Nate’s mouth watered. Jack was absolutely right. If it tasted half as good as it smelled, then it would indeed give his life at Little Willow Farm meaning. It had been so long since he’d had a home cooked, family meal and certainly not with a tight-knit, loving family like this.
‘Yep.’ Laurel brushed past him and he dumped his beer on the side, following her through to the cupboard under the stairs.
‘I’ll help,’ he said.
‘I can do it, I know where it is,’ Laurel threw over her shoulder. Yes, he knew that she didn’t need any help, that she was self-sufficient, but still. He wanted to help.
‘I know, I’m just helping.’ He grinned as she flitted her eyes at him.
It wasn’t so much a cupboard under the stairs but next to the stairs, and it was packed to the literal rafters with boxes, including an ancient version of Monopoly, and small pieces of furniture that were obviously too precious to throw away but weren’t quite right in the house. Laurel reached up to take down a box that rested on the seat of a dining chair, which in turn had its front legs precariously balanced on the arm of a comfy chair and its back legs on a higher small cupboard.
Laurel edged the box forward and it tilted dangerously, starting to fall. She stretched to her full height with a grunt, smacking her hands flat against it as it teetered on the edge of the seat. The thin fabric of her top rose up around her waist, showing a delicious strip of milky skin above her skirt.
‘Are you just going to stand there? You could help,’ she said, trying to look over her shoulder but afraid that everything would fall if she moved too much.
‘Thought you didn’t need help,’ he couldn’t stop himself saying.
‘Shut up, Nate, and just help me,’ Laurel snapped. ‘It’s going to fall.’
Nate stepped towards her. Sure, he didn’t have to press his chest to her back and follow the line of her arms with his as he reached for the box above her. He didn’t have to take slightly too long in securing the box in his hands, but why not? She was attractive, and she was obviously attracted to him by the way her eyes had skimmed over his chest earlier, so why not flirt a little?
Laurel’s breath hitched in her throat, and the tips of her ears turned pink. She held herself entirely still as he pressed against her, making awkward and difficult work of gripping the box. He traced her pinking neck with his eyes and grinned at the hitch in her breath. What would her skin taste like? How would her legs feel wrapped around his waist?
The tension ratcheted up intensely.
‘Okay, have you got it?’ she asked, lifting her hands and shuffling away from him as best she could in the tight space.
‘Yeah,’ he said, lifting the box and setting it down somewhere less precarious. His voice was rough.
Laurel let out a breath and her throat bobbed in a swallow.
‘Okay.’
Grabbing the legs of the chair, Laurel angled herself towards the door. Nate took hold of the other side.
‘I’ve got it,’ she said, still flushed.
‘I know, one of the legs is caught.’ Nate tilted the chair this way and that, but it wasn’t shifting.
‘Can you just,’ she started, ‘if you pull it towards you,’
Nate frowned. She was wrong.
‘No, it needs to go backward.’
‘I can see where it is, Nate, you need to pull it towards you, then twist it left.’
She was agitated but whether it was because of the chair, or because the air was still thick with the memory of her back against his chest, he didn’t know.
‘No,’ he argued, ‘it’s just, hold on.’
The frustration fizzed up in her face like a shaken bottle of pop, and she pulled the chair as hard as she could, Nate pulling in the other direction. The wood creaked and cracked, and Nate stumbled backward as the backrest of the chair came off in one devastating popping, crunching sound.
Laurel fell against the door frame, mouth open.
‘What have you done?’ she hissed at him, shooting her eyes around to see if anyone was coming.
‘What have I done? You’re the one who wouldn’t listen, this wouldn’t have happened if you had just done what I said.’
