Her attention didn’t flinch. “You’re right. I screwed up, and I really am sorry. Do you forgive me?”
He nodded. “You’ll tell me stuff from now on?”
“Yes. Will you tell me stuff?”
“Yes.” Guilt stabbed him as he spoke the half-lie. He was angry at her for cutting him out, but he’d been cutting her out for years. He’d never told her how he felt about her. Like her, he had reasons that seemed good to him. Like her, he’d been judging what she could and couldn’t hear. And even after giving her a hard time about her silence, he wasn’t prepared to break his.
“What about our kiss?” she asked bluntly. “Do you want to discuss it more?”
Don’t think about what kissing her felt like, he warned himself.And whatever you do, don’t look at her lips.“No. You?”
“No. I mean, anytime you want to chat about it, I’m game. It’s just that I don’t really have anything else to add. Beyond what I said yesterday.”
“Neither do I.”
“It happened. And now I know that my friend Zander is a very good kisser.” Her voice turned teasing. She hopped off the step and pulled her car keys from her pocket. “Which is useful information to know. I’ve been trying to set you up for years, but now I realize I was undervaluing your assets.” She shot him a charming, lopsided smile.
“Were you?”
“I was. But no longer!” She sailed in the direction of the inn’s small parking lot. “See you later.”
“Yep.” He watched her car until it disappeared from view.
The next afternoon, Nora told Willow and Britt about the series of books she’d purchased to read on her honeymoon, and Willow wondered aloud whether Nora would have time for reading on her honeymoon while Britt scanned the faces of the arriving international passengers at SeaTac airport.
Mom and Dad had spent the past two years serving as missionaries in Africa. Today they were coming home.
A family exited into the terminal after clearing customs. Not Mom and Dad.
A young couple exited. Not Mom and Dad.
“There they are!” Britt called.
Her sisters squealed, and they all moved forward en masse to give hugs. Britt, always the fastest sister, reached them first.
Her father, Garner Bradford, wrapped her in a bear hug. “Hi, sweetheart.”
In response to the powerful reassurance and protection of his hug, tears pricked Britt’s eyes. The degree of sturdiness in his armshadn’t changed. His bristly five o’clock shadow felt like it always had against her temple.
“Hi, Dad. Welcome home.” She hadn’t expected to get teary. She almost never got teary. Clearly, she’d needed a hug from her dad more than she’d realized.
Gloom had been hovering over her for the past two days since the kiss on the beach. Several times, she’d tried to pray. She wanted to trust God with the situation with Zander and experience peace as a result. But she’d had a hard time focusing her mind. She couldn’t feel God’s presenceat all. So far, He’d answered her prayers with echoing silence.
Her sleep had been lousy and, at this point, her brain was exhausted from fretting over Zander. She’d done everything she could think of to set things right between them. Even so, their friendship was sputtering like a car with a glowing Check Engine light.
She didn’t think he was being completely honest with her, and she wasn’t being completely honest with him because yesterday, when they’d been sitting on the step and she’d looked into his eyes, she’d had to force her hands to stay down. They’d wanted to lift, tunnel into his hair, and pull his mouth to hers.
Had kissing Zander resulted in an instant addiction?
She embraced her mom, who smelled of her familiar crisp perfume. The bracelet Dad had given her during Britt’s middle school years made its quiet jingling sound.
“I missed you,” Mom said.
“I missed you, too.” Britt took a step back to allow her sisters to complete their turns.
Garner and Kathleen Bradford were fifty-seven and fifty-five, respectively. They’d met almost thirty years ago at Bradford Shipping, shortly after her father inherited the company from his father. Her mom, who’d been working in the customer service department, had been full of plans for improving Bradford Shipping. Dad had moved her into an office near his and added her to a task force bent on saving the failing company. While pursuing their sharedgoals, her dad had fallen for the ambitious strawberry-blond beauty, and her mom had fallen for the green-eyed heir to the empire. The rest was history.
They’d loved each other in word and deed for decades now. The two of them were friends and allies, as well as spouses. Serving as a missionary was a dream Mom had hit upon when Britt and her sisters were little. It hadn’t been Dad’s dream, but because of their partnership, he’d entrusted the reins of Bradford Shipping to his managers in order to take Mom to Africa so she could live out something that had been important to her for so long.
