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“Take the next exit.” I point at the upcoming sign. It’s been forty minutes since we left Wild West, and the only time I’ve opened my mouth was to give directions. Anytime Chase tried to initiate conversation, I started baby-talking to Mike. Chase took note and stopped talking thirty-five minutes ago.
“Not that I’m not happy that you agreed to let me drive you home, but you aren’t, by any chance, leading me out to the middle of nowhere to kill me and bury my body, are you?” He pulls the car off of I-45, heading west.
“As much as that might give me pleasure at this exact moment, no. I’m not.” I cuddle Mike closer. “I’m taking you home.”
“I thought you had an apartment downtown.”
“I do. I’m taking you to my parents’ place.”
That quiets him for the next twenty minutes as we pass less retail shops and subdivisions and more split-rail fences and open spaces.
“This is it,” I say when we pull up to the red brick ranch-style house.
Chase’s headlights illuminate the metal wind chimes hanging from the porch.
“Home sweet home,” I sing, a sense of peace coming over me just looking at my family’s old house. I’ve kept it all these years. It’s become a place of refuge for me. Where I grew up. Where I mourned. Where I started my company.
Oddly quiet, Chase gets out of the car, circling around to open my door and help me out. Gripping Mike extra tight, not wanting him to get loose and then lost in the woods, I lead Chase up the porch steps to my front door.
“Well. You came all this way. I might as well let you in for a bit.”
A little of that trademark Moore smirk pulls through. “I’d like that.”
Sighing like I’m put out, instead of oddly nervous at Chase seeing my childhood home, I kick the rock by the porch post and unearth the house key.
“Are you for real? People actually hide keys under rocks?” He looks up and down the street. “Aren’t you afraid people will find it and rob you?”
“Come on, city boy.” I unlock the front door, setting Mike down in the small foyer. “Let’s sit you down a spell before you have a conniption right here on my momma’s front porch.”
He looks stunned. “I know I have a lot to apologize for, but right now, when you talk like that, I want to do more than have a conniption with you on your momma’s front porch.”
My treacherous nipples perk up at the thought.
“Let’s just see how the apology goes, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re not off to a very good start, Mr. Moore.”
31
CHASE
Her house is like something out of an AMC western special. Like old-time America. I’ve traveled quite a bit in my life, but usually to places like Europe or the tropics. I haven’t been south, except once to Miami, and that just isn’t the same thing.
The chandelier over the breakfast nook in her kitchen is an honest-to-goodness wagon wheel.
I love it.
I’m not the only one. Mike leaps up onto the Formica counter and curls into an empty basket. Taking a fluffy tea towel from out of a drawer, Bell drapes it over him like a blanket.
Bringing the cat was a good move on my part, I think. Much better than the Elvis impersonators.
“Would you like some water?”
“Yes, thank you.” I feel oddly formal with this woman who owns my heart. That’s all my doing.
“We don’t have bottled. Just tap.” She opens a wood-grained upper kitchen cabinet, the kind with scrollwork on the front.
