Page 69 of Beyond the Blue Horizon
There was a woman and a little girl hovering behind me, both of them bundled up for the snow.
The child was maybe four or five, and she wore a pink, full body snow suit. You could barely make out her dainty face with the way the hood was cinched down over her head.
The woman was probably my age, give or take a few years, and she clung to the little girl’s hand.
Wariness oozed from her being. Doubt and caution woven in every molecule of her body.
When Theo noticed her, the easiness he had been wearing drained. I could almost feel it being sucked from the atmosphere.
He fumbled to a stop where he and Finn were about thirty feet out in the field.
Instantly on edge.
All his focus on the woman and her child.
My stomach tightened in a coil of distress that gathered from out of nowhere.
I scowled against it, trying to discern where it was coming from.
Jealousy?
Is that what it was? This feeling that spiraled through every one of my senses as Theo began to slowly move in our direction?
“Everything good?” he asked when he got close enough that his words could only be heard by us. His grumbly voice had deepened further.
Anxiety seemed to have the woman shifting on her feet, and she hesitated before she forced out, “We’re fine. We were just wondering if it’s okay for Lucy to come out and play?”
Finn scrambled onto his feet, standing on the sled as he waved his hands over his head. “Hi! I is Finn! You want toswed wifme?”
Theo seemed to war, and I could feel his intensity bluster through the air as his attention swept the entire perimeter.
It was as if he were a guard protecting precious property and not merely the owner of the motel.
Unease skittered underneath the surface of my skin.
He finally turned back to her, and his chin barely dipped. “Yeah, of course.”
He dropped his gaze to the little girl. “Why don’t you come and meet Finn, Lucy?”
His forever gruff voice had gone gentle, and he cautiously stretched out his hand.
“Okay,” Lucy whispered, timid yet eager.
“I is Finn!” Finn jumped and shouted and giggled, clearly not reading the mood.
But I was struggling to read it, too. My attention swung between the woman and Theo. The two of them were locked in some kind of stare as the little girl tentatively approached him.
Yep.
Jealousy.
That roil of my insides was definitely jealousy.
And I hated it.
Hated that this complete stranger could evoke this reaction in me.
It was ridiculous.
