Page 27 of Between the Shady Groves
“Sure.”
Matteo walked quickly away, and Cannon was bummed that he wasn’t hanging out longer in Raspberry Ridge, because if he were, he could pick Matteo’s brain on what he should do to start getting in shape. Maybe he could still do that and just take the information back to Cincinnati with him and get started back there. He didn’t really relish the idea of being miserable, because that’s what he equated exercise with, but…he wasn’t getting any younger, and if that was the kind of man that Lauren was attracted to, it probably wouldn’t hurt for him to bulk up a bit on his physique.
Fourteen
Lauren stood at the window in her small living room overlooking the street of Raspberry Ridge. The sun had gone down, and she was ready to go take a shower and read for a bit before bed, but she didn’t want to go back to her bedroom until her husband’s truck left. He was sitting in it, just sitting in front of her store.
Cannon wasn’t going to stay there all night, was he?
But she’d been waiting for more than forty-five minutes for him to leave, and he hadn’t.
As far as she knew, his truck hadn’t moved all day. That meant that the bread that she’d given him that morning was the only thing that he had eaten all day.
She paced from the window to the kitchen counter and back. Her hands holding her stomach, her head lifted toward the ceiling, like there were answers there. She did not want to feel responsible for him, and she did not want to feel guilty that he was probably down there hungry and uncomfortable.
Was he expecting her to invite him in?
She supposed she could. She had a couch, and he could sleep there, but that was pushing the boundaries of what she wanted to establish.After all, she didn’t want him to think that he could just move in. Even if he was her husband.
Why not?
Like she had just thought, he was her husband. He had every right to live here if he wanted to. That’s the way marriages worked. People lived together. They didn’t drive off to a different state and start a business and just leave without saying anything. The way she had done.
She was not going to invite him in, but she’d go down and find out what he was planning, and maybe make a suggestion as to where he could stay tonight. There was a nice inn in Blueberry Beach and another one in Strawberry Sands. Neither one of those were more than half an hour away.
With that determined, she grabbed a sweatshirt from the chair, knowing that it probably had grown cool since the sun went down, despite the fact that it was summer, and hurried out of her apartment and down the steps, through the bakery, and carefully unlocked the front door.
She made sure it was unlocked before she stepped out and closed it behind her. She did not want to get locked out, even though now she was slightly less afraid because her husband was here. She knew if she accidentally locked herself out, he could get her back in. And he wouldn’t abandon her until she was taken care of.
Did that show that he loved her? She was looking for comfort and attention, and he was giving her protection and little acts of service.
Had they really just miscommunicated that badly?
She knocked on his window, and he startled, although from what she could tell, he was just sitting in his seat with his hands over his stomach, his seat stretched out as far back as it would go from the pedals.
He tried to open the window, but he needed to turn the truck on first.
“Sorry. Didn’t see you there. What do you need?”
“What are you doing?”
He paused, looked around, his face confused. She didn’t think he was putting on a show. Theater really wasn’t his thing. He wasn’t very good at acting.
“I’m going to sleep in my truck in front of your apartment. You don’t have a security system on that thing, and it’s my job to make sure that nothing happens to you.”
That’s really how he saw it? It was his job to make sure that nothing happened to her?
That actually made her feel safe and protected. She liked that feeling. And she would have missed it if she hadn’t talked to Skyler earlier that day and had Skyler point out to her that maybe he was saying “I love you” in a way that she didn’t understand or appreciate.
“Did you eat anything?”
“I had that bread you gave me earlier.”
“You’re hungry.” She didn’t have to ask. She knew it. He ate like clockwork during the day. Not that he wouldn’t skip a meal for a job or in order to not have to quit early, but she knew he was hungry.
“Yeah. But in case you haven’t noticed, there are no fast-food restaurants here, and…no restaurants of any kind.”
“I’ve got leftover spaghetti. I don’t have anything fancy, I just made spaghetti to go with my cheese bread and added some garlic and butter to it.”
