“Just a minute!” She launched away from him like he carried the plague. He tried not to let the hurt show, steeling his features into neutrality as she turned her back to him.
In much less than a minute, the red-haired bloke from the pub, the one who must have been her brother, filled the narrow doorway of the stockroom. His lips parted with a concern that diminished quickly when his sea-blue eyes scraped from Eiley to Warren. Warren grabbed the nearest pile of books he could find, holding them low to hide his hard on.Shite.
“The hell’shedoing here?” he asked with more derision than felt fair from a stranger.
“We, erm, we were …” Eiley stuttered.
“I was helping her with the flood damage,” Warren provided. “You must be the brother, aye? I’m Warren.”
“Did I ask you?” Her brother’s snarl was low with warning.
“Fraser,” Eiley snapped. “Hewashelping me. What areyoudoing here?”
Before Fraser could answer, a peal of voices rang through the bookshop, a child shouting for their mummy rising above them. Warren was quick to take another step back, spine crashing against the bookshelves. The kids were here.
As a wee lad raced into the stockroom, into her arms, Eiley’s face lit up in a way Warren hadn’t thought possible. Everything he’d known about her changed in an instant: posture relaxing, tenderness radiating through.
“Hi, munchkin. Did you miss me?” She twirled with the lad, dimples half-hidden by his shoulders.
Warren smiled without meaning to, just as he always did when he got to witness moments like this. The best part of the job was when he could reunite a bairn with their parents or retrieve something they’d thought lost.
Yet it came hand-in-hand with sadness. Envy he kept waiting to grow out of always gave him that same winded feeling he’d experienced as a kid falling off his bike for the first time. Family was a given to most people. He had a front row seat to all the things he should have had, too. All the things he’d lost.
“Yes, lots and lots! Auntie Harp said we have to stay at Nanna’s again!” The boy looped his arms around his mum’s neck. He shared her freckles and innocent frown, but his hair was ash-brown and his eyes a bright hazel. Not for the firsttime, Warren wondered where his father was, and why Eiley hadn’t mentioned him even once. He didn’t want to consider the options, though they wriggled into the back of his mind anyway: dead or just not here? He hoped she and the kids hadn’t experienced the same world-ending loss he had.
“We do. I’m so sorry, Brook.” Eiley set Brook down, kneeling so they were on the same eye level. “I know you liked having your own room, but the flat’s been damaged so we’re going to have to stay with Nanna until it’s fixed. But it’s not forever, okay?”
The stockroom became even more cramped when a blonde woman, who he assumed was Auntie Harp, the writer, appeared with a fair-haired, sleepy toddler on the ample curve of her hip. Looked like Warren would be meeting all of the family today.
Harper winced at Eiley. “Sorry. I tried to hold him off as long as I could, but Cam and I came home early to see how you were. Sky’s already settling in at your mum’s.” And then her inquisitive brown eyes turned to Warren. “Holy Hercules. What ishedoing here?”
Eiley took her youngest – Saff, he recalled – from the other woman, blowing raspberries into her neck until a gorgeous giggle escaped her. She bore much more resemblance to her mum, with fine, strawberry blonde hair tied in a band with a tiny blue bow and adorably cherubic cheeks. Warren didn’t know how to look away from all that contagious joy. He’d come across plenty of mothers before, but fuck, Eiley was the most loving, most beautiful, he’d ever seen.
“This is Warren,” Eiley introduced with another sharp warning glance at her brother. “He was the firefighter who helped me.”
“Wait, the firefighter with a raging superiority complex is also the slimy womaniser from the tavern?” Harper cocked her head, examining him without any sense of shame. “You missed that part out of the text!”
Warren raised his brows at Eiley. “Wow. You’re full of kind things to say about me, eh?”
“Did he cause you trouble?” asked Fraser, tugging Brook aside as though afraid the child might be tainted if he came too close.
“No. Everything is … fine.Anyway” – Eiley turned what was fast becoming Warren’s favourite shade of pink – “thank you, both, for taking care of the kids. Did you enjoy your morning with Cam, Harper?”
Harper only narrowed her eyes, leaning closer to Eiley and pointing at the pale column of her neck. “Is that alove bite?”
Warren risked a glance and found the red mark was, quite possibly, a love bite. From him. He’d gotten a bit carried away, afraid she’d slip through his fingers if he didn’t latch onto every bare patch of skin.
“No!” Eiley shouted, covering the bruise with her sleeve. In her arms, Saffron jumped.
“Auntie Harp, what is a mumaniser?” Brook questioned.
God, this was a disaster. Warren tried to fix it hastily, perhaps even make light of the situation so Fraser would stop glowering: “It’s slang for an exceptionally handsome lad.”
Eiley squeezed her eyes shut, flustered and likely wishing she’d told Warren to piss off hours ago. He couldn’t blame her. There wasn’t enough pizza in Belbarrow to fix this.
Fraser crossed his arms, revealing biceps almost as bulky as Warren’s.Double shite. “Actually, Brook, it’s a word we use for bad men who don’t treat women with respect.”
“Which, of course, is not true of me,” Warren was quick to point out. “Hence why I’m here to help.”
