Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,46

ache a little bit when she looked at him.

“Well,” Wendy said, standing, “I had better get to doing the dishes.”

“I can help, if you like.”

“No,” she said quickly. “It’s a...certified kitchen. You need a food-handlers card.” He didn’t really need one to help her with dishes, but she didn’t want him back there. She needed a break from him. And she certainly didn’t need him acting gentlemanly and confusing her feelings even further.

“Suit yourself. I’ll be checking out tomorrow. I’m hoping that I can come back soon.”

“Well, we always like return guests.”

“Well, I hope that you look forward to me returning, too,” he said.

“I’ll set the diary pages on the table for you. You can go over them this afternoon.”

“Appreciate that.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and Wendy felt a blush rising in her cheeks again.

And then she turned and ran like she was fleeing temptation.

But she tried to pretend it was just that she had dishes to do.

EMMA

“Can you run this across the street?”

Emma looked at her boss. Then looked around. “Me?”

The first month at her new job had gone by quickly. It was a relief, especially after the weirdness that she experienced every day at school. People were so strange with her. So careful.

She was thankful for Catherine, who was real, and normal, and who had been with her the whole way through the journey of her father’s illness, and seemed to be able to handle his death a lot better.

What a stupid thing.

That complete strangers couldn’t cope with her father’s death. Because that was what it seemed like.

That they were uncomfortable with her because someone she loved had died. That they expected her to be uncomfortable all the time.

It clung to her like a film and made her feel separate from everyone around her. At first that had been fine, but now she just felt...outside. And she didn’t like it.

She had messed up a test, and a teacher had been nice to her. Sympathetic. Had said that it was understandable.

But that wasn’t true, and it wasn’t fair. If people didn’t know her, they wouldn’t be okay with her failing at a test or at something basic, just because of her circumstances.

She didn’t want to be held to some kind of weird low standard just because something in her life was sad.

There was no sanctuary, no escape.

Except for at the diner.

She liked the sound of food cooking, loved the smells. The chatter of the people. The customers ran the gamut, from friendly to absolutely terrible, and she even enjoyed that.

There was something about dealing with a grumpy old man who didn’t bother to smile, not even at her, that made her feel...human.

It made her feel like a normal person.

And then, of course, there was Luke.

Luke came in and got dinner at the diner almost every evening.

He would walk across the street from the mechanic shop, in a pair of battered, dirty jeans, and a faded T-shirt, even though it was cold out, and lean over the counter, getting an order to go.

And she would watch him.

Sometimes he would catch her watching him, and then she looked away quickly. Eventually, she started trying to smile, because she realized the looking away quickly was not only suspicious, but it was also weird.

And so it went on like that, for the whole month.

And now Adam wanted her to take Luke his lunch order.

Adam’s face was too neutral, which meant he was probably well aware of how she felt about Luke. “Yeah, Luke wasn’t able to get away for lunch, so he said he needed some food, and he was going to come pick it up, but I think he got caught on the job, so I thought it might be nice to run it over to him.”

That was nice. And it also meant that she was going to have to be face-to-face with the object of her very distant crush.

He’d been an escape. A distant, easy fixation. And this was about to bring him into reality.

“Okay,” she said, taking the bag and whipping out the door, letting it close hard behind her.

She moved quickly and decisively across the street, looking both ways as she did. Because if she stopped and even took one breath, she was going to get all weird.

It was crazy, how handsome she thought he was. With his dark hair that was always sticking up at odd angles, like he’d run his fingers through it. His dark brown eyes, and his square jaw. When she looked