2. Nora
Chapter 2
Nora
I waded through the half inch of water that filled the kitchen of my rental house.
Was that spaghetti?
I hoped it was. I didn’t want to think about what else could be that shape.
I was flicking through the home delivery app and added a Shop Vac, mop, bucket, and floor cleaner. The cart was getting very full.
I’d only moved in last night and had absolutely nothing besides two suitcases of clothes and a wildly impulsive and impractical circular chair in front of a folding table that held my television.
And that was it.
The divorce had blindsided me. California was a fifty-fifty state, and my ex hadn’t fought it. Mostly because he’d been the one to destroy my world. I’d left everything behind in Los Angeles with Booker. Including the signed papers on the overpriced and shudderingly modern dining room table he’d picked out.
Probably why I’d bought that crazy impractical chair.
I peeked into the small living room with the massive, cozy lavender chair perfect for curling into. Hell, I’d slept in it last night.
Booker liked cold, modern lines and buying it had been my first middle finger to that life.
Driving from Los Angeles to Indigo Valley had been grueling, but leaving him in my rearview had been cathartic.
And halfway between Colorado and Nebraska, a weight lifted off of me.
We hadn’t been right for a damn long time. We were both career-driven. Booker, with baseball, and me with my social media company— No BS . I just chose to ignore how much we’d grown apart in favor of working harder and going home less.
Now I was relocating my entire life to my old hometown.
Alone.
I looked down at my wet socks.
Thankfully, my landlord, Gene, had a handyman on call. Hopefully, he’d show up before the water hit the living room. I rushed over with a few rolled up towels to make a damn.
The doorbell chimed. “Thank, God.” I turned and splashed through to the short hallway. “One second!” I called and peeled off my socks and shoved them in my pocket with a wince as my jeans quickly showed wet spots. Not my best idea.
I swung open the door and my breath stalled.
“Sully?”
Sullivan Murdock stood on my doorstep, ShopVac in hand, a tool belt on his narrow hips, and a bag beside his workboots. “Nora?” He dug out his phone and looked at something on his phone, then he glanced at me. “Not who I was expecting.”
“My landlord.”
“That makes sense.” The endearing grin I remembered from my early days in the valley was still the same. There were a few more crinkles at the corners of his eyes and heavy scruff showed off that honed jawline that definitely hadn’t sagged in the more than a dozen years since I’d seen him.
He cleared his throat. “I thought you were in LA.”
“Now I’m here.”
“Evidently. Uh, I guess you have a busted washer?”
“Oh, right.” I glanced down at my toes, annoyed that I hadn’t gotten a pedicure since Christmas. As if that mattered right now. “C’mon in.”
“I have my son with me. I hope that’s okay.”
“Son?” I blinked as a lanky child somewhere between toddler and teen stood. I wasn’t around kids much. My babysitting days had included pets, not kids before I’d been able to get a regular job. “Oh, hi.”
The boy waved, but he didn’t look up from his handheld game.
“Do you have somewhere he could sit and play his game?”
“Sure. I don’t have much yet. I just moved in yesterday, but there’s a chair.”
Sully snickered. “A chair?”
“Literally. A chair.” I glanced over my shoulder. “The kitchen is all wet, though.”
He held up the ShopVac. “I come prepared. Danny, this is my...friend, Nora.”
Friends was a stretch. Maybe once upon a time. A long time ago. “Hi, Danny.”
Danny gave a barely there nod, then they both came in. Sully peered into the kitchen with a whistle, arms full. “Definitely broken.”
“Thanks. Your skill is masterful.”
He chuckled, his eyebrow arching with humor. He gave me a once over with those hooded, dark eyes. Had he just checked me out?
God, he was probably married.
Heck, I’d married his best friend. There had been absolutely nothing between us.
Mostly.
He put the vacuum and his toolbox down. He turned to Danny. “Pretty sure your sneakers won’t make it. Mind if I pick you up?”
The kid’s eyes went wide as he looked up from his Switch. “Uh. Okay.”
