It was time to move on down the road.
* * *
Even with thestop at the storage unit, and then a stop once they arrived in Wardham to collect the key to her new house from the lawyer’s office next to Lola’s boutique, they still beat the moving truck to her new house.
A text message from the driver explained why. They’d stopped to eat on the highway, and were twenty minutes out.
She didn’t mind. That gave her a minute to appreciate her first view of the tidy little white cottage as its owner.
“This is it, eh?” Brent asked.
“Yep.”
“Nice location.”
She nodded. It was. One block from the beach. Two blocks from the future site of Evan’s ice cream stand, if she had anything to do with it. Three blocks from downtown, and walkable to almost everything.
She loved it.
She loved even more that Evan was sitting on the front step wearing an honest-to-God lumberjack-inspired red check flannel shirt over a snug black t-shirt and faded, fitted jeans.
Very fitted, she thought to herself as he stood up.
And work boots.
Her ovaries really liked those work boots.
He knew it, too. His eyes lit up when he saw her taking in the whole effect, and he winked at her as they approached. But his good humour fell away the second he turned to greet Evan. “Hey.”
Her husband nodded curtly back. “Hey.”
Never before had she heard such electrically-charged single syllables. She rolled her eyes to herself. At least if they were trying to out-testosterone each other, the heavy-lifting stage of moving in wouldn’t take long.
Before they could get into a stag-worthy antler-locking battle, a black SUV pulled up right behind Brent’s truck, and Evie and Liam piled out.
Evie held a box from Bun in the Oven, and Liam had a takeout tray of paper coffee cups.
“We’re here to drop off breakfast,” she called out. “Happy move-in day! Carrie and Lola are on lunch duty.”
By the time they were done, Jess was probably going to be in a caffeine and carb-induced coma, but it would be worth it. She had a group of friends who wanted to take care of her for the first time ever.
And she’d already burned off the donut and coffee from first thing that morning. “Let’s re-fuel!”
They finished just in time for the big truck to arrive.
Evan and Brent found a good rhythm with the movers, emptying her boxes into a pile in the sunroom—which she didn’t have any furniture for—while the other guys delivered furniture to each room under her careful direction.
They even set up her office suite in the second bedroom upstairs, which made her ecstatic. It worked just as well here as it did at her old house, and she let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
“It’s perfect,” she said to herself.
But she wasn’t alone. “Looks pretty good,” Brent said from behind her.
She spun around. “Hey.”
He held out the box marked Office Papers. “Inaugural box opening?”
Not that one. That one had the divorce papers on top. “I’ll open it later.”
