Page 25 of Loyally, Luke
She winced. “But a first by me.” She raised a palm. “Ice. Let me get ice.”
Ellie rushed to one of the two remaining appliances—the refrigerator—and dug through a bottom freezer, slowly pulling out a handful of ice. “Here. Put this on it.”
He would have complied, but one hand gripped her phone and the other held whatever he’d pulled from the hole. As if suddenly aware, he raised the item into the light.
“It’s a leather bag?”
Luke squeezed the bag, feeling the firm contents. Box-shaped?
He offered the phone to Ellie, who placed the hammer on the counter and slid her phone into her pocket, ice still in one hand.
With the bag between them, he carefully tugged at the drawstring and drew out... a book?
Ellie stepped closer and slid a slender finger over the leather cover. “A book?”
She gently opened the cover, a gasp puffing from her lips. She looked up at him. “It’s a journal.” She pointed down at the writing on the inside cover for him to see. Or at least, see with his good eye. “Blair MacKee, 1918.” Ellie gave her head a shake, bringing more of the scent of oranges toward him. “Could it really have been under there all this time? Decades?”
Luke tried to peer down at the pages, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to see out of his left eye as the swelling continued. “Over a century.”
“Remarkable.” Her attention flitted to his swollen eye. “I’m so sorry. Your poor eye.” She raised a cube to his cheek and he flinched at the shock of cold and sting. She grimaced. “I imagine this makes you even more excited to have me work with you.”
A soft laugh slipped through his grin. “At least you’ve given me fair warning.”
Her smile dawned slowly, like it had to work out the kinks. And despite how ridiculous the thought was, he liked that he’d somehow made that smile bloom. Even if only for a moment.
Daggone it.
“Oh, pardon me.”
Luke and Ellie turned to find Mrs.Kershaw standing in the doorway of the kitchen, her gaze shifting from him to Ellie to Ellie’s hand on his cheek and back again.
Heat traveled into Luke’s face and likely started melting the ice at record speed.
“Mrs.Kershaw, you’ve arrived at the perfect time.” Ellie looked away from him, her expression moving back into the well-controlled category. “We’re in need of more ice.”
“What happened?” The woman rushed forward, examining Luke’s face.
“A building accident,” Luke offered. “Nothing that a few pieces of ice and a pain reliever or two won’t fix.”
Almost imperceptibly, Ellie slid the journal from Luke’s hand behind her back. “He’s being too generous, Mrs.Kershaw. I’m the one who accidentally hit him with the hammer when I thought we discovered a dead animal under the floor in the closet.”
The older woman’s eyes grew wide, and she pressed a palm to her chest.
“It was just this leather bag, Mrs. Kershaw,” Luke explained to keep the woman’s eyes from growing any wider.
“But we did see the old signatures on the wall.”
Mrs.Kershaw’s face relaxed into a smile. “Aren’t they lovely? Such a part of the history here.” She turned her pale eyes on Luke. “You won’t destroy them in the renovations, will you?”
“No, ma’am. We’ll find some way to keep what we can of them.”
“Very good.” Mrs.Kershaw waved for him to come closer. “Now, let’s see to your eye before it swells to a close.”
Luke looked back at Ellie, who offered a tight smile, one hand still keeping the journal behind her back. Those eyes implored his silence, his mutual camaraderie.
And Luke realized something.
When Penelope mentioned forced proximity, he had no idea it included a small closet, a secret one-hundred-year-old journal, and the tactile memory of an off-limits Skymarian in his arms.
