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That was it.
I sucked in a breath, released slowly.
Then I went inside the trailer, walked down the hall and into my office. Sitting in my chair, booting up my computer, too sad and exhausted deep inside to even bust out my planner.
I knew I wouldn’t sleep.
But…I also wouldn’t be late.
Twenty-One
Joel
The downtown area was starting to actuallylooklike a downtown.
Some buildings complete.
Others in progress.
The houses on the surrounding streets in a similar situation.
A small town making its way back.
Because of the woman sitting in the large park. I’d spotted her curls from a block away, returning from the meeting with my contractor—the plans to rebuild had been approved, fuckingfinally—and knowing that I’d be settled again…in six to eight months.
I pulled over, parked in the lot that had formerly been shaded by old-growth oaks.
Talking to Billie, teasing her, verbally sparing with her would take my mind off the fact that it would be months before my house would be done and one-bedroom apartment living was my future for, at minimum, another year.
Billie wasn’t sitting close to the lot, but she also wasn’t sitting all that far away. She should have heard the car and reacted, or at the very least heard the engine cut out, the door pop open.
She hadn’t moved. Not one fucking muscle.
If she was listening to music, earbuds in, drowning out the world, we were going to have words.
River’s Bend had been a safe place to live, to grow up, to walk and exist.
But the town still had crime.
Now, there were contractors and industrial crews all over. People coming in and out to work. People Billie didn’t know.
People who could hurt her.
My temper spiked.
I shoved the little bag I’d been carrying around into my pocket, the bag I’d been wanting to give it to her for weeks now,wouldhave given it to her if only the stubborn woman hadn’t fucked around and gotten a damned gold medal in avoiding me and got out of my car, slamming the door.
Still no reaction.
“Fuck,” I muttered, and moving quickly, I closed the distance between us, but when I got close to her, to her ass plunked on the small gray blanket positioned in the narrow strip of shade the freshly replanted trees threw—smaller now, their branches years away from providing the same type of comfort—I saw she wasn’t wearing earbuds.
I frowned.
And dropped to the blanket next to her, my legs going to either side of hers, my arm wrapping around her middle.
She jumped, jerked in my hold.
“Easy, harpy,” I murmured, leaning close, stopping just short of burying my face in those curls.
