Chapter 3 #2
With no idea how I got across the diner with my badly shaking knees, suddenly I’m perched on Nico’s creaky leather office chair. Knox is crouched in front of me, pressing a cold bottle of water into my hand.
I have no clue where he got the water from.
“I need to get back to work,” I say, making no move to take the bottle.
When I stand, he nudges me back into my seat. “You need ten minutes.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he’s already speaking. “Nico agreed. Lina can handle the front, and Nico will step in if she needs more help. Winston will be okay in the kitchen.”
Was Nico in here telling him all that, and I just blanked out? Maybe I do need ten minutes to pull myself together.
Winston, the forty-year-old short-order cook, only works during the busy lunch hours. If it were only Nico in the kitchen, I’d have gotten back to my feet—wobbly knees or not—and gone back to work.
As I take the bottle of water Knox offers, his fingers brush mine. My breath sticks in my throat, my eyes flying to his as the bottle slips from my grasp. His expression doesn’t change as he presses the bottle firmly into my palm.
I unscrew the lid, conscious his gaze is following the movement of the bottle from my hand to my mouth. He looks away right before I take a sip, and his attention doesn’t return to my face again until I’ve screwed the lid back on and set it on the floor beside my feet.
“Sorry you had to get involved out there,” I say.
He rakes his hand through soft-looking curly blond-brown hair. “It’s no problem.”
His lips are really pretty, kissable even when he’s pressing them together.
Not the time to be focusing on that, Maisie.
I clear my throat. “You’re early.”
I wince.
Seriously?
He cocks his head, gray-green eyes curious.
“You don’t usually come until 12,” I add when I really should have kept my mouth shut.
You sound like a stalker keeping track of his comings and goings.
But he is early. It’s only 11:00, and he’s alone. Usually, he’s with the three other alphas at table five.
His expression is a little less blank than it was a second before. “I was just passing by. Did you know that guy?”
I shake my head. “Never seen him before.”
He stands.
My back kisses my chair as all those feet and muscles eat up all the space in the room. Not literally, of course. That would be crazy. The room feels a whole lot smaller when he’s standing.
“Sorry.” He drops into a crouch as if he knows how much he just scared me. “I promise I look scarier than I am.”
“You threatened to throw a man headfirst through a window,” I feel compelled to remind him. “And that man ran away from you.” I’m surprised he remembered to grab his sunglasses before he bolted.
He averts his gaze as he scratches his jaw. “Yeah, well, I haven’t had my morning coffee yet.”
My lips twitch at his dry tone, and the need to run or hide dissipates. I wasn’t expecting a joke, but it was exactly what I needed.
“Thanks. For the water and what you did out there.” I gesture toward the partially open office door at his back, where the distant hum of radio music and conversation drifts in.
“Knox Winter. I work at the construction site down the road.”
Even if he wasn’t in the usual construction worker uniform of heavy boots, dark jeans, and a hoodie, I’d have known it already.
“Maisie Lucas. I, um, might have seen you around,” I say, as if I don’t know his full name and haven’t been hanging on Lina’s every word over the last month when she fills me in on everything she knows about the four hot alphas from table five.
He offers me his hand with a small smile.
I hesitate.
Men’s hands are… difficult. They bring to mind punches and slaps and pinches that hurt.
Nothing good. What happened in the diner changes things.
I’m used to dodging fists, not having a man threaten violence defending me.
I’d have run into a table or a wall and knocked myself clean out getting away from the man grabbing for my wrist. Then Knox was there, slipping in front of me. Protecting me.
I snatch Knox’s hand as he’s lowering it, and butterflies take flight in my belly when he closes his around mine.
“Nice to meet you, Maisie Lucas,” he says softly.
Handshakes belong in business meetings, offered up by men in suits or saved for acquaintances.
Not this one though. This one is different.
Knox’s hand doesn’t bring to mind pain I could never dodge fast enough.
His touch feels like the start of something new.
Something intimate. Maybe even something special.
I smile back when no part of me is afraid. “Nice to meet you, Knox Winter.”
With the sun setting behind me and the memory of the jerk from the diner still fresh in my mind, I make the walk back to my apartment at a near run, glancing over my shoulder so often I nearly run into two lampposts on my way back home.
I walk to work every day. It’s only ten minutes, and I don’t have the money to throw away on gas for a journey that short. If Derek finds me in Rios, I’ll need all the gas I have in my tank to get away.
Today, I wish I’d driven.
