CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Later that evening, Henry pressed his thumb against the doorbell, banged the knocker, then pressed the doorbell again. After the third round of buzz-buzz-knock-knock-knock-buzzzzz, the door cracked open.

“Henry?” Lance opened the door wider. “What are you doing here?”

“Do you have a minute?”

Lance scratched the back of his head and darted a glance back into the house. “I’m sort of on a date. We’re getting ready to eat dinner. Is this something that can wait?”

“I kissed Goldie Hawn.”

“I’ll be just a minute,” Lance hollered over his shoulder as he stepped outside, closing the door behind him. “Continue.”

“Except she’s not Goldie. She’s Edith. Now we’re pretending to date and I’m pretending to be Henry, so I had to send the real Henry away, even though there is no real Henry because I’m the real Henry. But she doesn’t know that, and before you say I should have told her the truth, I know I should have told her the truth, but you didn’t see that Steve guy. He’s bad news. I don’t trust him. You wouldn’t either. So now I can’t tell her the truth, because if I tell her the truth, she’s going to get mad I didn’t tell her the truth. Then she might go away. And I don’t want her to go away, but that’s crazy because at the end of summer she’s going away anyway, you know?”

Lance opened his mouth to speak, but Henry rushed on. “Problem is I like her, Lance. I mean, I really like her. All I want to do is keep kissing her. And not just because she’s a bombshell—oh, man, that red dress—but she’s the type of woman I could see sharing the rest of my life with. Am I insane? I have to be. I barely know her. But the thing is, I do know her. She’s told me things and I’ve told her things, so there’s this strong connection between us. But she doesn’t know that. She thinks she’s got a connection with Henry. What am I supposed to do?”

Lance blinked. “Who’s Steve?”

“Her husband’s brother.”

“She’s married?”

“No. He’s dead.”

“Steve?”

“Her husband. Have you been listening? What kind of therapist are you?”

“A physical therapist. And for the record, I didn’t know we had a showing-up-unannounced-with-personal-problems relationship.”

“Well, we do. Now are you going to help me with my problem or not?”

“What problem? Sounds to me like you’ve got a bombshell living in your house who you’ve been getting to smooch left and right. You call that a problem?” Lance grabbed the door handle. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a lovely lady sitting in my kitchen and I’m hoping to land a few smooches of my own, so . . .”

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me?”

“Yeah, man. That’s all I’ve got for you—as both your physical therapist and your friend. You still wanna talk, head down to the corner pub. I’m sure crazy Al would love hearing you ramble about dead husbands and old lady bombshells. Shoot, he’s probably the only one in this town who could make a lick of sense out of anything you just said. Good night.” Lance closed the door.

Henry ambled back to his pickup truck. Well, fat lot of good that did. Not that he’d really been expecting to receive any earth-shattering advice. More that he just needed to collect his thoughts a minute before he got back to his house. Before he got back to Edith. Before he got back to wanting to kiss her again.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know what needed to be done. He needed to tell Edith the truth. And he would. Just as soon as Steve was out of the picture. That way even if she hated him for lying, she’d at least be out of harm’s way.

When Henry pulled into his driveway, pink-tinged streaks of orange brushed across the horizon. He let himself in through the front door, surprised when the smell of home-cooked food wafted from the kitchen. He’d been planning to throw in a frozen pizza.

“Hey.” Edith stuck her head out from the kitchen. Cute little worry lines formed between her eyebrows as she blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Have you had supper already?”

“No. Usually I grab a bite on the way home, but tonight I went over to see a friend about . . . something.”

She brushed her bangs to the side and the wrinkles along her forehead smoothed out. “Good. I made some chicken and rice casserole. It’s ready if you’re hungry.”

“Starving.”

Edith dished out two servings and they sat together at the kitchen island. Other than the scraping of their forks, they ate in silence, shooting each other the occasional polite smile. “This is really good,” Henry said.

