“I fixed my breakfast.” He pointed at the clock on the microwave. “For you, it’s lunch.”
She snorted. “It’s not that late.”
Obviously, she had slept in because she was emotionally and physically exhausted. Didn’t he understand? Sleeping late wasn’t her normal habit, and he was well aware of that.
Yesterday had been a rough day even before her hysterical fit in the garage. She almost started crying again. No, she wouldn’t break down. She wanted to be happy because being with him the previous night had given her hope for the possibility of being happy for the first time in her life.
She sauntered over to where he stood. He had fixed some sort of breakfast casserole. It looked as good as it smelled. She glanced up at him and smiled sweetly. Was he going to share? He grinned at her with apparent amusement. No, she wasn’t going to ask. Without a word, he pulled a plate from the cabinet and dipped her a portion. She took the food and sat at the kitchen table.
“Thanks,” she mumbled her genuine appreciation with the first bite in her mouth. “This is delicious.”
He placed a tall glass of orange juice in front of her. “You sleep okay last night? Your eyes look tired.” He sounded concerned rather than critical.
She sniffed. “No, after you fell asleep, I couldn’t turn my mind off. I stayed awake for hours.” She took a sip of orange juice. “But you look like you slept pretty good.” It was an indictment. How dare he sleep well while she suffered from wanting him?
“I can sleep anywhere and under any conditions.”
“I’ll bet you can.” She flinched at her snarky tone. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m grouchy in the morning.”
“That excuse would fly if it was still morning.” He smiled.
Good. At least he wasn’t taking her catty remarks seriously.
“You’re not my boss.” She was about to add that she was his boss and he’d better get back to work.
“While you were still asleep...” He paused and smirked. “I finished painting the dining area persimmon.” His mouth puckered when he said the word persimmon.
“What time did you get started?”
“I woke up about four this morning. I guess I got started about six.”
She had assumed he wasn’t a morning person since he usually didn’t make it to work until around nine. He wasn’t lazy. She had defined his work ethic as laid-back. His habits hadn’t changed because he had moved into her house.
“What’d you do for two hours?”
Instead of puffing up at her impertinence, he laughed. “I was snooping.”
Was he starting that again?
“Oooh, you’re a…” She tried to nail him with a sharp slap on his upper arm, but he avoided her attack.
He grinned. “It’s too early to start that.”
“I thought you thought it was already late,” she said with a touch of playful sarcasm.
“Did you get any rest?”
Suddenly he was sympathetic. Or was he?
“Some.”
“You’ll need to be strong for what’s coming. You’d better prepare yourself. Sooner or later, Grayson will be back with a search warrant.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Oh, I know how cops work. He won’t stop harassing you until he satisfies himself he’s solved your cousin’s murder. First he’s going to keep asking questions until something you say or do gives him enough to get a warrant. Right now, he’s looking for something, anything that will give him probable cause.”
“He won’t find anything. I didn’t kill my cousin, so there’s nothing in the house that could prove it. He’s wasting his time.”
“He doesn’t know that, and he doesn’t think you’ve told him everything. He’s going to keep coming back until you tell him what he wants to hear or until he finds enough evidence to start investigating a new theory. Cops are persistent like that. They latch onto a theory and run it into the ground until it becomes obvious they need to go in a different direction.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “If he can’t get you to talk, he’ll try to drive a wedge between the two of us. Make us turn on each other.”
“Can I ask a really blunt question?”
He smirked. “As if you’ve ever needed my permission.”
She narrowed her eyes and then proceeded with her question. “You seem to know a lot about cops.”
“I thought you were asking a question.”
“That is a question.”
He tossed the hand towel he’d been holding onto the counter. “I used to be one. So... Do you still want me to stay?”
“Of course, I do.” She rose from her chair and moved to stand in front of him. “I thought we discussed that last night. I don’t care what’s in your past.” She rose on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his mouth.
At first, his lips remained stiff and uncooperative, but after a moment he returned her kiss.
She leaned back so he could see the sincerity in her eyes. “I know you still haven’t told me everything. You don’t have to...not until you’re ready.”
He held her gaze, and she was reluctant to look away. His eyes were so much more expressive than he usually allowed. In them, she perceived hope and fear tangling with uncertainty. She wanted to reassure him she meant what she said, but didn’t know how to do that without starting a discussion for which neither of them was ready.
The moment became awkward, and they both turned their heads away from each other’s direct gaze.
“I’ll clear up the dishes, and then I’ll come help you with whatever you’re doing this morning.”
“I’m floating drywall in the parlor.” His voice held the husky quality that made her core heat.
“Good.” She smiled. “I’m going to turn that space into my office.”
“It’s a good size for that.”
“I’m thinking of painting it…persimmon.”
He groaned. “Your house. Your choice.”
His index finger trailed down the side of her face and crossed her jaw before tracing the outline of her lips. He placed a soft kiss on her mouth and left the room without telling her what he had done for two hours before he started work. He had effectively sidetracked that topic.
