AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll use the back door.” Hugh turned back to Beth, already mouthing words. She rolled her eyes instead of trying to read his lips, because she hated that. Even worse was when he started texting her while they were in a group. She hated that; if he had something to say, he should just say it.
“Uncle Hugh?”
The front door opened, and TJ came outside at a run, headed straight for his uncle.
Hugh laughed and picked TJ right up over his head. “Were you going to prank me? Were you? Grandpa’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” their father said. “I’m here.” She watched as the three of them embraced, and Hugh followed them back inside, no buckets of water in sight. She looked at Trey, and he looked at her.
“Do you have an hour or two to spend with us here?” she asked. “It’s okay if you don’t. I’m really good at making up reasons why someone couldn’t stay.” She smiled, because that was totally true. “Or rather, reasons I can’t come to this, that, or the other.”
Trey approached and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I can stay for a while.”
“Great,” she said. “Because I need to introduce you to my father.”
“We’ve met a couple of times now,” Trey said, his eyebrows drawing down in confusion. “Once…before, and just now again. I shook his hand and everything.”
Of course he had. Trey wasn’t awkward the way she was. He might not know what to do in a situation, but he took it by the horns and wrestled it to the ground.
“I need to introduce you as my boyfriend,” she said. “Did you tell him that?”
“Now that—no.” He looked at her, slight awe in his expression. “Are you going to use that word?”
“What word? Boyfriend?”
“Yeah, that one,” he said.
“You don’t want me to?”
“I’m just trying to figure it all out is all,” he said. “Seeing each other, I get. We are seeing each other. I’ve been seeing you over the past several weeks.” He looked toward the open front door. “Boyfriend…I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Then I’ll just say we’ve recently started seeing each other,” Beth said, liking that a lot better. She took the first step toward the door, and Trey went with her. “What—when do you cross the line into boyfriend?”
“About the time I kiss you,” he said, dipping his head closer to hers. “Does that work for you?”
She shivered, because everything about him worked for her. “Yes,” she whispered, passing through the doorway. Laughter came from the back of the house, where the kitchen sat, and Beth continued that way, determined to get the word out that she had started seeing someone again.
Trey would be the very first man she’d dated since Danny’s death, and she hoped no one would find it odd that she married him in only a few weeks. She’d just say she didn’t want to wait. She’d been alone long enough, and when she met Trey, she’d just…known.
Like magic, she thought, wondering what had happened to damped the magic on his and Sarah’s relationship.
She couldn’t help wondering if such magic really existed, and she glanced up at him, searching for something she wouldn’t find on his face.
“Daddy,” she said once they’d reached the kitchen. “I wanted to properly introduce you to Trey.” She put a bright smile on her face. “We’ve started seeing each other.” She beamed at Trey and then her father.
Her dad didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, I saw you holdin’ his hand out there on the porch.” He grinned at Beth and cocked his eyebrows at Trey.
“Come on now,” Trey said, a grin on his face too. “I thinkIwas holdin’herhand.”
* * *
