Man's Best Friend (The Dogmothers #5) - Roxanne St. Claire Page 0,44
house, Declan. I want to return it to its original beauty. I want to do that for my grandmother and great-grandmother and…” She pressed the locket to her chest. “My great-great-grandmother who built it. The least I can do is fix Gloriana House.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, standing up to get close to her. “Of course I’ll help you, and what I can’t do, I’ll help you find someone who can.”
She turned to him, only then realizing they were inches apart. “I know this isn’t your favorite place to spend time.”
“But you are one of my favorite people to spend time with.” He felt his lips lift in a smile that mirrored hers.
“Really?”
“Some things don’t change, E.”
“But…” She held his gaze, slicing him wide open with those cut-crystal eyes. “Then why did you freeze me out, Dec?”
There it was. The question he’d known was coming. And he didn’t have a good answer, not one worthy of this fine woman. “Because I’m an idiot.”
She gave him a look that said she thought the explanation was as lame as he did.
His heart hammering, he lifted his hand to her hair, stroking the near-black silk as he held her gaze. Then he slipped his fingers under her hair, grazing her neck, easing her a little closer.
“Evie?”
“Yes?”
He heard the breathlessness in the word, the need for him to give her a better reason than I was a mess living in an emotional hole as dark and dank as a basement in an old house.
“Oh wait.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone, reading the screen. “Vestal Valley approved me to do Judah’s surgery on Saturday.”
“That’s awesome.”
She nodded, stepping back, out of his touch. “Let’s take it one day at a time, Dec. We both need…time.”
After twenty years? He didn’t really need any more time, but maybe she did. Time and a hell of a better explanation.
She held up the locket and let it dangle between them. “We’ve already found a treasure. Who knows what else could happen?”
He knew. He knew exactly what could happen. If he could apologize for shutting her out for twenty years and be man enough to explain why.
And if that wasn’t incentive enough, he didn’t know what was.
Chapter Eleven
Evie couldn’t help letting him off the hook. Sometimes, all you can do for an animal in pain is let them curl into a ball and ride it out. She could sense Declan’s walls coming down, if a little more slowly than she’d like. Maybe it wouldn’t be the full-on detonation of the fortress he’d built, but she was getting through, one straight arrow and bad joke at a time.
And after twenty years, she was mature enough to know that being with him, even without getting the answers she wanted, was better than being without him. Plus, he was going to help her around Gloriana House, which was already a huge concession.
While he worked, Evie spent time with Granddaddy and Judah, playing an endless game of gin rummy with one and taking the other for slow walks to the grass.
It was nearly four when she walked Judah downstairs, grabbed a few bottles of water, and guided the dog to the garage building on the west side of the property, following the sound of an electric sander.
Outside the separate garage, which, in her lifetime, had never actually housed a car, but certainly had a century’s worth of tools and random garden equipment, Judah started sniffing and exploring some shrubs. Evie squinted into the building toward the workbench, catching sight of Declan in some afternoon light streaming through a window, his slightly damp T-shirt stretched over rock-solid muscles as he gripped the tool to shave a window frame.
It’s gonna be hard to be just friends.
And imagine how complicated making a baby would be.
But what they had made was progress. From frozen to friends, and she liked that. She also liked how delicious he looked in a tight, sweaty T-shirt. Ripped. Solid. So damn masculine and easy on the eyes.
Her handyman.
When he’d mentioned that, her mind had slipped back twenty years to a cool Carolina mountain morning when a boy made…promises.
I’ll be your handyman…chauffeur…lover…husband.
She couldn’t remember the exact words he’d written on some random note card all those years ago, but she remembered the sentiment behind them. Sometimes, on her darkest nights, she’d dredge up that feeling of the last truly happy time they had together, less than an hour before their worlds and friendship imploded.