He chuckled.

She took a breath. “I guess I do leave the work here when I leave, but I don’t leave the people here. And neither do my coworkers. So…” She looked at him, her bottom lip between her teeth. “Thanks for pointing that out to me.”

Then she did fully turn and walk away. Back to work.

Dax sat at the table by himself for a long time after she left. Thinking.

Dax almost never sat—or did anything alone anywhere—for any extended period of time.

But the true sign his world was tipping on its axis?

He didn’t even really want to play Ping-Pong.

4

Jane approached the door to the break room on Monday with trepidation. She’d avoided it Friday and had been off for the weekend. She was always glad to have the weekend off, but she’d welcomed the time away from Hot Cakes even more than usual. After her sit-down with Dax the day before that, she’d been shaken. By him. By his ideas and his sexy smile and his desire to make things better for everyone and the way he’d gotten her thinking about things.

The guy with the gummy bears in his office wasn’t supposed to make her think about things.

But today she was going in there. Because… she wanted a cappuccino.

No, that wasn’t true. Entirely. Those were pretty damned good. Especially the way Dax put cinnamon on the top of his. But that wasn’t what was drawing her toward the break room today.

She’d been at the nursing home yesterday, and the nurses had told her that her dad had been in his room and hadn’t wanted to come out for the last couple of days. He wouldn’t come out with her either. He said he had no interest in doing anything that was happening outside of his room, so why would he come out? Which was logical. Though sitting in his room all day wasn’t great either. Jack’s mind was fully functional except for the fogginess one of his medications caused at times. But he took that at night, so during the day, he was mentally functional. It was his body that was failing him. And none of his nurses danced around the fact. His condition wasn’t going to get better. The best they could hope for was to treat the symptoms, like the tremors and muscle tightness, and hope the disease could be slowed. But all the experimental programs were happening in bigger cities, and they simply couldn’t afford for Jack to participate in any. It was one of the truths of living in a rural area. Medical advancements didn’t get here as quickly and specialists were spread thin.

Which left relatively young men, whose minds were still intact inside of failing bodies, living in nursing homes with people who could be their parents and who needed a different type of care.

Jack just didn’t want to do the activities offered at the home a lot of the time.

Jane was so frustrated. She felt guilty he had to live there but knew she couldn’t care for him herself. He’d be sitting in her apartment alone all day if he lived with her. And there’d be no one there to help him with even the simple things like getting up to the bathroom or eating. Things the tremors and muscle spasms made impossible for him to do on his own.

He needed another person to physically help him up and down, and as the psychologist had explained to them while they’d been dealing with the move to the nursing home, it really was easier for everyone most times if that person was a professional. Not only because they knew safe techniques for helping but also because helping your father use the toilet was just something that was difficult emotionally for both the child and the parent.

Still, when Jack said he spent his day reading and watching television for days on end, she felt terrible. She visited three times a week, but it was so hard to get there more often. She had to check in on Kelsey too. She had friends and coworkers—with sick kids and dogs that needed sitting—that needed her too and… frankly, she sometimes just needed time to sit in her apartment alone.

She understood the beauty of alone time. She really did.

If that’s all Jack was going for, it would be different.

“Yes!”

The shout came from the break room and jerked her out of her thoughts.

Last night had been really hard. Typically she would be out in her car, eating a sandwich in total silence, just breathing, not up for being with people.

Today, though, she was standing in front of the break room door, knowing Dax was inside, and hoping he could distract her.

Actually, she knew he could.

She wanted that.

But she was worried. Worried she’d get really addicted to that. Addicted to him.

She couldn’t just ignore all the stuff going on in her life. She couldn’t make a habit of letting Dax take her mind off everything. She needed to deal with everything. She should probably be on the phone with the nursing home administrator or Zoe and Josie, someone who could give her advice.

Instead, she wanted to drink cappuccino and flirt.

“Hey, you joining the tournament?” Gabe, one of the other guys in the shipping department asked, passing her on his way to the break room.

“The tournament?” she asked. She started after him. Now that someone had seen her in the hallway, she had to go in. Not going in would be silly.

Just today. Just this one time. Just one hour of distraction.

“The UNO tournament,” Gabe said, pushing the door open. “It’s Monday.”

She assumed that was supposed to make sense. It didn’t, exactly, but she knew Dax was behind it, and that was really all she needed to know to know it was something fun and popular.

Honestly, the employees really had been talking about him a lot. How funny he was. How enthusiastic he was to learn everything about the factory. How self-deprecating he was about getting a lot of it wrong. Apparently, the mixer had “somehow” gotten switched to high with very few ingredients inside and had sprayed runny pink batter everywhere yesterday. He’d been coated in it.

Jane was suspicious. She wouldn’t put it past Dax to mess a few things up on purpose just to help everyone around him relax and to give them a good laugh at his expense.

But she wasn’t going to ask him about it. It made her like him more, and if he confirmed it, she might have to admit she had a little crush.

The noise from inside the room rose as she and Gabe stepped inside and she took in the sight. The tables were full. Four to six people sat at each one and they were all playing cards. It looked like a poker tournament. Other than the brightly colored cards and lack of cigar smoke and bourbon, she supposed. Instead, they had glasses and cups beside them. She assumed those held soda and cappuccino. Bowls of pretzels and M&M’s and chips sat around as well, and yes, gummy bears. Seeing those made her smile and she searched the room for Dax.

She found him lounging at a back table watching the whole thing. His chair was tipped back on two legs and he looked pleased. Happy. Almost proud. And looking at him just then, simply watching other people having fun, she realized this really was him. He really did like to make other people happy.

And if she’d had a crush on him, it would have grown a little then.

Or a lot.

She needed this. Just today. Just for this hour. Not for good. But yeah, for right now, this seemed like a great idea. Not the card game. She didn’t want to play UNO. She wanted to talk to Dax though.

His gaze found her when she was halfway across the room. The front legs of his chair hit the floor with a thump and his grin grew. It made her heart thump hard in her chest. The last time someone had looked that happy to see her had been last night when her dad had seen her come through his door. But that thump had been accompanied by sadness and guilt and anger about how unfair the whole situation was.