I strolled up to Knox, held the bucket over his head, and dumped it.
Naomi was staged in the bed of Knox’s truck, several dozen snowballs piled at her feet. Jeremiah was documenting the moment on his phone while Stef stood next to him holding the largest margarita I’d ever seen in the other. Sloane and Lina were lying tangled in the snow laughing, both dogs frantically licking their faces.
There was something earthy, elemental about Sloane’s husky laugh. She didn’t laugh like that around me. Not anymore.
Naomi let out a peal of laughter. “You look like the abominable snowman,” she called to her husband. It was a fair assessment. Knox’s beard was completely coated in snow.
Knox unfroze, raised his arms, and growled.
His wife shrieked and tried to make a break for it, but Knox vaulted into the back of the truck and wrapped her in a snowy embrace. He rubbed his face against her bare neck, making her scream louder.
“That’s definitely a framer,” Jeremiah claimed as he snapped away.
Nash tugged the still laughing Lina to her feet. “You smell like tequila and bad decisions,” he said.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a noisy kiss on the mouth. “And you smell like we should have sex.”
Sloane, on the ground, mimed a fit of vomiting.
I tossed the bucket aside and held out a hand to her.
She eyed it for a beat too long, so I reached down and hauled her to her feet.
Her mitten-clad hands gripped my forearms as she regained her balance. She was still laughing. Her lovely face was the picture of joy. Up close, I zeroed in on the darker smudge of forest green around the iris of her left eye.
“Not down my shirt,” Naomi screeched from the back of the truck.
“These shenanigans better not ruin my boots,” Stef complained, looking at his feet.
Sloane was grinning, her emerald-green eyes clear and bright.
“You’re not drunk,” I observed.
“None of us are. It’s the snow. It turns us into fourth graders. Case in point,” she said and waved both magenta mittens at me. “When’s the last time you did something as undignified as playing in the snow?”
“You can take the man out of Knockemout, but you can’t take Knockemout out of the man,” I quipped.
She frowned. “Wait. I forgot. I’m mad at you again.”
“With us, I think that’s always safe to assume,” I said dryly.
She bent at the waist and picked up the scruffy Piper, who was going to need a new sweater since this one was covered in clumps of snow. “I’m extra mad because you ratted me out to Naomi when all I wanted was a quiet evening at home by myself.”
“As you can see, I too am suffering the consequences of my actions,” I said, gesturing in the direction of Knox and Nash.
Sloane buried her face in Piper’s wet, wiry fur. “For some ridiculous reason, Naomi felt the tattler shouldn’t be alone tonight either. My suffering is almost worth knowing that you have to entertain your pals instead of figuring out how to drive up the cost of blood pressure medicines or whatever it is you do to entertain yourself.”
“I entertain myself by binge-watching Ted Lasso and cheering for Rupert the villain.”
Sloane tried and failed to smother her laugh. “Damn it.”
It was a headier thrill than anything I could recall in recent history. That was pathetic.
“Hold up. Are those two actually smiling at each other?” Lina demanded.
“My God. It’s a snowstorm miracle,” Stef said, making the sign of the cross as Jeremiah slung an arm around his waist.
“I better call into the station and see if some kind of asteroid is about to hit us,” Nash joked.
“I don’t like this,” Knox said, giving me the evil, snowy eye.
“I love it,” Naomi insisted, hooking her arm through his.
“Har har. You guys are hilarious,” Sloane said, taking a deliberate step back. She turned her back on me and took that warm feeling with her.
Knox and Nash insisted on spending the night after the girls had commandeered the dogs and taken them next door for the night.
It was midnight. Knox was passed out on the twin bed in the bedroom staged for a boy while Nash slept on the pullout couch in my office.
Anyone would have thought from the long, impassioned goodbyes they shared with Naomi and Lina that they were going off to war.
What was it about love that turned men into simpering idiots?
I considered myself lucky that it was at least one thing I didn’t have to worry about.
I turned my attention back to the financial records in front of me. The digital fundraising platform would make an interesting addition to my “evil corporate empire.” I saved my notes to the cloud and fired off an email to my assistant to add a meeting with the platform partners to my calendar.
I took off my glasses and rubbed my bleary eyes with both hands.
I wanted to go to bed. To fall, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Not with Sloane’s bedroom lights still on, glowing warm and gold like a beacon as the snow continued to fall.
It was a habit worse than smoking in my opinion, not going to bed until Sloane’s lights went dark. It was a compulsion that did me no favors, considering the woman was a bookworm who read past midnight most nights. I glanced down at my copy of The Midnight Library near my elbow and wondered if that was something else I’d give up once I finally sold this place.
I was pathetic, secretly sharing a bedtime as if timing my lights-out with hers somehow ensured that she was safe. The sooner I sold this house and cut ties, the sooner we’d both be free.
The floodlight in Sloane’s backyard lit up the winter wonderland, and I was on full alert as I leaned forward to peer out the window.
There she was.
She’d changed into yet another pair of pajamas and topped them with a dark, bulky coat and bright red snow boots. I watched as she trudged purposefully out into the yard, willing her to stop before she was lost to me behind the hemlock and clump of arborvitaes.
I rose from my chair and held my breath. She paused, still in view, and I relaxed.
Sloane tilted her head to the sky and spread her arms wide. Then she pitched backward, falling flat on her back. My muscles coiled reflexively, ready to run downstairs and out the door until I realized she was moving. Her arms and legs were working in a sweeping motion. In and out. In and out.
I watched mesmerized as Sloane Walton made a snow angel.
I pressed my palm to the cool glass.
Take care of my girls. I heard Simon’s words as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud.
It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know the effect his daughter had on me. How dangerous she was to me. How fatal I could be to her.
She was sitting up now, head tipped back. I wondered if she was thinking of Simon too. If that was yet another tie that unfairly bound us together. In a moment of weakness, I brought my hand to the window and traced her figure with my fingers on the glass.
I saw it before she did, the distant orange streak of light in the sky. A shooting star.
Sloane brought a hand to her face, then sat there in stillness.
She moved suddenly, done with her own stillness. I watched captivated as she carefully worked her way to her feet before jumping clear of her snowy creation.
Hands on hips, she stared down at it and nodded. Then she looked up. Not at the sky, this time, but directly at me.
My desk light was off. There was no way she could see me in the window, I told myself as I pulled my hand away from the glass. Still, I stood in the shadows and watched her stare up at my window.
After an agonizing minute, she looked away and slowly made her way back to the house.
It wasn’t until she’d disappeared from view and the lights in her bedroom finally went out that I realized something.
She’d been wearing my coat.
5
Hot Guy in My Bedroom
Sloane
Twenty-three years ago