Chapter 5
Knox
Reclining in my seat, I ignore the plate of food in front of me as I watch Maisie step behind the counter.
Something bothered her before she walked away. A thought or memory. A bad one. Before Wyatt asked how she could remember such a specific order, she looked pleased to see us. And there had definitely been a hint of a smile on her lips as she approached our table.
“She’s not as scared of us,” I say.
“Of you,” Hunter corrects me, picking up a fry and dipping it into his ketchup. “Which, to be fair, you are pretty intimidating.”
I glare at my friend. “I am not intimidating.”
“You threatened to launch a guy through the window,” Elias says dryly, “stuff like that is going to leave a lasting impression on her.”
“He was trying to grab her. What else was I supposed to do?”
“You know, there is a thing called diplomacy,” Wyatt drawls.
I raise my brow at him. “And what diplomatic way would you have dealt with a guy who was eyeing Maisie like dessert and getting ready to drag her into his lap while she was looking fucking terrified?”
Tawny brown eyes darken, and his hand tightens around his coffee cup.
“Exactly,” I say, victorious. My eyes return to Maisie. “We made a promise.”
“She’ll never be afraid again,” Wyatt says in a low voice, the hum of an increasingly busy diner drowning out any would-be eavesdroppers.
“I intend to keep it,” I say.
“We all do,” Elias says.
Hunter chews his French fry, swallows, and asks me, “What did he say when you turned up at his motel room?”
Discovering he was a tourist didn’t surprise any of us.
No local with an attitude like that would last long in Rios.
Sheriff Watson would have paid them a visit to remind them to keep their hands to themselves in public.
He doesn’t like trouble in his town. He also doesn’t like to wait until trouble lands in his lap, so he’s not above going to a person directly and giving them a subtle warning that he’s watching and to save him additional paperwork by avoiding whatever it is they’re thinking of doing.
It’s just one of the reasons we’re all reluctant to leave Rios. Not the main reason, but a big one.
I shrug, my mind flashing back to the college student who’d tried to slam his motel room door in my face when he saw who’d come knocking. “Obviously, he wasn’t happy. I just made it clear—”
“We made it clear,” Elias cuts in with a pointed look at me.
I roll my eyes. “We made it clear that if he feels the need to go to the diner, he should collect his order from the counter and take his food to go.”
“Surprised he didn’t go to the sheriff,” Hunter mutters, picking up his BLT.
“The sheriff will care more about his grabbing habit than the fact we warned him to keep his hands to himself,” Wyatt says, lifting his mug to his lips. “And he’d have made the same visit as you did.”
I lift my brow.
Wyatt adds, “Maybe without the threat of violence if he doesn’t learn to keep his hands to himself.”
Elias chuckles. “Love that you added the maybe. Anyway, the guy has bounced.”
None of us had seen him around town since he tried to grab Maisie, and her confirming she hadn’t seen him either had been about what we’d expected. But we’re working on-site all day. Just because we scared him out of town doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t come back to hassle Maisie some more.
“She nearly called us the hot guys at table five.” Hunter grins.
Our table isn’t that close to the counter, but there have been times over the last month when the radio station changes songs at the perfect time to catch fragments of conversation between Lina and Maisie.
One of the nuggets we’ve picked up is that Maisie is as attracted to us as we are to her, even if she’s determined to hide it.
“That means nothing if she doesn’t trust us,” Wyatt says, having cleared half his plate while the rest of us talked.
Hunter loses his smile.
Elias makes a face. “Way to kill the mood, Comeaux,” he mutters.
“Just being realistic,” Wyatt says. “I don’t just want her to find us hot. I want her to know she can trust us.”
We all want her, but we’re four big men, and Maisie is petite and skittish. He’s right to be concerned. She might never trust us.
As we all dig into our lunch, my eyes slide to Maisie, smiling shyly at Lina when the other waitress nudges her. She’s beautiful. Too beautiful not to catch a guy’s eye everywhere she goes. As if she feels me staring, she glances toward me. I look away.
We’ve all been taking it slow with her, getting her used to seeing us.
Occasionally, we drop bits about ourselves into our small talk when she tops up our coffee, brings us our meals, or clears our plates.
Slowly, she’s started revealing bits about herself to us.
Slower than we’d like, but she’s worth waiting for.
The bell over the door chimes as it swings open, letting in a cool gust of air into the diner. I nod at Sheriff Watson, and he nods back as he walks in on his way to the counter.
