tampon up my nose?”
“Two,” she said with a nod as she rose from her squatted position, seemingly satisfied with what she’d done.
“But…why?”
She looked at him over her shoulder, her body blocking whatever she was doing at her desk. She bit her lip, and he didn’t know why, but he felt a tingle in his own. “I didn’t want you to bleed out.” Her voice was soft, flat, and he didn’t miss the droop of her head. For all the gusto she’d displayed when she shoved the tampon up his nose, she’d done a complete one-eighty in a minute’s time.
“I’m not going to bleed out.” Even if I was, I could keep that from happening. You know, if you left the room for longer than a minute.
Was she…worried about him? Something warmed in his chest at the thought. But of course she was worried about him. Probably worried she’d violated some workplace protocol, and he was going to threaten a lawsuit for a broken nose. That was quite a wallop she’d given him, though he’d deserved it.
Should he have told her he’d made it halfway home before he realized he’d forgotten his phone on the front desk? Yes. Should he have maybe popped by her office and let her know she wasn’t the only one in the building? Also, yes. Though, in his defense, that was what he’d been doing when she’d punched him. But then…he’d just watched her.
The truth was, he’d watched her a lot since he’d started working at the salon. He’d watched her come back from lunches with her now-ex boyfriend, her shoulders slumped as she trudged through the door. He’d watched her become a little more like herself each day after she’d dumped him.
He’d watched her because he couldn’t help it. The crush he’d harbored pretty much since the moment he’d met her was something kept at bay, what with her relationship and then subsequent breakup followed by her I don’t want to be in a relationship ever again speech. In fact, he was pretty sure his crush was over, that he’d tamped it down so far and for so long that it couldn’t still be a factor. And yet, here he was, nursing an injury all because he still couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
“Maybe I should take you to the hospital, or I’ll just…let me get something else,” she said before ducking out of the room again.
Nate groaned as he tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling once again, wincing as he bumped the wall behind him.
How had he gotten here? It'd started innocently enough. He’d only come back here because it sounded like someone was in distress. Or dying a slow and painful death. How was he to know that was her singing voice? Sure, she was forever be-bopping around the salon, snapping her fingers and rapping to songs like “Baby Got Back” and “Hot in Herre.” Now he understood why she stuck to songs of the mostly spoken-word variety.
He couldn’t look away. And not in the way that people couldn’t look away from a train wreck. No, this was something different. Hypnotizing. Watching her long blonde hair trail like ribbons of gold with each whip of her head put him in a state he’d never been. Strange, he was in no hurry to break out of it.
And then he saw her face—well, just the side of it. But enough to show the smile that didn’t meet her eyes. Not even close. Like her mask had slipped just the tiniest bit, just enough for him to notice that right now, she wasn’t as effervescent as she seemed day in and day out at the salon. That maybe she was, as the song repeated, fake happy .
His muscles hardened, the first sign that his body was taking the reins, gaining control of whatever was about to happen, because this was his kryptonite—wanting to fix people.
Only, he couldn’t.
That was why he was always trying to prevent disaster—he was of no use once it struck. He was nothing like his brother. Not by a long shot.
He clenched his fists, two balls of tightly wound tension fighting the impulse to shift—something that always happened when he thought someone was in danger. Only…she wasn’t in danger, unless you counted whiplash or damage to her own eardrums. All likely in this scenario, but nothing that should have wound him up like this. So, why this sudden impulse to save her?
“This oughtta do,” she said with a smile closer to the one he’d gotten used to seeing on a daily basis. She walked over with a container of something and knelt next to him again.
“Is that…?” He tilted his head to the side to read the side of the box. “Is that your dinner?”
She shrugged. “It was going to be, but you need this a lot more than I do.”
He was just about to argue that the frozen chicken fried rice had more business being in her stomach than on his face when she pressed the ice-cold box to the side of his nose. The frosty burn combined with his sore skin, and he took in a sharp breath.
“Oh, did I hurt you again?”
“No. It doesn’t hurt.”
Liar. He felt pain alright. Just not in his face. There was this strange twisting in his gut, something he wished he could ignore. But between that and the fluttering in his chest, he wondered if maybe she was right, and he really needed a doctor.
