Chapter 16
“I wanna go see my daddy!”
It was nearing Joey’s bedtime, two days after they’d all been at the shop together, and Olive was on Joey duty while Katie spent time with Joe at the hospital.
Currently, Joey lay dramatically on the floor of the living room with Holmes snuggled up to his side and Pepper sitting on top of Holmes, guarding her men.
Olive crouched in front of the gang. “We’ve got twenty minutes until bedtime,”
she said to the only human in the mix. “I’m sorry that we can’t go see him tonight, but first thing tomorrow, okay? Can you pick something else? A snack? A game?”
She gestured to Pepper. “A kitten?”
“Disneyland!”
“I wish,”
she said on a laugh. “Hey, did you know I’m a fort-building master?”
He perked up a little bit. “You are?”
“Yep. My grandma and I used to have cookies and milk in our forts, and share secrets.”
“I’ve got a secret,”
Joey said. “Summer Adams kissed me on the playground.”
She blinked. Kids kissed in pre-K?
“She says I’m her boyfriend. And you kissed Uncle Noah, so that means you’re his girlfriend.”
“Uh . . . ,”
Olive said, starting to sweat as she looked around for an adultier adult, but nope, it was just her. “Let’s find some blankets for the fort.”
“Don’t we have to ask Mommy first?”
Hmm. Probably better to ask for forgiveness than permission. “She’s busy right now, so let’s not bother her.”
She smiled and he smiled back with Joe’s mischievous smile. No wonder he was already dazzling girls.
She found blankets in the linen closet, and they dragged a few of the kitchen chairs into the living room in front of the couch and got started.
Her first two attempts were miserable failures. The blankets were too heavy and kept slipping. They switched to spare sheets, which worked, but let too much light inside for Joey, who wanted to use a battery-operated lantern for a hand-puppet shadow show.
“I’ve got an idea.”
Olive went to the laundry area for the stepladder, which she set up next to the stairs. Her plan: use some of her hair ties around the railing to rig another sheet above the fort, like a canopy, to make it darker inside.
She was on the second rung of the stepladder trying to make it all work when two arms reached around her, taking hold of the sheet and hair tie. She’d know those arms anywhere. They haunted her in her damn sleep. “I’ve got it,” she said.
Proving she didn’t, it all began to slip.
Noah caught the sheet. Still on the stepladder, she turned to face him, which put her nose to nose with him. “I had it.”
“Building a fort is a team effort.”
“Well, then, why don’t you and your team go work on the north side,”
she said. “I’ll build the south side.”
This was sheer bravado on her part, as she had no idea which way was north or south. And there’d been that pesky little white lie about her fort-building skills.
It’d been Gram with all the skills. Whenever Olive had visited her as a kid, Gram would pull out all her sheets and blankets, then drape them over chairs in a strategic way that made Olive feel like she had her own house. She’d tuck Olive inside with a flashlight and then slide in warm homemade cookies and milk.
Noah was admiring the fort so far. “Nice touch with the hair ties. Resourceful.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“Yes, and here’s another.”
Leaning in, mouth to her ear, he murmured, “You smell good.”
A shiver of arousal went through her, and since that was annoying, she elbowed him to back up.
With a low laugh, he did.
And . . . the sheet held.
“Yes!”
Joey said, pumping his fist in the exact same way Noah had done at his T-ball game whenever something good happened on the field.
It made Olive smile. “I’ll be back with goodies.”
Retreating to the kitchen, she stood at the sink, staring out the window as she sucked in a deep breath, trying to regroup.
“What are you doing?”
she asked when Noah appeared at her side.
“Breathing?”
She sighed. “I meant with the standing so close thing, the whispering in my ear, the touching . . .”
She turned her head and looked at him. “You’re confusing me.”
“Yeah.”
He gave her a half smile. “I’m sorry. I’m confusing me as well.”
She snorted. “Maybe it’s because our mouths seem to think they’re magnets?”
He choked out a laugh, then shook his head. “I can’t seem to stop myself from getting too close to the fire.”
She was the fire, of course, which wasn’t exactly a compliment. “Sure you can. Just take a big, giant step back. You know you want to.”
His gaze held hers. “Turns out that’s not what I want at all.”
He paused. “The thing is, the way my life is, what I want isn’t supposed to matter.”
She felt how much he believed those words, but she shook her head. “Well, it should matter. What you do isn’t who you are, you know that, right? And don’t you ever get lonely?”
“Yes.”
He ran a finger along her jaw. “Are you lonely too, Oli?”
“Sometimes.”
She hesitated. “More than I’d like to be.”
“So why London?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, stymied on what to say. “I’ve been there a long time.”
“I know. What I don’t know is why.”
What did he want to hear? That she’d needed to put distance between herself and her biggest mistake—that mistake being how she’d single-handedly messed everything up for the family she’d loved as her own? “London is where I got my first job offer after college.”
He nodded. “But then, when you left that job to start your own business, you stayed. Was it really something you wanted, to be so far, or were you running away from something?”
She scoffed and turned back to the window, even as her stomach hit her toes. “That’s ridiculous. What would I be running from?”
Although his mouth curved into a smile, his eyes were serious. “You tell me.”
With terrifying gentleness, he settled his hands on her arms and pulled her around to face him. “Were you running away from me?”
She closed her eyes and found herself mad. “You don’t get to ask me that, not when you left Sunrise Cove too.”
“I did.”
He let his hands fall from her. “But I didn’t run away and never look back.”
“Whatever lets you sleep at night.”
Suddenly chilled, she hugged herself. “I need to get back to Joey—”
“He’s fine. Listen.”
She cocked her head then smiled in spite of herself and peeked into the living room to find him on his belly inside the fort, Holmes at his side, Pepper on top of the dog as usual, both listening raptly as Joey read them Goodnight Moon, which he’d memorized.
Olive’s heart turned over inside her chest, but she ruthlessly ignored it when she met Noah’s gaze. “For what it’s worth, I’m leaving as soon as Katie feels she doesn’t need me anymore. Going back to my life, that is—not running away.”
“You think you can walk away from all of us, again?”
“I don’t know, Noah. Can you?”
The intensity left his gaze, replaced by a grim amusement. “I guess we’ll see.”