“What’s happening with the sheriff?” I ask Wyatt who’s pushed his empty plate forward and is sipping on his coffee.
Wyatt likes to make sure Maisie gets to work safely in the morning, since she walks from her apartment to the diner. It’s only a ten-minute walk, but if anyone is going to get to her, it’ll be on her way to work or home again.
During the day, the rest of us take turns walking up from the construction site to check on Maisie during our breaks. That had been the reason I’d been standing outside the diner when a guy tried to grab her.
After work, one of us makes sure she gets back to her apartment safely. Only when she’s in her apartment, with the door closed and the light on, do I relax enough to go home.
She’s our main topic of conversation. Namely, how we can convince this shy, skittish but gorgeous omega that we’d burn down the world to protect her.
Wyatt puts down his cup with a thud. “Sheriff’s not willing to do anything.”
I scowl. “But she’s in trouble. He saw her bruises, right?”
Wyatt nods. “He asked her if she needed help, and that’s all he can do. There’s nothing else I can say to him to get him to do more.”
Hunter frowns. “So we’re just supposed to wait until whoever hurt her tracks her down?”
“She’s been here a month, and there’s been no sign of any trouble except that prick who tried to put his hand on her,” I say. “If anything was going to happen, it would’ve happened already, right?”
No one says a word because none of us is willing to let our guard down. The one time we do could be the one time Maisie needs us.
My eyes slide back to the pretty waitress moving around the tables with a smile as she tops up coffees and removes empty plates.
Everything about her calls to me. Her scent.
Blackberries and wild honey. Her peachy skin.
Even the way she has a habit of tucking a strand of hair behind her ear when she’s nervous is pretty.
She does that a lot whenever the bell over the door rings.
Her shoulders tense, and I don’t just see her fear; I feel it.
“Hey!”
My body rocks from the force of Elias’s nudge.
I rip my eyes off Maisie to scowl at him. “What?”
He snorts. “You weren’t blinking.”
My scowl turns into a frown. “I was absolutely blinking. We finish the condo in about a month, then what?”
Hunter tosses his last fry into his mouth, chews, and swallows. “And?”
“Wyatt already told her about the Florida job,” I remind him.
Hunter shrugs. “So we tell her we’re staying.”
He makes it sound easy, but it isn’t.
If we tell Maisie we’re staying, she’ll want to know why. We can’t predict what will happen after we say we want her. Will she feel like we’re putting pressure on her, expecting something more from her than she’s willing to give?
The Florida job is good money. The best paid job we’ve been offered.
It even comes with a fully paid apartment.
Management couldn’t have made it any clearer that they’re pulling out all the stops to get us to say yes.
We won’t just be rocking up to work onsite; we’ll be practically managing the resort build for the two years it’s expected to take.
It’s the sort of job we’d have signed up for without hesitation.
Until Maisie.
And not just Maisie.
The perfect combination of Maisie and a town that, for the first time, none of us are ready to leave. We’ve been traveling from job to job for years. Some places have seemed perfect, but as we near project completion, we’ve looked at each other and known it was time to move on.
That isn’t happening here.
Before Maisie, we’d started talking about setting up a construction company and basing it here. Some places you arrive, and it feels like a homecoming. That was Rios for us.
Then we rolled into the diner one lunchtime, our stomachs growling, ready to order the big sandwiches and tasty fries we’ve all come to love, and Maisie had been hovering at the front counter. All soft and sweet in a pink uniform that brought out the pink in her cheeks.
And the bruises no amount of makeup could cover.
Maisie Lucas.
I hadn’t asked her name at the time, but I’d noticed her name badge on the front of her uniform, and afterward, we’d talked about her. About what we’d seen and about how we’d make it a habit to stop in at the diner a little more than usual, just in case whoever had hurt her paid her a visit.
“What did she say when you told her about Florida?” I ask Wyatt.
He tilts his head. “She looked… disappointed.”
“You think she wants us to stay?” Elias asks hopefully.
Wyatt shrugs. “I don’t know. I want to think that, but it’s been a month, and I hoped she’d have opened up to us much more than she has. Maybe I saw something that wasn’t there. Maybe it was wishful thinking.”
I glance at the counter, catching Maisie’s eye. She looks away, and I let out a quiet sigh. “Could be.”
I’m turning back to the table when she glances back at me, her cheeks flushing pink.
Could also not be.