“That’s good, then. Let me just…” She raised her hand to his cheek, her soft skin snagging on every sprig of stubble on his face. “Look at me, Nate.”
Her voice was quiet, softer than the lovie he’d had—and accidentally tore to shreds—as a child. The warmth of her fingertips seeped through his skin, a soothing contrast to the frozen dinner she held to his face with her other hand. His breathing slowed, and it wasn’t his imagination, but hers did too. He felt it on his face, the spicy pumpkin and vanilla scents swirling around him with her every exhale.
She leaned closer, her eyes unblinking, holding his with such intensity he had no chance of escaping their grasp. Had they always been this shade of cerulean blue? She held up a small flashlight and moved it from eye to eye, back and forth, and he realized it wasn’t so bad getting taken care of like this. In fact, he very much liked it, which was not a good thing.
He closed his fists, letting his fingernails bite his palm. The memory of his shredded Winnie the Pooh bear should have been enough to snap him from…whatever this was.
He swallowed, an attempt to buy himself a second to pull the increasingly thickening air into his lungs. Were they having…a moment? He mentally ran through the list of reasons why they couldn’t, why they shouldn’t, have any moments besides the boss/employee moments they usually did. Why their conversations needed to stick to schedules, supply orders, and holiday hours.
But when she inched forward ever so slightly, the reasons blurred like his vision temporarily had after the swift blow to his head.
“You’re good,” she chirped, shooting up from the floor like a Roman candle launching into the sky on the Fourth of July. “I don’t see any signs of a concussion.”
“Oh,” he responded, hating the disappointment that laced the world’s shortest sentence. Because what was disappointing? That he didn’t have a concussion? He wasn’t so sure, seeing as his mind had been playing tricks on him from the moment she started examining him. “I didn’t know you had medical training.”
“Only some basic first aid. It’s always nice to be able to help people in need.”
“Yeah, it must be,” he replied, his shoulders slumping a bit. He didn’t know how that felt, but his brother sure did. Time to switch the subject before his bitterness permeated the room. “I really am sorry…about all of this.” He looked away from her toward the door, noticing the drops of blood on the tile. “I shouldn’t have snuck up on you.”
“Please.” She waved him off. “I’m super jumpy as it is. There was no reason for me to act that way.”
“Of course there was. It could have been anyone breaking in here.” He furrowed his brow, remembering how her despondent expression made him want to save her—to protect her—from whatever was bothering her. Rubbing his nose, he realized what a fool he’d been. Stella didn’t need a protector. “You really do have a mean left hook.”
Her cheeks reddened, the color migrating south to find its home on the slope of her long neck. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. I wish I packed a punch like that.”
It wasn’t his imagination. Her eyes roamed across his chest and down his right arm. He fought the urge to flex, though he wasn’t sure why he even thought to. He shouldn’t have wanted to impress her. But he did.
She rounded the desk and stacked a couple papers on top of one another. “My dad made me take a self-defense class before I went to college.”
“You got a lot out of it, that’s for sure.”
“I never thought I’d actually have to use anything I learned.” She reached for a paper at the top of the desk and muted a series of curses as she knocked over her mug. Dark-brown liquid sprinted across the desk, talking a handful of papers as its soggy victims before he could scoop up those left unscathed.
She grabbed the roll of paper towels she’d brought in moments ago to stop his bloody nose. “Well, I can punch with the best of them, but clearly, that’s where my coordination ends,” she mumbled to herself.
Her dance moves from earlier confirmed that theory, but he wasn’t about to say that, not when her posture deflated like a jack-o-lantern a week after Halloween. “I don’t know about that,” he lied.
Once she’d dried off the desk, he moved to put the papers back when his eyes snagged on a blueprint.
It was an obvious rendering of the salon. But where the gray, bulky receptionist’s desk would have been was a shiny, brass table with scrolls of iron as the feet. And all the overhead fixtures and lights around the mirrors matched the brass, giving the space a modernized yet retro feel. The black-and-white checkered tile was gone in favor of a marbled floor speckled with flecks of gold. Nate wasn’t one who watched home improvement shows. Heck, he wasn’t even sure of the difference between granite or quartz. But even he admitted to himself that this was stunning.
“That’s the salon, right?”
