Page 16 of Wrapped with a Beau

Elisha doesn’t mind the walk from town to Ves’s house, even though the wind this morning is brisk enough to make her teeth chatter. But the trek gets her blood pumping and it’s easy for her to be optimistic about how the conversation will go.

Surely in the face of a hand-delivered breakfast, he won’t be so standoffish?

“Elisha,” she says, trying to match his deeper voice. “Good morning. It’s lovely to see you.”

Hold up. She scowls. Would he think it’s lovely to see her?

Granted, she hardly knows the prickly man, but it doesn’t sound like him. “Elisha,” she tries again. “It’s great to—no, that’s not right, either. It’s... tolerable to see you again? What accursed lottery from hell did I win to see you again so soon? Oh god, you again?”

It’s deeply annoying that she can easily envision him saying any of those responses.

“Okay, however he greets you doesn’t matter,” she says firmly. “Remember: grace and gumption.” She switches to her brighter voice. “Morning, Ves! Thought you might enjoy a hot breakfast.”

Back to his baritone. “Would you like to come in?”

“I’d love to!” she chirps.

This is going well already, she thinks as she trudges up the front steps of the Victorian house. She even believes it when she raises the Green Man knocker and raps once, twice.

Just as Elisha begins to fret that it may be too early to drop in, the door swings open. Oh my.

A somewhat sleep-rumpled, frazzled-looking Ves stands there wearing gray sweats and a tee so white it battles with the color of his hair. He has faint pillow creases on his cheeks, like he just woke up, and his feet are bare. Seeing his toes, weirdly, makes him feel much more human, and she has to forcibly drag her gaze up his body to meet his eyes. Which are suspiciously narrowed at her.

“Good mor—” she begins to say.

“Yes? What do you want?”

Her mouth drops. Oof, already off to a bad start. She squares her shoulders. His impatience isn’t going to deter her. Clinging to her mantra, she hesitantly lifts the brown carryout bag. “I brought you breakfast.”

“You brought me—” He frowns.

“Breakfast,” Elisha supplies. “I thought we could eat together? I don’t know how you’re fixed for the most important meal of the day, but my family owns the Chocolate Mouse, you can’t have missed it, it’s that big brick building in the center of town—”

“You’re rambling,” he says, cutting her off. He rakes his hand through his platinum hair and sighs. “Just...” He looks like he’s about to regret what he’s about to say next. “Come in.”

She scrapes her feet on the mat first, and when she crosses the threshold, it’s abundantly clear what she’s walked into: sheer and undeniable chaos. Maeve’s romance novels have been pulled off shelves and heaped into piles, entire drawers have been emptied, and there are about five patches of visible carpet that he must have been using as a pathway from one end of the room to the other. In short, the living room looks ransacked, and the kitchen table isn’t much better, buried under papers and some of Doc Hollins’s old file boxes.

She gapes. “What have you been doing?”

His jaw takes on a defensive set. “Cleaning.”

“You call this cleaning? No, no, buddy. Whatever this is, it’s the opposite of that.”

“Didn’t ask for your opinion,” he grumbles, yet still chivalrously takes the bag from her.

“No, the first one is for free,” she quips, eyeing the candy cane ornament propped against the wall.

“And yet it’s still a bad deal,” he calls over his shoulder as he heads for the kitchen. But the grouchiness has mostly faded from his voice. “Oh my god, coffee.” Ves says the word with rapture. “Coffee that doesn’t smell like dead rat.” He shudders. “Coffee that hasn’t come from that contraption in there.”

“You actually used Maeve’s ancient coffee maker? She hasn’t touched that since her dad died.” A flicker of sympathy goes through her at his visible revulsion. “In that case, I forgive your bad mood.”

For a second, she thinks he’s going to gift her with another smart-alecky remark. But he surprises her.

“Sorry,” says Ves with a rueful almost-smile. “I do appreciate this. I’m just not a morning person.”

Elisha files that away under the other irrelevant things she knows about him, along with how cute he looks even when he’s grumpy and that his lips part just so, revealing lovely square teeth that look whitened a normal amount, not to a freaky fluorescence. She doesn’t want to notice these things, much less be flustered by them, but it’s inescapable when you’re a foot away from hotness.

“I’ve been up since five a.m.,” she says. “And please know I say that in a matter-of-fact way and not in a smug I’m-better-than-you way, which I’ve been told is how it comes across sometimes.”

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