CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Autumn
I was curled up on the couch with my throw blanket over me. My Friday nights since Gideon had left consisted of my cat and a crime show. I’d started with a rom-com and had immediately backed out at the first smitten smile from the hero to the heroine. I couldn’t do it. Give me a stern British detective and a murder.
If the setting was overseas, I wouldn’t have to risk characters visiting Las Vegas.
I stuffed my spoon into my ice cream. I was hitting the hard stuff tonight. I doubt I’d be able to touch a Bloody Mary or eat an olive for weeks. Months probably.
Years?
Nah, that was too pathetic.
Yet, if I never drank another Bloody Mary or had one more blue-cheese-stuffed olive, I’d be fine.
My doorbell rang. I frowned at the picture window. Dangerous hope rose in my chest.Had Gideon returned? Had he bought a car and made the drive to Bourbon Canyon to declare his love for me?
Right.
“Quit crying in your drink and open up!” a woman shouted from the other side.
Junie?
I nudged Sprinkles off my lap. She grunted and stretched. I rose and went to peer out the spy hole.
My sister was on the other side, her face tucked into her collar. She was shifting her feet back and forth to stay warm.
I swung the door open. “Have you lost your cold blood?”
She rolled her eyes and pushed past me on a wave of peony-smelling lotion. “I put on a sweater when I played in Phoenix last week.” She toed her fluffy boots off. They’d get wrecked in five seconds on the ranch. “It was almost seventy degrees. I was so ashamed.”
“You’ve been away from home too long.”
Regret flashed in her eyes, but I pulled her in for a hug. She tossed her arms around me and fiercely returned the embrace.
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” I explained into her cloud of dirty-blond hair with purple stripes. “I’m happy for you.”
She pulled back and flashed me her camera-ready smile. “Aww, thank you.”
I kept my hold on her shoulders. I was her sister. She never gave her family that smile. That smile was fake. “What’s wrong?”
She sagged in my hold. “I’m not here about me.”
“If you’re here about me, there’s nothing to tell.”
Her gaze landed on the half-eaten tub of ice cream. Ihad skipped the pints and gone for the half-gallon container of cookies and cream. The last two weeks of setting the stage at work had been exhausting.Yeah, Gideon went back to work. Silver could only do without him for so long. But, you know, it’s fine. I love teaching, and maybe he can work out a remote-work arrangement.
Each word had widened the crater his absence made in my heart.
“It’s treat night.”
She stepped far enough into the living room to look at the TV and winced. “It’s British-crime-drama bad?”
“I love British crime dramas.”
“When you’ve been through a breakup.”
I choked on a sob. “We didn’t break up.” Tears welled in my eyes. The last two weeks had felt very much like a breakup. “We had a deal. He was always going to leave. I just...”
