Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 104869 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104869 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
She swallowed down her disappointment and continued. “Despite our best efforts, we’re still going to run in to each other. So could we please just try to be civil?”
His nod was curt, restrained. He palmed his coffee cup and lifted it for a quick sip.
“Communication. Civility,” he itemized after putting the cup down. “Got it. Anything else?”
Now it was her turn to frown as she considered his question.
“I can’t think of anything.”
His entire demeanor seemed to thaw. The grim set of his mouth relaxed into a near smile.
Smith wasn’t like her father. Or Cade. Or Nox. Or even like her.
While he was becoming increasingly adept at hiding himself from her, all of the coldness and hostility was contrary to his character.
“You just had to fracture your toe and take your overdue break in the smallest town on the planet, didn’t you?” Despite the words, there was something akin to affection in his voice.
One might even imagine he was inviting her to laugh along with him.
He’d often done that in that past. Tried to invite her into his warmth. With laughter. Quips.
That easygoing, relaxed nature of his had been so welcoming and tempting. But Kenny had refused to be drawn in, afraid that when he left, it would be one more thing forever lost to her.
So she’d deprived herself.
Withheld herself.
And lost him anyway.
This glimpse of that same inviting warmth was heartening. She was relieved to see that she hadn’t stripped him of it completely.
“Absurd, isn’t it?” she murmured, her own voice less rigid now. Melting a little around the edges. “Trust me to make things difficult, right?”
The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he graced her with another one of those almost smiles.
“What form of communication were you thinking of? Letters? Calls? Emails?”
“I don’t know, Granddad. What about Morse code? Or maybe smoke signals?” she asked with a snort and a roll of her eyes.
Her acerbic comment startled a short, sharp bark of laughter from him and he looked shocked to hear the sound spilling from his lips.
“I’d forgotten—” He stopped speaking abruptly, as if suddenly remembering himself.
“Forgotten what?” she prompted gently, and he shifted uncomfortably. The chair creaked a little beneath his weight and once again she worried that it was too fragile to support him.
“I forgot how funny you can be,” he said after another moment’s hesitation. “We haven’t really had that much to laugh about over the last year and a half, have we?”
“No.” But they could have had.
There could—should—have been love and laughter and happiness.
What a horrible, horrible waste.
She instinctively reached across the table and at the last second, remembered herself. She curled her fingers into her palm, resting her fist on the cloth mere inches from the splayed fingers of his beautifully veined right hand.
“Let’s try not to…” She swallowed, eyebrows drawing together as she tried to find the right words. “Wallow in our regrets any more, Smith. Let’s try to set them aside just for right now. Do you—um—do you think we can do that? Maybe? Just for now. This moment?”
He did what she couldn’t and closed the distance between their hands, the back of that long, beautiful index finger delicately brushing over the ridges of her knuckles.
That gentle touch sent gooseflesh skittering over her skin and she uncurled her fingers, until her own index finger, so much slimmer than his, slid along the length of his.
The contact—so tender and unexpectedly intimate—left her reeling.
His finger hooked around hers and they sat in silence for a few moments, heads bowed, with only their index fingers entwined in the middle of the table.
“No wallowing,” he agreed, in a voice that had sunk to a low rasp. “Just for now.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Another reassuring stroke of that sensitive finger along the slim column of hers and
Kenny stared at their interlinked fingers. His skin was burnished by the sun, offering a stark contrast to the paleness of hers. She blinked back the hot moisture that suddenly burned at the back of her eyes, and made a soft, self-conscious sound.
“So if not smoke signals or Morse code, I’m assuming you mean texts?” His raspy voice broke the silence before it became too awkward.
“Yes, of course.” Emotions back under firm control but lurking just below the surface, Kenny braved a glance up into his eyes.
They were dark, stormy, but not hostile. Rather, he looked as conflicted as she felt. But for the first time since her arrival there was no rejection or anger lurking in those beautiful depths and Kenny ventured the tiniest of smiles. The upward tug at the corners of her mouth made her realize how long it had been since she’d truly smiled.
And she recognized that despite his turbulent reaction to having her here, he’d still smiled more than she’d done since her unannounced and unwelcome reappearance back into his life.