“C’mon in,” Skye said, opening the door wide as she moved into the living room. “We don’t want you to get mauled by the blood-hungry bears following the scent of your organic Peruvian-roasted coffee beans.”
Theo followed her without further prompting.
“I see you brought the car today. Didn’t feel like a poetic stroll this morning?”
He laid one hand casually along the mantel. “Oh, I got a refreshing stroll in much earlier. Went through the woods a good two or three more times. Communed with the bears.”
“Yeah?” Skye said, taking the second cup from his hand. She raised a brow at the mantel. “There’s a spider crawling toward your hand.”
She smiled as he snatched his hand up so quickly the daddylonglegs skittered in the opposite direction. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
Though she acted cool and collected, she found the coffee cup tremoring slightly as she shut the bathroom door. But then, in three minutes she’d gone from a dead sleep to drinking coffee with the ghost of her past. Her heart hadn’t adjusted quite yet.
“I can hardly believe it,” Theo called from the living room. “This house is unrecognizable.”
“Believe it,” Skye called back, her heartbeat slowing enough to allow her to take a sip of coffee and turn on the water. “This renovation took me every bit of the past three months.”
“Youdid all this yourself?”
The question was both infuriating and complimentary. It was the same fiery comment of his last night that made her want to dunk his head in the creek. She splashed some water on her face and called through the door, “Youdon’t think I could?”
“Given how it was before, I didn’t think anyone could, not single-handedly.”
Her annoyance eased as she splashed her face a second time.
The floorboards creaked as Theo moved from room to room.
Skye rubbed face wash into her cheeks.
It had taken quite some time, but she’d determined last night how to handle him—more specifically, how to handle herself around him. She was not going to be rude. She didn’thateTheo. Well, when she’d watched her mother at Food City scraping pennies at checkout last weekend, hate had crossedher mind. But she was not going to let hate lie there useless. No, what she was going to do was use that particular experience to fuel her behavior over the next few days.
There was nothing to gain by acting furious at Theo, and there was potentially everything to gain by treating him exactly like he wanted: as an old friend. So she would do that. She would remember the good ol’ days. For the sake of her father she would help Theo, because left to his own devices, he’d plant the seedlings sideways and drive the tractor into the creek. And when the opportunity came, she would act like the mature adult she was and communicate with him about her dad’s pay. Not overtly, of course, but in a subtle way, so that when the time was right, she would bring up a point that would make him pause and rethink the course of his actions. That would make him realize how unjust he was being.
How had the mother said it inMy Big Fat Greek Wedding? She would let him think he was the head of his own decisions, but all the while she would be the neck that turned his head in any direction she wanted.
This wasn’t going to be about what happened fourteen years ago. This wasn’t going to be aboutthem. It was just going to be about ensuring her parents got what they deserved.
Honestly, this was a golden opportunity.
All she had to do was avoid hating the parts she hated about him, appreciate the parts she had at one time truly appreciated about him, and to be sure, above all, not to let her heart get in the way.
“How’s your dad doing?” Theo called.
She cracked the door open an inch and peeked at the man standing in her dining room. Running his fingers down thelength of the dining room table, one hand resting in his pants pocket. The same jawline. The same broad, if not broader, shoulders filling out his shirt.
He had taken the best features of his youth and improved on them.
Frankly, it was irritating to see.
Skye closed the door and rummaged through her makeup bag for something to cover up the dark circles beneath her eyes. “Broken collarbone and some bumps and bruises all around,” she called back.
“Will he need surgery?”
“They don’t think so. He’s just going to have to take it easy awhile.”
“I’m sure that’s killing him.”
Skye opened the foundation case. “Mom caught him trying to sneak out to the tractor at 3:00 a.m. You have no idea.”
