Page 35 of Dear Henry, Love Edith
When he leaned back, enough for her to see the subtlecurve of his mouth, she didn’t know if the heat in her belly was because she wanted to slap the smile off those lips or kiss them off.
“Just in case,” he said with a wink.
Edith nodded, afraid if she talked, it would only come out as a squeak. When the back door closed a moment later, she dropped her head into her hands and begged God to make Steve leave town that very minute. She couldn’t keep up this charade.
Especially since she wasn’t sure which part was the charade—them pretending to be a couple or her pretending like she wasn’t falling head over heels for a stranger.
Her appetite gone, Edith dumped the rest of the eggs in the garbage. She refused to let anything keep her from going to South Africa at the end of the summer. Her life wasn’t here.
Even if she left a tiny piece of her heart here after she left.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Later that evening, Henry pressed his thumb against the doorbell, banged the knocker, then pressed the doorbell again. After the third round ofbuzz-buzz-knock-knock-knock-buzzzzz, the door cracked open.
“Henry?” Lance opened the door wider. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you have a minute?”
Lance scratched the back of his head and darted a glance back into the house. “I’m sort of on a date. We’re getting ready to eat dinner. Is this something that can wait?”
“I kissed Goldie Hawn.”
“I’ll be just a minute,” Lance hollered over his shoulder as he stepped outside, closing the door behind him. “Continue.”
“Except she’s not Goldie. She’s Edith. Now we’re pretending to date and I’m pretending to be Henry, so I had to send the real Henry away, even though there is no real Henry because I’m the real Henry. But she doesn’t know that, and before you say I should have told her the truth, IknowI should have told her the truth, but you didn’t see that Steve guy. He’s bad news. I don’t trust him. You wouldn’t either. So now I can’t tell her the truth, because if I tell her the truth, she’s going to get mad I didn’t tell her the truth. Then she might go away. And I don’t want her to go away, but that’s crazy because at the end of summer she’s going away anyway, you know?”
Lance opened his mouth to speak, but Henry rushed on. “Problem is I like her, Lance. I mean, Ireallylike her. All I want to do is keep kissing her. And not just because she’s a bombshell—oh, man, that red dress—but she’s the type of woman I could see sharing the rest of my life with. Am I insane? I have to be. I barely know her. But the thing is, I do know her. She’s told me things and I’ve told her things, so there’s this strong connection between us. But she doesn’t know that. She thinks she’s got a connection withHenry. What am I supposed to do?”
Lance blinked. “Who’s Steve?”
“Her husband’s brother.”
“She’s married?”
“No. He’s dead.”
“Steve?”
“Her husband. Have you been listening? What kind of therapist are you?”
“Aphysicaltherapist. And for the record, I didn’t knowwe had a showing-up-unannounced-with-personal-problems relationship.”
“Well, we do. Now are you going to help me with my problem or not?”
“What problem? Sounds to me like you’ve got a bombshell living in your house who you’ve been getting to smooch left and right. You call that a problem?” Lance grabbed the door handle. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a lovely lady sitting in my kitchen and I’m hoping to land a few smooches of my own, so...”
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me?”
“Yeah, man. That’s all I’ve got for you—as both your physical therapist and your friend. You still wanna talk, head down to the corner pub. I’m sure crazy Al would love hearing you ramble about dead husbands and old lady bombshells. Shoot, he’s probably the only one in this town who could make a lick of sense out of anything you just said. Good night.” Lance closed the door.
Henry ambled back to his pickup truck. Well, fat lot of good that did. Not that he’d really been expecting to receive any earth-shattering advice. More that he just needed to collect his thoughts a minute before he got back to his house. Before he got back to Edith. Before he got back to wanting to kiss her again.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know what needed to be done. He needed to tell Edith the truth. And he would. Just as soon as Steve was out of the picture. That way even if she hated him for lying, she’d at least be out of harm’s way.
When Henry pulled into his driveway, pink-tinged streaks of orange brushed across the horizon. He let himselfin through the front door, surprised when the smell of home-cooked food wafted from the kitchen. He’d been planning to throw in a frozen pizza.
“Hey.” Edith stuck her head out from the kitchen. Cute little worry lines formed between her eyebrows as she blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Have you had supper already?”
