Page 10 of Loving You

In the flurry of greetings, she’d ended up facing me while she hugged Kate. Her eyes looked off somewhere to my right, but the expression there damn near gutted me. It was a forlorn thing, and the tears rimming her eyes accentuated my concern.

What was going on with her?

It couldn’t be that she was so glad to be finished with our meeting that she was crying in relief. This wasn’t simply because I bored her or drove her crazy with pet peeves or whatever else we used to rib each other about months ago.

Maybe she hadn’t seen her friends in a while. Maybe she’d had a tough day. Maybe she’d reached the hangry point and there was just no holding back.

Wait.

A memory tugged at me as April blinked away her tears before her friends could see them. Years ago, we’d had a server who’d been in an abusive relationship, and for months she pretended to be fine when she wasn’t. She had that same look in her eyes. It was almost… haunted.

No,hunted.

Dread flowed through me at the thought that something similar could be happening with April.

The women slid into the booth, Ellie and Kate on one side, Rachel and April on the other, and began perusing the menu as though they didn’t come here weekly.

Sure, I could be overthinking it. Any of the excuses I’d come up with could be the reason April was surreptitiously dabbing at the corner of her eyes as she held the menu just so, but my instincts said that wasn’t the case.

My gut hadn’t steered me wrong often—maybe only about Connor and Brenna, and thank God I was wrong about them. In this, I suspected I was right. Whatever had been off about her the other day, and what I was witnessing right now, they were linked.

A crushing wave of fierce protectiveness washed through me, and I had to slip my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out for her.

“Um, Eric?” Ellie’s voice pierced my thoughts.

“Did you need something?” Rachel asked as the three Walker women looked on and April continued her read of the menu.

I should’ve said no. I should've left them to their girl time. Perhaps that was all April needed.

But somehow, I couldn’t make my feet move or my mouth say anything but, “Actually, yes. I’m so sorry about this, but April, I just realized I need you for one more thing. Can you come to my office for a minute?”

She blinked up at me, her flushed face a punch in the gut, before her eyes bounced away as she spoke. “Um, yeah. Let me order real quick, so I’m not holding things up, and I’ll be right there.”

Confirmation bloomed within me. Sure, I was appeased that she’d agreed to speak with me again even though she’d been eager to join her friends. But the fact that she hadn’t tossed me a thinly barbed comment or a flirtatious inquiry about whether I couldn’t get enough of her had me clenching my jaw so hard I might’ve cracked a tooth.

Keeping it together considering our audience, I nodded. “Ladies, enjoy your lunch.”

My pulse climbed with every step toward my office. I worked through a number of approaches, each worse than the last. They all sounded like a boss concerned for an employee, not like a man speaking to a woman he—

Nope, I’m not even going to finish that thought.

April and her marketing skills were a valuable asset to this brewery. She was a colleague, and if I was concerned about her, that was the only reason why, and there was nothing wrong with that.

I tidied a small stack of paperwork sitting to the left of my desktop, then fiddled with a pen before turning to my computer and clicking aimlessly through tabs until April knocked lightly on the door.

“You needed something else?”

I need you to tell me what’s going on and let me fix it.

I certainly couldn’t say that, so I stood and gestured to the same chair she’d left less than ten minutes ago.

“Yes, though I hope you’ll forgive the excuse I gave. It’s not work-related.”

She tucked her hands into her lap after taking a seat. “Okay. What’s going on?”

I sat and scooted in my chair, then leaned my wrists on the desk in an effort to appear nonconfrontational. “I was going to ask you that very question.”

Her brow furrowed. “Me?”

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