Surprised that the kid looked reticent, I frowned.
Sully swung him up as he sloshed across the kitchen in his thick soled boots. “Where to?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Just through there.” I pointed to the doorway across from us.
He laughed as he set him down on the other side of the towels. “You weren’t kidding about the chair.”
“Man, that’s cool!” Danny’s voice was little more than a whisper, but there was obvious excitement in it.
He nodded to the chair. “I’ll be back. Sit tight.”
“’Kay.”
Sully came back through the door. His mussed hair fell over his forehead, making his eyes seem even darker. “Let’s see what’s going on, shall we?”
“Hope you know. I ran it to wash the dust off the dishes, Gene supplied. Said I could use a box of dishes in his garage since I had nothing when I arrived.”
Shut up for God’s sake, Nora.
“Since I don’t see a floor full of suds, I’m assuming you didn’t do something stu—er, silly like putting dish soap in it.”
“No, I’m not that clueless. I used one of those pod things. It was working just fine when I left to put away my clothes. I came back in to get a glass of water, and there was water pouring everywhere.”
“Looks like we’ll have to play detective. Why don’t you go sit down? Not sure I want you stepping in this water with your bare feet.”
“Right.” I turned around. There wasn’t anywhere to sit. I was still figuring out the furniture for the small kitchen.
He splashed his way over to me. “Sorry, my kid took the only seat, huh?” He moved the box off the counter by the back door and picked me up.
Startled, I hung onto his shoulders. The familiar scent of laundry detergent and cedar was like a memory slap. Along with afternoons at Jenny’s, getting jammed into a booth with Sully, Booker, Tina, Mercy, and Ripley to share a pizza after school.
“There we go.” He set me on the counter. His dark eyes locked with mine. Surprise heat lit his eyes for a second before it was banked. He stepped back with an easy smile. “Now let me see what’s what and you can tell me what you’re doing back in Indigo Valley.”
He walked through the wetness to the ShopVac and plugged it in. He grinned over his shoulder. “After I suck up some of this water.”
Sullivan Murdock. Of all the people to see my place on the first full day back, it had to be him.
He and Booker had been joined at the hip all through high school. We’d run around in a huge group of people, thanks to the guys being on the baseball team. And when it wasn’t baseball season, they were running track. Anything to be outdoors.
Once Booker got picked up for college ball, and Sullivan hadn’t—things had changed.
Booker had worked his ass off to go to Stanford University, and I’d been enamored enough to follow him. It turned out to be exactly what I needed in getting out of New York. When Booker had gone pro, I’d been his anchor. Even when it had started feeling like the wrong fit, I’d stayed.
I’d loved him.
Took me a few years to figure out that I just wasn’t in love with him anymore.
The vacuum shut off, dragging me out of the past. Sully took the top of the vacuum off and hauled it out the back door to toss it in the grass. He set the canister down beside me on the half counter.
“Nora Hart.”
“Baker,” I corrected and flashed my naked ring finger. “Not that I actually took Booker’s name. Made the divorce easier paperwork-wise, anyway.”
His eyebrows shot up. “I thought you guys were...always.”
“We grew apart, I guess.” I gave him a half smile as I curled my fingers over the edge and swung my feet. “You?”
“Never pulled the trigger.” He went back to the dishwasher and opened the door. He pulled out the bottom rack of dishes and set it down on the floor. “Don’t think these actually got anything other than wet.” He went down on one knee to look inside. “Great.”
“So, you have a boy? Split custody?”
He glanced over at me. “Nope. He’s just mine.”
The fierceness of his voice made my belly flip. What was that like? To have a guy speak so clearly and vehemently for someone ?
I wasn’t sure Booker had ever sounded so resolute about me, even when he yelled up at my window a week before college graduation and asked me to marry him.
“You’re my anchor, No. I need you.”
Always his anchor until it pulled him down too firmly.
“Nora?”
I shook off the past one more time. I needed to leave it there. “What?”
“What are you doing back in Indigo Valley?”