I was more shaken than I realized after I slipped out of Nico’s office and returned to work, even with a ten-minute break with Knox Winter, who filled the time telling me about the different stages of building a condo.
It was more interesting than I thought it would be, and it had everything to do with his low, husky voice and a dry sense of humor that kept surprising smiles out of me.
After I got back to work, I dropped everything I picked up.
Whenever the bell rang over the door, I nearly gave myself whiplash thinking the guy had come back with his friends to teach me a lesson. Not sure where that particular thought had come from, but it trickled into my subconscious and refused to budge.
I spent the rest of my shift working at the front counter instead of on the floor because I refused Nico’s offer to go home, and Nico proved himself truly the best manager ever by taking over my tables for me.
Knox’s size had scared me at first, but I wish he were walking beside me. I feel nervy on the street, wary and on edge. But I make it to my apartment with no problems, using my key to let myself into the building and quickly locking the door behind me before I make my way up the stairs.
The one-bedroom apartment is above the flower shop, near the bottom of Lincoln Road. Without Nico, I’d have been sleeping in the motel or maybe even in my car.
I’d been finishing my sandwich at the diner when Nico mentioned, offhand, that he was looking for a waitress.
A voice in my head had told me it was meant to be, a happenstance that the one place I wanted to stay came with a job and a chance to earn some much-needed cash.
Gas is expensive. Motels, even cheap ones, can be ruinous if you stay in one long enough.
The apartment belongs to Nico’s niece, who’s studying for a master's degree at the University of Arizona and living on campus. Her college apartment comes fully furnished, so she left most of her stuff in Rios for the two years she’ll be living down there.
Nico hadn’t been able to find anyone to take over the apartment, since tourists stop in town for a night or two, and Nico had no interest in taking on a second job by turning the apartment into an Airbnb.
It came fully furnished, with knives and forks in the drawers and sheets in the linen closet. All I needed to do was stock up on toiletries, and it was move-in ready. It was perfect. I spent the first day changing the bedding and bringing the few clothes I had from the trunk of my car.
I’d left Nevada in a blind panic. Derek had found me six months into my brand new life as a cocktail waitress in an off-the-strip casino.
I’d walked through the front door, exhausted at two in the morning, to a punch in the face, swiftly followed by a hand wrapped around my neck and my back slammed against the wall.
For six months, I’d lived a quiet, normal life.
The go-bag I’d always kept beside the front door became an object I tripped over rather than something I actively needed.
So I emptied the two changes of clothes, spare cash, a small first aid kit, along with two bottles of water and a couple of protein bars.
Essential things I would need if I had to run in a hurry.
That had been a mistake I don’t intend to make again.
At the front door, I shrug out of my denim jacket and hang it on the coat hook above my black duffel. In it, I have just enough to see me through the first couple of days if I have to run again.
As always, I check the doors and windows carefully.
I’m on the second floor of the building, but Derek is determined.
He found me in Nevada, which means he could find me in Iowa.
If he wanted to get into my apartment, he’d get in.
All the windows I locked carefully before I left for work are still locked.
There’s no sign anyone moved any of my things.
Only after I’ve confirmed that everything is exactly how I left it do I head to the bathroom to shower and wash off the smells from being in the diner for the last nine hours. I eat my breakfast and lunch for free, but dinner is my responsibility.
This is my favorite part of the day, and it delays the worst part for a little longer.
Thirty minutes later, I leave the bathroom in a cloud of steam, my skin pink, in baggy PJs, my hair left down to dry, ready to relax. Now for food.
Walking to the kitchen, I stand in front of the empty refrigerator for five minutes, then shut it with a sigh. Moving to a nearby cabinet, I pick out a box of crackers and a jar of peanut butter from the cupboard next to the sink.
I eat my simple dinner standing up in my quiet kitchen, only because it feels too sad to eat it at the table for four on my own.
Finished with my lazy meal, I clean up the crumbs and switch off the lights on my way to the bedroom.
It’s too early to go to bed, barely six o’clock, but I borrowed a book from Lina, a fantasy that I’ll read for an hour then turn out the lights.
After all the excitement of today, I want to climb into a new world with dragons and knights. A world that won’t have anything to remind me of jerks like the guy from the diner.
Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting upright in bed with the book open. The words are right in front of my face, yet all I can think about is Knox shaking my hand.
That ordinary moment felt like the start of something new. Wyatt came in earlier than usual just to talk to me. He’d never done that before. It’s as if they’ve decided to stop keeping their distance and want something more from me.
Do I want something more from them?