Chapter 15
Maisie
Knock, knock.
Flat on my back in bed, I chew my lip with my eye on my bedroom door as I consider ignoring it. I could, but I won’t. That would prove to Hunter—and myself—that what I’ve spent the last several minutes doing is less about catching up on lost sleep than hiding from him.
I get up from my bed, tugging the rising hem of my t-shirt as I cross the room to find out what Hunter wants, and it’s him. I feel it. My heart pounds with every step, and my hand shakes when I lift it to the doorknob.
You’re just answering a door. That’s it. Things don’t have to be strange or awkward because you ground your pussy against his thigh until you came and he—
Stop. Stop that right now.
My body is hot, my panties are wet, and my cheeks are burning, though not with embarrassment. I’m a thousand percent aroused all over again.
Knock, knock.
“You okay, Maisie?” Hunter calls out, sounding worried.
He’s out there thinking something is wrong with me while I’m in here telling myself not to jump him the moment I pull my door open.
Without thinking too much about what I look like and what he might have come to my room for, I open the damn door.
Hunter, showered and dressed in a white t-shirt and low-slung black sweatpants with the ends of his dark-blond hair still damp, must have given up hoping I’d open up because he’d half-turned as if ready to leave.
This is the first time I’ve seen his hair not up in the messy bun I’d gotten used to when he’d stop in for lunch at the diner.
It’s a little shorter than my shoulder-length, darker when wet, and I can’t stop wanting to lean in closer because it smells like coconut, and I love coconut.
“Hey.” His indigo eyes go on an achingly slow, deliberate, and pussy-twitching journey over my body before he wrenches them up. His gaze slips past me to linger on something behind me.
Curious about what caught his attention, I peer over my shoulder, wincing at my bed. The comforter hangs off it, half on the floor. “Sorry,” I tell him automatically. “I’ll make the bed.”
As I’m apologizing for my unmade bed, I remember the mess I left in the kitchen. Making pie to say thanks loses a lot of its appeal if you leave the cleanup to the people you made the pie for. “About the mess in the kitchen…” I edge to the left, blocking the shameful state of my bed.
Hunter wrenches his gaze to my face, his cheeks pink as if embarrassed to have been caught staring. He shoves both hands into his pockets and clears his throat. “Uh… I used to live in a house full of surfers. I’ll take an unmade bed over the nasty stuff I saw on a daily basis. Can we talk?”
Torn between asking him what it was like living with a bunch of surfers, why he moved out—was it the mess?—and why he was staring at my bed if it wasn’t in disapproval, I step aside instead of leaving him hovering outside my room. “You can come in if you want?”
His gaze lingers on my unmade bed. The shield behind his eyes lifts, and I see what I missed before.
In the kitchen, while I was making a mess, baking up a storm, I pulled the last pie from the oven.
As I removed my mitts, I felt someone staring at me.
I convinced myself it was in my head; it was too early for anyone to be awake, and I’d have heard them walk down the stairs.
But I’d still turned, my instincts screaming that I wasn’t alone.
Hunter had his head against the doorway, powerful arms folded over a tanned, muscular chest. A soft smile played on his lips, and his eyes burned as he watched me. Even his “hey” had felt more heated than a simple greeting would ordinarily be.
Then I caught the tent in the front of his briefs, and all rational thought emptied out of my head. That must’ve been why I thought it was a good idea to move a hot pie pan, fresh out of the oven, along the kitchen counter with the back of my hand.
He had looked like he wanted me.
Me.
Maisie, who had never been and could never be the wife Derek wanted.
Maisie, who was too stupid to do anything right.
Maisie, who hadn’t felt wanted or beautiful in far too long.
Now he’s looking at my unmade bed as if he’s mentally stripped the clothes from my body and has me pinned down on it. Not as if he’s judging me for being a twenty-six-year-old woman who leaves a trail of mess in her wake.
With hunger.
“Hunter?”
Dark-blue eyes snap to my face. He catches me looking at him, and his next smile is sheepish as he scratches his hair. “Shit. Sorry.” He takes a step back as he focuses on me. “That’s, uh, probably not a good idea. How about we talk out here?”
If I were braver, I would tell him I want him as much as he seems to want me. “Sure.”
I leave the door open and follow him toward the staircase. It’s a handful of steps for him to sink onto the top, and I sit beside him. We’re two flights up, and it’s quiet downstairs.
