Roan grimaced. He hated that she’d seen him in such a vulnerable state. “We’re moving them into the storage room.”
He turned on his heel and stalked out into the tavern.
She could follow him or not. He didn’t care.
He ignored the traitorous part of him that was glad when she followed.
They started with Conrad, since he was closest to the storage room, and they carefully carried him in and laid him against the wall.
Conrad, he could have carried on his own, but the others would be heavier.
The storage room was even darker than the main room, and full of things they wouldn’t need without any customers. It was a good place to keep the sleeping men until they woke again.
Conrad was young and lean; the others proved a far more worthy challenge, and it took both of them straining to carry Edgar, who spent entirely too much time sitting in his tavern with a drink or eating instead of being active.
They moved on to Tom. Roan scooped him up into his arms like he would carry a baby—not that he had any experience, but he’d seen his brother do it a few times—and heaved upward.
The man was perhaps even heavier than Edgar, or perhaps Roan was simply exhausted already.
Abigail reached underneath to also support Tom’s weight, her arms settling just inside his, and if they hadn’t had a sleeping man cradled between them, the pose might have felt intimate.
It only felt awkward.
“I wasn’t planning on doing this today,” Abigail said, her voice straining just as much as she was as they shuffled awkwardly into the storage room.
The man’s arm fell off his chest, landing solidly against Abigail’s.
“I’m sorry,” Roan said, not quite meeting her eyes.
“It’s fine,” Abigail said, though her tone suggested otherwise.
As they entered the storage room, she quickly stepped back, allowing the arm to fall and hang freely instead of resting against her bosom. Roan grunted as he tried to carefully set Tom down, his face probably as red as the beets lined up on a nearby shelf.
But he couldn’t blame her for stepping back.
The rest of the men proved easier, though more than one of them put them in an awkward position. “I suppose it’s a good thing none of them were awake when theywere touching me, or you’d be tempted to throttle them,” Abigail said with a slight giggle as he set down the last man.
Roan nearly dropped the man to the ground before whirling around to stare at her. “Has that happened here?” he asked, the words pouring out of him unbidden.
If someone had hurt her in his tavern, they would pay.
“No, no,” she said hastily. “I mean, there have been times before, but not here. No one would dare to do that here—not when you and Beastie have made it perfectly clear that they’re all expected to leave me alone.”
She’d experienced it…but not here.
At least there was that. Roan nodded curtly, then strode out into the main room. “If anyone ever needs a reminder of that rule, you tell me,” he said over his shoulder. “I want this to be a safe place for you.”
He didn’t dare voice the rest of the words in his head. That he wanted this to be a safe place for her because even though she had only been here a few months, she was the best barmaid he’d ever had, and he hoped she would never leave.
Saying that would be far more vulnerability than he ever intended to express to her, especially after she’d already seen him unconscious on the floor.
“I appreciate that.” She’d followed him out, and something in him was glad. “I’ll get our supper. It’ll be ready soon,” she said, smiling up at him before bending over to pick up the white rose on the floor. Roan couldn’t tear his gaze away from it as she picked it up. She smiled down at the bloom and extended her hand to offer it to him before wincing and examining her thumb, where a small pinprick of blood had appeared.
A twinge of concern hit him and Roan frowned. “You ought to be more careful,” he told her, swiping the flower from her before striding off toward his office.
This whole situation was highly inconvenient, and she had this bizarre way of making him feel things he didn’t want to feel.
He didn’t want to feel any more emotions.
