Page 49 of From Best Friend to Bride
I screamed, jerking away from him. I whacked my head on the thick, wooden headboard, and my eyes watered as the sharp pain radiated across my skull.
“Owww!”
“Shit!” Fred rushed over and grabbed my head, pushing it down to check the back of it. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, parting my hair with his fingers. “I didn’t think you’d jump halfway across the bed.”
“You know how I feel about my feet being touched!”
“I didn’t think you’d be that ticklish through the duvet!”
“You thought wrong.” I pouted, rubbing the back of my head as I looked up at him. “At least you’ve put some clothes on now.”
“I see the bang to the noggin hasn’t altered your personality any,” he remarked, pulling back. “Are you going back to sleep?”
I wished.
“No.” I let go of a long, dramatic sigh. “Bean’s kid has broken his hand or something, so I have to go in at one to cover his shift.”
“Wasn’t he in the hospital getting an x-ray on his ankle last month?”
“Bean? Or his kid?”
“His kid.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Probably. Si reckons he’s got Bean’s brains.”
“Poor bugger,” Fred muttered, walking over to the dresser. He grabbed the towel and ran it through his hair, mussing it all up.
“No, no. How many times? You don’t scrub, you squeeze.”
He met my eyes in the mirror. “That’s easy for you to say. You have long hair. How am I supposed to squeeze this?”
Good grief.
I patted the bed in front of me, and he came, obediently sitting down with his back to me. I got onto my knees and gently dried his hair with the towel, then took the hairdryer from the bottom drawer of the bedside table and plugged it in.
I dried his hair, meeting his eyes in the mirror. He grinned, and his blue eyes sparkled impishly.
“And you say I couldn’t live without you. You can barely do your hair without me,” I said when I was done drying. I took the wax from his hands and ran it through his soft hair, using just enough to make sure it stayed in place. “There. Now piss off so I can get changed.”
He got up and put everything away, then grinned at me. “Clothes are in the bottom drawer over there.” He nodded towards the chest of drawers.
I frowned, but by the time I’d gotten my words to work, he’d already left the room. I shuffled over to the drawers and opened the one he’d said was mine.
Sure as shit, I had clothes in there.
My clothes, too.
Huh. Either someone was covertly moving me into Hawthorne House, or I spent more time here than I’d thought.
I wasn’t sure which one was more terrifying.
11
DELILAH
Something was definitely going on.
Nana had been giggling on and off for the past three days, and she had a great deal of plans with her friends for a woman who was, in her words, on her ‘bloody deathbed.’
