Beyond the Orange Moon (Mathews Family Book 2) (9 page)

Her smile slowly vanished. “Frosting?”

“Black smudge,” he murmured.
 

“Thank you,” she whispered, her eyes wide.
 

“Let’s clean up this mess.” He stepped back before he lost control, put her up on the counter, and pulled that wet, pink shirt from her body.
 

“Charlie,” she began, shaking her head, “you don’t have to help me.”

Ignoring her protests, he picked up the charred remains of the muffins and tossed the entire thing in the garbage. “I hope you weren’t attached to that pan.”

“I never want to see it again.” Lucy pulled down a stack of clean towels and spread them out all over the floor. “I’ll get it later.”

“Lucy, customer!” Lucy’s friend yelled from the doors.
 

“Are you sure you got this?” Charlie asked, looking at the wet floor.
 

Lucy nodded quickly and dabbed a towel against her chest, which was still wet and enticing as it glistened up at him. “It’s just water.”

Charlie stepped to the double doors and held one open for her, following her out, all the while using his best efforts to ignore the energy between them.
 

“I’m sorry,” Lucy called to the waiting customer. “Technical difficulty in the back.”

Both the customer and Lucy’s friend, Grace, eyed Charlie who was also covered in water. Charlie nodded to them both and came around to the other side of the counter, where his coffee still sat.
 

Lucy handed the customer a scone and a black coffee, and then his receipt. “So,” she said to Charlie after the customer walked away, “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. I guess I should brush up on my fire safety skills, huh?”

“Yes, you should.” Charlie grinned. It was a warm, gooey expression that hadn’t graced his mouth in a year.
 

They sat in silence for a while and stared at each other. She was beautiful and he could have looked at her all day, really. He wasn’t sure what she was feeling behind that gaze, but he knew what was going on in his head and it was something he needed to walk away from. As attracted as he was to her, he just wasn’t ready to go further.
 

“I should go,” he said quietly.
 

“Blueberry,” she said, and handed him a muffin. “It’s on me, though.”

Charlie took the muffin from her hand and grazed her finger on purpose. “Thank you.” He turned to leave and once again noticed the strange look from her friend. “Grace, is it?”
 

Grace took a deep breath. “Yes,” she muttered, clearly uncomfortable in his presence, although he had not a clue why.
 

“Have a good day, ladies,” he said, and walked outside.
 

* * *

“You’re an asshole,” Charlie said as soon as he walked into the trailer to find Mike surrounded by banana muffins.
 

Mike eyed him strangely as he took in Charlie’s wet shirt. “You were supposed to flirt, not drown her.”
 

Charlie blew out a quick breath and looked down at his shirt. He ran his hands along the wet fabric and he couldn’t help but smile at the memory of her in his arms. “She had a small kitchen fire while I was there.”

“And you came to the rescue?” Mike asked, and raised his brows. “That went better than I planned.”

Charlie collapsed into his chair. He raised his hand and closed his eyes. “Just do me a favor and stop helping.”

Mike laughed and picked up a muffin. “Helping?” he said. “Is that what I’m doing?”

“No, as a matter of fact, you’re not,” Charlie said. “I shoved a guy who was rude to her and she thinks I’m some womanizer who sleeps around on his wife. I’m obviously not making a great impression on this girl, so, no, Mike, you’re not helping.”

“Womanizer?” Mike asked, surprised. “Why does she think that?”

Charlie flashed his wedding ring.
 

Mike looked down at his desk and frowned. “I’m not even going to say it, kid. Don’t ask me to go there.”

“I’m not asking you! I haven’t
asked
you, get it?”

“Okay,” Mike said, raising his hands defensively. “I thought maybe it would do you some good to at least get a little action, but I’ll back off.”
 

Charlie stared at him hard and chewed on the inside of his cheek. He subdued the smirk he felt coming and looked out the window to the guys working outside. “Fuck, she looked good in that wet shirt.”

“I bet she did,” Mike said.
 

“Oh, hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Charlie said. “Jonah needs a job.”

“Jonah?” Mike groaned. “I’d take Hugh or Brandon, but I don’t know about Jonah.”

“Brandon designs buildings; he doesn’t build them. You know this.” Charlie leaned forward. “And you would really take Hugh over Jonah? Seriously?”

“I wouldn’t take either of them. If I had to, though, at least I know that Hugh adapts,” Mike said, rubbing his chin. “Jonah, not so much. He’d leave in the middle of the day to chase a woman across the street and I’d never hear from him again.”

“Hugh would do that, too,” Charlie corrected. “He’d just figure out how to talk his way out of your wrath first.”
 

“Exactly,” Mike said. “Hugh has more respect than Jonah.”

“None of what you just said makes sense.” Charlie shook his head. “Neither of those idiots have any respect.”

“And you’re asking me to hire one of them.”
 

“He needs a job, Mike. I need him to have one before he tells my mom that he quit school.”

At the mention of Linda, Mike’s eyes softened and moved to a random spot on the wall. “Where do you want me to put him?” he asked, sighing in surrender.

“Start him on the bottom and let him earn his keep,” Charlie said. “He’s smart, though. It might not seem like it, but he is. He could probably help us out with the financial aspect and help get things in order around here.”

“I wouldn’t mind that, actually,” Mike said, thoughtfully.
 

“That’s the spirit, Mikey boy,” Charlie said. “You’re a good man.”

“Do not ever call me that again.”

“A good man?” Charlie grinned.
 

“Don’t you have work to do?”
 

