“Hmm,” she said, drawing out the sound. “And that ‘woolgathering’ wouldn’t have to do with a pretty young redhead that’s new to town, would it?”
Goodness gracious, this town!
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said dryly.
The elderly woman cackled delightedly. “Sure, sure,” she said. “Keep your secrets—but fix that door!”
She returned to the house with careful steps, not stopping to say anything more. Garrett knew there was a reason he liked the old lady. She might drop hints about local gossip, but she wasn’t likely to badger him about it.
Besides, she wasn’twrong. Garrett had been able to think of little else beside his kiss with Eleanor for the last few days. He was normally a good, solid sleeper, but he’d spent the previous several nights dissecting and inspecting their kiss from every angle. Had she liked it? What did this mean between the two ofthem? Was he ready for a romance? What should he do next? Did he want to kiss her again?
This last question, at least, was easy to answer. He very much wanted to kiss her again. Many times, if possible.
It made him a little nervous how much he wanted to kiss her again, in fact.
When Maria had left him, it had gutted him. He hadn’t just found himself missing the woman herself, although he had missed her, of course. He’d missed her desperately. But maybe even more than that, he’d found himself grieving the life he’d planned to have with her. When she’d called off their wedding, she had also called off the future they’d anticipated together.
The idea of giving someone else control of his future again was scary.
For ten years, he hadn’t considered it worth it to trust someone else with shaping his life. He’d wanted to be in charge. Just him. Yes, life would always have its unpredictable elements, but all the decisions had come from Garrett and Garrett alone. He’d liked it that way.
And then he’d met Eleanor Ridley. And she made him wonder if maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t worth taking a risk to get to spend more time with her. To get to sit near her by the fire in that front room she was doing up, to get to taste some of the cooking she did on that new stove of hers. To just talk to her.
And, yes, to kiss her. He wanted to do a fair bit of that.
But what didshewant?
He asked himself the question for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time, he reminded himself that there was only one way to get an answer.
He was going to have to talk to Eleanor.
Talking, he thought as he undid all the work he’d done to hang the door, this time putting it on correctly.My favorite.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
By Sunday morning, Eleanor had driven herself to distraction, and even keeping her hands busy was no longer helping. It had been three days since she’d kissed Garrett, or maybe he’d kissed her. She didn’t know which, not even after reliving the experience a thousand and one times. But what she did know was that they had kissed and then he had sort of… run away?
It did not seem like a good sign, all things told.
“You probably rushed it,” she muttered to herself as she tried to install a flower box outside her new picture window. It was, predictably, not going well. If only Eleanor knew somebody who was good with these kinds of things!
Oh, wait. Shedid… or at least shehaduntil she’d kissed him and scared him off.
“The two of you just agreed to be friends,” she said, looking at the way the flower box was supposed to hang, per the instructions, and the way it was absolutely not doing that in real life. “Now you’ve ruined it. He won’t want to be your friend anymore. And you have nobody but yourself to blame.”
“Are you talking to those flowers?”
The voice startled Eleanor so badly that she dropped the flower box directly on her foot.
“Oh, ow! Ow!” she exclaimed, hopping around a bit. Garrett quickly put an arm around her waist to help her balance.
“Shoot, sorry,” he apologized hastily. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The ache in her toes, which had been protected a bit by her sneakers, faded as quickly as it had come. She put her foot back down on the floor and was relieved when she didn’t feel any additional pain from setting weight on it.
“Don’t apologize,” she urged him. “I was just… muttering, and I got all caught up in it.”
“Well, still,” he said, his usual gruffness back as she disentangled herself from his supporting hold. “Next time, I’ll announce myself before I get quite so close.”
