did. He agreed I’ll be totally safe in that room.”
Mel lifted a brow. “I didn’t see his lips move, actually.”
“Trust me,” Ellie said. And then she walked on. “It’s going to work out perfectly.” When they got to the bar, Mel said goodbye. “Thank you so much, Mel,” Ellie said, waving.
Noah walked Ellie to her little PT Cruiser that sat in front of the church. “What went on while you two were out of earshot?” he asked Ellie.
“Oh, Your Righteousness, you probably don’t want to know. What if it makes you an accessory to the crime or something?”
He sighed heavily. Impatiently. “Just lay it on me, Ellie.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Come on. You smiled the whole time.”
“Yeah, that part wasn’t so easy. I wanted to smack him just from the look in his eye. I said, I know about you, so don’t try anything. My boyfriend is a six-foot-five-inch bouncer in a mean bar and my father is a judge, and if you even exhale within twenty feet of my boobs, I’m going to have your nuts on a platter. And then I’m going to call my boyfriend and my father.”
Noah was speechless for just a second, but then he burst out laughing. “You didn’t!”
“Of course I did. I think that’s called a preemptive strike. Isn’t that what it’s called?”
“You’re out of your mind,” he said, laughing in appreciation.
“I got that room for a hundred bucks a month. And it’s a great room.”
He shook his head. “You think that threat will hold?”
She peered at him, lifting a corner of her mouth and an eyebrow at the same time. “That bouncer? He’s a friend. I babysat for him and his wife a couple of times. He’d come out here and scare the bejesus out of that imbecile if I asked him to. But before we even get to that, Mr. Nick has a date with my knee. And I know how to do that.”
Noah just chuckled and shook his head.
“I just want that room. It’s the best room I’ve ever seen. My gramma and I slept on a pullout sofa together my whole life. The only thing that could make that room prettier would be if my kids came with it.”
Noah sobered. Two sentences hit him in the gut—she slept on a pullout sofa bed her entire life? With her grandmother? They must have lived in one room. And her kids? It must have been so traumatic to leave her children with a guy she knew didn’t love them. When they got better acquainted, he meant to ask more about that. “So,” he said. “When will you move in?”
“Oh, right away. I’ll bring money and my stuff tomorrow. It’ll just take one trip. Can I have a little time in the morning to unload the car? I’d like to do it when Mr. Hands is at work. I plan to avoid him.”
“What about the duplex?” he asked.
“That nice lady next door owns it. She’ll let me go without a problem. She understands my situation. She’s on my side.”
“You can move in one trip?” he asked, looking at her car.
She turned to look at him. “Noah, the kids have their clothes and toys with them. I have very little to move. Believe me, I live a one-trip existence.”
“My car is full of stuff,” Ellie said to Noah when she arrived at the church the next morning. Then she crouched in front of Lucy, grabbed her head in her hands and kissed her snout, receiving a lick in return. “Morning, girlfriend. You’re looking better every day.” Then to Noah, “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to take an hour to tote it up the stairs to my new residence. I just want to wait until Mr. Fitch has gone to work.”
“Ellie,” he asked, “did you leave anything behind? Or in storage somewhere?”
“Nah, that’s it. I travel light. So, what’s on the schedule for today?”
He tried not to let it show that he felt something cinch in his chest at the very idea she could fit all her worldly goods in the little PT Cruiser she drove. Up until he married, while working and going to school, he’d had next to nothing, but that was different. He liked having a light load; it was all part of the changes he wanted to make in his life. But Ellie had a family! What about her grandmother’s house, her grandmother’s furniture—the pullout sofa and piano? But asking about that would have to wait. He said, “Well, I’d like you to get started painting the bathrooms today, if you think you can do it.”
“Of course I can do it. I should probably change clothes. Around nine, I’ll go move my stuff, but I’ll wait till later to put it away. I’ll grab something old and ratty to put on and get started. You have the paint?”
“Some yellow, some white, some blue. Can you work with that?”
She made a face. “How were you planning to use them? One blue bathroom, one yellow, white trim? Because that’s very boring.”
He looked at her long fingernails. Today was hot pink with sparkles. He looked down—she was wearing tennis shoes, but somehow he knew her toes matched her nails. Against his better judgment he said, “Use it any way you like.”
“Good deal. Do you have any masking tape? Any caulking?”
“Yes, why?”
“Straight lines and edges. Just out of curiosity, how’d you settle on those colors?”
“They were on sale,” he said.
She shifted her weight to one foot. “Have you ever actually had a church before?”
“Not exactly.”
“Listen, I’ll make something work with those colors. Even though they’re pretty dorky colors….”
He had a fleeting thought that this was not the woman to be lecturing him about good taste in anything. “Aren’t you the least bit afraid I might take that personally? Maybe I’m sensitive about the colors I picked.”
“No,” she said, tilting her head and peering at him. “You’re not gay.”
He smiled at her. “You sure about that?”
And she smiled, her hands on her hips. “Obviously. Or you’d have chosen more interesting colors.”
He sighed heavily. He watched her walk toward the upstairs bathroom in her shrink-wrap jeans. He squinted. He followed, Lucy ever at his side. She had a tattoo peeking out of the back of her low-rise jeans, right in the small of her back. “I … ah … have an old painting shirt you can throw over your clothes, if you’d like. Would that help?”
“Sure, thanks. After I get my stuff out of the car, I’ll put on my old sweats. You have all the supplies for me to get started?”
“Stacked outside the bathroom in the hall.”
“Super. I’ll start up here and, when I’m done,
