Logically, it didn’t make much sense, but in her heart, Evie felt as though she’d known the man her entire life. He’d somehow gone from being a stranger who’d helped rescue her and the girls to someone who owned a piece of her. The verybestpiece, in her opinion.
Because Beckett Stone owned every beating inch of her heart. Even if he didn’t know it.
You should tell him.
A shot of fear raced through Evie’s system at the thought of putting herself out there in such a vulnerable way. Could she do it? Was she ready to risk what she and Beckett had only just found by dropping a massive bomb like that at his feet?
Her nerve endings began to fire, and there was a slight tingling at the tips of her fingers. It wasn’t as if rejection was a new concept to her. She’d dealt with that her entire childhood.
Kids made fun of her unruly curls. Her deep dimples and upturned nose. The curves Beckett couldn’t seem to get enough of garnered countless unkind nicknames and whispers behind her back.
And though Evie knew inside her heart Beckett cared for her deeply, to lay it all out like that, and admit she was falling for him—that she hadalreadyfallen for him—was another level she wasn’t quite sure he was ready to face.
Soon, though. She’d tell him soon. Because life had already proven its unpredictability to her too many times recently to take too much of it for granted.
As for today, Evie was going to focus on what she already had planned. Lo was coming home tomorrow, and there were some last-minute things she wanted to do before then. And since she was presumably staying over at Beckett’s…
Laundry. Dishes. Dust. Floors.
Her goal was to have the place so spotless Lo wouldn’t have to lift a finger for at least a few days. It was the least she could do after the woman let Evie use the place as her own personal hideout.
She took a sip of her coffee relishing the extra dose of caffeine as she made her way out of the kitchen. Since laundry was first on the list, she’d get a load going and then set to work emptying the dishwasher.
Evie was walking through the living room on her way to the stairs when the sound of a car door being shut caught her attention from outside. She went to the large picture window overlooking the street, reaching up to push aside the curtains hanging low.
There was a car parked on the street in front of Lo’s condo. A man was climbing back behind the wheel of his yellow taxi, and there was a woman walking up the drive.
Her head was down, and a hoodie covered her downturned face as she pulled two suitcases behind her, and?—
Suitcases? Why would someone be here with… Ohmygosh!
“Lo!” Evie hollered her friend’s name as she excitedly ran the rest of the way to the front door.
Moving quickly, she nearly spilled her coffee as she set it on the small accent table positioned between the window’s edge and the door. Evie rushed to type in the security code she’d memorized weeks before, and as soon as the tiny light turned green, she opened the front door and ran outside.
“You’re home!” She hurried to the woman she considered a sister.
“Surprise!”
Lo released the handles attached to her bags and threw her arms around an incoming Evie. Squealing like a couple teenagers, they greeted each other with a mutual bear hug.
After a moment of tight squeezes and a few back-and-forth sways, Evie released her sneaky friend. “I thought you weren’t coming home until tomorrow.”
“I wasn’t, but I changed my mind.”
“How come?” Evie asked as she went for one of the wheeled bags.
“For one, I’m pretty sure my sister was ready to kick me out,” Lo teased, grabbing the other suitcase. “And two…to be perfectly honest…” Lo’s pretty blue eyes lifted to the condo as they walked side-by-side the remaining stretch of the way. “I was just ready to be back home.”
“What about blind date guy?” Evie propped open the door with her hip, holding the door open for her friend. “What was his name? Shane?”
“Shawn? Yeah…no.” Lo lifted her suitcase over the slightly raised threshold before entering her home for the first time in weeks. “That’s gonna be a hard pass for me.”
“Really?” Evie fumbled with the suitcase a tad as she followed the other woman inside. With the door falling shut behind her, she rolled the bag out of the way, butting it up against the nearest wall. “I thought you said he was cool.”
“He was…at first. At least, I thought he was. But then things got…I don’t know. Weird, I guess.”
“Weird how?”