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“I do keep him inside. He’s started making a break for it every time I open the door and making me chase him around the neighborhood.”
She shrugged, determined to blame him despite his excuses. “What’s his name?”
“Winston,” Ethan said with a grin.
She stood up and eyed him suspiciously as he lifted the puppy into his arms. “Are you serious?”
He chuckled, flashing his dimples and making her stomach flip pleasantly. “Doesn’t he look like a Winston to you? You know? Bulldogs and Winston Churchill?”
“Hmm.” She knew nothing about World War II beyond what little she’d learned in school and then promptly tried to forget, and she knew even less about dogs.
The pup was curled contentedly in Ethan’s arms, sharp looking puppy teeth gnawing on his fingers, and she shook her head in bewilderment. She didn’t want to encourage him by laughing at the absurdity of him holding a dog like a baby, but her lips twitched involuntarily as she reached for the doorknob again.
“Do you want to have dinner with us? We owe you for reuniting us after his escape attempt.”
The question stopped her before she could open the door and she looked back at him, equal parts surprise and exasperation warring in her chest. “You’re just going to keep asking me aren’t you?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged and settled the pup more firmly against his chest as it began to wiggle. “Before you answer, just know you can hang out in the living room and pet the dog while I cook if that’s what you want to do. Feeding you is the least I can do to say thank you.”
She glanced at Jackson and David’s house, remembering what they’d said to her about giving him a chance. They were so certain that she was overreacting, overthinking as always, and Ethan was being unexpectedly pleasant, his thumb stroking the neck of his dog as she thought over his offer.
She looked from him, his lips tipped up in challenge, to the dog in his arms. Surely, she could trust the dog’s judgment. Her experience with them may have been limited but that’s what others had always told her about animals, that their intuition about people’s intentions were stronger than a human’s and more reliable. The dog looked like he trusted Ethan implicitly, like he knew he would be cared for and protected despite the man’s immense size and intimidating appearance.
She sighed, shoulders slumping in good natured defeat. “What are you cooking?”
Triumph flared in his eyes as he held out his free hand, waiting for her to take it. “Spaghetti.”
“Now?” She looked from his outstretched hand to his dimple and back down at his dog. It felt like some sort of dream. The unsettling kind where you know you’re dreaming but you can’t change the outcome. He showed up and smiled at her and the next thing she knew she was petting his dog and agreeing to eat his spaghetti. None of which had been part of her plans for the evening. In the back of her mind, an alarm was blaring, but she couldn’t seem to remember what the danger was when he looked at her like that.
What harm could spaghetti really do, after all?
“Did you have other plans for tonight?”
She thought of her empty house, her strict routine, and shook her head.
His hand was warm as it closed around hers, and nearly twice the size. The ring he wore brushed against her fingers and she trembled, remembering the way the skull had glinted in the light—a clear warning that she ignored as she followed him across the yard.
He didn’t let go of her hand like she expected, instead keeping a light grip on her like he thought she might change her mind and run back to her own door instead. Her cautionary nature warred with the comfort of letting him hold her in even such a simple way. When he finally let her hand drop so he could let her inside, she wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or disappointed.
The house was much the same as it had been when old Mr. Callaghan had lived here, but the furniture was different—a black leather couch and a large polished wooden coffee table instead of the pastel fabrics and white wicker that Mr. Callaghan had kept after his wife passed away. The biggest flat screen TV she had ever seen dominated one wall and the others were empty, with no trace of family photos or any personal touches.
“The house looks different,” she mused, watching him set Winston on the floor and give the puppy an affectionate pat. It was sad to see all the traces of her friend erased. She’d missed him more than she’d realized and she wiped a subtle hand over misty eyes.
“You’ve been in here before?” Ethan asked.
“I used to visit my neighbor,” she explained, her fingers drifting over the edges of the furniture as she explored the once familiar space. “His home health nurse found him passed out in his chair one morning and they took him to the hospital but he didn’t make it. He was a sweet old man and liked my cookies. I probably didn’t come by as often as I should have.”
“A sweet old man.” His lips turned up slightly at the corners, a sardonic twist, as he echoed her words. “That’s not exactly how I remember him.”
“You knew him?” She flicked her gaze to his face, her hands stilling on the arm of his couch as she watched an echo of old pain flit across his face.
“He was my grandfather,” Ethan said with a jerky shrug as her jaw dropped open. “It’s not a big deal.”
“I guess that explains why the house never went up for sale,” she mused, trying to see some resemblance between the lines of his face and the old man in her memories and finally settling on the height of his cheekbones and the length of his nose.
“My inheritance,” he confirmed.
“I guess that’s something.” It was but she knew very well how poor a substitute money was for love, especially from your family. She would have given a block full of houses to be more than an obligation to her own, after all.