“Hunter, is something wrong?” I ask him when he does nothing but frown down at his gray sweatpants-covered knees.
“Everyone has gone into work,” he says, angling his body to face me. “We can’t all take the day off together, but I’m staying with you at the house today.”
From my first day working at the diner, I never got the impression that they were rich.
Their clothes are casual, and this farmhouse is cozy and simple, so that they’ve discussed this and decided to use their PTO to keep me safe isn’t fair to them.
They can’t have that much personal time off as construction workers, and with the condo almost finished, their bosses must need them on site every day.
I thought Elias staying with me yesterday was a onetime thing, not a pattern of the days to come.
It sounds an awful lot like they’ve worked out a schedule to babysit me.
“Thanks, but you don’t have to do that,” I tell him with a smile. “I’d be fine here alone. Promise.”
I have never told such a big, flaming lie in my life.
I’d be terrified being thirty minutes away from town, where no one would hear me scream, even with a fancy security system that Knox can access the external camera through an app on his phone.
I would still be thirty minutes away from help if I needed it, and I don’t have a car after Derek torched mine.
If Derek found me here, he could do a lot of damage, maybe even kill me, before anyone got back to help me.
Unless there is a panic room or a cupboard full of guns Knox didn’t tell me about. Not that a gun would be helpful. Knox could load me down with guns, Rambo-style, and I’d wind up shooting a hole through my foot because I never learned how to fire a gun.
“It’s fine. And it won’t be us all the time,” Hunter says with a smile. “On the days we all have to be at work, you’ll have a deputy sitting in a patrol car outside in case Derek shows his face.”
Yeah, that’s even worse. Now I’m pulling a cop away from his job when he could be out saving someone’s life.
“That sounds really boring for him. Maybe I could go sit in the police station then?” I suggest. “Or I could hang out in Nico’s office in the diner.” Both of which sound boring to me, but at least I’m not pulling anyone away from anything important, and I can take a book to read for entertainment.
He bounces his shoulder against mine. “The sheriff has two deputies. Lawrence would only sit inside the police station waiting for a call if he weren’t sitting outside watching the house. Stop feeling guilty.”
“I’m not feeling guilty,” I lie.
He gives me a long look that conveys just how good he is at reading me.
“Okay, maybe I’m feeling a little guilty,” I concede.
“You aren’t inconveniencing anyone. Keeping you safe is something we all want to do, Lawrence included, and the best place to do that is here, away from town, where we will see your ex coming before he can finish getting out of his car.”
When he puts it like that, it’s hard to argue.
“Would it be okay to take snacks out to Lawrence when he’s parked outside?
Or maybe he could wait inside instead of sweating in his car?
I know it doesn’t get that hot in Iowa in the fall, and he’s not a dog or anything so he could always pop a window, but if he’s watching over me, he might as well do it comfortably on the couch with a cool drink in his hand and the TV on. ”
Hunter peers down at me, the corners of his eyes creasing in a smile. “You’re real sweet, Maisie Lucas. I keep asking myself how I can be this lucky that you’re sitting next to me and not some other guy.”
My stomach flips, and I feel the tops of my ears heat as I look away. “No, I’m not.”
He gives me another gentle shoulder bump. “How about we leave the deputy in his patrol car, huh? I wouldn’t want him stealing you away from me when I’m not around.”
My eyes snap to him. “You sound—”
“Jealous? Damn right I am. You might prefer a cop over a construction worker. But that’s not what I came up here to talk to you about.”
My mind flashes back to what happened between us in the kitchen this morning, and the reason I spent the last hour hiding out in my room.
He regrets it.
He’s here to tell me it was a onetime thing that will never happen again. Why else would he look at my bed as if he was imagining us having sex on it and then back away as if he was facing down a ghost?
Plastering a fake smile on my face, I get to my feet. “That’s okay. I understand.”
He circles my wrist and tugs me back. “Nope. Not what you’re thinking.
” Releasing me with a sigh, he studies me with a seriousness I wasn’t expecting.
“Wyatt is going to kick my ass for doing this, but we keep arguing about it and getting nowhere, so I figure I’ll take his pissy mood over tiptoeing around shit and just say what I’m thinking. ”
“Say what?”
“None of us wants to take the Florida job.”
I frown. “Because it’s a bad job?”
He shakes his head. “It’s a great job. Great pay. Dream job material.”
I scrunch my nose. “So what’s the problem?”