Page 43 of Bidding on a Second Chance
“I hope we can still be friends.” Her statement was a test.
Graham returned to his food. “As your friend, your dating life is none of my business.”
He was stepping back, not pursuing her.
She might’ve been asking for that, yet something inside her dropped and broke like a glass Christmas ornament.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
Graham entered Second Chances through the front door on Saturday morning. The choice was strategic. First, since they were picking up candy bars and money, he wouldn’t be parked on Main Street longer than the two-hour time limit imposed on this block. Second, Piper would expect him to enter from the other way, giving him the opportunity to surprise her.
“Good morning.” Piper’s greeting came from the direction of the sales counter. She must’ve offered the salutation blindly, because a rack of long dresses blocked the view. For security reasons, she ought to relocate the display, but the cover served his purposes. By the time he rounded the display, he was only three feet from the register. Plenty close to watch the rose-pink bloom on her cheeks.
She claimed to want the friend zone, but he doubted she blushed at the sight of her other friends.
“Ready to collect some candy bars?” She stood and rubbed her hands in overdone excitement.
He helped her into her coat instead of calling her on it. He liked flustering her. Especially when she got flustered enough to forget her fears and kiss him like she had in the stockroom.
And what a kiss. He’d been craving a repeat ever since.
Thing was, he didn’t trust decisions made by a flustered mind. Though her fear was as strong as a chain, it behaved more like an elastic band, stretching sometimes, but forever pulling her back. Meanwhile, he had no desire to set himself up for rejection again. Pursuing her heart before she dealt with her fear would result in another disaster. He had to be careful this time. Patient. Their next kiss wouldn’t be until after the cord had broken for good.
Even if the wait killed him.
Which it wouldn’t. Not directly, anyway, but—
“Ready?”
He was blocking Piper’s path from behind the sales counter. “Yes. Do we need the cart for this?”
“I called the stores. Almost all of them sold out of the candy bars, so, as long as you can carry one box, no cart necessary. Think you can handle it?” She squeezed his biceps as she rolled by with her scooter.
He lifted an eyebrow.
Her blush deepened.
He hid his smile by moving ahead to hold the door for her. For shorter distances, she’d been forgoing the scooter, but today’s route would take them several blocks. He let her set the pace as they started down Main Street.
Overhead, clouds moved in, the first signs of a storm predicted to blanket Redemption Ridge in ice and snow overnight. Hopefully, the precipitation would hold off until after their errand.
The sweater displayed in the front window of JoJo’s Scrapbooking and Yarn had a button pinned to it, advertising the benefit auction for the Rasinskis. A small paper sign tented in front of it said, “Bid on this sweater!”
Graham wondered if it’d occurred to any small business owner besides Piper to donate not one or two but ten items. He pulled open the door for her to precede him into the shop.
Back at Second Chances, the last of the furniture waited for him to finish. With her foot becoming less painful, Piper had sanded down the pieces he hadn’t gotten to yet and had also completed some of the priming. An impressive accomplishment, given she still wasn’t back to one hundred percent. If not for the accident, she would’ve been fine all on her own, even if the commitment would’ve daunted anyone else in town.
“What inspired you to donate ten items, anyway?” he asked.
“For the auction?” She shrugged. “It’s a young family, and they need help. Riley’s the cutest.”
“There’s that soft spot you have for kids.”
She glanced at him. “I think it’s been growing lately.”
JoJo appeared in his peripheral vision and stole her attention away.
Graham didn’t take his eyes off Piper. She could’ve argued with him. In the past, to signal loud and clear that she didn’t want kids, she would’ve. If she was hinting like this, she might be closer to overcoming her fears than he’d realized. They might come out on the other side of all this as a couple. One day, Lord willing, they could have a family. Everything he’d wanted and thought he’d never get.
