Page 33 of Avenged

“Are you okay?” I asked as she lay back next to a gaping hole.

She was bleeding. Her leg had cuts all up and down it. Violet flew to the sink, tearing off paper towels and wetting them. We carefully wiped her leg as Leena lay there, panting, hand to her chest. “Leena, say something,” I said quietly.

She waved a hand in the air. “I just had my whole life flash before my eyes. Way more than when Mandy and I went ziplining. That was expected. This…this just…” She sat up as her words faded away, looking at the hole in the floor and the scrapes up and down her leg.

“Cripey,” she said just as Mandy came in and said, “Oh, my word! What in the heck happened?”

We all stared at the hole. “Termites,” Violet finally said.

“What?” we all asked, turning to look at my little sister.

“See the honeycomb-like structure in the wood there? Termites.”

“How on earth would you know that?” Leena asked.

Violet shrugged. “I had to do a report on animals who lived in colonies last year for advanced biology.”

“And you selected termites?” I asked, my own shock registering not from the hole but from my genius sister’s random knowledge.

“It’s your own fault,” she said.

“How is that?”

“You had me watch all those Spiderman movies, and then I had to find out if there were any insects who could really cause superpowers, and that led me to a whole story about researchers who are using insects to cure human diseases. Termites have some fascinating possibilities.”

I chuckled. This was the Violet I knew and loved. The one who geeked out over the craziest things. Not the one who curled her hair and wore makeup for a boy who wasn’t good for her.

The door opened, and we all turned as we heard Travis’s voice call out, “Hello!”

“In the kitchen,” Mandy responded.

The heavy tread of feet sounded down the hallway, and I looked up in time to see his face turn from a smile to one of shock. But my heart skipped two beats anyway looking at him. He placed a paper bag on the table and rushed forward. “What the hell happened?”

“Don’t cuss,” both Leena and Mandy admonished.

“I’m afraid you have to give him this one,” Violet said, but her eyes were on the doorway as she looked for the other male body she expected to come through it.

“Are you okay?” Travis asked, his brow furrowed in concern as he took in Leena’s leg.

“Just some cuts. I’ll be good as new. The floor, on the other hand, will not be.” She sighed. “I swear, some days I think we just need to sell this house and move on to something brand-new.”

“I can’t fathom you anywhere but here,” I said.

“Help me up,” Leena said to Travis. He put his arms around her and lifted her to her feet like she weighed nothing—as easily as he’d picked me up and carried me to the hospital. My face flooded with heat at the memory.

I hid it in my hair as I bent to look down at her leg again. “Does it hurt to step on it?”

“No, no. I think it’s fine. That wood must have been so soft that my foot went through it like it was butter.”

“You go get cleaned up, and I’ll go find Randy’s number,” Mandy said, bustling from the room.

Randy was their contractor. The one who’d redone the kitchen and added bathrooms to almost all the rooms upstairs when they’d been set on making the house into a bed and breakfast. Lately, they’d been having too much fun traveling to actually think of starting the business.

“Let me help you,” Violet said to Leena, and she took the older woman’s arm and helped her up the stairs.

Travis and I were left behind in the quiet. We stared at each other for a moment, and I was able to truly take him in. He was wearing a dark-green T-shirt that accentuated his eyes and jeans that clung to him as if he and they were one. He was sexy as all get out. He was my husband, and yet, I was unsure of what to say to him. I’d been that way when he’d lived here, too, but today, he seemed equally unsure, and that surprised me, because Travis was nothing if he wasn’t confident.

The smell of burning oil caught my attention. I turned away, rushed over to the stove, and turned the heat off under the pan Leena had been cooking the pancakes in. Just as I picked it up, the house phone rang, causing me to jerk in surprise. My hand slid farther down the handle than I’d intended, hitting metal and scalding my fingers. I dropped the pan and cried out at the same time.

---