Page 80 of Beach Cottage Kisses
“Then I’ll be here at eight.” She cut him off. Didn’t want to hear what he just…when it referred to her possibly being cut out. Cut off.
She recognized that the emotions were over-the-top. Gave herself some slack for them until she had time to reacclimate to her regular routine back in her own space.
“Hey…”
She had to turn back. Couldn’t ignore the disappointment in his voice.
He looked her in the eye. Warmly. Friend to friend. With a knowing that comforted her. “Thank you” was all he said.
With a shrug, a grin and a “What are friends for?” she held the door for Angel and let herself out.
He might have watched her go.
She felt like he was watching.
Wanted to know if he was.
But Iris walked down the beach, shoulders straight and head up, without looking back.
Chapter Nineteen
That first hour Scott was on a high that propelled him around his cottage, getting everything back in order just as he liked it.
He and Iris were good. They’d made it through the fire without getting burned. Singed a little maybe, but the incident had been a lesson to both of them. One that had brought them closer. Making them better. As most of life’s lessons did.
Leaning on crutches where necessary, he lightly cleaned bathrooms. Started to move his things back into the master bedroom but had a second thought on that one. He had his independence back. No point in stretching things too far by challenging himself to get in and out of a higher bed when doing so wasn’t necessary.
And a little more time to let the memory fade of the night he and Iris had spent sitting up on that bed would probably be good, too.
Those were intimate hours he would never forget. Didn’t want to forget.
But the bed, her, him…that part had to go.
Darkness fell and he made dinner. Some of his homemade spaghetti sauce from the freezer, warmed and spread over the pasta he managed to cook and, leaning on his crutches,to drain, too. He was back. Different. But all there. A new and improved version of himself, the back and knee injuries notwithstanding.
His knee still hurt. Joel had told him to expect discomfort for a while as he healed and then worked to retrain parts to work together. In another couple of days, when the stitches came out, he’d progress more quickly. He had no intention of pushing that. One ripped incision in a lifetime was enough for him.
Scott kept busy even after the high from his regained independence started to fade. He did laundry, answered emails, reading case notes as the loads washed and dried.
But as busy as he was, as much as he was getting done, as good as it all felt, there was a pall. A quiet that went beyond physical sound in the house. He could turn on music. Television, even, if he wanted voices. He couldn’t bring the emotional needs of another into his home. Not without having another person there.
And while, in that moment, he was missing the companionship, he also fully knew that when he got back to work, was fully engrossed in cases again, in court and judges, with individual members of juries uppermost in his mind, he’d fail to notice those emotional needs, even if another human being was in his home.
He wasn’t back in court yet. Wouldn’t be at least for another week. Which meant he was going to have to be proactive about keeping his head on straight. Starting with reestablishing the cottage as a place where he could count on being alone. First with Gray’s unexpected advent, and then, shortly after the wedding, with Iris’s occupancy, he’d begun to get used to having someone else around.
That stopped immediately.
Grabbing up his compression and bandaging materials,he shoved them into a grocery bag, slung it over his wrist and headed toward the back door. Morgan stood there, watching him. Not wagging her tail to go out.
And it hit him. Walking on the beach on crutches would not be prudent. Or in any way helpful to his overall plan to heal as quickly as possible.
“Let’s go,” he said to the girl, nodding toward the seldom-used front door. Morgan didn’t wag her tail, but she did move that time, and stayed beside him during the quarter-mile trek down to Iris’s cottage.
He was almost there before he stopped to pull out his phone to let her know he was coming. It wasn’t like he could just hang out in the street and wait for her to come out, as he’d have done any other time since he’d known her.
Except that she’d be heading up the beach to his place, not the street.
His thought had been to get there before she left, so she couldn’t tell him not to make the trip.