“Thank you.”

Silence again. Henry wasn’t used to sharing a meal with someone like this. Whenever he and Angela ate together, he chewed and Angela talked.

Angela. Henry wished he could swallow his guilt as easily as the casserole. He hadn’t given her one second’s thought. No, wait. That wasn’t right. He had given her one second’s thought, and in that one second, he berated himself for not ending things with her already, then decided it was easier on his conscience if he didn’t give her any more thought.

Edith wiped a napkin across her lips. “So that woman I’ve seen you with a few times. Is she your girlfriend?”

Henry sputtered on his water. Was Edith a mind reader? He cleared his throat. “Uh . . . no. No. No. I wouldn’t have kissed you or started pretending we were—” he motioned his hand back and forth between them—“you know, if she and I were still . . .” He flopped his hand in the opposite direction, as if Angela were the refrigerator.

He really needed to set aside some time to have that conversation he’d been avoiding with Angela, didn’t he?

Henry picked at his last bite of chicken. “We’ve dated on and off the past couple of years. Her parents own a farm near here. After people started using their barn for weddings, Angela started her own wedding photography business. It didn’t take long for it to take off. She’s good at what she does. But as she got busier and busier, we began connecting less and less.” And the fact that Henry hadn’t minded one bit should have been a giant red flag.

“I’m sorry.” Edith poked her fork at the few remaining grains of rice on her plate. “Breakups are tough.”

Henry stood and dumped the rest of his scraps in the garbage. “What about you?” he asked, desperate to change the subject. “Clearly you have something special going on with Steve.”

“Ha. That was part of the reason I came out here for the summer and why I’m looking forward to leaving at the end of it. Ever since my husband died, I haven’t wanted to form any new attachments. I just want to be me, living my life on my own terms for once. No ties. No connections. No—”

“Steve?”

Edith let out a breath of laughter. “Definitely no Steve.” She took her plate to the sink. “You know, growing up, he wasn’t a bad kid. He was a couple years behind me in school. I think he always had a bit of a crush on me. But unfortunately for him, the only crush I ever had was on his older brother.”

She rinsed her plate, then began filling the sink with water. “To be honest, Steve never showed his face much in all the time I was married to Brian. It wasn’t until Brian got sick and was near the end that it suddenly felt like Steve and I were around each other all the time. I can’t say he ever crossed the line, but I started to notice how he’d find little ways to be touching me. You know—a shoulder squeeze here, maybe a little back rub there—things like that. And if he wasn’t touching me, it felt like he was always watching me.”

Edith paused. “Am I talking too much?” She reached for Henry’s plate. “Sometimes I get carried away. Here, let me wash.”

Henry kept the plate. “How about I wash and you finish the story.” He could use something to do with his hands right now, besides thinking of ways to use them on Steve. “And don’t worry,” he said to lighten the mood, “I’ll let you know when you’re talking too much.”

Edith wrinkled her nose at him and looked so adorable that Henry plunged his hands into the sink water just to keep from pulling her close. “So what happened?” Henry asked after he’d washed off their plates.

“Huh? Oh.” Edith’s face remained somber as she grabbed a towel to start drying. “Well, eventually my husband died. We knew it was coming. He’d been sick for a while. Cancer,” she explained.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Edith became quiet. For a long minute Henry didn’t think she planned to say any more. But then with a wave of her hand, she said, “Anyway. After Brian was gone, Steve kept finding reasons to come over to the house. He’d bring by dinner. He’d take out the garbage. One evening I came home and found him cleaning out the gutters. It was all nice things, and I really did appreciate the way he was trying to help out, but at the same time, it was too much.”

She opened a cabinet and returned the dried plates. “Before long he was there all the time. And if he wasn’t there, then he was calling all the time. It was like we were married. And that’s when I realized, after everything I’d gone through with Brian—all the struggles, all the heartache—the last thing I wanted was get tied down in another marriage. Not when I was free to do as I pleased for the first time in my life.”