“Most likely.”
 

Mike raised his arm and pointed to the door. “Go.”
 

“Enjoy your muffins,” Charlie said. He slipped a hard hat on and walked out to the site.
 

* * *

Lucy wiped down the counter and felt a fiery rush creep over her when she thought about standing in Charlie’s muscular arms. She froze mid-wipe and nearly groaned when she thought about the searing look in his eyes. He was definitely battling something when he looked at her. And she could imagine what it was, but that just made her depressed.
 

She shouldn’t go there with him. She
couldn’t
go there at all. But how could she prevent him from coming in to the café? Did she even want him to stop coming in?

It all made her stomach hurt. It was too much.
 

“You’re in trouble,” Grace said from her stool, where she had been silently perched for an irritating length of time. “This is really bad, Lucy. He wants you. And you want him!”

Lucy let her shoulders fall as she released the breath she’d been holding. “He just came in for a muffin,” she said. “He didn’t ask me out or anything.”

“I think he wants to skip that part, girly.” Grace shook her head and crossed her arms. “What a fucking mess.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“Jumping into his arms in the kitchen and staring at him like you could literally rip his clothes off in front of customers is
not
handling it.”
 

“Grace, stop!” Lucy groaned and rolled her eyes.
 

“No!” Grace yelled, and leaned forward. “I swear to God, you are your own worst enemy. Use your head, Lucy!”
 

Lucy all but growled as she threw the towel down and looked up at the ceiling. “You’re seriously driving me insane. Don’t you think I know all this? Don’t you think it’s gone through my head since the first time I saw him?”

Grace stood up and threw her purse over her shoulder. “I need to go home and sleep.”

“Good,” Lucy snapped.
 

“You need to concentrate on moving your life forward from that mess. You don’t have to be a nurse, but you don’t need to be that woman’s replacement, either.”

Lucy glared at Grace. “What a shitty thing to say.”

“I might regret that when I wake up from my nap, but right now it’s the only way I can see this. You will never get that out of your head—never.”

“Do me a favor, okay?” She didn’t wait for Grace to respond. “Butt out.”

Grace stared at her for a few seconds, seeming to mull over the last five minutes. “I’ll see you at home.” She turned to leave, but spun back around and tossed something on the counter. “He left his wallet.”

Lucy picked it up without saying a word. She watched Grace leave and looked down at Charlie’s wallet in her hands. Great.
 

Later, after Lucy’s shift, she pulled off of Mountain View Road and stared at the construction site in front of her. She looked up at the tall beams and wondered how Charlie had contributed to the creation. Each morning that she ran by this place, something new had been done to the building—or soon-to-be building. It started as an expanse of land that housed an old building; then the building was destroyed, leaving nothing but empty ground. Then beams turned into scaffolding and, within days, she saw stairs inside, and then cinder blocks. It always interested her to see a building start from nothing, but now she was even more absorbed in the wonder that was Charlie Mathews and his connection to the building.
 

She parked her white Dodge Dart in the dusty lot on the other side of a fenced-off area. She took a deep breath and scanned the groups of workers on site, until her eyes finally landed on Charlie, who was leaning over a table and pointing to something as he spoke to the men around him.
 

Grudgingly, she got out of her car and approached the fence. She was embarrassed to be here, but she didn’t have his phone number and she couldn’t let him go without his wallet. Who knew when she would see him again? What if he needed groceries to feed his son? What kind of person would she be if she allowed him to cancel all of his credit cards when he didn’t have to?

“You lookin’ for someone?” a man in a hard hat yelled, interrupting her nagging thoughts.
 

Lucy nodded and prayed her face wasn’t as red as she imagined. “Charlie,” she said, pointing.
 

A slow, knowing grin crept over the man’s face as he took in the sight of her. “Hey, Boss!” he yelled without breaking eye contact. “You got a visitor!”

Lucy felt a lump expand in her throat. “Oh, please don’t do that.”
 

“Boss!” he yelled again, despite her pleading. “She’s cute, too!”

Oh dear God.
 

She watched as Charlie stiffened. He slowly raised his head and looked in her direction. Most of the workers around him had also stopped and were now looking her way with grins of their own.
 

She locked eyes with Charlie and felt a spasm in her heart as a small smile graced his wonderful lips. Showing him his wallet, she raised her hand. “Your wallet!” she yelled over the sounds of the machines.
 

Charlie watched her for a moment and then straightened his body. He shook his head and said something she couldn’t quite make out; however, with the way the group around him erupted into laughter, she was positive he was telling them to shut up.
 

As he came to greet her, she looked down at her feet and attempted to slow the nervousness that shot wildly throughout her body. It was only then that the posters of shirtless construction workers with ripped muscles and tight jeans made sense to her; Charlie Mathews belonged on one. He wasn’t even shirtless at the moment, but her imagination easily took care of that.
 

“I didn’t even know I was missing that,” he said from a few feet away. When he was finally in front of her he reached up, every muscle flexing, and clutched the fence. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I told you that it’s on my way,” she said, meeting his eyes.
 

“Wait there,” he said. “I’ll come around.”

She walked over to her car and rested against the hood. She crossed her arms and watched as he made another inaudible comment to the workers, who seemed to be very curious about her presence. It occurred to her that she was relieved she couldn’t hear what they were saying.
 

“So embarrassing,” she mumbled, and loosened her grip on his wallet. Wouldn’t it be just lovely to hand him back his wallet with her fingerprints embedded in the black leather? That was all she needed to add to her humiliation.