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“How long are you staying?” I asked as I rested my right hand on my hip. “The weekend?”
“It’s funny that you ask that considering this ismyhouse.” He didn’t raise his head as he replied, and the clangs continued. “I should ask why you’re here and not Danielle too. So, you want to spend the weekend? Grab the couch, you’re most welcome.”
I laughed and flung my head back a bit. He looked at me and arched a brow. His serious expression made me pause. “I’m not just staying the weekend. I don’t know how long I’m staying.”
“What?”
I shrugged, and he moved to stand up but hit his forehead on the cupboard door. Tommy yelped, then cursed under his breath as I reached for him. “Are you all right?”
It was a spontaneous move, and I touched his arm before he looked down at me. His blue eyes landed squarely on mine, and their intensity sucked the air out of my lungs. It was an immediate reaction I had never had with him, leaving me breathless.
What is this?Heat spiraled up my spine slowly, and I noticed the golden ringlets embedded deep in his eyes. This was my first time being this close to him, and oh boy, why did his eyes have to be so mesmerizing?
He reddened again, then he quickly cleared his throat and stepped away from me. “I’m fine,” he answered in a tight voice. “You can’t stay longer than the weekend.”
It took a moment for me to catch my breath. I licked my suddenly dry lips and folded my hands over my chest. “Why not? Danny said I could stay.”
“Danny’s name isn’t on the title, my name is.”
“The cottage has been abandoned for years.”
“You don’t know that” he retorted.
“Danny said—”
“I sayno!” he countered before I could finish my sentence.
I scoffed, shocked that he hadn’t changed one bit. There was a reason I didn’t like Tommy Thatcher from the start. It was because, for a man and father, he could be stiff and inconsiderate. I knew it wasn’t the fanciest way to describe your best friend’s father, but how could I not think of him this way? When he had cheated on his wife, broken up his family, and scarred my best friend’s heart for life?
Tommy
LeahMaureenstillhadher sharp tongue and guts. I remembered the last time I saw her. The day, Danielle left for Nashville without my consent. I remembered both of them driving away in Leah’s father’s old pick-up truck.
Danny had the wheels while Leah had her guitar around her neck and her fingers on the strings. The girls were talented but clueless and too young to go out into the world on their own.
All I had wanted for them was to be safe. Was I too harsh by refusing their choice to leave Dallas? Maybe. My daughter hasn’t spoken to me since then anyway.
I looked at Leah again and noticed all the changes in her at once. Even though I preferred her auburn brown hair that matched the color of the sun, I liked the blonde too because it brought out her perfect features.
She had big, rounded eyes, and full luscious lips, that were inviting me to nibble on them. When I looked at the rest of her earlier, I noticed she had filled out in all the right places, and I had to immediately clamp down on that thought because it was all shades of wrong.
I had never thought about Leah in that manner before. So, what was this tingle rushing through me when she came close to me earlier? That too has never happened before.
“Well, I’m staying,” she said and cut me out of my thoughts. “I don’t have any other place to go, and this cottage is big enough for both of us.”
“The cottage has only one room, that’s why I offered you the couch for the weekend,” I interrupted and turned away from her.
“That’s a crazy lie. Danielle had a room in the attic,” she said and pointed up.
“Yes, but it’s infested with termites, and I recently had the entire place cleaned out, so it’s just an empty space with no bed or toilet because the pipes are too old and leaky.”
“Well, I could take the master bedroom when you leave,” she suggested. “You’re leaving anyway, aren’t you?”
“I live here now, Leah,” I told her and didn’t miss her gasping shock as her lips dropped wide. I walked out of the kitchen, and she followed me without pausing in her strides.
“Well, we’ve got to figure something out because I have nowhere else to go.”
Her voice still sounded the same. It was a soft breathy sound that the air always carried lightly. I remembered whenever she sang in the evenings, I would sit outside on the back porch and just listen to her and Danielle. They sounded angelic.
