SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,35
Mad. “Was that Harper Hill?”
“Yes.”
“Seeing you two together seems just like old times.”
Over his shoulder, Mad glimpsed the truck’s taillights receding in the distance. “Yeah,” he muttered, “just like old times.” His mood lowered more.
It hadn’t improved by the time he turned down his street later that evening. Pulling into the drive, he caught sight of a figure perched on his porch steps, illuminated by the light beside the front door.
He approached slowly. “Here to announce a case of lockjaw? Rusty cornea? Crooked pinna?”
She wore jeans and a sweatshirt with a pair of flip-flops. A large elastic bandage could be seen on the sole of her foot. “Antibiotic ointment prevented all that.”
He glanced down again. “And a bandage covered with butterflies apparently.”
Her foot wiggled. “They chase the blues away.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he noted plastic grocery bags on either side of her. “More medicine?” he asked, nodding at them.
“You were so concerned about my foot earlier.” She smiled up at him, apparently her frame of mind sunnier than his. “I have to say I found it…”
“What? You found it charming?” He narrowed his eyes. “Please don’t say it was cute.”
She glanced down. “That kind of talk seems to get me in trouble.”
Okay, here was his way into that conversation he wanted. He took a breath. “Harp, about that trouble…” He’d be damned if he apologized for kissing her again. No one had been witness this time, and they’d both been into it—equally.
She wouldn’t be able to deny that. But he didn’t like that she’d run off and that he hadn’t been able to decipher the expression on her face when she did so…
Making him feel, once again, that he’d never been able to give her what she needed.
Right? Why else would she have left him behind and never returned?
But this time she had returned.
He started again. “Harp, about that trouble—”
“I come bearing gifts.” Lifting the bags, she stood and held them out to him.
“What’s this?” he asked, taking them in hand.
“Steak for your eye.”
“Oh.” He’d forgotten the kid had sucker-punched him. If he wasn’t so pissed about it, humiliation might have set in.
“Or we could grill the meat,” she said. “I also have some potatoes in there to bake. And a bag of salad. Not fresh stuff from the farm, but I stopped in at Duffy’s.”
“Well, I didn’t have dinner.”
“I learned that from Sophie. She texted you followed the officer to the station and didn’t return to the beach party.”
“So you brought me food.”
“Unless you want to treat that wannabe shiner.”
“It makes me look manly.”
She tilted her head, appeared to study him. “You think?”
He couldn’t help but smile. She was here. About to enter his home. “Let’s make dinner.”
Chapter Eight
Harper loved the coziness of the house, a bungalow style that he’d opened up on the inside so that the living room and the kitchen were all one. But the tile was original and he’d replaced the farmhouse sink that sat below a stained glass window.
She’d wondered if it might be weird to be inside his home, when she’d sat down to wait on his porch. But she couldn’t bear to let her last impression be the impression of her backside in a skimpy suit, on a childish run from awkwardness. When she’d been shopping for ointment and elastic bandages, she’d decided to make new memories as a way of overcoming her obsession with the old ones.
And to smooth over the abrupt end to those kisses on the sand.
Her plan appeared to be working.
The baked potatoes went in, he fired up the grill, and she found the tossers that matched the salad bowl.
Maddox Kelly had a salad bowl with matching salad tossers.
See, they had grown up and this evening would prove it.
They’d grown up and were able to move on.
Conversation bounced between traveling and food and family while sitting across from each other at a small table that he’d even placed a candle on.
She had lit the candle.
At a break in the conversation, the flame mesmerized her. Life could have been like this, she found herself thinking.
Their lives.
The idea made her hop up. “Dishes are on me.”
“There’s no dishwasher,” he warned, but let her fill the sink with bubbles while he topped off her glass with a local cabernet sauvignon.
Suddenly music came from somewhere, some jazzy composition that made her snort with laughter. “What are you playing?”
“This?” he said, dumping utensils into the sink. “It’s Spotify. The playlist said dinner music.”