Faster than I can say it, really, though you can bet it’s popping out of my mouth over and over again as I dive through the barrage, trying to get to the kid.
Mugs come smashing down everywhere, exploding like little bombs of sharp-edged shrapnel, but right now I’m less worried about my investment and more about protecting the skinny body careening toward the starbursts of jagged dagger pieces littering the floor.
After this, I’ve really gotta rethink my pet policy.
I grab for the boy just as he’s about to hit the floor, hooking my arm around his waist and slinging him against me as I twirl.
There’s no way I can stop us both from falling, but at least I can take the brunt of it.
I know it’s going to hurt.
I don’t care.
I just brace, pinch my eyes shut, and prepare for a fractured elbow, only hoping a ceramic blade doesn’t pierce a vital organ.
But when something hits me, it’s not the stabby mug fragments.
It’s a brawny arm, twined around my waist like a steel cable, yanking me away from the floor so hard it rips the breath out of me.
My eyes fly open.
Alaska.
He’s grabbing even as his knees hit the floor, bowing forward and wrapping me in his shield of a body until I’m cocooned in him and the kid gets cocooned in me.
Holy hell.
I’ve never felt so surrounded by pure body heat before.
I stare up into his shockingly calm canyon eyes with my heart on fire.
My breath comes in rapid shudders while the debris settles, the last of it bouncing off his broad back before hitting the floor and bursting apart in puffs of porcelain powder and shiny marbles.
It’s been a storm of noise. The sudden silence feels like a gunshot.
Everyone’s staring, frozen around us—except Mitch, who’s got Momo by the leash, fighting to wrangle the boxer under control and dragging the excited dog outside as gently as possible.
Mozart’s left the crime scene.
Typical.
But I’m not looking for the cat.
I’m looking up at the Everest of a man holding me in his arms, wondering why I feel like I’ve just been lit with a triple espresso, lashing my blood into an electric rush.
“You okay?” he rumbles breathlessly.
God. Am I?
I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or his son, and I’m suddenly too freaked to answer. Especially when I realize I’m gripping the boy like he’ll break if I don’t hold him together.
With a startled sound, I relax my grip and yank my hands back.
But he’s got his arms wrapped in a chokehold around my neck, his face buried in my shoulder.
Something goes soft and weird inside me.
I never had any younger siblings, and my family’s so scattered and thinned out. Even Ember Caldwell, my cousin, is someone I only got to know better later in life...so I’ve never known what it’s like to have a child clinging on for comfort.
It gets me all worried and warm—and after a tentative look at Alaska, I rest a hand on the kid’s back.
“Hey,” I say. “You’re not hurt, are you? It’s okay. The Great Eruption’s over. Think we might’ve bothered the Yellowstone Caldera, though.”
There’s a sniffle.
Then a muffled voice, miserable and soft. “...but I...I broke your stuff. You’re not mad?”
“No, I...” I pause.
Technically, I guess I should be mad, huh? I mean, I don’t have that much disposable income, and a major profit margin just crash-landed on the floor. I’m just relieved everyone’s okay. “Do I look mad, kiddo? What’s your name?”
“Eli,” he mumbles.
“Eli,” I correct myself, and can’t help smiling.
Never mind how Alaska’s still holding me, almost keeping me locked in a stereotypical damsel-in-distress save pose.
Or that the entire shop’s looking at us.
Concert over. Even if Peace turned into the hybrid reincarnation of Elvis and Aretha Franklin, she couldn’t have kept the crowd’s attention through the flying mug drama.
Now there’s an upset kid craned against me, and I’ll worry about the rest later.
Eli lifts his head slowly. Underneath the mess of hair—he’s doing that feathery forward-swept hair helmet thing that was popular ten years ago—he’s got deep walnut eyes. Just like his dad, and they’re wide and wet and mournful now, heavy with guilt.
“I’m not mad,” I whisper. “Promise.”
“Y-yeah?”
“They’re just mugs,” I say, and keep my smile, hoping it’s reassuring. “No one got hurt, and that’s all that matters.”
“Elijah,” Alaska murmurs—coaxing, gentle, but firm. “What do we say?”
“I...I’m sorry, ma’am.” Eli rubs at his eyes. “And I...” He looks around, then, his eyes bleak as they widen with horror. “Um, I don’t know if my allowance is enough to pay for all this.”
“You’ll be working it off for the rest of your natural life. Starting with helping me clean up right now,” Alaska counters dryly before those walnut eyes sweep to me.
I tell myself my heart’s just flouncing because I narrowly escaped dying in a mug deluge.
“How much for the damage?” he asks.
“Er.” My face heats like I’m standing over a vat of roasting beans in July. “Could I maybe talk about this on my feet?”
Alaska blinks.
He clears his throat a little too loudly and obviously, harumphing like some giant bear. It makes Eli giggle, peeking at his father from under his hair with a slow, teasing grin spreading on his lips.
“You gonna carry us both like babies, Dad?” Then he turns that grin on me. “He’s strong enough, y’know. I once saw him pick up a whole—”
“That’s enough,” Alaska says gruffly, ruffling Elijah’s hair with one hand.
With the other, he hefts me up until I find my feet on the ground. That’s when I let Eli down and steady him so we’re all standing around awkwardly in the ruins of what used to be my cute little mug tower.
Welp.
Guess there was a reason for that imminent spider feeling that’s been churning in my belly like a runaway train for weeks.
Good luck is a mirage.
Fool’s gold, plain and simple.
Raking my hair back, I twist my lips, tallying up what I spent on this—not just the invoice cost of the mugs, but also the table with the giant crack down the middle, the floorboards I just replaced after those pricks who were after my best friend Libby scratched the whole place up. And now there’s a bunch of gouges in the freshly laid honey-toned ash wood.
Yikes.
I’m not trying to take this guy for every penny when he’s such a gentleman, but I just don’t have the cash to cover this. If he doesn’t mind helping out, then I’ll gratefully take it.
I can’t lose the business.
I can’t.
No one wants to come to a grubby, dingy coffee shop with splintered-up floorboards, even if I’m the only real coffee game in town besides the diner.
Opening my mouth, I turn back to Alaska—only for all the blood that was rushing through me to practically drain right out as I see the wet, dark cascade running down the leg of his jeans.