****
Chase applied the first layer of drywall compound over the joint tape. He would have to let that dry and then apply another layer, smoothing it out until it blended into the surrounding wall. Once he’d done that three times, it would be ready to prime and texture. Then, Laurel could paint it that awful persimmon color.
He decided to take a break while the compound dried. Laurel hadn’t joined him in the living room as she had promised. She must have found some other chore to distract her. She could somehow manage two or three tasks at a time and do them all well. One thing at a time usually required his undivided attention.
When he finally located her, she was sitting on the top step of the back porch, staring at the garage. He stomped one foot on the wood decking and then the other, hoping the loud clunk of his boots would penetrate her distraction.
She turned and smiled at him, patting the porch beside her. “Why don’t you take a break? You’ve been at that for three hours. It’s after one.”
He lowered his butt onto the top step next to her. “Are you going to make us lunch? I’m starved.”
“Sandwiches.” Her mind didn’t seem to be on the here and now.
“You want to talk about it?” He asked, unwisely in his estimation because he believed it to be a woman’s favorite question, an invitation to purge all her emotions.
“No.” She sniffed. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“I thought you were going to help me with the drywall.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot.” She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I went up to the attic to look for family stuff. You know. Picture albums or mementos. Anything about my family. There was nothing. I haven’t been able to find a single thin
g about my aunt or my father or their parents. It’s almost as if someone cleared the place of any family history. I really hoped to find something up there about my dear, old cousin.”
Her tone sounded a trifle bitter. Did she resent her cousin for dying and making life inconvenient for her?
“Nothing at all, huh? That’s odd.”
“I’m almost twenty-eight-years-old, and I have no family ties, no roots, no sense of who I am. I have nothing but this old house left to me by an aunt I never knew. I was trying to grieve for the woman, mostly because I thought that was what I was supposed to do, but all I can do is grieve for myself. Now what am I supposed to do about a dead cousin? Am I supposed to claim his body and bury him?”
“I thought you had nothing to say.”
“Oh, please,” she said with a thin smile. “You want a sandwich? I lost track of time. That’s all I have to offer today.”
“Sandwiches are fine.” He was in no position to be picky. “As long as it’s not bologna,” he added anyway, just because he thought he never wanted to eat another bologna sandwich as long as he lived.
He offered his hand and pulled her up from the porch steps.
The happiness she exuded that morning had faded. When she brooded, her moods bounced all over the place. He had to do something to get the pensive expression off her face. She needed to focus on something big that would take her mind off her incomplete family history.
“Do you still want to fix up the garage apartment?”
A flash of panic crossed her face, and she placed her hand on his forearm. “As long as weird stuff keeps happening, I want you to stay in the house with me.”
Did she think he wanted to move into that rodent habitat? No, he just wanted a huge project for them to work on together, something that would keep him at Laurel Heights for a while longer.
“I agree. You don’t need to be alone until we know what’s going on...until we figure out who or what is messing with you.”
She stared at him a long moment, biting her lower lip in silence. Okay, he got it. She didn’t want to talk about what was going on in the house. They could stay on the subject of remodeling. Emotionally and mentally safe ground for both of them.
“Have you ever been up there?”
“Just once.” Her voice betrayed her fear of the garage.
“I think you need to go up there—”
“No.”
He unwrapped her fingers from his arm and pulled her next to him, stroking her up and down her back.
“I’ll go with you. I think you need to see how much work is involved.”
“Chase...”
“What is it?”
She trembled next to him. “The nightmare I had...”
“What about it?”
“There’s an armoire. The doors swing open, and there are three drawers on the lower left side. I open one of them, and there are tons of pictures in the drawer. I pick them up, but they fall from my hands...one at a time.” She sucked down a sob.
“Why does that scare you?” He was trying hard to understand.
She leaned the top of her head against his chest. “I don’t know the people in the pictures...but I know I should.” She stepped back and glanced up at him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “That’s not the scary part though.”
He waited for her to tell him what she feared most about the pictures. The terror on her face pained him. He wanted to protect her, but he couldn’t stop what went on inside her head from hurting her.
“What’s the scary part?”
“The people have no faces.”
“Hum...Wonder what that means.”
She slipped back into his embrace. “I don’t know. I wish I could figure out why the dream frightens me so much.”
“If you have the dream again, I’ll be there to wake you up from it. I won’t let you be afraid alone.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Promise?”
“Promise.” He rested his chin on the top of her head.
“That’s not the worst part though.” She breathed in deeply. “The armoire in the garage is just like the one in my dreams, and the bottom drawer has a lot of pictures in it.”
He held his breath a moment. This was significant. He just wasn’t sure how.
“Who is in the pictures?”
“I don’t know. I don’t recognize them.”
“How did the armoire get in the garage? I mean, you must have seen it somewhere before. Maybe in your childhood.”
