He cocks his head, gray-green eyes curious.
“You don’t usually come until 12,” I add when I really should have kept my mouth shut.
You sound like a stalker keeping track of his comings and goings.
But heisearly. It’s only 11:00, and he’s alone. Usually, he’s with the three other alphas at table five.
His expression is a little less blank than it was a second before. “I was just passing by. Did you know that guy?”
I shake my head. “Never seen him before.”
He stands.
My back kisses my chair as all those feet and muscles eat up all the space in the room. Notliterally, of course. That would be crazy. The room feels a whole lot smaller when he’s standing.
“Sorry.” He drops into a crouch as if he knows how much he just scared me. “I promise I look scarier than I am.”
“You threatened to throw a man headfirst through a window,” I feel compelled to remind him. “And that man ran away from you.” I’m surprised he remembered to grab his sunglasses before he bolted.
He averts his gaze as he scratches his jaw. “Yeah, well, I haven’t had my morning coffee yet.”
My lips twitch at his dry tone, and the need to run or hide dissipates. I wasn’t expecting a joke, but it was exactly what I needed.
“Thanks. For the water and what you did out there.” I gesture toward the partially open office door at his back, where the distant hum of radio music and conversation drifts in.
“Knox Winter. I work at the construction site down the road.”
Even if he wasn’t in the usual construction worker uniform of heavy boots, dark jeans, and a hoodie, I’d have known it already.
“Maisie Lucas. I, um, might have seen you around,” I say, as if I don’t know his full name and haven’t been hanging on Lina’s every word over the last month when she fills me in on everything she knows about the four hot alphas from table five.
He offers me his hand with a small smile.
I hesitate.
Men’s hands are…difficult. They bring to mind punches and slaps and pinches that hurt. Nothing good. What happened in the diner changes things. I’m used to dodging fists, not having a man threaten violence defending me. I’d have run into a table or a wall and knocked myself clean out getting away from the man grabbing for my wrist. Then Knox was there, slipping in front of me.Protecting me.
I snatch Knox’s hand as he’s lowering it, and butterflies take flight in my belly when he closes his around mine.
“Nice to meet you, Maisie Lucas,” he says softly.
Handshakes belong in business meetings, offered up by men in suits or saved for acquaintances. Not this one though. This one is different. Knox’s hand doesn’t bring to mind pain I could never dodge fast enough. His touch feels like the start of something new. Something intimate. Maybe even something special.
I smile back when no part of me is afraid. “Nice to meet you, Knox Winter.”
With the sun setting behind me and the memory of the jerk from the diner still fresh in my mind, I make the walk back to my apartment at a near run, glancing over my shoulder so often I nearly run into two lampposts on my way back home.
I walk to work every day. It’s only ten minutes, and I don’t have the money to throw away on gas for a journey that short. If Derek finds me in Rios, I’ll need all the gas I have in my tank to get away.
Today, I wish I’d driven.
I was more shaken than I realized after I slipped out of Nico’s office and returned to work, even with a ten-minute break with Knox Winter, who filled the time telling me about the different stages of building a condo. It was more interesting than I thought it would be, and it had everything to do with his low, husky voice and a dry sense of humor that kept surprising smiles out of me.
After I got back to work, I dropped everything I picked up.
Whenever the bell rang over the door, I nearly gave myself whiplash thinking the guy had come back with his friends to teach me a lesson. Not sure where that particular thought had come from, but it trickled into my subconscious and refused to budge.
I spent the rest of my shift working at the front counter instead of on the floor because I refused Nico’s offer to go home, and Nico proved himself truly the best manager ever by taking over my tables for me.
