Page 25 of Hero Next Door
She frowned. “What about the cabinets upstairs?”
“Easy. Tomorrow, the plumbers are going to be here and we can’t help them. So we do the cabinets upstairs while they work the pipes.”
I expected her to be excited that I was telling her we had the rest of the afternoon off. I’d thought she’d jump at the chance to get out of the house.
Instead, she looked like I’d just told her we were about to go take part in a light torture session.
“What?” I asked, my frown matching hers.
She must have realized that her reaction was strange, because she forced her face into a more neutral expression. “Nothing. A break sounds great. It’s just… I don’t really want to go into town, that’s all. So I guess I’m wondering what you mean when you say we’re going to get something to eat.”
Okay, she’d already been somewhat mysterious for such a straightforward girl, but now she was reaching truly epic levels. She didn’t go into town? Why? And how the hell had she…
I looked around, taking in the cans of paint sitting around and door to the kitchen, where she had a fully stocked fridge and pantry.Someonehad bought all that food and transferred it into the house.
Who?
And was it any of my business, really?
Simple answer to that: no. Sure, I might have been having the time of my life with her over the past couple days, and the memory of her laugh might be seared right into my soul. That didn’t mean I had a right to any of her secrets.
It didn’t mean I wanted them.
“Then we’ll stay out of town,” I said simply. “I happen to have the perfect alternative.”
She gave me a deeply doubtful look, like she was wondering whether I was handing her a bill of goods and lying through my teeth.
But she didn’t argue with me.
And that pleased me a lot more than it should have.
CHAPTER13
Dev
Ihadn’t lied about having the perfect place to take her that didn’t include town. The truth was, I’d been thinking about it for a while.
I know, it’s shocking that that whole scene wasn’t as off-the-cuff as it might have seemed. I just wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment sort of guy. I liked to have a plan, and when I proposed something, I liked to have some idea of how I was going to accomplish it.
When I told Parker that I wanted to take her out, I knew exactly where I was going to take her and what we were going to do while we were there. I knew what we’d be eating and what the view would be like. I wasn’t lying about any of that.
I did, however, sort of gloss over the fact that I’d have to stop in town, first.
“You stay in the truck,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.”
I looked over at the girl in my passenger seat and almost jumped at how much she’d changed. The confident, sassy girl I’d been dealing with for the past three days had suddenly become a wide-eyed, jumpy deer in the headlights, her gaze darting from left to right and her hands clenched into fists in her lap.
God, she wasn’t kidding about not wanting to be in town.
I wished I knew why. I wished she felt like she could tell me what it was that had her so jumpy and visibly scared. I wanted to take the girl in my arms and hold her close, whispering in her ear that it was going to be okay and that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. That I knew how to defend people—that I’d spent years handling weapons in Iraq, and that I’d very happily shoot anyone who came for her.
I wanted to tell her she was safe.
And I’d never wanted to tell anyone that, so this was entirely new for me. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it, and I definitely wasn’t sure it would come out the right way if I reached over and grabbed her and pulled her into a hug right now.
Hell, she’d probably knife me in the guts for trying.
I did put a gentle hand on her arm, though, and she turned to me with big eyes and lips that were pressed tightly together. “I’ll be right back,” I said gently. “I need to go into the grocery store and get some things, but it will only take me five minutes.”
