Page 27 of Suddenly Single
Rosalyn stepped closer.“Beg your pardon—last night?”
“Yeah, we had dinner in the back. He was slightly more talkative than the night he made me a sandwich.” She paused, thinking back to the way he’d looked at her, curious and confused and wary all at once. “A little more, anyway.”
Rosalyn’s eyes rounded like two pennies.“You must be joking.He invited you to dinner in the private quarters?”
“Oh, not like that,” Jenny said with a laugh. “It was more like I invited myself and he took pity on me. The restaurant was closed, so I went around back to see if he had a bowl I could use. And there he was, grilling fish he’d caught.” She smiled. “Fish was delicious.”
Rosalyn stared off a moment.Then she looked at her watch.“Oh, bother, I’ve got to get on with it.” She glanced up at Jenny. “Donna mind me being so nosy.I’ve known Edan for an age and like to keep an eye on him. Do you mean to go for a walk, then? It looks like rain.There are some extra brollies in the reception area.”
Jenny was going to guess that a brolly was an umbrella, but she smiled and thanked her all the same, and Rosalyn went back into the kitchen.
She didn’t need an umbrella. She’d checked her weather app—the rain wouldn’t arrive until late this afternoon.
That would give her plenty of time to think things through.
Eight
It didn’t rain. Itpoured.
Jenny and the two dogs had walked a little over two miles deep into the hills behind the Cassian Inn when the skies opened up and hosed her.
She should have grabbed abrolly.
She pulled the hood from her jacket up over her head and turned around to start back, assuming the terriers would be joining her.But the dogs had deserted her—she could see the dots of them running down the hill toward a red brick building.
Jenny trudged along behind them, picking her way down what was now a very muddy path.By the time she reached the red brick building she was thoroughly soaked.There was a parking lot and a sign that said,Lake Haven Senior Home.
She hurried inside to a vestibule entrance and tried to shake the water off of her. It was useless.She draped her jacket over the umbrella bin and squeezed water from her hair as she dripped onto the welcome mat. Through a frosted glass door she could see shadowy forms of people moving around.One was moving closer.
A rush of cool air startled her when an elderly woman with kind eyes had opened the glass door.“Did you swim across the lake?” she asked jovially.
“Feels like it,” Jenny said.
“Come in, dry off.Have some tea,” the woman said.
“Thanks, but I’ll just wait here for the rain to pass, if you don’t mind.I have to find the two little dogs that were with me. They ran down here and I’m sure they are hiding around here somewhere.”
“You must mean Mr. Mackenzie’s dogs,” she said.“He’s put them in his car while he visits.”
Jenny blinked. “Edan Mackenzie ishere?”
“He is! He won’t be long, I suspect.Poor man—Mr. Finlay doesn’t know who he is any longer.”
Who was Mr. Finlay? Jenny looked past the woman into the room behind her.There were several old people sitting about, some in wheelchairs, some at a table.A pair of caretakers in scrubs. And there, seated next to the window beside an old man was Edan. A very pretty and shapely caretaker was standing beside him, smiling with big doe eyes as she talked.
“Come in,” the woman urged Jenny.
Jenny hesitantly stepped across the threshold, her eyes warily on Edan.It was still hard to believe that she’d boldly kissed him last night.She’d kissed him the way the young female caretaker probably wanted to kiss him this very minute.Oh yeah, Jenny could see it written all over her: The lean-in.The soft smile.The rapt attention to the few words he might utter.
Edan happened to glance in her direction.His gaze locked on hers and narrowed unhappily.He said something to the elderly man and stood up, put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and then started toward Jenny.
She looked around for a place to hide.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded when he reached her.
“Drying off,” she said, gesturing to herself.“I got caught in the rain.Turns out, my weather app is useless.It said it wouldn’t start raining until this afternoon, so naturally the skies would—”
“I’ll take you back to the inn, aye?” He put his hand on her elbow.
