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I groaned.
“But I do.”
She screwed up her face, and I was secretly pleased she wanted me too.
I took her hand and led her toward the stairs. The dogs raced ahead of us. Sadie was slower as she hopped up the steps, but we let her set the pace to the top.
“Look what the cat dragged in.” Miss Adeline set her book down and smirked. “My mistake. We don’t have any cats.”
Pepper snickered.
Miss Adeline’s razor-sharp eyes zeroed in on where my fingers were twined with Pepper’s. “You ready to take a stand?”
I swallowed hard. The alarm bells and instinct I had to stay away from Pepper to protect her from my father had been overridden by the ones that kept me coming back. A war raged inside of me.
Pepper was winning.
Is that why I was here? To take a stand?
“I . . .” I didn’t know. Only that I kept ending up here. With her.
“You don’t have to answer that.” Pepper sent Miss Adeline a pointed look. “She’s full of nosy questions.”
“Looks like my next one should be where’s the mop?”
My coat was drenched, as well as my hair and the bottom of my pants. Pepper wasn’t much better.
“Let me take your coat.” Pepper slipped her fingers under the collar and gently pried it off.
She opened a closet door and hooked it over the top before she shrugged hers off and hung it on the doorknob.
“Have you eaten?” Miss Adeline pushed out of her chair before I could answer. “We had chicken tortilla soup. And before you get all excited, no we didn’t make it. That’s what the deli down the street is for.”
There’d been enough food for a buffet at the get together at Cassano’s house. I hadn’t touched any of it. I couldn’t.
“I haven’t.”
“I’d suggest you go home and change clothes, but what’s the point?” She pulled a bowl out of the cabinet.
“Miss Adeline!” Pepper might as well have clutched her proverbial pearls.
“What? He’d just get them all wet too.” She turned on the stove where a pot was already sitting. “Did you think I meant because he’s going to take them off soon?”
Pepper closed her eyes and I half wondered if she was going to run into the closet to hide.
“I honestly have no idea why you’d subject yourself to this,” she finally muttered.
“Go take a shower before you catch a cold,” Miss Adeline said. “You’ve been out in that weather too long.”
“Can you handle being alone with her?” Pepper asked.
I’d rather be alone with Pepper. In the shower. But this wasn’t the time.
“I think I’ve got it.”
Miss Adeline didn’t speak again until the sound of the water turned on down the hall.
“Sit.” For a second, I didn’t know if she was talking to me or one of the dogs, but they were all already stretched out around the floor. “She might let you avoid my questions, but I won’t.”