“Starting over. Divorced at thirty-four. My mom is so proud,” I said wryly.
“Single dad at thirty-four. My mom is actually more in love with Danny than maybe anyone on this planet.”
“Your mom was always taking on kids in the neighborhood. She took me prom dress shopping when my mom had to work.”
“She loved it. Dirty boys didn’t give her any of those kinds of mom moments.”
“She was so patient. Took me to three different shops until we found the one.” I remembered that more than shopping for my wedding dress.
“Yeah. I remember that red dress.” He was unscrewing something in the guts of the dishwasher. “Thought Booker was going to swallow his tongue.”
I huffed out a laugh. I’d lost my virginity that night. Even in the limo, we hadn’t been able to keep our hands off each other. “You went with Tina, didn’t you?”
“Sure did. Well, for part of the night. She broke up with me during the middle somewhere. Thought Randall Wheeler was a better steppingstone.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “She goes by Christina these days. Full name only. Married Randall a few months after graduation. They have three kids and a dog and live on Steward Place.”
I whistled. “Quite the glow-up.”
“Randall’s dad gave him a job. They seem happy enough.”
“Happy enough?”
He grunted as he dug out a roll of paper towels from his big box of tools. He ripped off a few sheets and a startling handful of goop dropped on top.
“Oh, gross.”
He laughed. “Don’t think this filter has been cleaned since...ever.” He stood and washed his hands. Took something else out of his box and hooked a hose to the sink faucet then cleared out the rest. “This just makes for not so clean dishes. Now I gotta find what’s broken that is backing it up.”
“How’d you learn this stuff?”
“My dad. He was mostly construction, but I ended up helping with odd jobs he didn’t want to deal with. I got good at them, then I got certified for a few things—air conditioning, heating, and a few others so I could expand the business. He’s mostly retired now.”
“Wow. Really?”
“Yeah, he hurt his back on the job. Forced retirement is more like it. Even if he tries to push his way onto jobs with me when it gets busy.”
“That sounds more like it. Your dad was the worst at sitting down unless he was watching a game.”
He laughed. “Not much changed since you went to California.” He swore under his breath. “I was hoping it wouldn’t require a part, but I have to order one.”
I sighed and hopped down on the mostly dry floor. “Guess I’m washing by hand for a while.”
He lifted the rack full of dishes and a good deal of muscle flexed under his black T-shirt before he settled it into the track.
Why on earth are you looking at him?
I averted my eyes, but not before he caught me.
Was my face red?
Hell.
“I’ll write up a bill for your landlord and order the part.”
“Great. Thanks.”
He crossed to me and pulled out a card, then he flipped it over. “Business line on the front and my cell is on the back if you need anything. This is an old house.”
“Right.” The punch of cedar always got me and made me want to lean in. Even back then. God, Nora, get a grip. I took the card. “How long you think?” I tipped my head up. I was a bit over average in height for a woman, but Sully had always made me feel small.
“Few days. I’ll be in touch.” He moved back and picked up the ShopVac. “Was good to see you, Nora.”
“Yeah. You too.”
“C’mon, Danny!” he called out.
A few seconds later, the kid appeared in the doorway with his Switch tucked under his arm. He looked down at the floor, then tentatively he took a step forward.
Surprised that he’d be so hesitant, I glanced at Sully. He had a sober expression on his face, his dark eyes watchful.
The kid darted across the linoleum floor to the hall without a word.
“He’s pretty shy,” Sully said quietly.
“He looks a lot like you. Well, save for the eyes.”
He gave me a tight smile. “No denying the Murdock genes there, hey?”
“Not at all.”
The silence between us made me want to babble to fill it, but I just followed him to the door.
“Guess I’ll see you soon, Sully. It was good to see you.”
He nodded. “Glad to see you too, Nora.”
I closed the door after them and leaned back against it. Not at all what I expected today.
I knew moving home would have some awkward moments, but Sullivan Murdock hadn’t been the first reunion on my list.
And why did he have to look so damn good?