Page 49 of Unforgettable

Scarlett shrugs and lifts her eyebrows. “Did you keep your receipt from Sunny Side this morning?” she asks me.

“Uh…maybe?”

She smirks and I dig in my back pocket, pulling out the receipt. The first thing I see is a phone number scrawled in huge numbers on the bottom, and above that says:

I love our talks. Call me sometime. Claudia

There’s a heart by her name.

“Oh,” I say, recognition dawning on me. “Is Claudia the waitress with dark hair and tiny hands?”

“Tiny hands?” Zac says, laughing.

Ivy cracks up both times we sign it.

“Yeah. We talk about how hard it is for her to carry everything,” I add.

Everyone loses it at that, even Scarlett.

I’ll be the brunt of every joke if it makes her laugh like that.

CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE

THE ODDS

SCARLETT

“Your family is wonderful.”

We’re walking back to our offices after showing Zac, Autumn, and Ivy their condo…which they went on about like it was a palace.

It was the proudest I’ve felt about this place in a long time. I’m as loyal as they come about the lodge, but I’m not oblivious to the ways it’s showing its age.

I didn’t expect to be part of the Ledgers’ visit, especially with the way it’s been between Jamison and me, peaceful truce or not, but I’ve already had so much fun with them. And Autumn invited me to go to The Pink Ski with them in an hour…that’s part of the reason I waited to walk back to get the dogs with Jamison—I want to test out how he feels about me going. Things have been so much better since we were stuck on the ski lift together, but I wouldn’t say they’re footloose and fancy-free, as Grinny likes to say.

“Beautiful and so down to earth…” I add.

“They are, aren’t they?” he says. “You’ll love Pappy and my parents too. They’re hilarious and so damn lovable.”

“I had no idea Ivy was deaf. Now that I think about it…I’ve seen you use sign language before…I just didn’t realize that’s what it was until I saw you do one of the same signs. This…” I lift my fingers to my chin then extend them toward him.

“Thank you,” he says. “That’s the sign forthank you.” He smiles and the easiness we’ve had between us…usually until I mess it up…is there.

I want to roll around in this warm feeling and never go back to his cool, blank looks, the steps of precaution I take, and the sadness that I feel to know he works hard to avoid me.

Granddad’s voice rumbles around in my head.You’re putting too much time into this place, angel. Women are meant to keep the home fires burning, to fill up that home with children and so much love. Don’t you want that?He’d said that when I’d broken up with Danny, a guy he’d liked heaps more than Regg.

His words are a wet blanket that I try to shake off, for more reasons than I can delve into while walking next to Jamison.

“I wish I’d known about Ivy,” I tell him. “I don’t know any signs, and I hate not being able to say everything I want to say to her…”

His gaze is so warm when I look up at him, my heart tumbles down around my feet.

“That’s really sweet, Scarlett. She likes you already and will be chatting up a storm by the end of the night, trust me. You can still say everything you want to say…she makes it so easy,” he adds, shaking his head. “She’s truly remarkable, the way she adapts to every situation. But one of us is always interpreting so she doesn’t ever feel left out of the conversation.”

He frowns. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell you. I really thought I had. She got meningitis at three and lost her hearing, and it was such a part of our every thought the first couple of years, trying to learn what we needed to make her life the best it could possibly be. To be the support system Zac needed…the guy is my hero. His career was taking off with the NFL, and he was a single dad, raising his little girl who suddenly needed something different than he’d ever imagined.”

“Wait, Autumn’s not Ivy’s biological mom?” We stop in front of my office and I lean against the door.

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