chatted up one of the boys on the other side while he refilled her tray with more pancakes. He’d just finished loading up when a horrendous crash of glass smashing to smithereens made them both jump as if someone had unexpectedly fired off a shotgun next to them. Her head swiveling in the direction of the sound, she focused in on two teenage boys standing in a quickly dissipating wreath of steam from the open door of a huge dishwasher. As she watched, one shoved the other.
“Look what you made me do, you dumb shit!” The shover gave the other, larger, teen another shot to the chest.
“Who the hell you callin’ a dumb shit, ass cap?” The bigger boy pushed back, making the first kid stumble back several paces. Following up his advantage, Big Boy dogged the retreating boy’s footsteps, thrusting his face into the other youth’s. “You’re the one who backed into me, you stupid fuc—”
“That’s enough.” Max’s deep voice cut through the obscenity, and suddenly he was just there, reaching between the boys to separate them. “Sometimes accidents are just accidents. Jeremy, grab the broom.”
“Why the hell do I have to sweep up his mess?” Big Boy demanded.
“Because we work as a team and I asked you to,” Max replied evenly, giving the teen a level look that had Jeremy slouching away. The remaining boy snickered.
Max turned to him. “I wouldn’t be too smug if I were you, because you’re not off the hook. Go get a dustpan and the mop. After you pick up the glass Jeremy sweeps, you can mop the area.”
“Hey!” The slighter boy adopted a belligerent stance. “He only hadda do one thing. How come I gotta do two?”
“Rules of the road, Owen.” Max’s voice was matter-of-fact yet somehow as calming as cool water poured over scorched earth. “Jeremy wasn’t wrong, you know—you picked up a huge tray of glasses, then backed up without once looking behind you. And the guy going in reverse is always at fault.”
“That sucks!”
Max reached out and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Maybe so. But rules are rules, kid. Go grab the dustpan and mop.”
The boy grumbled but did as he was told. Harper picked her tray up off the counter and turned away.
Great. Like it wasn’t bad enough that she already harbored a fascination for this guy. Why did he have to go and be good with kids, as well?
She didn’t understand this damn attraction; it was so not her general M.O. She’d never gone for the big, physical guys—she was usually drawn to older, more sophisticated men. But Max Bradshaw... Lord, whenever he was near she felt like a vampire trying to do the stay-on-the-straight-and-narrow-blood-bank thing.
All the while scenting a juicy vein.
And if that didn’t make everything more complicated, she didn’t know what did. Like things weren’t convoluted enough already...considering the job with The Brothers Inn wasn’t her sole reason for being in Razor Bay.
“You prob’ly better move, lady,” the boy who had refilled her tray suddenly said, shaking her out of her reverie.
“What’s that?” She blinked, then, following his gaze, glanced over her shoulder. Other volunteers, awaiting their turn, had begun stacking up behind her. “Oops.” She flashed them her friendliest smile. “Sorry.”
Picking up her tray, she threw herself back into dishing out pancakes.
When the last patron left, Harper nearly did, as well. She had wiped down her tables and straightened the chairs. And since she’d tucked her driver’s license into her back pocket so she wouldn’t have to deal with a purse, she was good to go.
But looking into the kitchen, she saw Max and his crew still hard at work cleaning up. She could see the boys had about reached their limit of volunteerism, and, with a quiet sigh, she rounded the end of the counter and crossed the kitchen to the teen who was about to carry a stack of plates on which he’d precariously balanced more glasses than was safe. He was the larger of the two boys Max had separated earlier, the one she’d privately labeled Big Boy.
“Let me give you a hand with that,” she said, reaching to pluck the glasses off the plates and efficiently stacking them into two towers.
“Thanks, lady.” The teen pulled an overhead cupboard open and shoved the plates in. He jerked his head to the cupboard next to his. “Glasses go in there.”
“I’m Harper.”
“Jeremy,” he said in a voice that didn’t encourage her to get chatty.
“Nice to meet you.” Stepping alongside him, she reached up to set the glasses in her right hand on the shelf. Apparently she’d stacked them just a little too high, however, for the bottom of the uppermost cup bumped the edge of the cupboard and began to tilt back toward her.
Warmth radiated against her back, even though nothing actually touched it. At the same time a suntanned, white-cotton banded biceps came into her peripheral vision, and Max Bradshaw’s deep voice said, “Hang on, let me take a couple cups off the top.”
It only took him a second, but that moment stretched languorously as a cat after a long nap, her senses bombarded with his heat, with the salty, slightly musky scent of him mixed with that of pancake batter and laundry soap. She eyed the up-close view of the tail end of his tattoos undulating from beneath his sleeve hem with the movement of his arm, then transferred her attention to the muscles and tendons that flexed in his forearm, his rawboned wrist and long hand as he swiftly slid a couple of cups from the stack she still held aloft, dropped them onto the one in her left hand, then removed four or five of those and put them in the cupboard.
“There you go.” He stepped back and Harper put the rest of the cups alongside the minitower he’d placed on the shelf.
Exhaling softly, she glanced at him over her shoulder. “Thank you. You seem to have a knack for rescuing me from glassware accidents-about-to-happen.”
He stilled for a moment, and something hot and fierce flashed in his eyes. Or perhaps she only imagined it, because in the next instant he gave her a faint smile, polite nod and a murmured, “My pleasure.”
Oh, trust me, it was mine, as well.
Probably a less than brilliant idea to go there, however, so she shook the thought aside and injected some starch in her spine. Then, seeing an opportunity and not shy about taking advantage of it, she turned to him fully. “Listen, I only work three-quarter time at the inn. I’d love to volunteer some of my free hours to Cedar Village.”
“Yeah?” He studied her through shuttered dark eyes. “What do you have to offer?”
“I don’t know. What do volunteers generally do? I’m pretty much a jack-of-all-trades. But what I really rock at is organizing activities. And fund-raising.” When he continued to simply look at her with level, noncommittal eyes, she shrugged impatiently. People usually jumped at her fund-raising skills. “If that doesn’t work for you, I could always just provide a woman’s touch.”
“I wouldn’t mind a woman’s touch,” drawled a blond boy who was swabbing down the counter a few feet away, and his tone told Harper he wasn’t thinking motherly thoughts.
“That’s enough, Brandon,” Max said, but it was the look that Harper aimed at the youth that made the boy squirm. It was a thousand-yard stare she’d perfected when she was twelve, a nonthreatening but cool gaze that made the recipient completely question the wisdom of uttering the words that had warranted it in the first place.
“Sorry,” Brandon muttered.
“Not a problem.” She gave him a slight smile that was warmer without encouraging him to repeat his blunder. Then she turned back to Max. “This won’t help for today’s event, but I could tell you how to make your next pancake breakfast more profitable. And while I can’t promise anything until I talk to Jenny, maybe she’d let us offer the occasional supervised use of some of The Brothers’