face.
“Is Beau sexting you?” Mrs. Higgins asked in the same whisper she’d used when she informed me Gam was a tart.
“Dorothy Ann Higgins,” Mrs. Scoggs admonished her friend.
“What? Look at her face.” Mrs. Higgins pointed across the table. “Her cheeks are redder than a Raggedy Ann doll.”
“He sent me a picture of his dog.” I turned the phone around as proof.
Gam shook her head. “I thought he had more game than that.”
“Oh, I think his game is just fine.” Mrs. Porter correctly assessed.
Beau definitely had game. Sending me a pic of Dug was sweet, and I was beginning to discover that sweet was hot. Very hot. I’d never been with someone so attentive and generous. I was fairly certain that last night with Beau may have ruined me for any other man.
“You know who had game?” Mrs. Higgins said wistfully. “My Edgar.”
The women all started sharing stories about their late husbands. How they met, what made them fall in love. As I sat at the table and watched my Gam with her friends, I realized the reason she’d put her foot down and would not even consider moving to California.
In California, all she had was me. And I worked all the time. Soap hours were some of the longest, most demanding in the industry.
Here, in Wishing Well, she had a family. They may not be related by blood, but it was clear that she was closer to these women than she’d ever been to my mother. She was closer to these women than I’d ever been to my mother.
And as I listened to their stories, I couldn’t help but think about Drake. There was no moment when I knew he was the one. There was no big romantic gesture or even a small one.
But I could already count dozens with Beau.
Chapter 22
Beau
“The only man that deserves ya, is the one who thinks he doesn’t.”
~ Barbara-Jean Nelson
“What am I doing?” I set my phone back on my nightstand and ran my fingers through my hair.
What was this girl doing to me?
I’d built Fort Knox sized walls around my heart after I walked in on Rachel and Neil. And in just a few days Sasha Nelson had infiltrated it. Case in point: I was sending her sappy texts and using Dug as a prop.
“Sorry, man.” I ruffled the top of his head.
Never in my life had I used Dug as a way to get women. I knew that was some guys go-to, but I’d never needed a shtick. So why was I using him now?
I stared down at my phone waiting for a reply. It was another brand-new phenomenon, one I didn’t like. It felt needy and desperate.
Leaving my phone on the nightstand, I stood and walked to my kitchen. After opening the fridge, I looked in and considered my options for lunch. I wasn’t even hungry, just out of sorts. I closed the door and let Dug out in the backyard. I noticed that my hose was in a tangled heap on the far side of the deck.
I walked over, picked it up, and began untangling the mess. “This isn’t a toy, Dug.”
It was my fault. I’d started the game of spraying him with the nozzle. Now, anytime he wanted to play, he came and pulled it off the hook that I stored it on. He didn’t understand that I needed to turn on the water for it to spray. Dug was sweet, loyal, and the reason why dogs were called man’s best friend, but he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.
I finished untangling it, wrapped it in a circle around my bent elbow and hand and hung it back up. I noticed that the deck had leaves and other debris on it from a light shower that had come down over the weekend, so I swept it. I continued finding, fixing, and cleaning things from the garage, front yard, backyard and did that lap two more times before I realized that none of my busy work was making this agitation I was feeling go away.
It was my day off, and normally my days off were spent doing projects around the house. But today, I was battling a restlessness that wouldn’t allow me to concentrate on anything. I knew the source was Sasha. When she’d somehow knocked down the barriers that I’d thought were so carefully constructed, she’d knocked something loose in me.
I was off balance.
I was restless.
I was anxious.
Not two steps into my kitchen I froze. I knew