Open Your Heart (Kings Grove #4) - Delancey Stewart Page 0,59
wrap up all the other loose ends.”
“One month,” he confirmed, giving me a broad smile. “This is going to be incredible.”
“Angel can help in the meantime?” Angel was a friend of Theo’s who’d stopped by while I’d been there, pitched in with some ideas and had already volunteered to help staff the concert series.
“He better,” Theo laughed.
“Okay. I’ll be in touch.” I hugged Theo goodbye and headed back to the mountains, resolved that this was the right next step for my life.
I just wished my heart felt as buoyant as my mind, but I knew eventually it would get on board with the plan.
Chapter 15
CAMERON
I watched Tuck and Harper drive away, and felt my entire body get heavier with every second as Tuck’s green Jeep disappeared from sight.
Tuck was a friend. And I’d brought him here, but I couldn’t help the sick angry feeling that flooded me as I imagined them in the car together, sitting close, talking.
I knew I was jealous, but I also knew I’d created this entire situation. I’d told her to go, I’d encouraged her to walk away from me. So why was it so hard when she finally did?
“What are you doing out here, moping?” Maddie said, strolling up the driveway, hand in hand with Connor just as evening fell on the first full day Harper had been gone. I looked up as they approached the spot where I sat in front of my fire and…moped.
“What makes you say that?” I said, forcing a smile.
“You look miserable,” Connor said.
“I’m smiling,” I pointed out.
They sat, and Maddie leaned forward. “That’s not a smile, Cam. That’s constipation, I think.” She looked to Connor for confirmation.
“Or maybe a bad burger?”
I heaved a sigh. “It was an attempt at a smile.” I gave it up and let my face reflect the rest of my body. I felt flat. “What’s up, guys?”
“Just came to hang out.” Maddie pulled two beers from the pockets of her sweatshirt. “Wanted to borrow your fire and figured you’d be out here.”
I lifted my own beer in salute as they raised theirs and for a moment we were all silent, pulling from our bottles.
“Where’s Harper and Tuck?” Connor asked, looking up at the dark big house.
“Valley. Tuck drove her down. She’s headed to Austin.”
“Ah,” Maddie said. “I forgot she was going. How long is she gone?”
“She’ll be back. It’s just for the weekend,” I said.
Connor was watching me, clearly thinking something he wasn’t saying, but Maddie didn’t suffer the same timidity.
“So that’s why you look like hell.”
“I look normal.”
“You look like crap. Hey, can I get a puppy to hold?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, but don’t let it go—starting to get dark and I think that cat is still stalking over there. The rangers haven’t been able to trap it, and even if they think it’s gone, I’d be careful.”
Maddie shivered and set her beer down, standing to go get a puppy. She’d made a habit of stopping by now and then, sitting with the pups and petting them. She said it was the perfect wedding stress relief.
She returned with a fluffy tricolor dog with light brown eyes, the one I’d been calling number three, and Matilda bounced out of the house and came to sit at my side. Her haunch was healed and she’d begun to leave the pups more and more, becoming my sidekick as I worked around outside the house, and often curling up next to my bed at night now that the pups didn’t need her so much. They’d moved to solid food weeks ago, and now sought out their mother mostly for affection, though they found that in each other too.
I dropped a hand to Matilda’s side and let her warmth work through me, calming me.
“You going to keep her then?” Connor asked, nodding at the big dog. Matilda cocked her head at the question, watching him as if she knew he was talking about her.
“I really thought her owners would have shown up by now,” I said. “But yeah, I can’t imagine taking her anywhere else now. She lived through being lost or abandoned, through the mountain lion and giving birth…I feel like she’s probably best to just stay in one place, have someone nearby who’s not going to leave.”
“Aren’t you worried?” Maddie said, and she was looking at me hard across the circle of fire, the little dog squirming in her arms.
“About…?”
“Your curse?” Maddie shook her head as she said it, her voice lowering.