“Good. And, Mabel, we can work through you feeling stuck. Remember, I’m not going anywhere. I will be there for you as long as it takes.” He paused, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them again. “Can I see you tomorrow?”
She nodded, staring into those eyes on her screen. Then she remembered he couldn’t see her. “Yeah.”
Zane shook his head. “I can’t trick you into the lisp again, can I?” His chuckle was growly. “You’ve become very good at this game, Mabel Joan.” His face dipped down out of view a moment before reappearing. “Goodnight.”
She counted to one hundred, watching the app to see him get in his truck and drive away. She unlocked the door and pulled it open with caution, then grabbed the bundle of light-blue hydrangeas he’d laid carefully on her doorstep.
He’d scribbled a note on some lined paper and tucked it in the wrapping around the flowers. “Don’t tell August and Hannah, but after I got the caterer squared away with Doctor Flynn, I went back over to their place and snagged these for you. They match your dress and the centers match your eyes. Thanks for the nice evening, Mabel. Zane.”
Wow. She peered at the flowers. They did have tiny middles that were light brown, like her eyes.
The retainer and zit cream and bralessness? If that had been all that was stopping her, she would have thrown the retainer behind her back, scrubbed off the ointment, and the bra? Well, she wouldn’t have worried about that part. She would have opened the door, quietly because of her dad, and then she would have kissed him with her whole heart.
Chapter13
Zane fumbled with the laptop on the makeshift desk in Mabel’s compact car. He didn’t love this little arrangement. He did love being with Mabel; that was the only good part of this assignment.
“Where are we at?” Mabel asked, her cheek dimpling as she looked left and right before crossing the road to start in on the next section of land.
Where are we at? As in you and me?
It was tempting to ask that. Of course, she was talking about the windshield survey, but he wanted to talk aboutthem. About how he felt about her and to reassure her that he would always try to be the man she needed. About how cute she was when she had her retainer in.
Not that he’d actually seen her in the retainer the night before. But he did get to see her in that dress at the wedding, and he did get to hear her voice through the doorbell.
“Okay, so we’re on Vines Road, and we still have the canal going from east to west, and then there’s the Garvin farm coming up?” he asked.
“Yep, 1137 Vines Road. Right there.” She eased the car to a stop on the gravel shoulder and put it in park. Her eyes narrowed as Zaneshifted in the seat, trying to pull his big knees up more to support the laptop.
“Okay, look,” Mabel said. “This isn’t working.”
“What’s not working? The candy wrappers lying around?” he asked, smiling. He closed the laptop and turned to face her…as well as he could with the gear shift in his way. “I don’t mind the garbage per se.” He picked up an empty wrapper and waved it in the air. “I just mind the fact that there’s been chocolate to be had and you didn’t share with me.”
“Maybe I’ll bring you some tomorrow. It’s the least I could do since you brought me flowers last night.” The dimple danced again. “But, Zane, you’re tall. Very tall and muscular.”
“Well, gersh. Thanks.” There he went again, acting goofy because he didn’t know how to respond when he was paid a compliment.
Her smile deepened. “You know how I insisted on driving when we started this thing? Well, maybe I’ve gotten my driving fix. Maybe we start taking your truck from now on.”
“That would mean you would have to do the paperwork.”
“It’s fine. I can do my share.”
“Well, then, what are we waiting for?” He dramatically pointed down the road. “To my house to get my truck!”
She giggled and waited for him to input the information for the Marvin house and outbuildings before she did a U-turn and sped to his house. As per the usual in Silver Plum, single thirty-somethings didn’t have a lot of options in housing, but he’d respectfully declined Parker’s offer to live in the loft apartment he’d been renting from Liam, the one several of them had lived in from time to time. Parker and Anjali had her house now.
No, Zane liked his little boxy home out on a long, quiet country road far out west from Silver Plum. A 1940s bungalow witharts-and-crafts details, he’d bought it after he secured enough for a sizeable down payment. If he’d actually finished vet school, he could have seen himself living in something much bigger one day, but doing the jobs he was doing now, he figured he was here to stay.
In his driveway, Mabel put the car in park and gazed at the house. “I’ve never seen the inside before.”
“That’s not acceptable at all. Forgive me for being a jerky homeowner before. Would you like to come in now?”
She bit her lip, her golden brown eyes dancing. “Well, yes. But I don’t know. Maybe we should keep working while we still have the light.”
She was right. She was right most of the time. But his heart did a little blip at the disappointment.
“You leave your car here, and we’ll get some of this data tracking done. Then when we run out of light, we can come back and you can get the grand tour.”
