“And maybe I’ll see you around.”
She nodded even though he couldn’t see. “I’d like that.”
“Goodnight, Maisie.”
“Goodnight, Axel.”
Chapter Eleven
He didn’t hide out the next day.
He set up his crew to work on the cabins and then went up to the lodge to check on the progress there. When he spotted Maisie, he immediately went over to her. She looked so freaking good in a pair of snug jeans that hugged all her curves and a T-shirt that clung to all the right places. His hands twitched with the need to do exactly what he said last night and haul her over his shoulder and take her to his cabin, but he refrained.
For now.
There were people everywhere and they were all in motion. Walker spotted him and jogged over.
“Hey! I was about to come looking for you.”
“Really? Why?”
Walker motioned for Axel to follow him over to one of the tables set up against the wall. “We’ve got so much going on in so many areas of the resort right now that we thought it might be helpful if we used these.”
He handed Axel a walkie-talkie.
“Seriously? Walkie-talkies?” he asked with amusement.
“Or you can call it a two-way receiver. I’m not picky. It’s just getting to be too much to keep running all over the damn property when we need someone. Right now, we’re going to test it with you, me, Connor, and Slater.” Then he handed Axel a clip he could use to add it to his belt.
“Okay. Thanks.” He hooked it onto his belt and shrugged.
“Are you here to help build some furniture?”
“Um…no. I’ve got a crew working on the cabins and I just wanted to come up and see how everything was coming along up here.”
Walker smiled proudly as he glanced around. “It’s really coming together. Like…I can’t even believe we’re at this point already. It felt like it would never get here, but somehow Maisie made it all happen. I honestly had no idea about the timeline and how long it would take between the time we placed the orders and the time it would all be delivered, but we lucked out and literally everything we ordered was in stock. That’s a good sign, right?”
“Seems like it.”
Clapping his hands together, Walker’s smile only grew. “I promised my grandparents I’d send them a video so they can see all the progress.” Pausing, he looked at Axel. “I still can’t believe we did this. Like…we were just a bunch of little snot-nosed kids running around here, and now we’re…”
“We’re grown-up snot-nosed men running around here,” he teased. They both laughed. “But I get what you’re saying. There are a lot of memories here. Good and bad. So it will be nice to only have good ones moving forward.”
Then he spotted Maisie, and he desperately wanted to keep her in the good memory category.
“There are only going to be great ones,” Walker corrected, but then he followed Axel’s gaze. “Okay, you either need to stop looking at her like that or take her back to your cabin. And I thought the two of you were cooling it for now.”
“We are, but it’s not what I want. I’m respecting her wishes. I just don’t like it.”
“And she won’t tell you what the issue is with her family?”
“Nope.”
They stood there in companionable silence for a moment before Walker spoke again. “I wouldn’t stand for it. And I don’t mean that like I’m being a jerk; I mean that if she’s clearly got something going on that is this upsetting to her, I’d want to be the guy to jump in and make it right.”
Axel glared at him. “Um…that’s not the stance you took with Harlow, so don’t even.”
“It’s not…”
