finished exploring, they sat in two rocking chairs placed on the boardwalk outside the mercantile. The scene was a pleasing one. Annie could imagine what it must have been like 130 years ago, and her thoughts slid pleasantly back in time.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, the subject of Bitter End apparently exhausted. Lucas glanced at her and said, “I hope my girls haven’t made pests of themselves. They’d be at the bookstore every day if I let them.”
“Pests? Heather and Hollie? Never!”
“They like you.”
“Well, I like them. I hope you’ll let them come as often as they want.” She wanted to add that he was welcome, too, but didn’t.
Lucas chuckled. “I don’t think I could keep them away.”
Annie recognized the girls’ need to be noticed and nurtured and loved. As a motherless child, that was what she’d sought herself. Whatever she could do to comfort them, to assuage their sense of loss, she would.
Lucas looked at his watch. “We should probably think about heading back.”
Annie knew he was right, but she hated to leave the tranquillity of Bitter End. Nor was she ready to give up this time with Lucas.
By tacit agreement, they returned to the truck. Lucas walked ahead of her, assisting her as she made her way carefully up the embankment. When the terrain became steep, he reached for her hand. She smiled her appreciation and was rewarded with a lazy grin, which unaccountably sent her pulse skittering. Friends, he’d said, and she’d agreed—yet it seemed somehow that they’d already gone beyond friendship.
She was well aware that Lucas was a handsome man, especially when he smiled. But it wasn’t his good looks that impressed her. Billy, her ex-husband, had been known as a heartthrob in their college days. But unlike Billy, Lucas Porter was a man of character, a man of inner strength. When his wife became ill, he hadn’t turned his back; instead, he’d remained steadfastly at her side. When she’d died, he hadn’t handed his children over for others to raise, but had uprooted himself and moved to Promise to be closer to his parents. This was the kind of man who would accept her scars. A man who wouldn’t turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble. Friends, she reminded herself. That was all they’d be and that was fine by her. Wasn’t it?
As they traveled back to town, they talked about the old families—the Westons and Pattersons and Frasiers—who’d left Bitter End and come to Promise. Truly a place for new beginnings, they decided. Lucas parked behind Tumbleweed Books and walked her up the stairway that led to her small apartment above the store.
She unlocked the door and was about to invite him in when he said, “Thanks, Annie, for a very enjoyable afternoon.”
“Thank you.” She held her breath, hoping he’d ask her out a second time right then and there.
He didn’t. Instead, he tucked his hands into his pants pockets, nodded and walked away.
Apparently the interest she felt wasn’t mutual.
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