“Yep. Be here in half an hour.” As he said the words, his stomach rumbled. “Listen, if my being here is difficult for you, we can forget dinner. I’ll get out of your hair.” He looked down at the dog, who had taken a proprietary space between Victoria’s feet. “We’ll both get out of your hair soon as the tow truck arrives.”
“You can’t leave,” she said, grinning. “Or I’ll end up eating leftover pot roast three times a day for a week.”
“Pot roast? I haven’t had that in about a hundred years.”
“Sorry it’s nothing more fancy. The roast happened to be what I had in the freezer. When I put it in the Crock-Pot, I knew I’d have way too many leftovers since it’s only me here, but—” She laughed. “Can you tell I haven’t had any company in a while? My mother used to say once my motor was running, there was no turning it off.”
Noah laughed. “I have a brother like that. Talks a blue streak sometimes about absolutely nothing. He—”
The words cut off as abruptly as they came. Victoria wanted to ask, to press him for more, but wouldn’t. She liked her privacy. She certainly couldn’t fault him for wanting the same.
And yet, in his eyes, she saw defeat, weariness. The emotions were too powerful, too private, and her gaze went to the floor, as if studying the black-and-white squares would provide some answer from the cosmos. They didn’t. What did she expect from forty-year-old linoleum anyway? “So, how do you like your roast?”
He grinned, clearly glad for the change of subject. “Done mooing.”
She laughed. “Do you like your potatoes baked? Or cooked with the meat?”
“Are you making gravy?”
“Of course.” Charlie started running excited circles around them, as if he understood the conversation.
“Then in with the meat.”
“Biscuits?”
“Homemade?” he asked, clearly teasing. Maybe even…flirting?
“Is there any other kind?” she said, returning the smile, the vibrations in the air.
“Not in my book.” His smile turned into a wide grin that seemed to take over his features and cast them in an entirely different light.
A sexy light.
The kind that lit a fire within Victoria’s belly that had never really been lit before. She swallowed, suddenly very glad she’d paid attention when her mother taught her to cook. “Carrots?” she said, the word a squeak.
“The whole works,” Noah replied, his gaze on hers.
The whole works. Well, heck, then she was going to bake a pie. Maybe even find that lone bottle of wine she’d been saving for a special occasion.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Noah said. “It’s been a hell of a long time since I had a home-cooked meal.”
Something about the way he’d said the words, the pained look that filled his green eyes, the way his shoulders seemed to drop…it all made her want to ask. To probe.
To help.
Because if there was one thing Victoria Blackstone did well, it was help other people. Florence Nightingale reincarnated, that was her.
She drew back, though. Helping Noah, getting involved with Noah, would detract from the plan. Tomorrow, there was going to be a whole new Victoria on the block.
But for tonight, there was Noah, his dog and a dinner to get on the table.
Because if there were ever two people she’d seen who deserved the whole works, at least for one meal, it was herself and this mysterious stranger.
An hour later, Noah sat at Victoria’s dining room table, Charlie lying at his feet, hoping to get lucky with a stray crumb, despite having devoured his own plate of meat. Noah had been as quick as the dog in downing his first helping of pot roast and was now making big dents in his second. The food was delicious, and had filled the permanently hungry ache in a belly that had subsisted for too long on fast food. “I haven’t had a homemade meal in years,” he said, wiping his mouth with a crisp white cloth napkin.
“Really?”
“I’m a bachelor. I can order take-out, and open a can of dog food.”
“For you or the dog?” She grinned and tipped her wine toward him.
He chuckled. “Based on the kind of fast-food junk I feed myself, I’d say Charlie gets the better end of the deal.”
Her laughter was soft and easy, a sound that seemed centuries away from the stiff, uncomfortable furniture filling her house. And a million miles away from the contemporary, stark loft Noah had just left.
He looked around at the floral wallpaper, his gaze sweeping over the brown shag living room carpet butting against the wood floor in the doorway, and thought maybe it was closer to two million miles.
“Go ahead, ask,” Victoria said.
“Ask what?”
“Why my house looks like something you’d see on TV Land. I can tell you’re wondering.”
“Oh, no, I…” His voice trailed off, no ready excuse to fill the space.
“My parents,” Victoria said, laying her fork across her plate, “didn’t like change. They took great pride in sleeping in the same bed all their lives, using the same stove for twenty-five years, making good use of the carpet that came with the house and grudgingly replaced a couple of rooms when the old carpet wore out. Call it frugal, sentimental…I’m not sure. But they liked things to stay exactly the same, day after day.”
“Liked?” he asked, catching the past tense. “You lost your mother, too?”
She nodded and started working on the interstate highway system in her potatoes again, but didn’t eat. “A couple months before my father. I’ve been here alone ever since. And well—” at this, she let out a sigh and looked around the dated room “—I haven’t had the heart to change anything.” She paused, took a second look and added, “Yet.”
Curiosity nudged at Noah. He wanted to know more, like what she meant by “yet.” And why she seemed to hold back parts of herself as she spoke, as if she was filtering out the bad scenes of her story.
Noah knew those signs. Knew the way someone sounded when they tried to paint a pretty picture, instead of telling him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So help him God.
But in the end, he hadn’t been all that good at divining the truth, had he? He may have seen the signs, but he’d ignored them, all the way down to the bottom. And in doing so, he’d disappointed the one person who was depending on him to make things right—his brother.
And now, Justin was on the streets, out of Noah’s grasp.
Against
