She’s falling because she was jumping on a stepstool.
I know how this ends, and I see it all happening in slow motion.
This ends with her banging her head on the sink, passing out, and crashing to the ground unconscious. Hurt.
Broken.
Bleeding.
Dying.
The dog charges through his doggy door with a yelp-bark.
I bump my sore hip against the prep table, almost trip over the dog, and lunge for her, grabbing her by the arm as she catches herself on the stainless steel sink with her free hand, spins so her back is to the sink, and recovers.
Without the actual need of my help.
Naturally.
Because she’s some kind of beloved freak who can somehow defy even gravity, and it’s goddamn adorable.
The next time Zen tells me I’m in a mood, I can tell you why.
It’s because Sabrina Sullivan has seeped into my every waking thought and she’s a terrible idea.
“Wow. Well.” She straightens, then seems to realize how close I am as she slowly lifts her head to peer all the way up at me. “That wasn’t how I saw my early afternoon going, exactly, but would you look at that landing? Apparently my mom thinking I was short enough to be a gymnast when I was little still has some benefits with dexterity and balance. But maybe don’t startle people when they’re standing on stepstools next time, boss-man? Yeah? Great. Good talk. Sit, Jitter. Mama’s fine.”
Zen, Willa, and Cedar all stare at us from the doorway to the dining room.
I’m still standing too close. I’m still gripping her arm.
I’m so close, when she breathes, her chest brushes my abdomen.
I need to step back.
But I don’t want to.
I don’t want to let go. Not when my brain is still full of images of her sprawled on the floor bleeding out from a head wound and adrenaline is sending my heart into overdrive and putting me at risk of getting my blood pressure into that zone that my doctor told me to avoid.
And especially not when I’m touching her skin with my bare hand, and she’s radiating warmth and her breath is coming more rapidly and her eyes are going dark, and I know she feels this too.
I don’t want to be attracted to this woman. I don’t want to feel sympathy toward her. I don’t want to fantasize about the noises she makes when I’m buried up to my balls inside of her and I don’t want to remember how good it felt to make her laugh when she was so sad in Hawaii, or how many times I’ve thought of her since I left the islands.
I don’t.
But I can’t let go.
It feels too damn good to hold on to her no matter how much I logically know this is a bad, bad idea.
“Back, boss-man,” she says. “Like I told my dog, I’m fine.”
She delivers it with a smile, but there’s a bite in her narrowing gaze.
I drop her arm like it’s on fire and step back, nearly tripping over the dog again.
Zen’s amused, which I only know because I know them well enough to spot the subtle smirk barely tipping up their mouth on one side as they stand in the doorway watching me.
The two other crew members watching us look mildly horrified.
“Sabrina,” Willa says. “You should’ve asked for help.”
Sabrina turns a grin on her as if she’s completely immune to being near me.
She probably is.
This is a me problem.
“Wasn’t much time between falling and catching myself,” Sabrina says.
“To put the higher dishes away,” the woman chides.
“You shouldn’t be on kitchen duty at all,” Cedar says. He’s a tall, slender, younger man in a different Bean & Nugget apron, and I don’t miss the not-so-subtle side-eye aimed at me.
Like he thinks I’m the one who’s keeping her in here.
“I like kitchen duty,” she tells him. “Reminds me of when I was little and Grandma was running this place. Jitter. Sit.”
The dog leans sideways against me. He’s so big, his body rests against me mid-thigh, and he has no hesitation in pressing me away from Sabrina while he grins a happy doggy grin at me.
Being this near to a dog again is opening other old wounds.
I’m just off-balance enough now that being around another dog fucking hurts today.
This dog?
He belongs to Sabrina, and therefore, he’s as off-limits as she is.
Self-preservation says he has to be.
It’s not safe to like people who’ve already let you down, and it’s even less safe to like people who have made it clear they want the opposite of what you do.
“The dog has to go,” I tell Sabrina. “We can’t have it in the kitchen.”
It. That might be too far even for Super Vengeance Man.
But Sabrina doesn’t blink at my attitude or my order. “Great! You can tell Shirlene when she gets here. She’s the health inspector, by the way. You met her briefly yesterday, but you met so many people, I don’t know if you remember which one she was. She asked me to bring him in today because she misses him since she moved in with her boyfriend. You’re living in her old townhouse. First guest, actually, since she converted it into a vacation rental. I don’t think she mentioned that part.”
I’m momentarily speechless.
But only momentarily. “Don’t you all have work to do?”
Willa eyes me.
Cedar eyes me.
Zen mouths something that looks like they know.
Know what?
That Sabrina and I slept together? That I can’t convince myself to not like her? That I adore her damn dog?
While I’m still puzzling that out, all three of them head back to the dining room.
“Get your dog off me,” I tell Sabrina.
She grins.
She grins.
And it has that damn sparkle to it. “Sorry. He licked you. That means you’re his now. It’s the rules. If you don’t like it, I believe the mayor’s coming in for a late lunch with Shirlene. You can see if she can get that rule wiped off the city books.”
“I don’t belong to people who lick me.”
She blinks at me.
Just once, but she does.
And it’s enough to take me back to my hotel in Hawaii where she did so much more than just lick me.
It’s damn cold in here, and I’m sweating.
“Go sit,” I tell the dog.
He stares at me forlornly for a beat too long, but then he ambles back across the kitchen to collapse dramatically to the floor inside his doggy house.
I look down at my fur-covered pants and stifle a sigh. Then I look up and find Sabrina righting the stepstool.
“What are you doing?”
“My job,” she answers cheerfully as she climbs onto the damn thing and reaches to put another large stainless steel bowl on the high rack.
“Stop.”
“Gotta get done.”
I stroll back to her side, take the bowl, and put it up high myself. “Ask for help with the high shelves.”
“I won’t sue you if I hurt myself while I’m doing something stupid.”
“And you were going to be right back.” Fuck. I did it again.
I brought up Hawaii again.
“Would you have still spent that whole evening with me if you’d known who I was?” she asks.
“Irrelevant. You’re not who I thought you were.”
“People are complicated. I can be who you thought I was that night and also be who I am today. Just like you can be the guy who was randomly in Hawaii on Emma’s wedding day after buying Chandler’s café, which prompts a lot of questions, by the way, and also be the funny, kind, supportive person who helped a stranger having a bad day out of the goodness of his own heart.”
“Digging for gossip?”
She hands me another bowl to put up high. “I was born exactly in that spot where you’re standing. Jitter’s doghouse? That little nook used to have a table where I’d do my homework while my grandma kept an eye on me when my mom was working. And she does work at a salon down the street. That dent in the wall next to the stove? My cousin Lucky’s head print. He and Chandler were fighting over who got the last blueberry muffin and Chandler shoved him into the wall. Grandpa took blueberry muffins off the menu to punish them both, and Grandma never made another batch for either one of them. She did, however, make them for me and Emma and Laney whenever we’d sweet-talk her into them, which we generally only did when one of us had had a bad day.”