2. Norah #2
This is not a customer’s space. I bring him back here, anyway, because the front has a second wind of last-gasp browsers and my sales associate, Mark, has everything under control.
I also might be more than a little intrigued by this stunning man who seems as gob smacked as I am that he is sitting on a stool that, with him on it, looks like it belongs in a kindergarten classroom.
There is also the inconvenient fact that bringing him back here has put us on opposite sides of a table barely wide enough for my lunch. His knees could touch mine if either of us moved a few inches. I am trying not to be aware of that. I am failing.
I finally connect the dots. “Coulter Cleaners,” I say, settling across the small table from him with my chipped mug that says Book Nerd, in large black letters. “That’s your family.”
“It is.”
The Coulters are a name in this city. Not a loud name, but the kind that comes up in certain conversations in certain neighborhoods and carries its own gravity.
They own the largest dry cleaning and laundromat operation in Larkin.
Their main operation is a warehouse on the other side of the city.
Word is it that they have the lion’s share of hotel and restaurant contracts for linens. It’s a big family-run operation.
Whatever made this man wander through my door this afternoon, I’m choosing not to examine it too closely.
“Not what I would have guessed for someone who came in for engine manuals.”
“We run delivery trucks,” he says. “Commercial clients. Things break.”
“And you fix them.”
“I try,” he says, and the word has more weight than it should, and I have the clear impression we’re not entirely talking about trucks.
“Silas Coulter,” I say, trying the name like a title before I commit to the book, feeling for what it tells me.
“Norah,” I say, and tap my name tag. “But you knew that.”
“Read it when I came in,” he says.
“Most people don’t even notice. Or care. Nametags are antiquated. There is an entire generation out there that thinks you’re trying to label them if you ask them to wear a nametag.”
He chuckles lightly, and I smile too.
He leans back on the stool and stretches his blue-jeaned legs out in front of him.
I get a full view of his muscular thighs, and my brain takes a detour it has absolutely no business taking.
I think about what it would feel like to slide off my stool, straddle his lap, and lock my hands behind his neck.
That would be one way to find out exactly how solid he is up close.
The thought arrives so easily that it startles me. This is not how I usually meet men. I don’t sit across from strangers mentally testing the width of their shoulders with my hands or wondering what their thighs would feel like under mine. Apparently, today I do.
I fixate on the shelf behind him because now I’ve noticed his hands. They’re big, broad with long fingers. I could dream about those hands—where they might go if I gave them some options.
I shift slightly and cross my legs, the blood pumping between my thighs. Hoping he doesn’t notice the bead of sweat starting on my upper lip, I pick up my tea and take a sip.
The tea does absolutely nothing to cool me down.
“You read everything when you came in. That was the most thorough assessment of a shop I’ve ever watched someone conduct from a doorway.”
His expression warms, real and brief. “Why did you invite me back here?”
Fair question. I’ve been asking myself this for three minutes.
“Because you’ve been in my shop for twenty-three minutes,” I say, “asked twice as many questions as any customer who actually buys something, and showed approximately zero interest in the automotive section the moment you found it. Whatever you came in for, it wasn’t a manual.
And you’re slightly more interesting than my re-shelving.
God, that’s a terribly embarrassing thing to say out loud. ”
He considers me for a moment. “So slightly more interesting than housekeeping. I think I’ve heard that one before, and it didn’t end well.”
I throw up my hand in protest. “Wait, wait. It’s way too early in our relationship to start sharing ‘ex’ stories.”
At that, he gives the first relaxed, genuine emotion I’ve seen so far. He throws his head back and laughs, perfectly brilliant white teeth gleaming.
I’m intrigued by this man. This wolf. More than intrigued, if the heat still sitting low in my body is any indication, but that isn’t the part I find most unsettling. I like him. Twenty-three minutes in, I already like being the person who can make that guarded face break into a laugh.
“There’s nothing more interesting in my past relationships than there is in this new one.” He says it as if it’s the most honest thing he’s said since he walked through my door.
His words hit squarely in the center of my chest. I leave them where they land.
Here is what I know about Silas Coulter. Twenty-three minutes in and one unasked-for cup of tea, he came in and read the room before he did anything else. He checked out the shelves and the ceiling, and the back wall, and then he focused on me, and whatever he found was enough to make him stay.
I’m afraid what’s making him stay is the same thing making it difficult for me to want him to leave.
I don’t particularly care for how quickly I’ve arrived at that realization. His gaze across my small table tells me he already knows that, and he has all the patience in the world.
But for me, it’s not the eyes. Not the jaw. Not the jeans, and not the heat of him in that narrow aisle.
It’s the patience.
That’s the part that’s going to be a problem.