by Anne Harper
“Is this the same cousin who was supposed to leak our wanting Dweller’s Cove to Mrs. McMurray?” Quinn asked.
So he was listening.
“Yeah,” Jones said without skipping a beat. “He should be wrapping up around three today. I’ve already got plans to meet him after.”
“See? Now we know someone else, in a way, who thinks Wren is a good man,” Tally added.
Nell sighed. She needed to come at this weirdly intimate work talk from a different angle.
“Good guy or not, dating isn’t an oligarchy,” she tried. “You all can’t sit here and decide that he needs to go on a date with me. Especially not when he hasn’t shown any interest.”
Jones, ever the pragmatist, conceded to that point with a nod and shrug. Tally, however, looked ready to rebuff it.
Quinn spoke before either of them.
“Why don’t you just ask him out?” He had the communal cat mug in his hand, heat from the coffee in it steaming up toward another cringe-worthy polite smile. “You’ll find out how he feels. If he says yes, then it sounds like, at the very least, you’ll have dinner with a pretty good guy.”
That made Nell pause.
“You think I should ask him out,” she repeated.
His eyes dropped to his drink as he took a sip. He shrugged.
Nell stared at his lips. The same ones that had taken her from enjoying her boss’s company to wanting to throw her no-men plan out the window and clear across the state border. The same set that had sidestepped her clumsy attempt at switching gears to a platonic hangout instead.
Now he was encouraging her to ask someone else out only twenty minutes after she’d tried to spend more time with him outside of their workplace?
It oddly offended her.
“I think I like the idea of swearing off men instead,” she decided on. “All men. Way less hassle, way less mess.” With a flourish, she pushed her chair back and one-handed her burrito, walking it out of the room like it was a microphone and she was a singer about to perform.
Tally followed her out, a bundle of anxious energy, and the menfolk stayed in their lanes. No one made an unprofessional peep until it was almost time to leave. Everyone was in the main room, finishing odds and ends and talking about billing and repairs when the chime over the front door sounded.
Nell was standing next to Tally while Jones and Quinn were by his desk. Everyone zipped to attention, ready to deal with a guest or client. Nell secretly was relieved. She could use whoever it was as a distraction to get her out of talking about her love life again, or lack thereof.
Yet a soft squeal from Tally followed the realization that Nell’s personal life wasn’t done meddling in places it shouldn’t.
Wren Blocker walked in, all smiles, and stopped right in front of Nell like he’d been summoned.
“Hey, there,” he greeted. “I was hoping to catch you before you left for the evening.”
“Oh?”
Wren extended his smile to the room before zooming back on Nell. She guessed he had just come from work based on his business casual good looks.
“I was wondering if you’d like to grab some dinner Saturday night.”
Nell’s lips parted, to say something, but Tally had to go and throw some awkward on it.
“It’s fate,” she whispered.
And by whispered, she might as well have yelled it from the rooftops.
Nell heard it, Wren heard it, and based on Jones’s snicker from the back of the room, the men of Heart in Hand heard it.
Heat, true and embarrassing, scorched up Nell’s neck and flamed through her cheeks.
Wren was kind enough to not comment. His eyes crinkled at the corners as that smile widened.
Which left all eyes on Nell.
What a damn day.
Chapter Fifteen
“As friends.”
Wren’s mouth formed the two words, but it took Nell a whole helluva lot longer than it should have to realize what it meant.
“You want to go out. As friends.”
He nodded.
“Sorry, I should have clarified, but I wanted to see your deer caught in headlights reaction,” he said with a fresh grin. “But, if you agree to it, I’m sure everyone in town will think we’re its new couple. You know how this place can get. So you might want to take that into consideration.”
Nell felt her shoulders relax now that the surprise had worn off. She also was starting to think that Wren Blocker was just one of those people who made you feel better. Or he could be a creep in a nice blazer.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“That’s it? Dinner as friends?”
His grin softened and a sigh deflated him enough to seem genuine.
“The truth is, despite her methods, your sister was right about me.” He lowered his voice so at least the men in the back of the room couldn’t easily hear him. Tally, however, hadn’t moved a muscle next to them. A woman trying to stay unnoticed by a pair of T-Rexes. “I’ve spent most of my adult life working too much and, while I don’t regret that, I am starting to feel the consequences.” His expression softened even more.
Vulnerable in a second flat.
“We might not have spent a lot of time together last weekend, but I enjoyed the company. Your company,” he continued. “So I thought I’d shoot my shot, as they say. See if you wouldn’t mind a redo of sorts. You know, at least sticking around for the appetizers.”
Instead of tucking that vulnerability back inside of himself, Wren held her gaze.
He liked hanging out with her.
He wasn’t afraid or ashamed or whatever else to admit it, either.
And that felt nice.
Nell fought the urge to turn around. Quinn only spent time with her outside of work when it was by accident or work-related itself. Or not his idea at all. The restaurant, the bar with her brother, Mr. Elliot’s, and a sex-toy extraction.
Maybe he really didn’t feel anything for Nell past work.
