Chapter Two – Rachel
Rachel felt him before she saw him.
And then he turned, and she knew. Knew there was something between them.
Even though she didn’t know who he was.
Because she knew that look.
She had seen it before, the day her best friend Tessa met Matt, but until now she had always been on the outside looking in. That unmistakable shift from ordinary awareness to something deeper, older, more certain.
Only this time it was aimed at her.
For one disorienting second, Rachel could not seem to make her feet keep moving. Perhaps because she was sending them mixed signals. Should she run to him or as far away as she could get?
Then Jenny touched her lightly at the elbow from beside her and said, under her breath, “You all right, love?”
The question broke the tension just enough that Rachel managed another step, then another, though she could still feel his gaze on her. Still feel as if he had touched something deep inside her.
But that was ridiculous. An overreaction. It would wear off. It had to.
Wouldn’t it?
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said automatically.
She was not at all.
The worst part was that her own body had already betrayed her. Heat flared across her skin. Her pulse had gone quick and uneven. And some primal part of her had accepted him as her mate before her head had a chance to catch up.
“Rachel,” Eleanor said, looking up at last and smiling as though this were the most ordinary moment in the world. “There you are. Perfect timing. Come and meet my son, Elliott.”
A Thornberg. Elliott Thornberg. He’d been away traveling, collecting recipes since Rachel had moved to Bear Creek a few months ago, so they had never met, but she’d heard about him. He was a nomad. Or close enough to one. A man who seemed to be constantly in motion.
Not the kind of man she needed.
Or wanted.
But her heart said differently. Her stupid heart, already broken into too many pieces to know what was good for it.
She took a breath and somehow made it across the room. All she had to do was act normal. As if nothing had changed. Even though everything had.
No. She could squash this down. Hide it away.
Up close, Elliott was even more of a problem. Taller than she had thought at first glance. Leaner too, but in a way that only made him look more male somehow, all long limbs and travel-worn strength, with sun-browned skin and eyes still fixed on her as if he had forgotten anyone else existed.
“Elliott,” Eleanor said warmly, “this is Rachel. She’s been with us for a few months now, and she’s like part of the family.”
Rachel loved Eleanor. She’d been like a mother to her in so many ways since Rachel moved to Bear Creek alone with her two daughters. It was a relationship she cherished. One that was bound to change now.
But Rachel had already had enough change. She liked her calm, settled life.
Rachel smiled politely. “Nice to meet you.”
His expression shifted, only slightly, but enough that she saw it. Softened, perhaps. Or deepened.
“Nice to meet you, too,” he said.
His voice was lower than she had expected. Warm. Rough-edged.
Then he held out his hand.
A normal gesture. Polite. Easy. Exactly what anyone would do when being introduced.
Rachel stared at it for one impossible beat too long.
Then she put her hand in his.
The shock of it was instantaneous.
As if a spark had passed between them. Her skin tingled where they touched, setting something alight in her veins.
His fingers tightened just slightly, and she knew he’d felt it too.
Rachel pulled her hand back first.
Too quickly.
She knew it at once as they stood there in an awkward silence, his eyes fixed on her face, hers dropping to the floor.
Then Jenny crossed behind Rachel with a stack of polished glasses and said, as if nothing in the world had happened, “Table twelve wants more water when you’ve got a second.”
Rachel could have hugged her.
“Of course,” she blurted, and moved away before anyone could say another word, though she could still feel the imprint of Elliott’s hand in hers.
It took all her strength not to turn around and look at him. The bond between them was impossible to ignore.
But she would ignore it. There was no room for him in her life. Because she knew what everyone knew about Elliott Thornberg.
He was the one who left.
She made it to the side station and reached automatically for the stack of wine lists, only to realize a second later that she was holding one upside down.
Heat rose into her face. She set it down, turned it the right way, then busied herself straightening the menus beside it, even though they were already perfectly aligned.
The restaurant was beginning to stir toward lunch. Another table had just been seated, and the easy lull from earlier was thinning. Good. That meant she could lose herself in work until Elliott left.
She glanced around the room, looking for something to do.
Something that would put distance between her and Elliott.
A couple near the front windows was lingering over coffee.
One table had just been cleared and reset.
From the kitchen came the murmur of voices and the occasional scrape of a pan. Normal sounds. A normal day.
Water. She was supposed to be getting water for table twelve.
Rachel picked up the water bottle and crossed to table twelve, fixing her expression into the calm, pleasant one she wore for work.
She poured water, smiled when the woman thanked her, and tried not to think about the fact that Elliott was still in the same room, still aware of her and of who she was to him.
His mate.
No, don’t say the word. If she didn’t say it, maybe it wouldn’t be true.
But she already knew it was.
When she turned back toward the bar, she found him gone.
But where?
She took the bottle to the side station and reached for the dessert board.
Or pretended to.
Really, she was looking for him.
