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I hurry down the stairs and catch sight of Marian. She’s frantic, talking a mile a minute and bombarding Aubrey with questions. The woman who’s slowly and unwittingly stealing my heart sets her hands on Marian’s shoulders.
“Listen, it’s going to be okay,” she tells her.
“How?” Marian wails. “I saw the contractor out there with chainsaws. Neighbors called me to ask if the house was still standing.”
I nod a hello at Caleb as he enters with Lauren.
“Of course, it’s still standing,” he says, lugging their bags in. “Dalt said they’d hold down the fort.”
Yeah, and I feel like Aubrey and I did. We also had sex about five feet thataway and wedged a huge drift between us when she suggested we only had a “fun” hookup, and that was that.
Actually, it was my blooper first, saying that I enjoyed hooking up with her. That didn’t mean it was a “hookup” in my mind. I was merely applying the term as a verb.
I’m such a mess.
“Dalton and I cleaned up most of the debris,” Aubrey calmly tells Marian. “Hayes is out there cutting up the tree. Fortunately, it missed the house.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Marian says feebly in gratitude and awe, pressing her hand to her breastbone. “Thank goodness it did.”
“And like I told Lauren,” Aubrey says, “the plants will need to be replaced.”
“And that’s doable,” Lauren chimes in.
“But the house is fine. The whole property is fine,” Aubrey says.
“I even walked around and checked the two cottages,” I add, speaking up for the first time. “Nothing hit them.” Marian is living in one while Caleb and Lauren occupy the other. They’re both intact.
“You mean the B&B is fine?” Marian asks, smiling at me over Aubrey’s shoulder. “Thanks to the two of you?”
I nod.
“See, if Dalton says he’ll hold down the fort, you can believe him,” Caleb says. “He’s too professional to let a property suffer.”
Professional? Ha. Not according to Aubrey, I’m not.
“You make good partners,” Lauren praises, smiling at us both.
About that. No, it turns out we don’t. And we won’t try to pair up again.
Bitterness controls me, and I hate it.
“From the drive up here, I could tell it was going to be okay,” Caleb says as he sets the bags on the small table in the foyer. “They managed to clear the road closure sooner than expected, and I knew that was a good first sign.” He grins, then pecks a kiss on Lauren’s temple. “In fact, we should celebrate the good fortune that the storm spared us.”
I could use a good drink.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Lauren says. “We should all go out tomorrow night.”
Caleb nods. “I like the way you think, sweetheart. We can head out and let loose.”
Aubrey rubs the back of her neck, not replying.
“It’ll be like old times,” Caleb tells me.
I’m still reeling from my fight with Aubrey and understanding she’s not feeling the same connection that I do for her.
The old times? What is he suggesting? We party hard like were naïve twentysomethings? My more recent “old times” included Johanna, and I don’t want to think about her at all.
Going out might be a decent way to avoid thinking about my last heartache. It might be a smart idea to avoid dwelling on the woman who’s trying to bash apart my heart that’s still piecing itself back together.
