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Chapter 12
Franklin lay on thefloor, not wanting to get up.
He’d dozed off and woken up twice to Eleanor crawling out or crawling back in bed after fixing the fire.
The last time it was fixed, he’d gotten up, and when he’d crawled back in, she turned over in her sleep, putting a leg over his and an arm around his waist, snuggling into his chest with a sigh.
He hadn’t slept a wink after that.
And she was still there. After a little thought, he’d put his arm around her and tucked her in closer, putting his chin over top of her head and telling himself he enjoyed the warmth.
He enjoyed the feeling of closeness and companionship as well.
He would never have guessed that she was a person who had struggled with anxiety. She looked so calm and collected every time he’d seen her. Usually that was from afar, and often at the diner in Strawberry Sands.
Even when they’d been in high school, he wouldn’t have thought that she had any issues.
Just goes to show that sometimes people’s issues didn’t manifest in ways that he would expect them to.
Still, he’d been running that over and over in his head, the thought that she’d decided that she was going to conquer it and she had. She was one determined person, who knew how to get things done. She might not be loud and might not seek a lot of attention, but she had a way of making things happen.
After all, she’d kept her business going while she planned the barn dance.
He’d no sooner thought that than an idea popped into his head: she could help him with his gala this weekend. She could be beside him, doing all of the things that Maisie usually did. She could organize the silent auction, mingle with guests, and just be there for him helping things run smoothly. As she had done this evening at the barn dance.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of asking her last night. But the idea hadn’t even crossed his mind when he had been telling her what his phone call had been about.
And now, the idea of trying to bring the subject up again and ask her if she’d go with him made his stomach twist and squirm. What if she said no?
Could he laugh it off?
After all, she’d asked him to dance, and he brushed her off, and somehow they’d made things work after they’d gotten stuck together.
Surely they could do the same thing with that. And it was a little bit of a challenge for him, if Eleanor could gather up the nerve to ask him, knowing that she had issues she had to overcome, surely he could gather up the nerve to see if she would go with him to the gala.
Of course, if she had been interested, she could have offered and she didn’t.
He had to struggle to get past that. She wouldn’t have thought to offer any more than he would have thought to ask her. A gala must be as foreign to her as a barn dance was to him.
She stirred, sighing a little, her arm tightening around him as her head nestled a little deeper. And then she froze.
He smiled. She must have woken up with a jolt, wondering where she was.
He resisted the urge to tighten his arm around her, to stroke her hair and tell her that it was okay, because it wasn’t really his right to do that. They’d agreed to lie down together just because they needed each other’s heat. It wasn’t anything more than that, and for him to stroke her hair or hold her close seemed to cross a line that he hadn’t realized he was close to.
Her arm slid from around his waist, and her body moved back a fraction of an inch.
He grinned a little, and then he said, “I’m awake. It’s okay. You rolled over the last time I got out and came back again, and it was actually nice because your leg over top of mine is keeping me warm.”
She jerked, and her leg snapped off his, and this time, her whole body jerked back too, taking the blanket with it.
“And now my back is cold.” He added that in the same tone he’d been talking to her in, just a casual, everything is a-okay kind of tone.
“Oh my goodness. I’m so embarrassed. I’m sorry. I had no idea I was practically plastered to you.”
