out of the woods, and we can drop the charade. But now? It would make her so happy. It’d give her something to think about besides how utterly crappy she feels from the chemo.” Sydney put her hand on his shoulder, locking them in a loose circle. “Please?”
This close, she could see the radiating lines of ice and midnight blue in his eyes. Could see his pupils flare wider, darken.
“Hon?” her father’s voice echoed down the hallway. Sydney sprang into the opposite corner of the couch, in a move that she’d feel in her quads tomorrow.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“There’s customers.” The unmistakable squeak and clang of the rolling bucket punctuated his sentence. “And I just dropped a container of milk that needs to be mopped up.”
“I’ll head out front.”
“Thanks, hon.”
Sydney stood. Waited for Alex to say something. When he didn’t, she put her hand on the doorknob. “Well?”
He crossed to the desk. Opened one drawer, then another. Once he grabbed a jumbo paper clip, he unwound it, then wrapped it twice into a circle that he then slid onto her ring finger. “It’s up to you to come up with a cutesy story about why I proposed with this.”
“Deal.”
The overwhelming gratitude and relief almost made Sydney miss that Alex was still holding her hand with both of his. With fingers that were long, blunt-tipped, and enveloped her own with a warmth that made her think of lazy weekend mornings under a duvet cover.
The door swung inward a crack, almost clocking her in the head. “Hon, I can hear Mom’s voice all the way back here. She’s getting riled up.”
“Trust me, that’s better for her than chicken soup laced with morphine.”
Sydney hustled out to the front of the Mercantile. Two steps from the register, Alex caught her hand again. Interlaced their fingers. For a near-stranger, it felt amazingly right. Like a perfect fit.
Which was impossible.
Gram’s eagle eyes spotted them, drawing her focus from the parents cooing over the newborn in the stroller. “Is everything okay with you two? Are you fighting? Did you go in the back to smooch?”
This was the moment she had to sell it. “Why bother? We can do that right here.” Sydney went up on tiptoe, looped her arm around Alex’s neck, and pulled his head down.
It should’ve been awkward.
Weird.
Perfunctory, even.
It was none of those things. Their kiss was as smooth as if they’d already rehearsed it a hundred times. His lips caressed hers, molded them, took their time with her. They were warm and welcoming and more than a little bit wicked.
Alex’s arms cinched around her back, lifting her off of the floor.
Or so she discovered once he set her back on her feet and her ankles wobbled to steady herself.
“Bye, my angel.” Alex raised a single eyebrow at her. It clearly taunted her in a you started this way. Then he squeezed her grandmother’s forearm—quite thoughtfully avoiding a germ-laden handshake. “Nice to meet you, Daisy.”
“I’m so happy you swung by for a visit, Alex.” She beamed at his retreating back, throwing off happiness like sparks from a bonfire.
Sydney touched a fingertip to her lips. They were still tingling from his kiss.
Maybe this had been the right choice to perk up her gram.
Or maybe…this crazy favor she’d asked him was a million, billion times more dangerous than she’d anticipated.
Chapter Five
“Hey, do you—” Alex broke off, annoyed. He sounded like a little kid’s half-assed version of Darth Vader from under this mask. Sure, it’d keep their lungs safe during days and days of sanding. But it was only hour two of the sanding, now that they’d finished their initial cleaning push, and he already hated the thing. He yanked it down to protect his Adam’s apple, instead.
“Do I wish we could’ve sprung for the full-sized industrial sander? Hell, yeah,” Teague said. His voice was similarly muffled. Unlike Alex, though, he seemed to take it in stride. Guess after protecting himself from the punishing desert wind and sand, a little mask action made no difference to him.
“We will. For the big jobs. But it’d be useless here on the stair railing.”
“I get it.” Teague winked over the top of the mask. “Size matters.”
“Don’t say that in front of Amelia and Ever. They’ll dissolve into giggles. Or a feminist mantra recitation. It is impossible for them to hear those two words and not take them out of context.”
“You mean like us and how anything remotely fart-related turns us automatically into eleven-year-olds?”
“Yeah.”
Switching off the sander, Teague said, “You sure about starting here?