Page 31 of Electric Kiss

“Why?”

“I missed you,” he said.

“What?”

“Can we go inside? It’s freezing out here.”

“All right,” Daisy said, glancing at his wrist. “You could pull down your sleeves.”

Nate chuckled. He climbed up on the ledge and then dropped into her office. Daisy waited for Nate to move further in, pushed the sash window down, and fixed the latch. She was more bothered about keeping that window locked than she was about her back door.

Nate moved to the other side of the room, where her coffee machine was sitting on the sideboard.

“Can I have a coffee?” he asked.

“Sure, milk is in the fridge underneath. Can you make me one too?”

“How do you take it?”

“Just milk, a splash.”

Nate set about making the coffee, and she took her seat behind her desk and closed her laptop lid to make her monitor screen go dark. It was a bunch of numbers that wouldn’t make sense, but she was in the habit of always hiding her work.

Nate came over to the seat opposite her desk and placed the mugs on the desk. He made himself comfortable with his legs stretched out. His feet ended up under the desk and resting next to her feet.

She eyed him carefully, her expression giving no indication as to what she was thinking. She didn’t give away if she was annoyed or amused or if she was even surprised that he was there.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

He swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the side out of the window he’d come through.

“You never sent me the list,” he said.

She tilted her head slightly, her eyes narrowing in confusion.

“What list?”

“The list of reasons why I can’t kiss you,” he replied.

A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Oh, that list. Well, it’s endless. I thought my surname was enough of a deterrent.”

He looked down at his shoes, his cheeks growing red.

“It wasn’t,” he said quietly. “You seem to think I hate all things Turner.”

“I know you hate all things, Turner. You have for a long time, at least during school, and it seems you blame the Turners for the downturn in business.”

She didn’t want to reveal she knew who he was on the call.

“Every business owner on the island thinks that. I’m not alone in feeling the pinch. This movie seems to have got the town buzzing.”

“So you don’t hate the Turners?”

“No, but I still don’t like what they’ve done to the island.”

“When you say they, I am a Turner,” Daisy said, exasperated.

“Not really. You haven’t played a part in the last six years. You haven’t been here. I didn’t like you at school for different reasons.”

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