Page 37 of You Had Me at Chocolate

He gave her a weary kind of smile. “Oh, I will, don’t you worry about that.”

Clem squeezed his arm. She knew how he felt—tired down to her bones. From anxiety and too many days of emotional ups and downs and the mammoth effort it had taken to get her mom even this far. She kissed her mom’s cheek. “See you tomorrow. It’s so good to have you back in Marietta.”

Her mother’s smile was slightly lopsided but it was pure joy. “It’s good to be home,” she agreed, her speech slow and deliberate and a little slurred on the last word like it often got at the end of the day. It was perfectly intelligible, especially considering how difficult her speech had been at the start, but Clem could tell she was tired.

Happy for sure, but still tired.

*

Clem drove through the streets of Marietta, along Main Street all decorated up for the season change and Halloween and she realized she’d practically missed fall cooped up in Bozeman hospital. And how many days was it until excited little trick or treaters were running around her street? She squinted trying to remember—Sunday! In two days!

Man, where had October gone?

She should have been on a Greek island—sun, sand, blue skies as far as the eye could see. Maybe not hot but not chilly either. No bare branches everywhere she looked, no pumpkins and cobwebs. For sure, there wasn’t any other place Clem wanted to be right now but this whole episode had only reiterated how life could turn on a dime.

That it was finite. And there to be lived.

It was just after six and almost dark when Clem pulled up at the curb outside her house. Jude’s sporty little SUV he’d bought two weeks ago sat in the drive like it had always been there and a plume of smoke twirled out of the chimney and her heart went kerthump.

She’d come home only sporadically these past weeks but knowing he was going to be there when she did, had been, well… lovely, even if they had been a bit like ships passing in the night. During the day, she rarely saw him and at night she often didn’t get in until after ten. But there was always food to be had and a pot of coffee in the morning and knowing he was keeping an eye on things for her here had been one more weight off her mind.

Sure, she could have called on a dozen friends and neighbors for the same but the thought of him here in her house just… made her happy. Their friendship, which had once meant so much to her, was being reestablished—in spite of their little slipup—and she didn’t realize how much she’d missed him until he’d come back into her life.

The aroma of woodsmoke scented the air as she walked up the path pulling her carry-on-sized bag behind her for the last time. The porch was bare and she made a mental note to do something about the state of it tomorrow or she’d be evicted from the neighborhood. Looking around the nearby houses she could see pots of bright colored mums, pumpkins of all shapes and sizes—some already carved—along with cornstalks and scarecrows decorating porches.

Not to mention witches, cobwebs, and skeletons.

Yep, tomorrow she’d do something about it but, for now, she just wanted to relax and enjoy knowing she didn’t have to do that trip to Bozeman and back any time soon.

She let herself into the house which smelled like an Italian restaurant. Jude appeared in the kitchen doorway in his low-rider jeans and those damn bare feet. “Hey,” he said and her heart went kerthump, kerthump.

Suddenly, the mortifying scald of hot tears burned at the backs of her eyes and she blinked them away furiously. She would not cry all over him again. “Hey, yourself.”

He didn’t ask if she was okay, he must have just sensed that she was a bit wobbly and he crossed the distance between them, holding out his arms as he got nearer. Clem melted into them gratefully, sighing as his big arms went around her and his chin came to rest on top of her head. She pressed her face to his chest, the steady thump of his heart a reassuring metronome beneath the blade of her cheekbone and it felt so damn good.

So right.

Right in a warm, fuzzy way. And right in a hot and heavy way as things stirred below her belly button. Which was all kinds of wrong. They’d had their one night and moved on. What she needed now was not hot and heavy, it was warm and fuzzy.

“Your mom settle in?” His words rumbled around his chest straight into her ear.

“Uh-huh.” Her voice was muffled but she didn’t care.

“Big day.”

“Long.”

“Momentous, too.”

“Yep.”

Clem swallowed against the lump in her throat. She felt like her mom had climbed a mountain and she and her dad had been walking beside her holding her up and, although there was still a way to go before they got to the summit, for the first time they could actually see it and her mom was standing on her own two feet.

And that wasn’t nothing.

“You hungry?”

Laughing, Clem pressed her forehead to his sternum. “I wasn’t until I smelled your food and now I am ravenous.”

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