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I pulledinto a parking space in front of Nora’s apartment. With the news of our engagement sweeping Franklin Notch, I didn’t see any point in sneaking around. In fact, it would probably be better for us to be seen around town together.
I hadn’t expected to run into Cal, and I certainly hadn’t anticipated him having any clue what happened with Nora the night before. But the moment he locked eyes with me in the grocery store, his face crumpled into a glare, and I knew I had underestimated Franklin Notch’s rumor mill.
I’d walked out of Len’s mountainside home on my own instead of being carried on a stretcher, thanks to Bunny and Millie. Considering the circumstances, I counted that as a win. Especially since no one had time to question how Nora and I had gone from virtual strangers to engaged.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I paused halfway up as Nora walked out of her apartment. She wore a forest green, oversized sweater over a pair of black leggings that clung to her body and, from my vantage on the stairs, gave me a view of the soft curve of her ass. Probably not what I should have been observing, given our business arrangement, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Hey,” I greeted her, eliciting a yelp of surprise before she turned.
“Hey, you didn’t tell me you were here.” She slotted the key into the upper lock with her right hand, grimacing slightly before using the other hand to turn the key.
“Is it the right wrist?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She shrugged, her lips twisting into a frown. She pushed back a lock of black hair behind her ear. “It’s not that bad.”
“Bad enough for surgery.”
“Good point,” she admitted.
I followed her down the stairs and around back to the parking lot. The normal foot traffic on Main Street slowed to a crawl on Sundays. With the coffee shop only open a few hours in the morning and the diner and bar closed, most people spent the day at home.
“Did you get bombarded last night?” I asked when we pulled out of the parking lot.
I’d quickly realized that my plan, while more than adequate for the weeks and months ahead, hadn’t addressed the information we’d need in these first few days. With a marriage proposal came questions; I’d stumbled through yesterday, trying to say as little as possible.
Of course, I’d benefited from being a stranger to the family.
Nora, not so much.
The panic in her voice when I’d told her I met with her brothers had been obvious. I’d spent the entire day in Manchester worried about her, feeling like I’d abandoned her.
Nora’s knee bounced against the car door and her eyes scanned the car's interior, flitting from the sun visor to the gearshift to the window and back again. “I camped out at Thea’s house for the night, so I didn’t have to see anyone. What exactly did Bunny say to you?”
I kept my voice steady and assured, even though I’d worried more about Bunny’s reaction than Nora’s brothers. “She had a lot of questions. Questions I couldn’t answer. Thankfully, Cal came outside to tear into me some more, so I didn’t have to answer most of them.”
Nora pursed her lips. “Like what?”
“How long we’ve been dating. How I proposed. Where we’d been meeting. How we kept it a secret for so long.” I listed them easily, skipping the more personal questions she asked, like when we planned to have kids.
“What did you tell her?”
“I kept my answers to what we’d already agreed on: we started seeing each other after the Highland Games. I proposed at the Commons. We mostly met in Pierce or further afield.”
“You didn’t mention the surgery?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t have a chance before Cal interrupted us.”
“What did you tell my brothers?” she asked, her voice growing more frantic the further away from town we drove.
“I told them I’d asked you to marry me, but I wanted their blessing; I got ahead of myself and realized we should have told them sooner but we’re in love and things just escalated.”
Nora practically vibrated in the passenger seat. She sucked in a deep breath, holding it in for an impossibly long time before simply nodding. I pulled off the main highway and onto the dirt road Len called a driveway. Parking the car, I turned to face Nora.
“Hey.” I reached across the car and set my palm on her arm. “Take a breath. Calm down.”
“Iamcalm,” she snapped, her body tensing.
I withdrew my hand. “Right. Sorry. Just, we need to go in there like a couple. Like two people who are excited to be engaged. Two people who actuallylikeeach other.”
