Goddamn.
I swear, I can still feel Felicity’s touch branded on my palm, ticklish and sweet.
Turning away with a snort, I head back outside into the warm spring night. The smell of the evening air comes on so different from the warm roasting scents inside the café. It almost slaps me in the face, the breeze sharp in the back of my throat.
Eli’s nowhere to be seen.
Until I rap on the passenger side window, and a shaggy head pops up.
“Is it okay?” he asks, his voice muffled through the glass.
“Come on out,” I say. “If you want your photos, you’ve gotta help clean up first.”
Eli groans. “I didn’t make any messes this time!”
“Nope, but we’re helping Miss Felicity.”
Eli’s face falls. He unlocks the door and slinks out of the SUV, glancing at the soft-lit windows of The Nest.
“Is she okay, Dad? They didn’t hurt her, did they?”
I keep my smile to myself.
Sounds like my son likes Miss Felicity as much as I do.
“Nope,” I say. “Not even a little bruise. C’mon. Let’s get to work.”
We head inside and join her.
She starts cleaning out the display case and throwing out the ruined pastries and cakes and candy, while Eli starts sweeping, and I work at righting all the furniture. Mostly just chairs, though a few heavy tables got knocked over, too—thank God these weren’t glass, but wood slabs that survived with maybe a dinged corner here and there.
It’s easy enough, working together like this.
Feels comfortable. Familiar in a weird way, despite the ugly scene I keep wondering about.
Satisfying, even, to be putting Felicity’s store back in one piece.
It takes about an hour to make it decent again, including throwing all the destroyed stuff in a big trash bag and dragging it to the dumpster out back. On my way back inside from the narrow alley, I stop by the vehicle and fetch the cash from the glove compartment.
When I walk back in through the front door, Eli’s perched on a barstool next to Felicity, showing her his camera. It’s an old Canon he picked up at a secondhand shop with a thick telescoping lens, and he’s telling her how to open and close the aperture ring.
“I’ve got a digital,” he says proudly, “but I like this one best. It takes better photos, but I can’t show them as easily. I need a darkroom to develop them right. Dad says if I’m good with my chores, once we get a place of our own, he’ll let me convert a spare room so I can work on my film instead of doing it at school.”
“That’s a great idea,” Felicity says with some amusement. “Especially since I don’t think the school has anything like a darkroom. We’re pretty rustic out here.”
“Lady, you don’t know backwoods till you’ve camped in the Yukon for a month,” I say, and they both look up at me.
Eli snorts, playfully rolling his eyes. “Don’t get him started. He’s so...Dad,” he says, like that explains everything.
Felicity gives me a quick smile, softer now in the clean, restored café, as if setting everything to rights brought her spirits back.
“He is indeed very Dad,” she teases lightly.
I can’t help how my heart skips at that smile.
Shit, this is bad.
Laughing, I settle on the stool on Eli’s other side and plunk the stack of bills on the bar between us. “Look, I’m used to roughing it. It’s how I learned to appreciate a good cup of coffee. It’s about all that kept me sane on long missions. Not to mention it’s a mighty good way to keep you from freezing your fingers off during those damned winters.”
“Missions?” Felicity cocks her head at me curiously.
“Dad used to be hardcore—a Navy SEAL,” Eli rushes out quickly.
If I was a blushing man, I’d be red as a beet.
Felicity stares at me with a sort of sly, fox-like amusement. Like she knows exactly what’s going on in my head.
“So you refined your palate on MRE kit coffee, huh? Not sure if I trust your taste, then.”
“Gotta suffer the bad to know the good.” I shrug, clearing my throat. “But yeah. I did my tour of duty, but I’ve been all over. Working oil rigs, mining, construction. In Alaska, you take the jobs that are there, and you work hard or you don’t work at all.”
Eli leans toward Felicity with a pointedly loud, conspiratorial stage whisper. “Seriously, don’t get him started. Alaska this, Alaska that. That’s the real reason everyone calls him that. ‘Cause he won’t ever stop talking about it.”
“Hey. Enough with that mouth, brat.” I cuff the back of his neck lightly, giving him a gentle mock-shake. “Not my fault I love my homeland.”
Felicity’s still watching me with those eyes that seem less guarded and more like they’re just waiting for me to find the mysteries hiding in their shadows.