Not obviously. She had spent enough years working in busy places to know how to glance without seeming to glance, how to move with purpose while watching everything at once. She checked the table by the window, the space near the bar, and the kitchen doorway.
Gone.
Good.
That was good.
Rachel picked up the dessert board and turned.
“Do you need a hand with that?”
She stopped so suddenly that the edge of the board knocked lightly against her hip.
Elliott was behind her.
Not close enough to touch. Not even close enough to be improper. Just close enough that she knew, with humiliating certainty, that some part of her had known he was there before he spoke.
“No,” she said. Too quickly. She adjusted her grip on the board. “I can manage.”
Something moved across his face. Not amusement, exactly. Not offense either.
“I didn’t mean you couldn’t.”
“I know.” Rachel lifted the board a little, as if proving the point. “It’s only a dessert board.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “I can see that.”
That should not have made her feel anything.
It did.
She shifted her weight and looked toward the couple by the window, though they were still talking over their coffees and in no urgent need of anything. Elliott remained where he was, one hand resting against the end of the bar, giving her plenty of room to move past him.
He was not blocking her.
That annoyed her, too.
If he had been pushy, she would have known what to do with him.
Across the restaurant, Caleb laughed at something Matt said near the kitchen doorway.
Eleanor moved between tables with a basket of napkins tucked against her hip.
Everything carried on exactly as it had five minutes ago.
A restaurant full of ordinary sounds and ordinary work, while Rachel stood there holding a dessert board as if it might save her.
Then Elliott said, “You’ve been working here a few months?”
Rachel looked back at him.
He already knew that. Eleanor had just told him. But his expression was open, almost careful, and she understood with sudden, irritating clarity that he was trying to talk to her.
Small talk.
A man meeting a woman at his family’s restaurant.
Nothing more.
Except it was more, and they both knew it.
“Four,” she said. “Near enough.”
He nodded. “Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
One word. Flat enough to stop most conversations dead.
To his credit, he didn’t pretend not to notice.
A faint smile touched his mouth, then faded. “Good.”
Rachel looked down at the board and straightened it against her hip, though it did not need straightening.
He waited a beat. “And Bear Creek? Are you new to town as well?”
She met his eyes then. She wished she hadn’t.
Up close, they were worse. Warm, perhaps a little tired, with something in them that had been knocked off balance and was trying very hard not to show it. That did something to her; she had no patience for.
“Yes,” she said.
He waited, but when she offered nothing more, he let the silence sit between them.
Rachel glanced toward the chalkboard by the bar. “The fish needs changing on that, actually.”
He followed her look at once. “Tell me what it is.”
She hesitated, then set the dessert board down and followed him the few steps to where the chalkboard stood. He picked up the chalk and waited, looking at her rather than at the board.
“Sea bass,” she said. “Brown butter, capers, samphire, crushed potatoes.”
He wrote the first line, then glanced over his shoulder. “How’s that?”
Rachel looked despite herself. “Samphire needs moving down. And there’s too much space.”
A flicker of warmth touched his face. “That serious?”
“In this restaurant?” Rachel folded her arms. “Yes.”
He shifted the words obediently, and this time when he looked back at her, there was something softer than amusement in his expression. He was paying attention. Not only to the words, but to her, and that was the part she did not know what to do with.
“Better?” he asked.
She stepped closer to check.
Immediately, she wished she had not. Close up, he smelled clean beneath the kitchen scents, with something warmer beneath that she could not have named even if she wanted to. His shoulder was only inches from hers. If she turned her head, she would meet his eyes again far too easily.
“A little more to the left,” she said.
He moved the chalk. “Like that?”
“Yes.”
He made the adjustment and set the chalk down, but neither of them stepped back straight away.
For one strange, suspended second, the moment felt almost intimate. Two people standing over a chalkboard in a busy restaurant, talking about fish and spacing and absolutely not the thing pulsing quietly underneath every word.
Then Elliott said, “I’d forgotten this place has a rhythm of its own.”
Rachel looked at him then.
He was watching her carefully, but not in a way that felt sly. More as if he was trying to find his feet in a place that had kept moving without him.
“It has,” she said. “It always takes me a while to get used to somewhere new.”
For a beat, he said nothing. Then he nodded once. “I’ll remember that.”
She backed away. “Table nine needs menus.”
“I can take them through if you like.”
There was nothing in the offer but help.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ve got it.”
He stepped aside and made room for her to pass. “Right.”
Rachel moved away before the pause between them could deepen into something harder to manage. She grabbed the menus. Her pulse was still too fast. Her face was still warm.
This was not good.
She needed this job. She loved working for the Thornbergs.
It would be all too easy to give in to this. To become part of the family.
But easy was how people got hurt.
If she let Elliott Thornberg into her life, into the girls’ lives, into all the quiet places she had worked so hard to make safe, then eventually she would have to watch him leave.
And Rachel already knew how much damage a leaving man could do.