I’m lifting her up onto the counter when the loud slam of a car door returns me to my senses.
We break apart, panting.
Her cheeks are flushed, and when she licks her lips, I yank my gaze away, or I’ll stop caring about who's outside and carry her up to my bed.
“Wait here.” I set her gently on her feet, and it takes brute force to lift my hands from her hips. “I’ll go see who it is.”
I walk to the front door and pull it open, grinning at the dark-haired man in his late fifties pulling a large brown box from the back of his truck. “Hey, Elias!”
Nico, Maisie’s boss, has his hands too full to wave back, but he grins from over the large box he’s cradling in his arms.
“Need a hand?” I call out.
“I’m good. It’s big, but the contents are light. Winston started early so I could make the drive out here to drop these off for Maisie.”
He manages the porch steps with the oversized box in both arms, and I step aside, pushing the front door wider for him.
“We were just about to have a late breakfast,” I say, closing the door once he’s inside. “Keep walking straight and you’ll hit the kitchen.”
This is his first time at our farmhouse. He’s almost always at the diner, cooking in the kitchen.
Maisie is tossing paper towels into the trash, having finished cleaning the eggs we cracked on the floor. Damn. I’d completely forgotten about the mess we’d made, and guilt swirls in my gut that I left Maisie to deal with it since half that mess was mine.
“I could have done it,” I tell her.
She smiles at me. “It’s okay. I didn’t mind.”
A chair wobbles. Maisie jumps into action, saving a falling chair when Nico sets the large box down on the kitchen table.
“Sorry,” Nico says.
“That’s okay.” Maisie glances at the box. “Sorry, I didn’t work today, and I’m sorry about your niece’s apartment.”
He waves a hand at her. “The fire wasn’t your fault. Insurance will take care of it. And don’t you worry about the diner. It was fine before you started, and it’ll be fine while you take time off to recover.” To Maisie’s wide-eyed surprise, he hugs her. “I came here to make sure you were okay.”
It’s a short hug, and Maisie is too shocked to return it. “But you’re short-staffed without me.”
“People go to the diner more to talk than anything else. Almost no one is ever in a rush. We’ll be fine without you.” He pats the box on the table. “This is for you. Once the locals heard what happened, they stopped in at the diner with whatever they had to help you get back on your feet. We got a good selection of clothes for you, some toiletries, and other women’s things. Not sure what all is in there, but everyone wanted to help.”
I’m getting a little better at reading Maisie. One look at her too-wide eyes and I’m across the kitchen and handing her a paper towel before the first tear hits her cheek.
Chapter 9
Maisie
Don’t cry.They’re just clothes, so don’t you dare cry.
But they’re not just clothes.
I stand beside an oversized brown box, nearly full to the brim, wiping the tears rolling down my cheeks with the paper towel Elias pressed into my hand.
“Thanks.” I give Elias a watery smile.
I already had a near breakdown thinking that Elias would hit me or scream at me for breaking the egg the way Derek would have. But Elias had been so sweet. He’d broken through my panic by breaking an egg and reassuring me it was okay. That no one was going to punish me for a mistake.
Elias shrugs as if it’s nothing, but it’s not nothing to me.
“Thank you, Nico,” I say once I’ve gotten control of my tears. “You didn’t have to do this for me. No one did.”
