Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Garrett was starting to worry that there was a thin line between romantic and lunatic.
They had five letters that were the same. That couldn’t be coincidence, right?
But this was probably a crazy plan, he thought as he propped his ladder silently against the wall of the bookstore as the sun rose on Sunday morning.
At least he had given up the ‘dead of night’ plan that he’d originally hatched, once it had occurred to him that a well-meaning neighbor would be well within their rights to call the police if they saw him climbing up the side of Eleanor’s building under the cover of darkness.
He tested the stability of the ladder, then grabbed the rose and poem… if he could call his amateurish scribbling a real poem. He hoped that this was one of the cases where it was the thought that counted.
Garrett did not consider himself a romantic man by nature. He’d never been prone to great displays of passion. It had been one of the complaints that his former fiancée, Maria, had always had about him.
Eleanor was very different, and they were at different stages in their lives than when his engagement had fallen apart.
And he wasn’t really comparing, or at least he wasn’t comparing the two women.
It was more that he was comparing the versions of himself.
And he couldn’t say as much without risking his reputation as the town grump, but he liked the man he’d become these past few years.
A lot of that credit went to Eleanor. And that was why, the night before when he’d been grinning to himself like a total dope about her declaration of love, that he had decided he wanted to show her that he felt the same.
Hence the poem. And the flower. And the romantic scheme to slip them under her windowsill.
He was halfway up the ladder when a window slid open, startling him so dramatically that he nearly fell off his ladder for a second time in two days.
Any more of this nonsense and Garrett was going to lose all his credibility as a local fix-it guy. You’d think he had never gone up a ladder before in his life. Sheesh.
“Uh, hey there, buddy,” Shane said, sticking his head out of the newly opened window. “What’s going on out here?”
“Shhh!” Garrett said waving his hand frantically at Shane, who blinked back at him in confusion.
“Um,” Shane said… but he said it in a whisper, so Garrett was happy enough about it. “Okay. So I take it that the need for quiet means that Ellie doesn’t know that you’re climbing up her house? Do I need to be all brotherly about this?”
In all honesty, Shane didn’t really sound like he was worried about what Garrett was doing. He did, however, sound highly amused.
Garrett narrowed his eyes at him playfully.
“No, I’m being romantic, you jerk,” he said without any real ire. “Go back inside. Go back to bed. What are you even doing up, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?”
There was a flicker of what might have been sadness in Shane’s expression, but it appeared and vanished again before Garrett could be certain that he’d seen anything.
“Being romantic, eh?” Shane said, ignoring the question. “I’d say it’s more like playing the fool.”
Garrett scowled harder… or at least he tried to. He was in too good a mood, and his facial muscles insisted on rearranging themselves into a grin.
“Yeah, maybe,” he agreed. “But isn’t that what most men do when they fall in love?”
This time, when the playful expression fell off Shane’s face, it didn’t immediately return. Instead, he looked thoughtful.
“Yeah,” he said, his tone almost absent. “You know, I do think you’re right about that.”
Garrett might have inquired further, but he was on a ladder, and that didn’t really seem like the ideal time for a heart-to-heart.
Also, there was something about Shane’s demeanor that made Garrett suspect that the other man wasn’t ready to discuss it, although Garrett would be the very first to admit that he wasn’t always spot on when it came to estimating someone else’s moods.
“So, can I?” He gestured awkwardly up his ladder.
“Oh!” Shane blinked rapidly. “Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Romeo. Something, something that yonder window, or whatever.”
“Dang, and people say that Eleanor got all the literary know-how in the family,” Garrett deadpanned.
Shane laughed, closing the window and leaving Garrett to his quest of romance.
At the top of the ladder, he put his hands flat against the windowpane, using the tension to scooch the frame up just enough that he could slip his poem and flower through the gap.
He made a mental note to get the frame tightened up.
This might be on the second floor, which meant that there was some element of safety, but he didn’t like that anybody could just come shimmy Eleanor’s window open…
Even if it did make it easier to leave her fun little romantic treats.
Quietly, he slid the windowpane back down, descended the ladder, and loaded it back up in his truck. He felt as though his mood was good enough to whistle as he started his day.