Chapter 2
Wyatt
Blackberries and wild honey.
The skittish new waitress’s scent clings to me as the bell over the diner door chimes when it closes behind me.
On my way to my truck, I can’t help but think about Maisie. Keeping my distance over the last month has required a level of control I didn’t know I possessed.
One sniff of her lush scent as she tops up my coffee, and I’m fighting an almost uncontrollable urge to drag her into my arms and kiss her soft lips as sweetly as I want to bend her over the nearest hard surface and fuck her. But maintaining distanceandmy urges has been necessary.
Extremelynecessary.
My first glimpse of the petite waitress with shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair and ice-blue eyes had been like a fucking dream. I’d stepped through the front doors of Nico’s Diner, and it had been akin to a truck slamming into me.
I’d stared for too fucking long. She noticed. How could shenotnotice when I was clogging up the front door? Those gorgeous ice-blue eyes had widened, and wariness had given way to fear.
I thought my size had intimidated her until Knox nudged my shoulder and gave me a pointed look. My eyes had tracked his gaze downward to dark, almost-black marks on her forearms shaped like bruises.
I’d mistaken the shadows under her eyes for a lack of sleep. They were too dark, too large to be anything but two healing black eyes. Someone hadn’t just dragged her around by her arms. They’d put their hands on her, and more than once. A man, from the size of those finger-shaped bruises.
She’d taken her time coming to our table, eyes wary and her body half-turned, poised to run. I’d kept my expression blank, fighting to control my rage that anyone could hurther. And her voice—soft, unsure—had made me want her as badly as I’d ached to snap the neck of the man who’d put his hands on her.
My cell phone vibrates in my back pocket, returning me to the present. I’m no longer in the past where a timid, shy omega had been so nervous around me that she’d nearly poured hot coffee into my lap. As long as she stayed beside me, I wouldn't have cared what she spilled on me.
I fish my cell phone out and hit answer when I see who's calling. Needing a free hand, I set the pie box on my truck so I can open the door.
“Did she get to work all right?” Elias asks.
“She did.”
If Maisie had glanced behind her on her ten-minute walk from her apartment to the diner to start her shift, she might have seen me. Then again, she might not have. It’s not the first time I’ve watched over her, and it won’t be the last. Maisie Lucas came to Rios with a black eye and bruises on her arms. No one is putting their hands on her. Not if I have anything to do with it.
“And no sign of the POS who hurt her?”
“Nope.” None of us knows who it is since she’s been so cagey about her past.
Between things she’s revealed over the last month, we know her name, that she was on the road for a while before she came to Rios, that she’s 26, and that she has an older sister she misses and bakes pies like a dream.
And that someone hurt her.
Badly.
So badly that she shuts down the conversation if it even starts to lead to her past. Husband, boyfriend, or whoever it is, makes no difference to me. Between the four of us, the guy doesn’t stand a chance if he sets one foot in Rios.
I met Elias, Knox, and Hunter on a job we all worked on in Texas nearly ten years ago. We fell into the construction business, wanting a job that paid well and didn’t tie us down in one place for too long. Now that we’re all in our early thirties, the itch to keep moving is decreasing.
We go where the work is. With projects lasting several months to a couple of years, we usually find a place to rent together for however long the job lasts. This Iowa job is no different, except that it's ending, and we haven’t started talking about what comes next.
“I'd better go grab breakfast,” Elias says. “Hunter is yelling.”
I can’t hear Hunter’s yell. Elias must still be up in his room, calling to check in before he makes his way downstairs.
“I’ll see you at the site.” I hang up, grab the pie box from the top of my truck, and climb into my seat.
Our rented house is thirty minutes out of town, so I have plenty of time to make a quick stop before I head into work. I’ll be too early, but that’s okay. It won’t be the first time I’m at the site kicking my heels after watching over Maisie.
I place the pie on the passenger seat, making sure it won’t slide to the floor before I slam my door shut and start the engine. Through the window of Nico’s Diner, Maisie stands at the counter with Nico.