Her head snapped up from the desk, her eyes wide and unblinking. “That’s…tha—that’s…” she stuttered. And there she was, wildly flapping her arms again, knocking over the coffee mug again. This time, at least it was empty. She ripped the paper out of his hands, wrinkling it in the process. “That’s nothing. Nothing at all. Just something I was messing around with on the computer a while back.”
It wasn’t nothing , unless she had a side gig working at Ryan Remodeling when she wasn’t at the salon. Yeah, he’d seen the logo at the bottom of the page. Was remodeling the salon something she was considering? Made sense. Since she’d taken over the salon from its previous owner a couple years ago, she hadn’t updated a thing, according to Lucy.
“It looks really nice.”
She stood behind the desk, arms crossed, and a toothless smile plastered across her face that looked like the one Sheldon Cooper flashed when he faked being happy. No doubt he thought Stella was a beautiful woman, but this smile was starting to freak him out a little. “It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.” Her head shook like a bobblehead doll on the dashboard of a car driving down a gravel road. Suddenly, the things Nate had seen in the back storage room a few weeks back made a lot more sense.
“Okay,” he said with a shrug. He bent to pick up what looked like a cutout from a brochure, one he’d seen on her desk a while back when she’d called him in to discuss some inventory issues. In the center was a chandelier that managed to sparkle like diamonds without looking gaudy. “This is really nice,” he said, handing the picture to her. If this was something she wanted to add to the salon, he was all for it. It was certainly better than the large globe light that, at certain angles, looked like butt cheeks hanging from the ceiling.
“Thanks.” She took the photo from his hands and shrugged. “Just something I imagined for the salon. More of a dream, really.”
“A dream? This lighting fixture?” He cocked his head and regarded the photo. “I’m no electrician, but I don’t see why you couldn’t get that hung pretty easily.”
“It’s not… I just… Sometimes dreams are better left in here,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “Sometimes it’s just better that way.”
“Why, though?”
“It’s just easier.”
Okay, so he wasn’t the most adept conversationalist, but even he knew they weren’t talking about chandeliers anymore. But she scooped up the plans in one fell swoop, and like that, the conversation was over.
Clearly, she didn’t want to talk about whatever all this was, and he wasn’t going to pry. Besides, leaning into this feeling of wanting to help her, wanting to solve her problems, wanting to be someone she could lean on wasn’t healthy—for either of them. What she needed was some privacy, and he sure could go for some distance.
“Are you all packed for the big weekend?” she asked as she took the paper from his hand.
So much for getting some distance.
How had he forgotten about the long weekend Lucy and his brother had arranged the week before their wedding? He hadn’t, actually. It was all he’d thought about for the past couple weeks. How had Lucy pitched it to him? Think of it as a five-day bridal shower full of games and fun! And that was exactly why he’d willed any thoughts related to the upcoming trip to hop on a giant broomstick and whoosh on outta here.
“I’m a…a last-minute packer.” Or a reluctant packer who was still in denial about the trip.
“Oh, me too. But Lucy keeps asking me over and over if I’m ready.” A distant smile grew on her face as she slowly sat in the desk chair. “She really is so darn happy. They both are.”
“Yeah,” he replied, his voice a little rough from the thickness in his throat. But that was the truth of it—his brother really was happy. Ridiculously happy. And even if thinking about how he’d also been that happy once made the center of his chest ache a little, he was one-hundred percent happy his brother had found something that he never had—someone to accept him for who he truly was.
“I should probably get going,” he said as he hitched his thumb over his shoulder toward the door.
“Me too. I think I’ve been here long enough today.”
“I could walk you home, if you’d like.”
“That’s sweet of you, but I actually drove today because I had all the decorations to bring. So, I’m good. You be sure to get some ice on that nose of yours, okay? I’d hate for you to be all bruised up.”
Funny. She had no idea how bruised up he was on the inside. How much pain he’d endured for so long that a fist to the face hurt a heck of a lot less than what had happened to him several years ago.
And what about her? There was obviously something bothering her about the salon, but was it really his job to fix it? Maybe not. But as she gathered the papers and slipped out of the office, he noticed the photo of the chandelier flutter to the ground. And for reasons he couldn’t quite figure out, he picked it up and slipped it into his pocket.