“Not what you needed with everything else that’s going on.” He held the door open for her and they stepped out into the sunlight.
“They come first. Always. My goodness—” She caught a glimpse of his muscled forearm and stared at it in shock. “I’m sorry, but those scratches look bad.”
“Ah.” He rubbed his arm with a reminiscent grin. “I got in the way of one of Tiny and Bungee’s disagreements.”
She stopped by her car. “You took Joy’s cat home with you?”
“He had nowhere else to go.”
“That was a nice thing to do.” She brushed her fingertips against his uninjured arm as she spoke, unable to resist the temptation to touch him. The brief contact reverberated through her. She lifted her gaze to Leon’s face and saw an answering darkening in his eyes.
I want more than a light touch. A delicious shiver tracked its way down her spine at the thought. So much for keeping her distance.
“It’s a habit I need to get out of.” A smile tugged the corners of his mouth upward. “Remind me to tell you sometime how I hooked up with Tiny.”
Flora laughed, nodding at the marks on his arms. “If Bungee wasn’t vicious, I’d consider offering to take him off your hands. A pet would be just the thing to help the boys settle in.”
“Bungee’s okay. He just hates dogs. And Tiny’s reaction to Bungee has been the same as it was when he first saw you.”
Flora raised her brows in a question. “He knocks him over and tries to suffocate him?”
Leon nodded. “Pretty much. Tiny loves everyone. He thinks Bungee feels the same way about him. All Tiny wants to do is kiss him, which provokes the cat into a state of hissing fury within seconds.”
“My sympathies are all with Bungee,” Flora said.
“The house has been like a war zone since Bungee moved in.” When she laughed, he shook his head. “Seriously. It’s like living in a cartoon.”
“I’m not promising anything, but why don’t I bring the boys over to meet Bungee this evening and we’ll take it from there?”
“Sounds like a plan. I’d invite you to dinner, but there’s just one problem.” He appeared so different when the conversation was light-hearted. That intensity in his eyes lifted and it was as if, for a few brief moments, he forgot to be sad.
“You mean we would have to stop your dog from smothering my boys between courses?”
He choked back a laugh. “Between us we should be able to protect them from any excessive outbursts of affection. No, I can’t invite you to dinner because I’m a horrible cook.”
There was a hesitant invitation in those words. He was batting the initiative over to her. Flora took a moment to think about it. Common sense told her getting in any deeper would be a mistake. She looked into Leon’s eyes and decided common sense was overrated. There was no question of getting in deeper. It was only dinner, for heaven’s sake, and they would be chaperoned by two boys, a cat, and a Tiny.
“I, on the other hand, receive high praise for my ’getti and meatballs from two notable connoisseurs.”
His smile told her that was the answer he had been hoping for. “You supply the food and I’ll provide the drinks. Non-alcoholic, of course. It’s a...” He paused, and she knew he was searching for the right word. Date? Too much and too soon. For both of them. “Deal.”
She watched him walk away toward his own car, a tall, broad-shouldered figure. The square of grass in front of the city hall was bordered by bright flower beds and the scent wafted toward her on the late-morning breeze. Sunlight filtered through the poplar trees and dappled the sidewalk. It was a lovely morning in a beautiful town and she felt the same stirring of excitement she had experienced when she first came to Stillwater.
This was her fresh start, the place where she could put bad memories behind her and allow her boys to grow and thrive. Even so, her excitement had been tarnished right from the start by the over-the-top article in the Stillwater Sentinel determined to save Stillwater from outdated medical practices. Flora had contacted the newspaper’s editor and complained about the tone of the report. She had been horrified at the criticism of local medics that was included in that article and the implication that she was behind it.
His response had been a half-hearted apology. The reporter had been overenthusiastic, he had explained. These days it was hard to get decent staff. The guy who wrote that article had left town one day without even bothering to hand in his resignation.
Despite the bad experiences, she had a job and a home here, a new life to carve out. She told herself her feelings about this place hadn’t deepened when she met Leon. How could they? Flora had no idea what he was carrying inside all that emotional baggage, and she wasn’t equipped to help him unpack.
I’m carrying too many bags of my own. And she had her boys to think of, as well as the hundred and one other things that had come hurtling her way since she made this move.
Sighing, she turned to open her car door, only noticing at the last minute the deep gouges in the paintwork all along the driver’s side.
It wouldn’t exactly be easy to concentrate on her afternoon appointments, but Flora knew she would have to force herself to focus away from the most recent act of vandalism. Life hadn’t been easy since Danny’s death. Alone, pregnant, and grief-stricken, then coping with newborn twins...it would have been easy to cave under the pressure. But she’d held it together, returning to work part-time when the twins were six months old and full-time just before their first birthday.
It was her approach to life. Sleeves up. Head down. Plow on.
And maybe it had been her
