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The deep, unmistakable voice had her slumping back down. Whoa. How had he gotten her number? Why did she feel so dizzy all of a sudden? “Sam?”
“Did anyone else give you something to read today?”
“My boss gave me my horoscope,” she mumbled. Which she suspected was mainly because it warned her against “taking unnecessary chances”. Pam never missed an opportunity to drive her point home. This one had been clear. Since Sam Miller was a client of JDS, Rory’s paws were not to touch him.
A smile lifted her lips. But what about her mouth?
“Did it mention a car accident?”
“No, it mentioned unnecessary chances and saving for a rainy day.”
“Huh. Guess those things aren’t so bogus. If I wasn’t going to fix your car gratis, you might get higher insurance rates.”
“You don’t have to fix it. My car’s riddled with dings and dents. A few extra scratches are just more decoration.”
“What kind of car enthusiast are you? There’s not even any leaves on the floormats in Bertha.”
She let out a laugh. Funny how much more talkative he seemed this evening than he had this morning. They’d definitely become more…familiar with each other. “Your car really has a name?”
“First and middle,” he confirmed. “Bertha Marie. Since Bertha is so hideous, thought she needed a taste of normal.”
“I thought only women named their cars.”
The long pause made her think she’d gone too far. Then he chuckled drily. “I’m pretty sure you saw that I wasn’t a woman.”
And shazam, right back at her. She found herself grinning. “Pretty sure you’re right.”
Another pause, longer than the first. “So did you read them yet?”
She laid her hand on the pile and released a breath. They weren’t really vibrating. That was just her nerves. Not that she knew what she was so afraid of. “No. I’d just opened the first envelope. You sealed them all?”
“Yeah.”
“Because you planned to send them?”
“No. I knew I wouldn’t send them. I didn’t want to keep opening them and rereading. Tweaking every word like I do with the billboards. You probably can’t tell,” he said, clearing his throat. “But they take hours. It’s a fine line between saying too much and not saying enough, even if you’re the only one who’s reading them.”
“You also have word count restrictions with the billboards.”
“True.”
She ran the edge of her short, unpainted thumbnail along the envelope. “And I know I keep saying it, but believe me, people read them. I read them. I always make a special point of driving by your billboard during your months, though I pretend it’s just because it fit into my route that day. This month I got distracted with work stuff and fell out of my normal routine.”
And I’ve been feeling soft and vulnerable lately and didn’t want to read any more about how much you loved her. It shamed me, but I was jealous. Still am.
“You probably just wanted to make sure they went up okay. But there’s never been a mistake. I always make sure to check once before I avoid the area for the month.”
“But your wife enjoyed them, right? That’s why you did them.”
Why hadn’t she asked him that before when he’d said no one read them? It was like she had a mental block when it came to Dani. As sad as she was about her passing and as connected as she’d felt to Sam—for no sensible reason really—she couldn’t seem to put them together in the same frame in her head. It was as if his love was separate from his wife somehow.
A likely side effect of fooling around with a sort of taken man, she supposed. Hard to imagine him with anyone else, at least while she was imagining her with him. Something she needed to stop doing right away.
“Sam?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Again he cleared his throat. “You’ll figure it out soon enough from the letters but Dani and I weren’t together when she passed.”
Rory reared back as if he’d reached through the phone and sucker-punched her. That no one was around to witness her utter dorkdom didn’t lessen her mortification. “How?”
