Page 130 of At First Spark
Some people flirt with a room and make it lighter. Kenzie makes it feel watched.
“I’m working,” I say. “So unless you need a room—which you can’t have because we’re closed—you can leave.”
She drifts farther inside instead of backing out, fingers trailing absently across the edge of the front counter. Too casually. Too comfortable. Her gaze catches briefly on the open ledger again. Then the renovation timeline. Then the calendar hanging beside the office door.
My stomach turns slowly. She’s not here to flirt. She’s gathering information.
“Holt didn’t tell you about me,” she says.
Straight to it then.
“No,” I answer evenly. “And I didn’t ask.”
I see it in the slight shift of her expression. Her smile thins just enough to expose something colder underneath it.
“Smart,” she says. “Though that’s not nearly as fun.”
Nolan moves then—not toward her exactly, but enough to shift the sensation of the room. Enough that she notices. Enough that I do too.
His body already placing itself between her and the office hallway where the permits and keys are stored.
Interesting.
“You need something?” he asks.
Kenzie’s gaze flicks toward him.
“You his replacement?”
I blink. Nolan doesn’t.
“No,” he says calmly. “I’m the guy asking whether this is going somewhere useful.”
The tension that follows stretches tight enough to snap. Kenzie looks between us again, calculating something I don’t like, then she smiles, like she learned what she came here to learn.
“Tell Holt I stopped by.”
“No,” I say.
Her eyes narrow slightly. “No?”
“No,” I repeat. “If you have something to say to him, you can tell him yourself. Somewhere that isn’t here.”
For a second, I think she’ll push. I think she might enjoy a bigger scene. Instead, she smiles again, all teeth and no warmth.
“Good,” she says softly. “You do have a spine.”
Then she turns and walks out, bells rattling behind her as the door swings shut hard enough to make the front window tremble in its frame. The silence she leaves behind is worse than the noise.
Nolan looks at me. “That her?”
I don’t ask what he means.
“Yes.”
Nolan looks toward the window, then the street beyond it.
“She alone?”
