Page 101 of Our Lips Are Sealed
Jamison padded back into the kitchen, stopping next to Simone to lean a hip on her shoulder. “Liam’s going to check out the site before it rains.”
Simone wrapped an arm around Jamison’s waist. “Go get started on ours, and I’ll call the boys in.”
Annabeth brought her mug over to the table. “Can I go?” she asked. “Seeing me alone on his doorstep might put Selah in a better mood.”
“Uh, Evie?” an unfamiliar male voice came from the patio, interrupting their conversation. “Are you in there?”
Rowan’s handsome face appeared on the other side of the screen door. Dressed in his uniform black t-shirt and jeans, Fairweather Holding’s head of IT tucked his curtain of black hair behind an ear. “Samuel sent me around back to upgrade the security system,” he explained. “Well, not me personally, but I need to show my guys where to start, and he said I should talk to Abe first, but I can’t find him. Apparently, there are some bushes that they can’t touch?”
“Oh my,” Annabeth breathed, taking in the tattooed man eyeballing her with as much interest as she was showing him. “Oh me, oh my.”
Evie nudged Simone’s foot under the table to signal her to stay quiet. “Annabeth can show you. She was just on her way to the cottages where Abe is.”
Rowan smiled, showing off a perfect row of white teeth. “Sounds good.”
But Annabeth didn’t move, continuing to blink at him in a daze. Evie cleared her throat loudly, knocking her out of her trance.
“Ummm, yes, that’s me. I’m Annabeth.” She raised her hand. “Annabeth is me.”
One of Rowan’s canines snagged on his bottom lip. “I know who you are.”
“O-okay.”
All but knocking over her chair to get to the back door, Annabeth joined him on the patio. She smiled coyly up at him. “I don’t do very well outside without some sort of skin-to-skin contact. Would it be alright if I held on to your arm?”
Their height difference was almost comical. Rowan was at least six and a half feet tall, while Annabeth hung out around the five-foot mark.
“You can hold on to anything you want.”
Evie and Jamison hurried over to the screen and watched them go while Simone stayed at the table. “Come on y’all, she just made a date with the police officer and that man has an earring in his eyebrow.”
“Rowan is actually a really good guy,” Jamison said. “I met him in Texas. He’s part of a family that has dealings with Fairweather Holdings out there.”
Simone’s eyes narrowed. “The McIntyres?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Well, now I’m really rooting for the cop,” Simone grumbled.
“You know, she can always date two men at once,” Evie suggested if only to irk Simone. However, the idea had promise. Annabeth deserved to have fun. “Or three. Don’t forget about Mr. South Africa. We wanted to set her up with Gabriel, too.”
Once Rowan and Annabeth traveled far enough to become nothing but dots on the horizon, Evie returned to her seat while Jamison went to start breakfast.
“Samuel asked me to run away with him,” Evie whispered to Simone as Jamison sang loudly along with the song playing. “He offered to take me anywhere, and I told him I wanted to go to his cabin in North Carolina. I’m hoping we can see Josie while we’re up there.”
“That’s a smart move. Much of the man Samuel has become is due to her influence.”
Evie drew circles on the white table with her finger. “Do you think Miranda would have approved of… us?”
“If life were fair, and they were with us, I swear on all that’s holy that your mother and his would’ve been over the moon about this.”
“I don’t remember much about Miranda.”
Simone laid her hand on Evie’s, giving it a squeeze. “Miranda was the bravest person I’ve ever had the honor of knowing. I liked her right away when we first met because I could tell she was a realist and understood that one should never take anything at face value,” she said. “And then once she got sick that first time, Miranda grabbed life by the horns and said, no more, I’m taking what’s mine. From then on, she did just that, striving and hoping to see the good in everything and everyone. Even in those who didn’t deserve it.”
“You mean Rebecca.”
Hearing her name dropped so casually over their morning coffee had Simone shifting uneasily in her chair. She turned away, facing the wall to hide the tears no one was ever permitted to see.
