That was when she felt it. Like starting to see what shape a sculpture would take. That itch she got when she knew she was onto something and inspired enough to see it through to the end. Compelled. “We should finish it ourselves,” she said.
She turned to face Elliot and found he was already looking at her.
“You really want to?” he asked. His face looked surprised that she’d offer to do anything with him, let alone this. But at the edges of his disbelief, she detected what she thought was hope. Excitement.
Her stomach jumped. She was playing with fire. “I’ve been thinking about it more—independent of anything you’ve suggested—and I’ve decided weshouldbe friends. Like actual friends. Notfriends.” She arched her brow. “And this is something I would do with a friend.”
He cocked his head to the side. “So now you want to be my friend. ‘What’s your angle?’ ”
She rolled her eyes. “Take the win, Hodges.”
“Okay,” he answered with a lopsided grin. “Let’s finish Forest’s Bridge together.”
The slanting sun painted his face in gold, and for a moment, she saw all of Elliot, right down to his beating heart, and she could almost imagine that he saw all of her.
“If earlier,” he started, his eyes on the water, “I’d told youthat you looked really beautiful, would you have let it go to your head?”
The compliment, hypothetical or not, rearranged something inside her chest. She rolled her lips under her teeth and faced the sunset. “Probably,” she responded, suppressing any trace of delight curling around the edges her voice. “I’m incredibly susceptible to flattery. Not to mention, it’s not the kind of thing you say to a totally platonic spouse.”
She felt his warm gaze against her side profile as he said, “That’s what I was worried about. Good thing I kept that thought to myself.”
“Thank god for that,” she replied. Then she turned her heels on the pea gravel patio and walked inside.
Lainey could no longer pretend she didn’t want anything more from Elliot Hodges than access to medical insurance and a way out of town. She wanted…something.
And she wished more than anything that she knew what that was.
Chapter 12
On a Steaming Hot Tin Roof
48 Days until Busy Season78 Days until the Longest Day of the Year
“I thought we agreedto work on Forest’s Bridge?” Elliot asked, when Lainey’s first lesson in DIY took them to cabin one, the recently vacated turtle cabin that now housed a family of raccoons.
She tied up her mop of red hair with a scrunchie, tightening the ponytail at the base with two fingers—the way she did when she meant business. “Oh, you’re not ready for Forest’s Bridge.”
“Is this aKarate Kidsituation where you spend several months tricking me into washing your car and painting your fence?”
She faced him. Lainey didn’t wash her car, because rain existed, and she didn’t have a fence because Elliot hadn’t installed one, despite the increasing number of weirdos wandering into her yard. Just the other morning, an individual with a handlebar mustache, dressed as a turn-of-the-century newspaper boy, was taking selfies and knocked on her living room window because she was “in his shot” while she’d been minding her own business in her own house.
“This is because I can’t, in good conscience, watch you poke around an electrical panel in the turtle cabins without immediate intervention.”
He nodded at her. “Surprisingly thoughtful of you.”
“And if you die by electrocution while removing a UVB heat lamp next to a taxidermied muskrat, the Bauers are going to be all the way up my ass. When someone gets murdered, they always suspect the spouse.”
She tossed him balled-up gloves from the pocket of her overalls.
He caught them in the air. “I take back the thoughtful part.”
“Remember that the next time you feel overwhelmed with the desire to strangle me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he responded “Oh, you’ve got a…” He leaned down and gently swiped her cheekbone. “There,” he said, lowering his hand and putting on his gloves.
“Oh. Thanks.” She lifted her hand to also wipe her face for some unknown reason, but whatever it’d been had evaporated into the crisp spring air, and she was left staring at him feeling…unsettled.
Lainey needed to breathe. And to look at something besides his mouth.
