Rose’s?”
“No.” He tipped her chin up to see into her eyes. “Back to that love thing. Are you—”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “I’m saying that I’ve fallen in love with you. I know it’s silly, it’s such a short time, but I’m figuring we have lots more time to figure it all out.”
“Yeah.” He looked down. “I came here with a shameless bribe thinking I’d have to talk you into letting me see you. I said it before, and I meant it. I love you, Mel.”
Her eyes filled. “Oh, Jason.” They kissed, sweet at first, but quickly heat and need jockeyed for position, until the puppy let out a surprisingly loud bark for such a little thing, right in their faces.
Jason grinned. “Melissa, meet your bribe. Sissy.”
“Sissy?”
The little puppy blinked and yawned wide, her eyes a dark, dark brown and filled with adoration.
“She’s a big sissy. She cried all last night. Please say you’ll take her.” He kissed her again. “I think a vet should have her very own pet, don’t you?”
She’d never had a pet before, never. She’d never had time, she’d never had space, she’d never—
She’d never wanted to open her heart. She took Sissy into her arms and melted when the puppy set her head on her chest and sighed as if she’d found home.
They’d all found home.
UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS
Alison Kent
To my daughters, Megan and Holly.
For living their own lives and allowing me to live mine.
I love you both.
Smoochies.
CHAPTER ONE
AVERY RICE TURNED onto the street where she lived, just in time to see her mother’s white Toyota Camry back out of their shared driveway and head away from the three-story Victorian.
So much for their weekly ritual of coffee and croissants. And for the second weekend in a row, no less. Her mother was taking this business of moving on with her life too far. Especially as her plans obviously included leaving her daughter behind.
They’d shared Saturday-morning coffee and croissants—the croissants fresh from Avery’s bakery—since the death of Avery’s father five years before. For the past month, though, Suzannah Rice had been busy doing her own thing to the exclusion of the shared things that had been a big part of both of their lives for so long.
Avery wasn’t complaining, though a little voice whispering in her ear argued otherwise before going on to tell her to get over it already. She readily admitted her quasi-isolation and homebody tendencies were no one’s fault but her own. But she’d found a great comfort in safety—especially after the near disaster she’d barely escaped when she had taken a risk years ago.
Another three houses and she bumped her pickup into the driveway. The driver’s-side door was hit twice with a blast from the sprinkler dousing the front lawn—and spraying the front of the house, she realized. She’d have to use the back door into her mother’s kitchen rather than the main entrance that directly accessed the staircase to her second-story apartment in the converted triplex.
Of course, doing that meant making her way down the long narrow driveway and around the overgrown SUV that belonged to her mother’s third-floor tenant and the longtime bane of Avery’s existence, David Marks. David, the know-it-all who was constantly riding her about still living at home with her mother when she didn’t live at home with her mother at all. She only lived in the same house. Yes, it was the house she’d grown up in, but it was now very clearly a multitenant dwelling, which he should know since he lived here, too.
Wicker bread basket hooked over her elbow, Avery shut off the engine, climbed down from the truck and pocketed her keys. Slamming the door apparently drew David’s attention—though what he was doing in her mother’s kitchen, she didn’t have a clue—because he was standing in the open doorway before she’d even climbed the first of the six back steps.
“Hey,” he said, wiping his hands on a workman’s knobby red rag and getting on her nerves by just standing there, wiping, silent now, his jeans slung way too low and his chambray shirt hanging open as if he’d just slipped it on. “What’s up?”
“Just me and the breakfast trying to stay dry.” She walked up one step, two, three.
“You just missed your mother.”
“So I saw.” Four steps. Five. She stopped there, leaving the sixth step between them because he hadn’t moved except to tuck the red rag into his front pocket. He’d been so much easier to take when she’d led cheers and he’d run around