her time, she’ll get over it.”
Feeling his lips twitch, Cole looked over. “You sure?”
“I did,” she said, then laughed. “About being myself, I mean. Mostly, anyway. But those hormone swarms are a bitch.”
“Yeah. I remember,” he said, and she laughed again, then gave him something close to a side-eye. “They’ll be fine, Rayburn.”
“Why would you say—”
“Because you’re their dad.” Not looking at him, she stuffed her fingers in her front pockets, the lightweight top scrunching over her wrists. “You were a good friend,” she said softly. “A good person. Even if we messed things up—”
She cut herself off when her father appeared at the porch steps, leaning heavily on the bottom post and breathing hard.
“Pop? You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay,” the Colonel said, swatting a hand at his daughter before hauling in another lungful of air. “You guys all keep reminding me I need more exercise, so I got it.” Then to Cole, “You and the kids are welcome to stay for dinner. Easy enough to fire up the grill—”
“Thanks,” Cole said. “But we’re going to my sister’s—”
“Right, right—I forgot.”
At the mention of Diana, Cole saw something flash in Bree’s eyes. The vestiges of fear, most likely. His sister, ten years his senior and Cole’s self-appointed surrogate parent whenever his well-meaning but easily distracted academic parents dropped the ball—which was frequently—could definitely be scary.
“How is Diana?”
“Good. Bored, though, now that her two oldest are in college. Keeps making noises about going back to work. But anyway,” he said as the kids tromped up the porch steps, looking a little flushed but otherwise none the worse for wear, “we should get going.”
“C’n we get something to drink first?” Wes panted out.
“It’s five blocks, you can’t wait?”
The kid pantomimed clutching his throat, as if he’d been on a fifty-mile hike in the desert, and Bree smothered a laugh. Clearly eating it up, Wes grinned, then did his poor puppy dog face. “Man, I would kill for some Gatorade right now.”
“There’s tea and juice in the fridge,” the Colonel said. “Help yourself. Although in my day,” he said, shepherding them back inside, “we made do with drinking from the hose...”
Bree chuckled again as Cole’s phone buzzed—a text from his sister, wondering where they were. “You really shouldn’t encourage him,” he said, pocketing the phone.
“Pop?”
“No. Wes. Kid’s a master manipulator.”
“Yeah, I seem to remember somebody else like that.” She shoved her hair behind her ear. Flashed a smile. “This was nice, catching up.”
“Sure.”
Her eyes shadowed for a moment. “So...I’ll be seeing you guys again?”
“Maybe.” Because if he said no, then he’d have to explain why. And frankly, he wasn’t sure he could. “How long are you staying?”
Although her smile stayed put, the shadow darkened. “Not sure—”
“Dad!” Brooke burst back on to the porch, holding out her phone. “Aunt Di says if we don’t get over there right now—”
“You guys go on, tell her we’re on our way.”
But when he turned back around, Bree had wandered out into the yard to sit on one of the swings on the old play set, looking like the world’s most lost little girl as she stared off into space.
And Cole stood there far longer than he should have, watching her.
Full plate, he reminded himself, then turned to leave, telling himself the image would fade.
Eventually.
Her underwear dumped into the top drawer of her old dresser, Sabrina shoved it closed and sighed, missing Mom—who would have been right there with her, if not tucking things into drawers and hanging up stuff in the closet, at least sitting on the foot of the bed, listening, eyes soft with sympathy or bright with anger. Honestly—Sabrina zipped up the empty case and rammed it underneath the twin bed—more and more, her life felt like some artsy foreign film where bizarre crap kept happening but you had no idea why. And a happy ending was not a given. Chad used to drag her to those. And she’d go and pretend to enjoy them for his sake, but mostly she was just Huh?
Take the past twenty-four hours, for instance. As if having her future ripped from her in the space of a single conversation wasn’t bad enough, then to run into Cole Rayburn, of all people. After which they’d had this perfectly normal, totally weird conversation, as though nothing had happened.
Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. There’d definitely been some heavy-duty skirting of the truth going on. Some people might call that civilized and mature. Because it was ancient history and all that. Except...this was Cole and her.
For whatever that was worth.
Which would be not a whole lot, Sabrina thought, starting downstairs. Dude obviously had his hands full. And, yes, that was her heart squeezing inside her chest, especially when she thought about his kids...
She released another breath. Only so much multitasking her poor brain could handle right now.
Through the open patio door, the scent of charbroiled meat floated in from the deck where Pop was grilling. Stalling, she got a diet soda out of the French-door fridge in the recently remodeled kitchen, all stainless steel and sparkly white quartz and cherrywood cabinets. Very pretty. Still, she missed the homeyness of the old seventies decor, the knotty pine and faux brick, the old gouged table where they’d eaten, done homework, spilled their guts to Mom. Even the kids who’d only been passing through.
The family room, however, she thought, popping the can’s tab as she peeked in the room, still bore the scars of having been a family room in every sense of the word. Probably one reason why the house was still on the market. The kitchen showed well, sure, but the rest of the house...not so much. Especially to buyers with no desire to take on a fixer-upper, even if most of the work was cosmetic. True, Pop had impulsively donated Mom’s vast, and eclectic, book collection to the library some months before. But since he hadn’t moved any further in that direction, Sabrina could only assume—since they’d never discussed it—that the action had paralyzed him instead of propelling him forward.
She tilted the can to her lips, remembering the beehive of activity this house had once been, of noisy meals and fights for the bathroom and never-ending chore lists, usually overseen by the man currently grilling their dinner. Now only an eerie stillness remained, a thousand memories whispering
