She lifted a brow. “I guess not.”

“Because you haven’t been taking your breaks in here.”

“I’ve been… busy over my breaks the last couple of days.”

Dax started to say something about her avoiding him, but he looked more closely. She seemed to mean it. In fact, her lips were pulled tightly at the corners, and her eyes were filled with fatigue.

“Is it your dad?”

Startled, Jane’s gaze met his. “My dad?”

“Max said he’s sick.”

She frowned. “You and Max have been talking about me?”

“Everyone talks about you,” Dax said. He gave her a little smile. “I fully intended to ask about you, but I didn’t have to. People love you. And they know a lot about you.”

She was still frowning when she said, “These people know me too well.”

“And love you,” he said again. He wanted to be sure she heard that part. They might not have been gushing to her about him, but they’d all had a million great things to say about her, and it seemed they were thrilled to have someone to say them to. Since everyone knew Jane so well, they probably didn’t have reason to talk about how wonderful they thought she was.

“Yeah, well, they don’t get out much. Their bar for greatness is pretty low,” she said. She reached for his cup and took a drink of his cappuccino.

He grinned watching her. “Well, they haven’t said great,” he told her.

She looked up at him. “No?”

“Nope. Not one person has used the word great.”

“What word have they used?” she asked. Her eyes were lit with something else now—sass, spunk, something other than exhaustion and the touch of sadness he’d thought he’d glimpsed too. This was much preferable.

She sat back in her chair, folded an arm over her stomach, propped her heel on the chair on the other side of her, and kept drinking his cappuccino.

He leaned in, pretending to think. “Let’s see. I’m trying to remember if there were any specific adjectives.”

“Hard working?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “I mean, it’s clear you know everything there is to know about this place, but nothing they told me was about the factory.”

She lifted a brow then lifted the cup. She was intrigued but trying to hide it. He was going to draw this out, not give her what she wanted right away. It would keep her with him longer. He’d felt like he’d missed her. It had only been two days, and he barely knew her, but he’d been disappointed to not see her over the past couple of days. Now it was bugging him that she’d clearly been dealing with something unpleasant.

He’d also noted she hadn’t answered him about what that was and if it had to do with her father. No one had given him specifics, but knowing he was sick and in a local nursing home made Dax want to know everything.

She swallowed her drink and said, “So what did they tell you about if not the factory? All I really do is work and go home. I’m not interesting at all.”

Uh-huh. He’d be the judge of that. She was very interesting if for no other reason than she was completely the opposite of the last several women he’d dated. She was a blue-collar worker from small-town Iowa where she’d spent her whole life. Her wardrobe, at least her daily work clothes, consisted of denim and t-shirts. She had gorgeous eyes and lips and skin and hair and not one bit of it was adorned with makeup or jewelry. She drove a forklift, for fuck’s sake.

“Let’s see, well, Alecia told me you came over and slept on her couch and took her two little girls to school for three days when her baby was sick with RSV and she was up all night with him.”

Jane paused with the cup halfway to her lips. She looked at him with surprise. “She did?”

“Yep. And you puppy-sat for Daren and his wife when they took their first vacation in five years last summer. He said if you hadn’t been willing to take their three dogs to your house for a week, they wouldn’t have been able to go because no one else would take them, and they couldn’t afford boarding, but you insisted they deserved to get away.”

Jane set the cup back on the table and crossed her arms. “Well, they did.”

He nodded. “And Marsha said you stayed an extra two hours every day for ten days, so you could give her a ride home after her shift when she was in a car accident, and it was taking the insurance company forever to get her the money to fix it.”

“I got paid overtime,” she muttered. But she was studying the cup on the table instead of looking at him.

“I guess that one was kind of about the factory,” he said.

And it occurred to him that none of them had said they loved her; it had just been very clear.

“Other people do that stuff too,” she said.

That was true. They’d told him those stories too. The stories about Jane had come up within conversations about how the factory workers felt like a little family and how they all helped each other out. He just homed in on her and what kind of person that clearly made her. Because he was incredibly attracted to her, and he’d never dated a woman who would have done any of those things he’d just talked about. Though to be fair to the women he’d dated, none of them worked with people who couldn’t afford to board their dogs or get their cars fixed right away.

“I buy cappuccino machines and subscribe to streaming packages that have classic game shows on them to make people happy and feel a little lighter about their work,” he finally said. “You actually help make things a little lighter for people.”

Her gaze came back to his, and he felt the connection in his gut. He hadn’t intended to say that, but it was true. He admired her. He took seriously his desire to make people happier and add some frivolity to life. Life was hard. It was serious no matter how hard you tried to have fun. So having moments, here and there, where it was just about fun and laughter were important. But Jane made people’s lives a little easier by doing things, getting in there and sharing their loads, and he really fucking liked that about her.

“I think this cappuccino is pretty delicious,” she finally said, her voice a little thick.

He smiled. Coming from her, that was huge. He’d take it.

“Can I ask you about an idea I had? I’d love your input,” he said.

“I know nothing about air hockey.”

He cocked his head. “What?”

“If you want to know what other tables to put in here, I’m not the right girl.”

He laughed. “Not that.” He paused. “And I think you are the right girl.”

Their eyes locked again, and the moment seemed heavier somehow. The right girl for what? Yeah, that was a good question. One he kind of wanted the answer to. A lot.

She pressed her lips together, and Dax realized he really was obsessed with that part of her body. He’d thought maybe that had been about the cake—then the strawberry bar—but no, it was the lips. The strawberry bar had been something. She’d gone right in on it and he’d loved that. This woman might not think she was into all his shenanigans, but when she had something that made her feel good, she dove right in. Now to show her that not all those things had to have sugar…

Or maybe they did. He had some ideas about him and her and those bars and his silk sheets…