I snap my attention back to Finn. "I was going to see if you needed help. Since I'm here anyway."
"You're off today—"
"I know. But I want to. Put me to work."
Finn grins. "There's inventory in the back room that's been crying for organization. Think you can handle it?"
"I can handle anything that involves making sense of chaos."
"Perfect. Grab an apron."
I grab one from the hook—too big, hangs past my knees, swallows me whole—and tie it on over the sundress. Maeve waves goodbye, calls out "Nice meeting you!" and disappears back toward town. I head for the back room before I can think too hard about the way Holt just looked at me.
Before I can process what it means that he looked at me like that.
Before I can acknowledge that I wanted him to.
The back room is exactly the disaster I remember—boxes stacked with no system, parts mixed together, labels that say helpful things like "misc" and "stuff" and "idk ask Holt." I sit cross-legged on the floor, tuck in my dress, grab the clipboard hanging on the wall, and get to work.
I'm maybe fifteen minutes in—cataloging socket wrenches and trying to figure out why there are three different sizes labeled the same—when I hear footsteps.
I look up and Holt's in the doorway.
He settles against the doorway looking like he knows exactly what that does to me, one shoulder propped there, arms loose at his sides, every inch of him taking up the room without trying. It hits me in the stupidest way, because this is the kind of thing the men in those dog-eared romance novels do—stand there looking unfair, waiting for the heroine to trip over her own pulse.
And here I am, throat tight, trying not to stare at the line of his chest under that worn T-shirt while the back room shrinks around us.
The air shifts and I'm suddenly very aware that we're alone. That he just looked at me like—like that. That I'm sitting on the floor in a sundress with an apron that's doing nothing to make me look less ridiculous.
"Your inventory system is still a war crime," I say, because someone has to break the silence and it's always going to be me. "How do you find anything?"
"I know where everything is." He walks in—closer now, standing over me while I'm cross-legged on the concrete. I have to crane my neck to look up at him. His shadow falls across me, blocking the harsh fluorescent light. "Been working here long enough."
"That's just admitting your system doesn't work. That's not the defense you think it is."
His mouth curves slightly.
"You've been here a week and a half. You've already reorganized the desk, the filing system, and now you're coming for my inventory."
"Someone has to. This personally offends me. This is chaos masquerading as organization and I won't stand for it."
"You gonna fix it?"
"I'm gonna try." I look up at him and there's something about this angle—me on the floor, him standing over me, the wayhe's looking down at me—that feels loaded. Significant. "Unless you want to stop me?"
"Why would I stop you?" He reaches up, grabs what he came for—socket set from the top shelf, his hand going exactly where it needs to without looking. He's done this a thousand times. "Place could use it."
"That's not the compliment you think it is."
"Wasn't trying to compliment you." But he's still almost-smiling, and my stomach flips.
He should leave. Should take his socket set and go back to work. But he's still standing there, not moving.
"You settling in okay?" His voice drops, quieter. "Town wasn't too overwhelming?"
The question surprises me. He never asks personal things. Never prods. "Yeah. Maeve showed me around. Met everyone. Saw everything. It's—everyone's really nice. Nosy, but nice."
"That's Coyote Bend." He shifts his weight. "They mean well. The nosiness comes from caring, not malice."
