“Maybe they’re just misplaced,” he suggested.
“Probably.” I tried to sound casual, but I never misplaced shipments. Ever. I jotted a note to check with the distributor in the morning and allowed myself to be distracted.
He looked unfairly good.Like, I was just a tired divorced woman trying to rebuild my life, and he was over there looking like a lumberjack, guardian angel, handyman, kind of good.
“All fixed for now,” he said, like it was no big deal.
I blinked. “Seriously?”
“Evaporator fan motor was shot. I patched it for now, but I’ll order the part and come back when I get it. And I tightened those wires too.”
“Thank you.”
He brushed my ponytail over my shoulder, his eyes crinkling as he smiled at me. “You’re welcome.”
My heart stuttered. That was the thing about Hunter. He didn’t justdothe things—he knew what they meant—being here. Helping. Staying.
I leaned against the bar beside him and sighed. “You always make things feel easier. I know I keep saying it, but it’s true.”
“That’s my goal.”
“I thought your goal was to bring me baked goods and flirt shamelessly.”
He gave me a slow, dangerous smile. “Multi-tasking.”
I reached for my laptop and my list and tried to get my voice under control. “Well. You passed the pie test. It is perfection.”
“Thank god,” he murmured. “I was really hoping to make it through the day without you telling my dad on me.”
I glanced at him sidelong. He was watching me again. Not in a creepy way. In atrying to memorize your face in this momentkind of way.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I muttered.
“Like what?”
“Like you know what I’m thinking. Like you see me.”
“I do see you. I’ve always seen you.”
His voice was low. Quiet. And it knocked the air right out of me.
I turned away, under the guise of tallying how many bottles of tequila we had left on the shelf. “Careful,” I said, forcing my tone to stay light. “You keep this up and I might accidentally agree to have dinner with you.”
He didn’t laugh.
When I looked back, he was still watching me. Thoughtful. Steady.
“Paige,” he said softly. “I didn’t do any of this by accident.”
The room went still.
I cleared my throat. “Okay. Time to change the subject before I combust. What’s next on your fixer-upper list? I have some money saved up to get started.”
He didn’t push for more. Just smiled like he knew the exact page I was on and was happy to wait for me to catch up. “I was thinking about checking that margarita machine again,” he answered, all casual and cool. “You said it made a noise like a dying banshee?”
“Only during full moons and karaoke nights. But seriously, it only seems to do it when I’m the only one around to hear it, usually after I come back from a day off. Weird.”
He chuckled, grabbed his tool bag again, and headed toward the back.
