“Kelsey—”
“You know how I know? I know because he broke up with me. I know because I use my real name publicly and I’m easy to find online and he has never contacted me, never once in nine years. That’s how I know.”
Maggie sank down on the bed next to her, put an arm around her. “Okay.”
Kelsey leaned in before remembering. She drew back. “Don’t, you’ll hurt yourself.”
“Worth it.”
“No, it’s not.” Kelsey drew her to her feet, supported under her arm when Maggie stiffened with the effort. “I know I’ll run into him at some point. But I’ve got nothing to say about him, Maggie. Please.”
Maggie patted the top of her head as she used to do when she was barely thirty and Kelsey barely ten. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is. I’m here for you and only you.”
And for a cookout at Aaron’s house…to meet his new wife...and no doubt run into Trevor. Oh, she should have said no. Persuasive Aaron with his stupid happiness.
“Enough for now,” Maggie said. “I have freezer cookie dough and reality shows. Let the girls’ night begin.”
* * *
For the next several hours on the TV screen, first bakers and then glass blowers competed to make their dreams come true. Maggie and Kelsey laughed at the forced drama and cried at the real drama of people trying to change their lives for the better, to better others’ lives with art. Afraid to look at the clock, Kelsey figured they probably went to sleep a little before six in the morning. She moved her alarm to noon instead of eight-thirty, and she retired to her old room overflowing with more feelings than she knew how to catalogue.
Then she was awake.
Not gradually but wide awake, sitting up in bed. She checked her phone: 9:15 a.m.
A quiet thump came from the kitchen. Must have been what jarred her from sleep. Maggie was up already? She’d told Kelsey not to expect her out of bed until late in the day. Maybe she needed something. She kept pain meds and food bars by her bed, but… Kelsey swung her feet to the floor and padded out of her room, down the hall.
The sounds continued as she neared her aunt. Clattering pans, clinking dishes, the shutting of a cupboard door that cut off as though Maggie had caught it to stop the noise.
Kelsey marched into the kitchen with a lecture prepared. She was here to take care of things. Maggie had to let her. Had to ask if she needed something. Had to resist a compulsion to reorganize if she could hurt herself doing it.
“Mag—” Her voice stalled in her throat as her breath did the same.
It wasn’t Maggie standing in the kitchen with an armful of dishes. It was a man, way too tall, sandy-blond hair all sexy-messy-spikey on top, shoulders impossibly wide, his back to Kelsey. He had gone completely still at one syllable from her voice. To his credit he did not drop the dishes.
Slowly he turned to face her. His eyes were wide, his lips parted. His muscled chest was motionless.
“I locked the door.” If she’d tried to say something stupid, she couldn’t have done better.
He didn’t breathe, didn’t move.
“Trevor,” she said, and he blinked at his name. “What are you doing in my aunt’s house?”
At nine in the morning. Without an invitation. Messing up the kitchen. And dang it, she knew she’d locked the door.
“Helping Maggie,” he said.
Kelsey’s gaze cast over the kitchen for answers while her heart pounded. He had moved pots and pans up from the lower cabinets, down from the upper cabinets, to careful stacks on the counter. Also on the counter sprawled a cluster of keys, including his signature bright-orange fob resembling a construction cone.
“Since when do you have a key to her place?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple dipping, drawing her eyes to the V-neck of the ocean-blue T-shirt that formed to his physique and set off his eyes in all sorts of distracting ways.
“Answer me,” she said.
It was the one thing he seemed unable to do. He swallowed again, set the dishes onto the counter with a quiet clatter, turned to face her again. And stared at her.
