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“I feel like you’re angry about something, Ford. Are you?”
“For so many reasons, but we don’t need to get into that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Makes two of us,” he muttered.
I don’t get much sleep.He’d said those words to her that night.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That you have something going on in there that makes you unhappy.” She pointed to his head.
“How do you know it makes me unhappy?”
“Doesn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Well, I hope things get better for you.”
“Me too.” His smile was slow. “Welcome to Ryker Falls, Autumn Harris. See you around.”
She watched him walk away from her. He didn’t go back into AS but headed up the street, his long, easy strides making him disappear in seconds. The thought slipped into her head that he was a man she should avoid going forward. She just wasn’t sure why yet.
Chapter5
Until the day Ford’s parents had given him that land, he’d thought his life would follow its current course for years, if not forever. But they’d made him start thinking about living on his own. Having a place to do whatever he wanted. To furnish with big comfortable chairs, the kind that swallowed him when he sat in them, and a huge flat-screen TV.
He’d have no floor rugs like his mother had all over her house. She yelled at him constantly because he’d moved them when he walked over them and they needed straightening. Plus, there was the dusting. She was a manic duster of things. Dust, according to his mother, was Satan.
He could also eat candy and leave the wrappers on the arm of his chair overnight if he wanted to.
Ford had worked hard his entire life, even more so after he’d come home from college with scars that cut so deep they’d changed him beyond recognition on the inside.
Three weeks after he’d been given that land, he walked down the stairs from the office of Chamberlain Architects, holding a roll of plans. He stepped onto the street. A coffee would be nice, to celebrate. Also a lemon-and-blueberry scone, but then he’d have to get a pastry from The Chocolate Place too.
“No, I don’t,” Ford muttered. He didn’t have to buy into the BS in this town. Just because there had been animosity with the Robbins sisters when Albert from The Chocolate Place had arrived and set up business across the street, the locals now always purchased equally from them so as not to show favoritism. “I am not a local. I’m a man who can make his own decisions.”
“What?”
“What?” He turned to look at Nash, who’d snuck up behind him.
“You were arguing with yourself. I want in on it.”
“I was just talking out loud.”
Nash looked like his usual messy, happy self, with worn sneakers, shorts, and a torn T-shirt.
“How is it you’re here and not at home with your girl?”
“Luna is on a conference call with Hugo about face shit, and I had stuff to do here in town. What I want to know is why you’re here and didn’t visit me or Maggs.”
“Face shit?”
Nash waved a hand in front of his face.
