He dropped the scrubber and fully turned, realizing he wasn’t quite ready for her to leave. “Oh. Oh sure. I’ll walk you to the door.”
She gave an appreciative smile as she pushed both chairs in and followed him.
He opened the door and stepped onto the porch.
For a few moments they stood there, saying nothing. The moon hung over the house above them, stars twinkling as they’d twinkled for the millions before them. The billions around them. But at this moment, the display seemed only for them.
He jutted his thumb toward her house. “I’d say ‘drive safe’ but . . . I figure you can manage pretty well.”
She gave a soft laugh and wrapped her arms around herself. “Thanks again. Chip. This was really . . . nice.”
He opened his mouth to give a casual, frivolous reply, then stopped. Because this wasn’t casual. Nothing about this conversation, or this night, was trivial. Even her calling him by name, just then, wasn’t casual. All of it meant something.
Maybe even a whole lot of something.
“You’re welcome, Bree. And I agree. We should . . . do it again,” he said, looking straight into her eyes.
And then she did something he didn’t expect. In fact, she did something that, five hours before, he would’ve bet his house and business on never happening.
She hugged him.
He felt the squeeze of her arms around his torso, her face pressed against his collarbone. Her hair tickled his nose and rubbed against his five-o’clock shadow. The air suddenly smelled a little more like strawberries. For the first time ever, he felt the impulse to rest his cheek there, to feel her soft hair against his rough jaw. But before he had the chance to wrap his arms around her, she pulled back.
A flicker of movement came to his right, and his eyes followed the source to the glow of Mrs. Lewis’s living-room window. He saw the woman’s face peeking from behind the curtain.
Bree bounced on her toes, looking more than a little embarrassed by her spontaneous display of affection. “Right. Well, I’m going to head back now. Thanks.”
He nodded, trying with all his might to keep the smirk from running up his cheeks. “Sounds like a good plan if you want to keep those legs of yours from freezing off before your audition next week.”
Her embarrassed expression dropped immediately. She lifted her brow. “Okay. I can concede to kitchen stalking. But how did you know?”
One side of Chip’s face lifted in a smile. “To defeat your enemy, you have to know them. And believe me, Bree, I know you better than the back of my hand.”
Bree released a sliver of a smile. “Well, all I can say is, that game plan is mutual.”
She hesitated, then ducked her head and hopped down the stairs.
The gravel crunched beneath her shoes as she crossed over his driveway and onto hers.
“Hey, Chip,” Bree called once she reached her porch steps.
“Yeah?”
“For the record, I hope you get the job next week too.”
* * *
It didn’t take but two minutes back inside his kitchen to make Chip drop the plates into the drying rack and snatch his keys off the counter.
He drove straight to Ashleigh’s house without calling. No text. No heads-up to set her mind spinning.
Oh, the transformation on Ashleigh’s face as she opened the door was painful. It took only seconds for the initial look of pleasant surprise to shift to a crease of concern above her sky-blue eyes.
But he had to say it to her. Because he had been right in what he’d said to Bree.
You need to keep on moving until you find the one who makes you want to stop.
And he had never quite stopped for Ashleigh, though she had waited patiently at the door for him all those nights while he worked, had waited patiently for him every step of the way.
She wasn’t meant for him, but for someone who appreciated her much, much more. Who didn’t just know she was wonderful but felt it.
That was not how Ashleigh saw it, and she made this painfully, tearfully clear over the next two hours. After he explained to her the reasons they should break it off—she insisted on hearing each one—the full force of Ashleigh’s oratorical skills came out as she paced and talked, wearing down a line on her Persian rug.
Several times key phrases such as “time I invested in you” and “waste all that work” came up, but he didn’t interrupt. Eventually