Henry worked hard to keep his face impassive. He drained the sink, then toweled his hands dry as he leaned back against the counter. “So you decided to go to South Africa.”

“I decided to go to South Africa. It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a long time. Especially this particular area of South Africa. Once I connected with an organization that was taking on volunteers, well, one thing led to another, and that became the plan.” Edith hung her towel back on the stove. “But as you can see, Steve is not a big fan of the plan.”

Yeah, well, neither was Henry. It was all he could do not to crush her to his chest and beg her to forget all about the plan. But then he’d be as bad as Steve.

Henry cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “Well, I’m proud of you, Edith. It takes a lot of guts to do what you’re doing.” He swallowed the words threatening to spill out and instead said, “Don’t let anyone hold you back.”

“I’m trying not to,” she said quietly, holding his gaze. She suddenly narrowed her eyes and crinkled her nose. “What is it with you two?”

“What do you mean?”

“You. And Henry. The real Henry. I tell you guys things I’ve never told anybody else, and I don’t know either of you. Especially you.”

Henry dropped the hand towel onto the counter behind him. He folded his arms across his chest and feigned a smug smile. “You read what Henry wrote. I’m a good guy. What else do you need to know?”

Edith rolled her eyes and folded her arms in a mirror imitation of him. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe who you are, what you do, why you’re helping me—things along that nature.”

“You want to know what I do? Fine.” Hopefully she didn’t notice how he’d skipped right over her first question. “I own a painting and construction company.”

“Oh.” Her brow wrinkled in thought a moment before smoothing out again. “And do you like it? Owning your own company?”

Henry shrugged, searching for how to answer that. “The office side of it isn’t exactly what gets me out of bed in the morning. Or the painting. But yeah, I like construction. I love being a contractor. I love carrying on my family’s business. It’s just . . .”

“Just what?”

“I don’t know. Boring, I guess.”

Edith’s brows rose as she unfolded her arms and leaned against the counter. “Boring how?”

“The projects we’ve been getting. It’s all little stuff. Remodeling a kitchen. Upgrading a bathroom. Adding on a new deck. I want to build something from scratch. Something unique. Something that’s a challenge.”

“So why aren’t you?”

“Can’t do projects you don’t get hired for. That’s the problem with having a small crew.” And a town that doesn’t completely trust you. “Everybody watches HGTV these days and thinks a house can be built in a week. But it takes time. Back when my dad started, the average square footage of a house was about 1,100 feet. His four-man crew could get one up in ninety days. But now, people want houses twice that size and they want it built in less time. I can’t promise that. The only thing I can promise them is the same level of craftsmanship this company has always provided.” A promise that seemed to carry less weight the moment his brother retired.

Henry sighed and leaned against the counter next to Edith, their arms grazing. “So lately I’ve been stuck taking on the projects we can manage on a shorter deadline, and well . . .”

“You’re bored.”

“So, so incredibly bored,” he said, slumping sideways until it looked like his elbow on the counter was all that held him up from the pressure of boredom trying to flatten him into the ground.

Edith laughed over his theatrics the way he hoped she would. “So is that why you’re helping me then? Because you’re bored out of your mind and have nothing better to do?”

“Oh no. I have a far better reason for why I’m helping you.” Henry angled in front of her, pinning her back against the counter.

“Oh?” Edith asked, chewing her lip, clearly in a failed attempt not to smile. “What could that possibly be?”

He palmed the counter on each side of her, his thumbs grazing her shirt at her waist, as he lowered his face close to hers, close enough to smell the scent of coconut in her hair from her shampoo. Close enough to see the tiny golden flecks in her brown eyes before he dropped his lips next to her ear. “Because I like the way you say thank you,” he whispered.

She playfully punched him in the stomach and Henry groaned. Right before he left the kitchen laughing, about as far away from bored as a man could be.