Maybe she really was forcing this friend thing too much…and, in her head, too far.
How could she honestly get angry at him for that?
Now she was standing in front of a man who had spent way less time with her and still had sought her out with purpose to try and do it again.
You can be friends with someone you haven’t kissed and you can walk away from someone you have.
“I guess I could use a new friend,” Nell said with a wry smile. “Plus, if you’re a psycho or pull any crap, you’ll have someone truly terrifying to contend with.”
Wren laughed, loud and true.
“Is it rude of me to guess that you’re talking about Liere?”
Nell snorted.
“Au contraire mon frère. Being a little afraid of Liere Bennett at all times is how I survived my teenaged years.” Nell reached over into her desk and pulled out her business card. She handed it over and firmly ignored the fact that she was sure everyone in the room was still staring at her. “Just in case you need to warn me that the woman herself is trying to sign us up for a wedding registry or something equally embarrassing.”
Wren took it and the awkward comment in stride.
Probably because he knew that Liere rarely took prisoners when she had her mind set on a goal.
“I’ll text you later to finalize everything, then.”
“Sounds good.”
He gave a sweeping smile to the rest of Heart in Hand and left. It wasn’t until his sports car could be seen pulling out of the parking lot through the front window that anyone spoke.
Of course, it was Tally.
At least this time she wasn’t chanting about fate.
“I really don’t want to go on a date, Henry Cavill.”
Nell gave her the ole eyebrow arch of what the what did you just say. Tally w
aved the comment away.
“You said you didn’t want to date a guy and that same guy showed up a few hours later and asked you out. A girl’s also got to shoot her own shot, you know.”
“And you’re trying to shoot at the actor who played Superman?”
“Why the F-Train not? Do you remember that dress I bought? I didn’t just get it for my reflection.” Tally lowered her voice. “And I’m guessing you might not have gotten that fancy bra of yours just for yourself, either.”
She did another uncharacteristic eyebrow wiggle.
Nell laughed the comment off, but she made damn sure she didn’t turn around.
No way in Hades was she going to admit that maybe, just maybe, Quinn had been on her mind when she did a one-two turn with it on in the mirror.
Her boobs’ gain was everyone else’s loss.
…
Quinn was in no mood to deal with people after leaving Heart in Hand that afternoon. In fact, he avoided the grocery store he’d had every intention of shopping at, drove right on past the café and the coffee he’d been craving since a sinus headache had started around one, and he decided to forgo getting an update from Jones about his cousin via text after he settled into his tiny home for the night.
He just…wasn’t in the mood for humans.
Well, all but one.
“Dad!”
Owen’s face popped up on his phone screen with all of the excitement of a preteen boy. Quinn might not have been a fan of new technology, but it oddly made his heart happier to be able to see his boy so clearly that he could have counted his freckles had he been so inclined. It made the distance between them feel a little bit less.
“Hey there, Rocket Man! I thought I’d call in a little earlier today since your soccer practice was canceled. Are you and your mom doing anything right now?”
Owen shook his head. He mostly did when it came to him and his mom. Since Owen was about to live full-time with only him, Quinn didn’t push the subject with Deborah about her scattered attention. He knew her work as someone who went across the country to create and implement marketing strategies and campaigns kept her busy and, well, he couldn’t force her to be more hands on. Though he had tried.
“She’s doing her homework, she said.” Owen’s face fell. Quinn knew the boy’s expressions as well as his own.
“And I’m guessing you have a lot of homework, too?”
Owen tried to look innocent, which only ever made him look guilty.
“Not a lot, a lot. I mean, most of it’s reading.”
“What about the parts that aren’t?”
This time Owen sighed so deep that his shoulders turned forward.
“Math,” he said, all dramatics. “A whole butt ton of it.”
Quinn stifled a laugh. There was something about when his kid said the word “butt” that got him every time.
“Okay, well, you know the drill,” Quinn recovered. “Send me the pictures and we’ll get it all taken care of.”
Quinn might have been in a rotten mood before but all of that tension fell away as he and Owen started their weeknight routine. Owen, much more proficient with technology and the internet at ten than Quinn probably ever would be, took pictures of his homework and then emailed them over. While he went through the motions, Quinn propped up his phone, grabbed a notebook already filled with notes to help him understand his son’s math homework, and set up his laptop next to both. As soon as the pictures were in and Quinn had them full-screen, Owen was at the coffee table with a pencil in his hand and a foul look across his face.
It didn’t always work but, today, Quinn let it.
“You know what? I’d like to hear about what happened with you and Bridgette today first. And did Connor get his Switch back from the principal or did he have to get his parents to come in?”
Owen dropped his pencil like a dead weight.
Soon Quinn’s tiny house was filled with the sound of his son and a breakdown of how his entire day played out.
It made the small structure around Quinn feel a lot more like a home than it had when he arrived.
…
Owen could only do so much being as far away as he was. Quinn’s good mood seemed to be reserved only for his phone time with his son over the next few days, and he couldn’t really figure out why.
