them had said about their “situation,” such as it was, since the fire had upended everything.
“Please stay.”
“If you’re sure it’s no bother.”
“I’m very sure it’s no bother.”
“Okay, then.”
“Okay, then.” He dropped back to his pillow but held on to her hand.
When she woke up in the morning, he was still holding her hand.
Chapter Four
“We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.”
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Two days later, Landon was no closer to figuring out how to take the next step with Amanda than he’d been before their middle-of-the-night chat, and he was beginning to feel a bit desperate. Before much longer, she’d be recovered enough to leave his home and resume her life elsewhere.
If he didn’t do something—soon—he was going to miss his chance with her. Yesterday, as he’d dabbed antibiotic ointment on the healing wounds on her back, he’d wanted to spin her around and kiss her so she’d know exactly how much he wanted her. But he couldn’t take advantage of the fact that she’d trusted him enough to recover at his home or cross lines she might not appreciate. He wasn’t even entirely sure she liked him the way he liked her, which was making him crazy.
Women had never been much of a mystery to him, not like this, anyway. He was having the worst time reading her. One minute, like when they’d held hands and talked deep into the night, he’d felt fairly confident they were on the same page. But since then? Nothing.
Desperation had brought him to his sister Hannah’s home at the end of an overnight shift at the firehouse. He stopped to say hi to Dexter, the baby moose Hannah had taken in, and was rewarded with a cold moose nose to the palm of his hand. “You’re getting big, pal. What’s Hannah gonna do with you when you’re full-grown?”
“I’m going to continue to love him and be his mother,” Hannah said from the doorway, where she stood with her daughter Callie in her arms and their dog, Homer Junior, at her feet. His eldest sister had long brown hair, which was twisted into a messy bun, and the dark eyes she shared with her twin, Hunter. “What brings you by so early?”
“I’m in need of some sisterly advice.”
“And as you know, I have plenty of that.”
“Which is why I’m here.”
“Come in.”
As Landon followed her inside the house, he removed his boots and left them on a rubber mat. The rain from the other night had begun to dry up, but the mud was back for a second visit this spring.
She handed Callie over to him. “Coffee or hot chocolate?”
He sat at the table with the sturdy baby on his lap while Homer rested on the floor nearby. “Whichever is easiest.”
“I just made hot chocolate for myself.”
Callie lunged for a spoon on the table and had nearly popped her own eye out before Landon caught up to her.
“Damn, she’s quick!”
“Nolan says she has the fastest hands in Butler.”
Hannah poured a mug of steaming hot chocolate for him and topped it with whipped cream out of the can.
“Remember me and Luc getting in trouble for eating all the whipped cream right out of the can?”
“More than once, as I recall.”
“Mom learned to hide it from us.”
“That, all cookies, all chips and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. But you didn’t come here to relive old times. What’s going on?”
“Amanda.”
“Ah,” Hannah said. “I wondered what was happening there.”
“Nothing is happening! Not one thing, other than a middle-of-the-night conversation that felt promising, but then nothing came of it.”
“And you’re frustrated by that?”
Landon gave her a withering look. “Yes, I’m frustrated. I like her. I think she likes me. She’s living in my house, which is, like, five hundred square feet, but it may as well be separate countries. I feel like I have this amazing opportunity with her, and I’m somehow managing to blow it without even trying.”
Hannah tipped her head as she studied him with that intense big-sister way of hers, as if she could see right through him. Which, of course, she could. That had always been the case. She was ten years older than him and Luc and had been like a second mother to them. “Are you even trying?”
He stared at her in shock. “What do you mean?”
“What, specifically, are you doing to indicate your interest in her?”
“Other than inviting her to stay with me while she recovers?”
“Yes, other than that.” While Landon’s mind