Lizzie told herself she was not checking her phone. Not when she took the thing out of her purse and transferred it into her back pocket as soon as she walked through the front door of her farmhouse. Not as, a mere fifteen minutes later, she made sure that the ringer was on. And not even when, ten minutes after that, she unlocked the screen and made sure she hadn’t missed any texts or calls.
Nothing.
Lane hadn’t pinged her to make sure she’d gotten home. Hadn’t responded to her text. But come on, like he didn’t have a wet cat on his hands?
Jeez.
And yet she was antsy as she paced around. Her kitchen was spotless, which was a shame because she could have used something to clean up. The same was true with her bedroom upstairs—heck, even her bed was made—and she’d done her laundry the night before. The only thing that she found out of place was the towel she’d used that morning to dry off with after her shower. She’d hung it loosely over the shower curtain, and since it was still inside the two-day rule for going into the hamper, all she could do was fold the thing the long way and thread it back through the rod that was on the wall.
Thanks to a mostly cloudless day, her house was warm up on the second floor and she went around and opened all the windows. A breeze that smelled like the meadow around the property blew in and cleaned out the stuffiness.
Would that it could pull the same trick with her head. Images from the day bombarded her: her and Lane laughing when she’d just come in to work; her and Lane staring at her laptop; the two of them …
All up in her head, Lizzie returned to the kitchen and opened the door to the refrigerator. Nothing much there. Certainly nothing she had any interest in eating.
As the urge to check her phone again hit, she told herself to cut it out. Chantal could be a problem on a good day. Slapped with divorce papers with the scene witnessed by one of the help—
The sound of footsteps out on the front porch brought her head up.
Frowning, she shut the fridge and walked ahead to her living room. She didn’t bother to check to see who it was. There were two choices: her next-door neighbor on the left, who lived five miles down the road and had cows who frequently broke through his fence and wandered into Lizzie’s fields; or the next-door neighbor on the right, who was a mere mile and a quarter away, and whose dogs frequently wandered over to check out the free-range cows.
She started her greeting as she opened things up. “Hi, there—”
It was not her neighbors with apologies for bovines or canines.
Lane was standing on her porch, and his hair looked worse than it had in the morning, the dark waves sticking straight up off his head like he’d been trying to pull the stuff out.
He was too tired to smile. “I thought I’d see if you made it home all right firsthand.”
“Oh, God, come here.”
They met in the middle, body to body, and she held him hard. He smelled like fresh air, and over his shoulder, she saw that his Porsche had its top down.
“Are you all right?” she said.
“Better now. By the way, I’m kind of drunk.”
“And you drove here? That’s stupid and dangerous.”
“I know. That’s why I’m confessing.”
She stepped back to let him come in. “I was about to eat?”
“You have enough for two?”
“Especially if it will sober you up.” She shook her head. “No more drinking and driving. You think you have problems now? Try adding a DUI to your list.”
“You’re right.” He looked around, and then went over to her piano and rested his hand on the smooth key guard. “God, nothing’s changed.”
She cleared her throat. “Well, I’ve been busy at work—”
“That’s a good thing. A great thing.”
The nostalgia on his face as he continued to stare at her antique tools and her hanging quilt and her simple sofa was better than any words he could have spoken.
“Food?’ she prompted.
“Yes. Please.”
Down in the kitchen, he went right over and sat at her little table. And abruptly, it was as if he had never been gone.
Be careful with that, she told herself.
“So how would you like …” She rifled through the contents of her cupboards and her refrigerator. “… well, how’d you like some lasagna that I froze about six months ago, with a side order of nacho chips from a bag I opened last night, capped off with some old Graeter’s Peppermint Stick ice cream.”
Lane’s eyes focused on her and darkened.
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Clearly, he was planning on having something else for dessert—and as her body warmed from the inside out, that was more than all right with her.
Shoot, she so wasn’t listening to common sense here. Getting rid of his wife was only the tip of the iceberg for them, and she needed to keep that in mind.
“I think that sounds like the best meal in the world.”
Lizzie crossed her arms and leaned back against the refrigerator. “Can I be honest?”