I didn’t know why I said it. The question was strange, completely inappropriate…
…I was a married woman.
In theory. Not by law, I guess, but in the eyes of the Lord?—
“You sure you’re okay with that?” Forrest said. “There’s a spare room in the cottage, but it’s a little cramped.”
“I don’t mind cramped,” I said.
Forrest looked at me for a moment…then he nodded.
“Okay,” he said.
Peggy smiled. Haven finally reached over and squeezed my shoulder…and I didn’t flinch.
Stetson pushed back from the table. “I’ll check the east fence line today,” he said. “Make sure we don’t get any unwanted guests.”
Everyone just nodded along like it made sense.
I looked down at my plate. The pancakes had gone a little cold. I ate them anyway, because they were still the best thing I'd had in months, and because it gave me something to do with myhands while I sat in the warmth of this kitchen that smelled like bacon and coffee and felt nothing like any place I'd ever been.
Forrest's knee was six inches from mine under the table.
I was aware of it the entire time.
When breakfast broke up—dishes cleared, Gage and Millie corralling the kids, Stetson and Buck already gone—Forrest stood and looked at me.
"I'll show you the cottage," he said. "Give you the lay of it."
I followed him out the back door into the morning, the fog burned off now, the Hill Country laid out gold and dry in every direction. Nickel fell in beside me like she'd been doing it her whole life.
And it struck me…a few hours ago, I’d been sleeping in a hunting blind.
Now?
I wasfree.
FOUR
Forrest
I wasn’t sure exactly why Willa Daley felt safe with me, but I was damn sure going to prove her right.
The cottage wasn’t much to look at; I knew that before Willa did, but I still felt it when I opened the front door—the low ceiling, the window that stuck in its frame, the smell of old wood floors and the ghost of every summer it had sat here catching heat with nobody in it. There was a clean set of linens on the bed in the spare bedroom, always unused, sans a little bit of Nickel’s dog hair from when she decided it washerbed.
I kept the place clean, at least. Always had.
“It’s small,” I said, like she couldn’t see that.
She gave me a soft, hesitant smile. “It’s perfect.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. “I grew up with twelve siblings and we had about thirty people packed into that house. So…yeah. It’s perfect.”
Good lord.
What the hell was going on over there?