Jones’s cousin came through and spoke to Mrs. McMurray directly about Heart in Hand’s interest in Dweller’s Cove, but the woman herself still hadn’t reached out, and Quinn was getting antsy. Nell insisted that they needed to hit their second word-of-mouth window with Carla Jean at the café during her normal brunch time on Thursday before he went with the more direct approach.
“A watched pot doesn’t boil, Boss,” Nell had said. Although Quinn was skeptical, he relented.
Since then, Quinn stubbed his toe on Tuesday and was still cursing about it on Wednesday. He burned his tongue on his coffee at lunch and after that he couldn’t find one of Ron’s old files about a property. He grumbled on and off about both until Thursday at closing time. He yelled at a bird that wouldn’t stop chirping outside of his window once or twice, too. After he told his phone, quite loudly, that if it was a person he might just punch it in the face, Quinn honestly felt like he couldn’t catch a break.
Yet it wasn’t until Friday rolled around that he realized his employees had been more quiet than usual. In fact, they were giving him a pretty wide berth compared to what he’d grown accustomed to around them. Sure, work talk was always on the table when he needed it, but the whole social thing? Not so much.
The office had become a proverbial cricket concert.
At the beginning of the week, he had decided to make friends. Now he couldn’t even land in their orbit.
Maybe because you’re being a grouchy bitch, he thought to himself during lunch. In retrospect, he had spent the last few days sounding like the human equivalent of a garbage disposal.
Now he was in his office and staring at a soggy, partially cold burrito, Nell’s lunch of choice when she didn’t go out. Though he’d never seen her let the food get cold by staring off into the distance and wondering if she was an asshole while it sat there.
Nope. She devoured the food while managing to multitask. Conversation, smiles, and laughter.
Maybe that’s why Quinn had grabbed one to try.
Because, in a nutshell, that’s what Nell had done to him.
She had somehow managed to drag him into trying or experiencing several new things he wouldn’t have ever gotten into himself in the short time that he’d known her. From eating frozen burritos and punching wannabe reporters to breaking the law and trying to make friends, she’d taken his plan to fly under the radar in Arbor Bay as he built a stable foundation for him and his son and somehow convinced him to fly through the shit instead.
Quinn sighed to himself.
It was obvious that he wasn’t the only one affected by Nell’s weird superpower. From what he could tell, the online world’s attention had cooled a bit since the viral video, but Arbor Bay was still all eyes on her.
As evidenced by Wren Blocker, Star Accountant.
Quinn could still hear Tally’s obvious cry of “fate” when the man had appeared.
He could appreciate that Wren was a good-looking guy—Quinn wasn’t completely naive or anything—and he could certainly appreciate him wanting to spend time with Nell to become friends.
He had just declared his desire to be friends, too, that morning, after all.
But what he hadn’t appreciated was how Wren looked at Nell when she agreed to go out. Or how she gave him her number. Or how Wren had turned around to look back at Nell one last time before he’d left.
And how Nell hadn’t looked at Quinn at all before she and Tally left, too.
You can’t turn her down for dinner, group or not, and be upset when someone offers to
take her out, he mentally scolded himself. Because that’s what you did. You lied about plans you didn’t have.
Though Quinn had almost said yes.
But then he’d seen the new text flash across his phone. The one from his ex-wife. The one about Owen. A simple heads-up that his soccer practice had been canceled for that afternoon.
Just like that he’d realized how much he’d wanted to be with Nell, alone. Then he’d heard Donavon in his head, disappointed and frustrated. Threatening the future of Heart in Hand because of them.
So Quinn had told Nell no to dinner and felt righteous about it.
Then talk of her date with an apparently amazing man had preceded a man who had come to Heart in Hand with one purpose and one purpose only.
Nell.
And now she was going out with him Saturday night.
Quinn took his burrito to the trash, appetite gone. Another day of being a loner wouldn’t kill him. So he spent the rest of the day letting Nell, Tally, and Jones keep that wide berth and then went home and had a beer.
His mood outside of talking to Owen, however, hadn’t improved when he woke up the next morning. The grumbling started in the shower. His shoulders tensed beneath the hot water. He caught himself making a face in the mirror opposite the stall.
Maybe he could go to Live Oak or the café to distract him from whatever it was that had put him in a foul mood.
Because it sure as heck wasn’t about his coworker. The viral sensation who had sworn off men and yet was going out with everyone’s favorite good guy.
Nope. That didn’t sound like something that would bother him at all.
Quinn stepped out of the shower, toweled off, and took care not to slip out into the kitchen like he had last week. Tiny houses didn’t pair well with big moods, but until Owen came to live with him and they could go house hunting together, this was his closet-sized domain. His pain in the ass decision instead of an apartment or rental house.
It wasn’t that bad, though. It just meant he had to put his hand out to steady himself just in case. Like when he got out of the shower.
He was three points of contact between the counter, the wall, and the no-slip kitchen rug when the plan of staying steady while nearly naked failed as a new obstacle entered the ring. Quinn almost keeled over when someone banged on the front door no more than two feet away from him.