Page 5 of When Hairy Met Stella

“Only some basic first aid. It’s always nice to be able to help people in need.”

“Yeah, it must be,” he replied, his shoulders slumping a bit. He didn’t know how that felt, but his brother sure did. Time to switch the subject before his bitterness permeated the room. “I really am sorry…about all of this.” He looked away from her toward the door, noticing the drops of blood on the tile. “I shouldn’t have snuck up on you.”

“Please.” She waved him off. “I’m super jumpy as it is. There was no reason for me to act that way.”

“Of course there was. It could have been anyone breaking in here.” He furrowed his brow, remembering how her despondent expression made him want to save her—to protect her—from whatever was bothering her. Rubbing his nose, he realized what a fool he’d been. Stella didn’t need a protector. “You really do have a mean left hook.”

Her cheeks reddened, the color migrating south to find its home on the slope of her long neck. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be. I wish I packed a punch like that.”

It wasn’t his imagination. Her eyes roamed across his chest and down his right arm. He fought the urge to flex, though he wasn’t sure why he even thought to. He shouldn’t have wanted to impress her. But he did.

She rounded the desk and stacked a couple papers on top of one another. “My dad made me take a self-defense class before I went to college.”

“You got a lot out of it, that’s for sure.”

“I never thought I’d actually have to use anything I learned.” She reached for a paper at the top of the desk and muted a series of curses as she knocked over her mug. Dark-brown liquid sprinted across the desk, talking a handful of papers as its soggy victims before he could scoop up those left unscathed.

She grabbed the roll of paper towels she’d brought in moments ago to stop his bloody nose. “Well, I can punch withthe best of them, but clearly, that’s where my coordination ends,” she mumbled to herself.

Her dance moves from earlier confirmed that theory, but he wasn’t about to say that, not when her posture deflated like a jack-o-lantern a week after Halloween. “I don’t know about that,” he lied.

Once she’d dried off the desk, he moved to put the papers back when his eyes snagged on a blueprint.

It was an obvious rendering of the salon. But where the gray, bulky receptionist’s desk would have been was a shiny, brass table with scrolls of iron as the feet. And all the overhead fixtures and lights around the mirrors matched the brass, giving the space a modernized yet retro feel. The black-and-white checkered tile was gone in favor of a marbled floor speckled with flecks of gold. Nate wasn’t one who watched home improvement shows. Heck, he wasn’t even sure of the difference between granite or quartz. But even he admitted to himself that this was stunning.

“That’s the salon, right?”

Her head snapped up from the desk, her eyes wide and unblinking. “That’s…tha—that’s…” she stuttered. And there she was, wildly flapping her arms again, knocking over the coffee mug again. This time, at least it was empty. She ripped the paper out of his hands, wrinkling it in the process. “That’s nothing. Nothing at all. Just something I was messing around with on the computer a while back.”

It wasn’tnothing, unless she had a side gig working at Ryan Remodeling when she wasn’t at the salon. Yeah, he’d seen the logo at the bottom of the page. Was remodeling the salon something she was considering? Made sense. Since she’d taken over the salon from its previous owner a couple years ago, she hadn’t updated a thing, according to Lucy.

“It looks really nice.”

She stood behind the desk, arms crossed, and a toothless smile plastered across her face that looked like the one Sheldon Cooper flashed when he faked being happy. No doubt he thought Stella was a beautiful woman, but this smile was starting to freak him out a little. “It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.” Her head shook like a bobblehead doll on the dashboard of a car driving down a gravel road. Suddenly, the things Nate had seen in the back storage room a few weeks back made a lot more sense.

“Okay,” he said with a shrug. He bent to pick up what looked like a cutout from a brochure, one he’d seen on her desk a while back when she’d called him in to discuss some inventory issues. In the center was a chandelier that managed to sparkle like diamonds without looking gaudy. “This is really nice,” he said, handing the picture to her. If this was something she wanted to add to the salon, he was all for it. It was certainly better than the large globe light that, at certain angles, looked like butt cheeks hanging from the ceiling.

“Thanks.” She took the photo from his hands and shrugged. “Just something I imagined for the salon. More of a dream, really.”

“A dream? This lighting fixture?” He cocked his head and regarded the photo. “I’m no electrician, but I don’t see why you couldn’t get that hung pretty easily.”

“It’s not… I just… Sometimes dreams are better left in here,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “Sometimes it’s just better that way.”

“Why, though?”

“It’s just easier.”

Okay, so he wasn’t the most adept conversationalist, but even he knew they weren’t talking about chandeliers anymore. But she scooped up the plans in one fell swoop, and like that, the conversation was over.

Clearly, she didn’t want to talk about whatever all this was, and he wasn’t going to pry. Besides, leaning into this feeling of wanting to help her, wanting to solve her problems, wanting to be someone she could lean on wasn’t healthy—for either of them. What she needed was some privacy, and he sure could go for some distance.

“Are you all packed for the big weekend?” she asked as she took the paper from his hand.

So much for getting some distance.

How had he forgotten about the long weekend Lucy and his brother had arranged the week before their wedding? He hadn’t, actually. It was all he’d thought about for the past couple weeks. How had Lucy pitched it to him?Think of it as a five-day bridal shower full of games and fun!And that was exactly why he’d willed any thoughts related to the upcoming trip to hop on a giant broomstick and whoosh on outta here.

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