‘When you have an older brother, it’s not always great,’ he said with a rueful smile, remembering all the fights he and Caleb used to get into. Especially the last one, the one they’d had right before he quit the business and left. Suddenly, he was sorry he’d brought up the subject.
‘Were you a lot alike?’
Elliot shook his head. ‘Complete opposites, actually. Caleb was always… bold. Loud and confident. Still is. People notice him when he walks into a room.’
‘I noticeyouwhen you walk into a room.’
His face heated at her words. He was going to argue that that was a recent phenomenon, but he stopped himself. It was nice to be noticed by Daisy. He didn’t need to be noticed by anyone else.
‘Thanks. I’ve been noticingyoufor a while now.’
Daisy ducked her head, letting her hair obscure her face again. ‘Oh, yeah?’
‘How could I not, when you’re always causing a stir at the town meetings.’
She lifted her head and laughed, giving his shoulder a playful shove.
‘Not always.’
‘I’ll just say, things got a lot more interesting when you moved back to town.’ He remembered the town meeting, nearly a year ago, when Daisy showed up to weigh in on the new name for the diner-turned-pancake-house. He’d been in town for six months at that point and still wasn’t sure why the hell he’d uprooted his life and moved here.
Daisy had caught his eye right away, and right away he knew that was a problem.
He’d tried to avoid her, but then he saw her at Jeanie and Logan’s wedding, laughing with her friends, dancing in that slinky black dress, arms above her head like she could dance away whatever it was that always made her look so sad.
She looked gorgeous that night.
Maybethatwas the day his libido woke up.
‘Oh, really?’ Daisy asked, and he decided not to tell her just how much he’d noticed.
‘Yep. It was a total snooze fest my first few months here.’
Daisy giggled.
‘I was ready to pack up and head back to New York until you showed up and started yelling at elderly people.’
Daisy laughed harder. ‘I don’t yell at elderly people!’
‘It’s fine with me. They totally deserve it!’
She rolled her eyes at him, but she was still grinning. ‘They do sometimes, don’t they?’
Elliot nodded. ‘Totally.’
‘I’m sure you staying had nothing to do with that big fancy job you got redesigning the inn.’
He shrugged. ‘That may have played a small role.’ It certainly made him feel like he hadn’t made a big mistake moving here, after all.
‘So did you and your brother fight a lot?’ she asked, pivoting back to their earlier topic.
‘When we were small, yeah. All the time.’ Being a year apart, they really gave their mother a run for her money. Thinking about it now reminded him that he should probably be nicer to his mom. ‘But at some point, Caleb decided he needed to protect me, like at school. He did a lot of my talking for me.’
‘That’s kinda sweet in a way.’
‘I guess so, yeah. Problem was, he didn’t notice when I started speaking for myself again, when I actually grew up.’ His brother still thought of him as that scared kid. Still thought he needed protecting, even all these years later. And the way Elliot fell apart after the divorce only seemed to prove Caleb right.
‘He worries about you?’
