Page 21 of Silos and Sabotage

Chapter 5: Not So Cold Case

One week later

Gage tapped the horn of his Bronco to let Ella know he was ready to go. He already had the motor idling. Then he climbed out and moved around to the passenger side of the vehicle to open the door for her. And wait.

She appeared on the porch less than a minute later. Her arms were loaded down with so many reusable shopping bags that he jogged up the porch steps to lend her a hand while she locked the house.

“It’s a little soon to be moving out, don’t you think?” He slid the handles of three bags off one of her shoulders and four bags off the other shoulder. While he was at it, he drank in the whole new look she’d warned him she’d be sporting this morning.

She’d dyed her hair back to its original shade of brunette. It cascaded in waves past her shoulders, falling halfway to her waist. Instead of the jeans and plaid she’d been wearing when they first met, she was in a long-sleeved white t-shirt that she’d half tucked into a pair of pale gray camouflage sweatpants. She looked full of energy and ready to take on the world, a far cry from the melted down version of her in her hospital bed.

It was impossible to hold in an admiring whistle.

She shot him a grateful smile as she double-checked the door handle to make sure it was locked. “Those bags, my dear landlord, contain nothing more than a few welcome gifts for the herd of displaced puppies and kittens at the animal sanctuary. I want to do my part to make them feel at home until they can be re-homed.”

“I’m not your landlord,” he reminded. So far, he’d refused her every offer to pay rent. They were slowly working out a much better agreement that involved meal sharing and other swapped favors. It was an arrangement he really liked.

“What are we, then?” There was a bounce to her step as she spun around and walked with him to the Bronco.

“Friends,” he supplied. They were more than that, but he didn’t want to rush things with her.

Her smile turned into a pout.

“Very,verygood friends,” he amended, kissing her with his eyes.

“Better.” Her pout disappeared. She hovered like a bee at his elbow while he loaded her bags in the back seat.

“Just a few gifts, eh?” He tapped a few of the toys on sticks and packages of snacks poking out from the tops of the bags. By his estimate, the sanctuary would be prepared for a zombie apocalypse after she walked through the door.

“This, my dear friend,” she informed him with a smirk, “is phase one of my plan to get off on the right foot with the rescue animals. Or paw, in their case.”

He had no doubt she’d have all the critters in the animal sanctuary eating out of her hand before the end of her first shift. She practically hadhimeating out of her hand already. Her joy at being given a second lease on life had been fun to witness.

Instead of resting as much as she should have, she’d spent far too much of her first week in his guest house shopping up a storm online with the laptop he’d lent her. She’d been ecstatic to see the first deposit of her inheritance money land in her bank account. As hazy as some of her memories remained, she had no difficulty remembering how to shop, cook, and enjoy the simple things in life — like picking wildflowers, reading a book in the hammock swinging in the side yard, and spinning around with her eyes closed and hands out during a brief rain shower that had blown their way.

Her smiles and her positivity were downright infectious. She’d brightened his entire world with them. Hearing how she’d spent her day had become the highlight of his day, along with the meals they shared. And the chuckles. Second only to his relationship with God, she was fast becoming a force of nature he wasn’t sure he could survive without.

As he assisted her into the Bronco, he drawled, “It could easily take the rest of the year to work your way through this meow-ntain of supplies.” He winked at her. “Pun intended.”

“Not even,” she scoffed, reaching for her seatbelt. “The stomachs of growing dogs and cats are bottomless pits. We’ll be lucky if this gets us through the rest of the month.” She made a comical face at him. “That was a purr-fectly horrible pun, by the way.”

“You gotta be kitten me,” he teased. “I thought it was hiss-terical.”

She raised her hands, palms out. “You win. It’s im-paws-able to top that.”

He longed to lean into the vehicle and sample the laughter bubbling on her lips. He wanted it so badly that it hurt. Instead, he shut the door and jogged back to the driver’s side. He was grinning like an idiot as he slid behind the wheel. “You did something to your hair,” he teased.

“Oh. You noticed.” She waved a hand like it was no big deal.

“Yeah, I noticed.” It was impossible not to notice that the hottest blonde he’d ever met had transformed into the hottest brunette he’d ever met.

“Well?” She cocked her head playfully at him as he started the motor.

“Well what?” He pretended to misunderstand.

“Do you like it?” She flipped a handful of the long, wavy strands over her shoulder.

“Yep.” Like was an understatement. She was so beautiful that it took a superhuman effort to drag his eyeballs away from her to start driving.

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