I couldn’t help it. I laughed, and what I was sure was the hand connected to the arm around my back, stretched wide and covered part of my belly, the tips of long fingers touching my belly button. I sucked in a breath.
“Can we do this more?” Lou continued on.
“We will,” the voice above my head agreed.
What was I going to do? Say “no thank you”? I could do this more often. I could do this every day.
But Dallas was married, and we were just friends. I couldn’t forget that.
What I couldn’t forget either was that he wasn’t going to be married forever.
And that didn’t necessarily mean anything good for me.
Chapter Twenty
The thingabout being neighbors with your nephew’s coach and your boss being related to said neighbor/coach was that if something happened to you, everyone they knew was going to find out your business.
And that was exactly what happened to me.
In those couple of days after the fire, Trip called and came by the house. A few of Josh’s friends from baseball found out, and their moms dropped off food. I got text messages from other parents on the team who had never given me more than a wave, letting me know that if I needed anything to give them a ring. Doing a good deed didn’t go unnoticed. Maybe I wouldn’t have money to pay the cable bill, but I’d have people willing to watch the boys or mow the yard. It was an outpouring of love I wasn’t familiar with that came at us—this time from people who were practically strangers.
Which was fine, because when I’d called my parents to let them know about how I’d burned myself—because I knew how much worse it would be if they found out another way—my mom had passed off the phone to my dad. I was used to her calling me an idiot, but the silent treatment was worse. The last person who needed to bottle things up was that woman.
I spent those first couple of days going to the salon to reschedule my appointments and talk to Ginny about what she could do while I was out for a while.A while. Best-case scenario seemed to be three weeks. Come hell or high water, I was going to be back at work in three weeks. I couldn’t afford to take off a week, but I absolutely couldn’t take off more than three.
When I wasn’t at the salon or moping around at home, holding my burned hand up high and cussing at it, I went to visit Miss Pearl at the hospital, who was being held there because of all the smoke she’d inhaled and she’d gotten a few burns too.
“How are you doing, Miss Pearl?” I asked the elderly woman after I’d set the vase of flowers I’d bought her at the grocery store on the table in front of her bed.
In a faded mint-green hospital gown, and with her hair limp and flat against her scalp, she’d blinked those milky blue eyes at me and sighed. “Half my house burned down, but I’m alive.”
Well, that wasn’t the positive statement I’d been expecting to get.
But she’d kept going. “You saved my life, Diana, and I never told you thank you—”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
She rolled her eyes. “I do. I’m sorry for messing up your name. You’re a good girl. Dal says I’m bored and like to push people ‘cause of it. I don’t mean any harm.”
Damn it. Sitting down in the chair beside her bed, I reached up and placed my hand over her cool one. “I know you don’t. It’s okay. I’m pushy too.”
That had the old woman smirking. “I heard.”
Before I could ask who she’d heard that from, she continued on. “Dal left, but he’ll be back by Wednesday, he said. That’s when they’re letting me out of this joint.”
He’d already warned me of that on Saturday when he’d woken up at my house and then went ahead to spend half the day with the boys and me, hanging around before he took off to visit Miss Pearl at the hospital.
But he hadn’t told me where he was going, and so I kind of snuck in, “Is he okay?”
You’d figure I would know you can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and Miss Pearl had a lot more experience bullshitting than I did. By the smile she gave me, she knew I was fishing, and the old woman said, “Oh, he’s fine. Just great.”
And that was all she’d given me. Damn it.
So a couple of days later, when I was lying on the couch with a glass of milk on the table and a smores Pop-Tart in one hand, watching television and wondering how the hell I was going to survive two more weeks without working, I was startled by a lawn mower roaring to life.
It took a couple of seconds for me to realize that the loud sound was coming from close by. Really close by.Was someone at my house?
Swinging my legs over the edge of the couch, I peeked over the back of it to look through the window at the side of the house. I saw nothing. I checked my phone as I stood up to make sure my dad hadn’t called and said he was coming over, but there were no missed calls.