“Celeste must have put there. I’ve never seen it before...except in my dream. At least, I don’t think I have. But there are some parts of my childhood I just don’t remember.” Her voice rasped as if her throat was raw from holding down strong emotion.
“I understand why you freaked out now.” He stroked her cheek, hoping his comforting gesture would calm her.
There was no way he was telling her about the man he saw in her house. The time for telling had come and gone.
He moved forward with his plan to distract her attention away from her fears. “We still need to go into the apartment if we’re going to renovate it. You don’t have to go into the garage. If you like, I’ll put a new padlock on it. You never have to go in there again if you don’t want to.”
“Why are you pushing this so hard? I thought you were going to stay in the house with me. You told me you didn’t want to live up here.”
He smiled. “No, I don’t. Like I said, I want to stay with you in the house...indefinitely.” He paused long enough she could see the sincerity on his face. “Until you kick me out.”
“I’m not going to kick you out.” A sweet light glowed in her beautiful eyes.
He bent his head to kiss her, and she returned his kiss. Nothing in his life had ever felt so sweet or so right. This was where he belonged. With her. In her house. In her arms.
He intended to stay. For a very long time. Not because of a promise he’d made to Rand. Or the need to protect her from whatever danger headed their way. He was an inadequate hero, at best. No, Laurel didn’t need him to be her rescuer. Their need for each other was so much more fundamental than that. They were two restless souls in search of a home. For him, home had never been a place. Perhaps they could find home in each other.
He hoped so. Laurel had stolen his heart. Did she feel the same way? If her kisses were any indication, she did. Physical reactions could be so deceptive though. He wanted to tell her how he felt, but he sensed she wasn’t ready to hear it.
He held her on the back porch for a long, long time. The wind blew around them, caressing them and cocooning them. The fresh aroma of springtime wafted in the air. She seemed in no hurry to go inside and fix the sandwiches. That was okay. Food wouldn’t satisfy his hunger.
Chapter Thirteen
The apartment had one window over what could laughably be called the kitchen sink. Through the dirt-streaked glass, Chase could see the back door of the main house, Laurel’s bedroom window, the sycamore under which he had parked his truck, and the drive down to the highway. He raised the window to allow some much-needed air into the stale space. When he tried to turn on the water, the plumbing made a strange gurgling noise and then hissed at him. No water erupted from the faucet. It remained dry as a bone.
The floorboards between the outside door and the kitchen area were still intact, but he had walked carefully across them, fearing that any moment he’d fall through the flooring into the garage below.
He examined the small space on the far side of the apartment, which could loosely be defined as a sleeping area. There was no bed. The area was so small there was only room enough for a double mattress on a set of bed rails.
Several large pieces of furniture crowded the center of the room. Heavy stuff on the questionable floorboards made him nervous. Those pieces would have to be removed. He slammed the window over the kitchen sink shut and walked the few paces to the bathroom. Well, it would be the bathroom if the apartment had running water. The flooring beneath the
toilet looked insufficient to hold its weight. No one would be using the facilities any time soon. The fixtures in the bathtub were rusty. He had learned his lesson in the kitchen. He wasn’t about to turn the tap on the bathroom sink.
He wandered back into the living room and placed his hands on his hips. The apartment hadn’t improved since he searched the place for Rand’s travel drive. He glanced out the open window. Grayson was coming up the drive in his typical dark blue unmarked cop car with a red-haired man in the passenger seat. What did Grayson want now? He squinted at the other man. He’d seen him before. But from where?
His gaze riveted on the window. Hadn’t he closed it before he went into the bathroom? He shut the window and made sure he locked it.
****
Laurel wiped the breadcrumbs from the kitchen table into her hand and tossed them into the kitchen sink. Chase had fidgeted the entire meal, obviously anxious to begin the apartment project, so he’d left the clean up to her. She didn’t mind. The solitude would give her a much-needed break. Time to study and sort out her feelings for the man.
Being with Chase required a lot of energy. When she was with him, her emotions rushed her and left her a bit overwhelmed. Stepping back would give her a chance to absorb what was happening between them.
It should seem weird and maybe even disloyal to be with Rand’s brother, but somehow it didn’t. She didn’t believe in luck or fate or karma, but she did believe there were no coincidences, that somehow a person’s path was plotted before they were even born. Sometime in her life she would have met Chase, even if she’d never met Rand. Some cosmic force bigger than themselves might have brought them together, but what happened between them once they’d met was totally up to them. That was the weird thing about life. She could mess up the chance she’d been given if she wasn’t careful. She wanted to make the right choice where Chase was concerned.
He clearly wanted to be with her, yet he wouldn’t have sex with her. Why? Was there something wrong with her? She’d never met a man who could restrain his sexual desires in the heat of the moment. None of the men in her life had had the self-control or the inclination. She’d certainly given Chase all the right cues. She’d wanted him, and she hadn’t hidden the fact.
Laurel Heights (Haunted Hearts Series Book 1) Page 13
