“I can’t wear the same clothes I wore the other day. What would everyone at work think?”
“That you were snowed in like the rest of us for a couple of days?” I smirked. “I doubt most of them would even notice. Rhonda and Denise don’t exactly pay attention to that sort of thing, and my brothers already know you’re here.”
“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to go home tonight,” Nellie said softly.
“Of course, it’s alright with me, Nell. I’ll admit, I’m greedy and I’d keep you here forever if I could, but I understand you’re not there yet.”
Nellie’s lips twitched with amusement. “It’s just, all my things are at my apartment. My clothes. My makeup. My hairbrush. And yeah, I don’t really know where I’m at with all of this.” She gestured between us with the whisk.
“I understand,” I nodded.
And I did, even if I couldn’t help the disappointment that swelled at her words. I wanted to rush full speed ahead, but Nellie was still holding back. It was like she didn’t trust what I was saying, but I knew I couldn’t force that trust. It had to happen on its own.
“Thanks, Noah.” Nellie smiled softly and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’ve been amazing, throughout everything. I’m sorry I’m so messed up and can’t seem to—I don’t know.”
Nellie seemed to be struggling with how to word what she was feeling. I might have been relationship-wary for the past decade, but I’d never struggled with communication the way Nellie seemed to.
I had a feeling it was our upbringing. I’d been raised by loving, involved parents, and had siblings. My entire family wouldn’t stand for me shutting down and retreating. Someone would hammer their fist on my door until I answered.
I didn’t know Nellie’s parents, but she’d mentioned on more than one occasion that their involvement in her life was limited. I could only imagine how that would affect her ability to communicate and let people in.
We drank our hot chocolates in the great room and played a game of chess on the old wooden set my grandpa left for me. Nellie was surprisingly cutthroat at chess. She kicked my ass three times until I finally surrendered.
“How are you so good at this?” I exclaimed after the third time she declared checkmate.
“Chess was the only game my parents were ever interested in playing.” Nellie shrugged, her smile slipping a little. “I could never get them to play Candyland or Trouble with me, but they’d play chess. Chess is a game of strategic thinking, and strategic thinking equals silence.”
The look on her face had made something clench in my heart. “Damn, that sucks. Family boardgame nights were a regular occurrence for us growing up. Our kid will be playing all the boardgames. Candyland, Trouble, Monopoly, Guess Who, The Game of Life, Mouse Trap, Snakes and Ladders. Chess too, because it’s awesome, but we’ll be rowdy about it.” I’d assured her with a wink, bringing that smile back to her eyes.
For dinner, Nellie insisted on cooking. She was somehow able to scrounge up the ingredients in my kitchen to make a pasta meal from canned tomatoes, jarred pesto, and cheese. We ate the rest of the salad with it.
The snow finally stopped around six o’clock, and after an hour and half of snowblowing my driveway, I was able to get Nellie home around eight.
Someone, likely Parker, had cleared the snow off the stairs leading up to her apartment and tossed down salt, but I still walked her up, hating that there were so many stairs leading to her front door.
“Thanks, Noah,” Nellie said as she unlocked her door. “For coming to the appointment, and letting me crash at your place.”
“It was my pleasure,” I assured her, leaning against the door frame and tossing her a self-assured grin.
“See you at work tomorrow?” she asked, and I nodded.
Getting Nellie out of my head after our snow day was an impossible feat. Even though work provided us both with a busy distraction, any moment I could, I was thinking about her, about how perfect she’d felt and how delicious she’d tasted.
But I wasn’t just consumed with my sexual attraction and compatibility to her. I kept thinking about the little things she’d revealed to me, the small truths she’d shared, and wanting to discover more about what made Nellie Banks tick.
We had two weeks until we could find out the results for the DNA test, but I wasn’t about to let the days pass without me proving to Nellie those results were more for her than me.
On Tuesday night the following week, I picked Nellie up at five o’clock for our date to the author signing event at Beyond The Pages for Atticus Connelly.
“This is so cool, I’ve never been to an author signing before,” Nellie said. She hadn’t read the book but that didn’t seem to lessen her excitement. I’d only gotten halfway through it myself, what with my thoughts so consumed by a certain brown-eyed girl. What I had read so far had been intriguing. Atticus was a good storyteller, and I was interested in hearing his process and what had inspired his writing.
There seemed to be a lot of similarities between Hartwood Creek and Coldwater Bay, especially with the witchy paranormal elements. Only in Atticus’s story, the witches hadn’t crafted a love spell, but a spell to ensnare the townsfolk of Coldwater Bay to do their evil bidding.
The signing event was on the second floor of the bookstore. The bookstore had an old birdcage elevator to the second level, but most people took the spiral iron staircase up because it took time to operate the elevator manually.
There were a lot of people at the event already, almost every folding chair was occupied. The Hartley triplets were in attendance, and their faces lit up at the sight of me and Nellie walking in together. They waved at us, then started whispering their conspiracies.
We managed to find two vacant chairs near the back of the room, and I helped Nellie out of her jacket, setting it on the back of one chair.
