Knox Winter. The alpha from table five, with a gray-green stare, who smells like praline and green apple.
With a sneer, my customer surges to his feet and gives Knox an ugly look up and down. “Who are you? Her boyfriend or something?”
Knox gets in his face. “Or something.”
The diner is pin-drop silent.
For two beats, nothing happens.
“I was just talking to her,” the guy eventually says, edging back a half-step.
“Wrong.” Knox’s bark has the guy recoiling and me jumping. “You were leaving. Right fucking now. You can walk out, or you can go headfirst through the window.”
Proving he’s no idiot, and with half an eye on Knox, the man grabs his sunglasses from the table and bolts out of the diner. He never looks back.
Knox turns around to look at me, blind to the silently staring customers. “You okay?” he asks me softly.
Not really.
“Fine,” I lie, hoping he missed the tiny tremble in my voice.
When the corners of his eyes tighten slightly, I figure I need to do a better job at lying or avoid guys with penetrating stares like Knox.
My knees tremble more than they should for nothing to have happened. The guy didn’t even touch me, yet I’m all shaky and hot, struggling to draw enough air into my lungs.
“Come with me.” His hand is a whisper on my lower back as he guides me to Nico’s office at the back of the diner, where Nico, standing behind the counter, is pointing to.
With no idea how I got across the diner with my badly shaking knees, suddenly I’m perched on Nico’s creaky leather office chair. Knox is crouched in front of me, pressing a cold bottle of water into my hand.
I have no clue where he got the water from.
“I need to get back to work,” I say, making no move to take the bottle.
When I stand, he nudges me back into my seat. “You need ten minutes.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he’s already speaking. “Nico agreed. Lina can handle the front, and Nico will step in if she needs more help. Winston will be okay in the kitchen.”
Was Nico in here telling him all that, and I just blanked out? Maybe Idoneed ten minutes to pull myself together.
Winston, the forty-year-old short-order cook, only works during the busy lunch hours. If it were only Nico in the kitchen, I’d have gotten back to my feet—wobbly knees or not—and gone back to work.
As I take the bottle of water Knox offers, his fingers brush mine. My breath sticks in my throat, my eyes flying to his as the bottle slips from my grasp. His expression doesn’t change as he presses the bottle firmly into my palm.
I unscrew the lid, conscious his gaze is following the movement of the bottle from my hand to my mouth. He looks away right before I take a sip, and his attention doesn’t return to my face again until I’ve screwed the lid back on and set it on the floor beside my feet.
“Sorry you had to get involved out there,” I say.
He rakes his hand through soft-looking curly blond-brown hair. “It’s no problem.”
His lips are really pretty, kissable even when he’s pressing them together.
Not the time to be focusing on that, Maisie.
I clear my throat. “You’re early.”
I wince.
Seriously?
