It almost felt like protectiveness. But just whom he felt protective of, he had no idea. The woman wasn’t Pax’s type at all. “Half an hour at the most.”
“You taking a date tonight?”
“Yeah,” he muttered, the word oddly tight. “What about you?”
“I’m leaving my options open. I’ll cover for you if you need more time,” he added, his smile good-natured as he headed out the store’s front door.
Erik wished he’d left his options open, too. Though all he said to his partner was that he’d catch up with him at the party and turned back to what was left of his task.
The aisles were finally clear. The inventory visible. Except for the large armoire they’d moved to the empty space near the front door and the boxes and bins Rory had said she didn’t need just yet, mostly those marked Christmas, nothing else needed to be carried in. Except for her monster of a dining table, which they’d put in place, he and Pax had carried the rest of the furniture in and left it all wherever it had landed in the living room.
His briefcase still lay on the checkout counter’s marred surface, its contents untouched.
Burying his frustration with that, he glanced up to see her watching him uneasily from the inner doorway. More comfortable dealing with logistics than whatever had her looking so cautious, he figured the furniture in the living room could be pushed or shoved into place. It didn’t feel right leaving her to do it alone. It wasn’t as if she’d call a neighbor for help with the heavier pieces. She didn’t even know them. And she’d seemed inexplicably reluctant to call in a friend.
“Where do you want the sofa? Facing the window?” That was where his grandparents had always had theirs.
Rory wanted it to face the fireplace. She just wasn’t about to impose on him any more than she already had.
“I’ll take care of it,” she insisted, because he had that purposeful set to his jaw that said he was about to get his own way. Again.
“What about the big cabinet?”
“It’s fine where it is. For now,” she conceded, not about to tell him she wanted it moved across the room to the stair wall. “I’m hugely grateful for your help with all this, Erik. And for your friend’s. But I’d just as soon not feel guiltier than I already do for having used your time like this. You came to work on the business. Not to help me move in. You need to go now.”
One dark eyebrow arched. “I need to go because you feel guilty?”
“You need to go because you have a date.”
She’d obviously overheard his conversation with his partner. Not that it mattered. Like Pax’s unveiled allusion to the care and feeding Erik had told him he was sure she’d require, nothing had been said that he’d rather she hadn’t heard. He’d bet his boat she already suspected he wasn’t crazy about being there, anyway.
“Right.” He wasn’t in the habit of leaving a woman waiting. “We’ll get to the inventory later this week. I won’t have time until Friday.”
“Friday will be fine. I’ll be here. And thank you,” she added again, touching his arm when he started to turn away. The moment he turned back, she dropped her hand. “For letting Tyler help,” she explained. “I haven’t seen him smile like that in a really long time.”
Thinking the cute little kid had just wanted to be one of the guys, he murmured, “No problem,” and picked up the toolbox and his briefcase. There was no reason for her to be looking all that grateful. Or all that concerned.
Still, as he told her he’d call her later and turned for the door, adding, “Bye, sport,” for the little boy who’d just appeared behind his mom, cradling a toy boat, he really wished he didn’t have the date with the bubbly event planner he’d taken out a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t know the striking blonde all that well, but she’d been easy on the eyes, into sailing and, had he been interested in pursuing her hints, not at all opposed to a little casual sex.
He just hoped she’d need to make it an early evening so there’d be no awkwardness at her door. His head wasn’t into games tonight. He wasn’t much up for a party, either, though he wasn’t about to stand up a client.
For reasons he didn’t bother to consider, what he wanted to do was stay right where he was.
The last thing Rory wanted Friday morning was to be late for her meeting with Erik. Or for him to be on time.
As she turned her car into her gravel parking lot, she realized she wasn’t getting her wish on either count.
She’d also just confirmed her suspicions about the gleaming white seaplane she’d seen tied to the dock at the bottom of the rise. It was Erik’s. He was on her porch, leaning against a post.
The fact that her mentor flew his own plane meant that he hadn’t had to queue up for the ferry or get caught in traffic the way she and the rest of the mortals had crossing the sound and navigating surface streets that morning. It also meant that it had only taken him minutes to make the flight that was now a ninety-minute-each-way expedition for her to Tyler’s school.
Hating that she’d caused him to wait, she left her little car in the otherwise empty lot in front of the store rather than park it in her garage and hurried toward where he’d straightened from the post. “I’m sorry I’m late. I was the last car off the ferry,” she called, praying he hadn’t been there long. They’d agreed on eleven o’clock. It was only a few minutes after. Still... “How long have you been here?”
The ever-present breeze ruffled his dark hair as he pushed his cell phone into a front pocket of his jeans and picked up his worn briefcase.
“Long enough to figure out you weren’t going to answer the back door or the one to the mudroom. I didn’t realize you’d be gone. I was just going to call you.”
His cloud-gray eyes slid from hers as a muscle jerked in his jaw. His skin looked ruddy from the chill. In deference to the cold, he wore a leather flight jacket—open, though, as if in defiance of the need for it.
She hadn’t thought of him as defiant before. Or rebellious, or rash, or anything that might even hint at irresponsibility. He seemed too much in control of himself for that. Yet the finely honed tension surrounding him alluded to a sort of restiveness that implied far more than his impatience with her, and made her acutely aware of how restless a man with flying and sailing in his blood might be. Restless. Daring. Bold.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything that wasn’t tempered by the numbness that lingered deep inside her. And she’d never felt bold in her life.
What she felt most was simply the need to keep pushing forward. Especially now. Forward was good. Looking back made it too easy to fall apart.
He didn’t need to know that, though. As she crossed the porch planks, searching her crowded key ring for the unfamiliar key, she figured all he needed to know was that she would make this venture work. Exactly how she would do that was as much a mystery to her as the dawn of creation, but she figured the basics would
