Now he was waiting for Lucy. Again. And, unless he wanted to bring her to work with him—which he did not—he’d have to bring her back to the cottage after.
At the twenty minute mark, he was about to get in his truck and leave without her, but then she stepped out onto the front porch.
Wearing his sweatshirt.
Why did seeing this woman wearing his hoodie make him want to pull her into his arms? His fingers practically itched to slide up under the fabric and glide over her bare skin.
“I said five minutes,” he said gruffly, trying to muster irritation to douse the heat pounding through his veins. “Not five minutes times four.”
“I decided jeans were a better choice,” she said cheerfully, ignoring his scowl as she climbed into his truck. “And then I thought it might get warm enough so I want to take the sweatshirt off, so I had to put a shirt under it.”
He didnotneed to think about what she was or was not wearing under the hoodie. “Riding in the truck doesn’t require a wardrobe change.”
Lucy just laughed and turned away to watch the waves breaking over the rocks as he navigated along the shoreline.
It was worth losing time on the job to hear her laugh. It worried him when she hid away in the blankets because he hadn’t known her all that long, but he thought she was generally a positive, upbeat person.
Sure, she’d been let down by every single person who mattered to her, but she was here now. Even if she couldn’t get a hug yet, she had Helen.
And she had Nick. He hadn’t asked for Lucy to barge into his life, and he wasn’t sure exactly what to do with her, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who could sit back and do nothing while a person needed a hand up.
“So where are we going, anyway?” she asked when they reached the outskirts of town.
“The hardware store. Unfortunately, due to economic reality, we have to buy the bulk of our supplies from the box stores in the city, but we always end up needing random things, and we get those from Smith’s Hardware.”
“And is the owner a Smith?”
“Yes, but—” He paused while navigating a particularly tight turn. It was so fun living in a quaint historic town with brick structures built while they were still designing roads for horses. “He’s not from around here. Back in the sixties, I guess, the Smith who was the third generation to own the hardware store decided to sell. Don Smith owned a small, struggling hardware store a little ways inland. He decided to sell his, and when he bought our Smith’s, he didn’t have to change the sign.”
“That was very practical of him. A good quality in a business owner.”
Nick parked and made sure he had the list before turning the engine off. “Are you going to wait here or go in?”
“I’m not going to sit in the truck while you do all the work.”
He was about to tell her going inside and grabbing a few things wasn’t exactly work, but she was already out of the truck.
Smith’s Hardware was a sprawling old building with multiple rooms and wooden floors that squeaked. It had almost anything a person could need, but good luck finding it. Don, though, knew where almost everything was in the layers of merchandise that was organized mainly by decade.
The fact it took so long to get to one of the big box stores—a time that could be doubled or even tripled by tourist traffic during the summer—and being able to dig up a fitting for a washing machine from the 1990s kept him in business.
“Oh wow,” Lucy breathed as she stepped into the dim, cool interior of the building. “There is literallyeverythinghere. Like, if you have a leaf blower, scented candles and a baking pan on your list, this is the place to go.”
“Feel free to look around while I take care of this.”
She actually looked offended. “I’m not shopping on company time. Lead the way.”
Nick clenched his jaw and headed for the counter, where Don was chatting with a couple of old-timers. He’d been joking when he told Lucy she was bound by his agreement with Helen, but maybe she’d missed that.
To be fair, he was probably frowning at the time. According to her, he did that a lot.
“Mornin’,” Don said as the other two guys wandered off to poke around the dusty back shelves. “Who’s this with you today?”
“I’m Lucy. I work for Nick.”
“You don’t work for me.” He looked at Don. “She doesn’t work for me.”
“You said—”