Page 37 of A Lonely Road
I choked on a laugh, but I sobered quickly. “I didn’t really mean to fall into a relationship right now,” I admitted.
Why the words were tumbling out—and to my new lover’s twin sister, no less—I had absolutely no idea, but Sam clucked sympathetically and looped her arm around my shoulders.
“Things don’t always happen the way we expect them to,” she said, “but sometimes the best things come along when we’re not even looking for them. Now, let’s buy these pretty little panties and get some grub, hmm?”
The restaurant Sam chose for lunch was an adorable, bustling Italian bistro at the edge of the strip mall. Though she carried the conversation, as she had for most of the day, that didn’t bother me. Now that my brief moment of reflection hadpassed, I felt almost as at ease with Samantha Lincoln as I did with Jake.
In the back of my mind, I wondered if this was what it felt like to have a big, close-knit family. It quieted the echoing cavern inside me, cloaking me with warmth, as though their companionship might somehow fill the void.
When the bill arrived, I snatched it up off the table, insisting that it was the least I could do. Sam apparently knew a lost cause when she saw one, so she left me to pay while she ran to the restroom before the drive home.
The day was gorgeous and the sunshine too tempting to resist, so I decided to wander outside to wait. Big ceramic pots of flowers lined the sidewalk and I trailed my fingers along the smooth edges as I moved away from the busy entryway. A crowd of people brushed past me on the sidewalk and I was shoved hard against a man in dark sunglasses.
“Careful,” he said with a smile, then he was swallowed up by the crowd.
Recognition hit me, stealing the breath from my lungs, and I had to wonder if I could even trust my eyes. For the second time since I arrived in Spruce Hill, icy tendrils of dread curled around my heart. That voice and the cold, arrogant smirk that accompanied it were like a ghost reaching straight into my chest and squeezing tight.
I suddenly felt like I was drowning, unable to draw air deep enough into my lungs. It was a hundred times worse than afterthe guy at The Mermaid grabbed me, and this time I didn’t have Jake there to help.
By the time I saw Sam exit the restaurant, painful gasps choked me as I staggered away from the crowd, bracing my hands against my knees just to stay upright. Her mouth moved, but the harsh drag of each breath and the thunderous cadence of my pulse in my ears drowned out her words.
“Nora!” Sam called as she shoved through the group, my name finally cutting through the panic. Her eyes flew wide when she reached my side. “What the hell happened? Here, sit, tell me what’s going on.”
“No,” I whispered. “No, we have to go. Please, can we just go?”
Sam took my arm, murmuring soothing words even as she glanced back at the bistro, searching for the source of my reaction. I tried to look, to explain what happened, but all I caught was a swift glimpse of the man in those dark sunglasses, then he was gone again.
“We’re going, sweetie, everything is going to be fine,” Sam said softly, wrapping her arm more snugly around me.
God, I hoped she was right.
By the time we arrived back at the apartment, I felt like I'd regained most of my composure. A quick glance in the visor mirror showed my complexion to be less ghostly, leaning more toward “Victorian lady who’s never seen the sun.” Oxygen was reaching my lungs again and I’d stopped trembling like a newborn lamb.
All in all, it was almost like nothing had ever happened.
Almost. Maybe. If it weren’t for a swift undercurrent of terror that skittered along my nerve endings every few minutes.
I firmly refused Sam’s offer to keep me company until Jake got home, insisting that I’d be perfectly fine and just needed to clear my head. Despite my attempt to brush off the incident as just a fluke, I was pretty sure Sam could tell it had affected me far beyond that brief panic attack outside the bistro.
I wanted to reassure her that I was okay, but after all her kindness, I didn’t want to lie to her.
Soon, I hoped to be able to tell her I was fine and actually mean it.
Chapter Twenty
Jake
Iwascheckinginventoryspreadsheetsin my office when Sam came into the restaurant. As she gave a perfunctory knock and opened the door, I froze. We’d always been able to read one another easily; she looked spooked, her shoulders tight, like she was bracing for something.
The relative calm I held onto for the first fifteen seconds probably had to be attributed to Nora’s effect on my general mood, but Sam’s strained expression chipped through it quickly.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, half rising from my seat before she motioned me back down.
For a moment, she didn’t speak, gathering her thoughts in a very un-Sam-like way that sent my blood pressure skyrocketing.
“Sam, talk to me. What is it?”
“Maybe nothing,” she said as she sat on the edge of the desk. “I don’t like to snitch, especially not on my friends. Even more especially not on someone who obviously doesn’t trust very easily. I really don't want to intrude on Nora’s private life, and I probably have no right to make a big deal out of something if it actually wasn’t, but if she isn’t willing to let me help her through this, maybe she’ll be more open with you. ”
