Page 27 of Holding On To Good

There’d been times over the past few years as Eli’s professional career started taking off, when Urban had felt a slight twinge of envy. But it wasn’t Eli’s fault Urban’s own dreams of playing ball in the majors had been cut short.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

An accident on icy roads had taken his parents’ lives and irrevocably altered every plan, dream and goal he’d had for his future. Leaving him with no other choice but to do whatever it took to hold his family together.

Edging closer, her expression softening with sympathy, Miranda set her hand on his forearm, like she’d done hundreds, thousands of times before. Like she still had the right to do so now. “You don’t have to pretend,” she whispered, her fingers cool against his skin, her light floral perfume invading his senses. “Not with me. Playing ball meant everything to you.”

He stepped back so that her hand fell from his arm. “That was a long time ago.”

“It was forever ago,” she agreed, her tone wistful. “But sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday. And now here we are, both back where we started.”

“I’m not back.” He’d never left. He lifted his bag of food, an indication that his dinner was getting cold. “Have a good evening.”

She studied him, searching his face—for what, he had no idea. Whatever it was, she must not have found it, because she inclined her head, a gracious acceptance of his not-so-gracious dismissal.

“Thank you. I’m sure we will.” She hesitated. “Urban, I…” But then she exhaled slowly. Shook her head slightly. “It was good to see you.”

He nodded.

Then turned and walked away.

Chapter Five

Sitting back on her bare heels, Willow turned up the Cat Stevens song playing through her earbuds. Somewhere around sip eleventy of champagne, she’d gotten the brilliant idea to pull up a small section of carpet in the front room to see if there was a contractor’s wet dream underneath—original hardwood floors. She’d put in her wireless earbuds, turned on her music, taken off her high heels and done what a badass boss did best.

Gotten down to business.

Except her fingers weren’t working right. And the floor kept swaying, tipping and turning this way then that way. She’d been tugging and pulling and yanking at the carpet and hadn’t managed to do more than work up a sweat and ruin her nails.

She’d told her sisters getting a manicure was a waste of time for someone in her profession, but they’d wanted a bonding experience, so off she’d traipsed to Candy’s Salon with them early this morning. Now her once pretty dark blue nails were chipped.

She scowled at the floor. Stupid carpet.

Stupid, dumb, tipping and turning carpet. If it’d stay still, maybe she could get a good grip on the short strands. She tried again. One moment she was yanking as hard as she could. The next, she was flat on her back, blinking up at the popcorn ceiling.

Well, she was not giving up—though she was going to rest here for a minute. Just until the room stopped spinning. But then she’d get herself up and back to the task at hand. It didn’t matter how long it took or what she had to do, she would rip this carpet out. She would persevere against moving floors and spinning rooms and uncooperative carpet.

Rolling over, she pushed herself onto her hands and knees and crawled the few feet to the corner. Squinted until the carpet came into focus then reached for it again, only to freeze when, in the moment of silence between song changes, she heard a soft thud.

She glanced at the fireplace, where she’d heard something scurrying about earlier.

Hence the headphones. What you couldn’t hear couldn’t hurt you.

Or try to eat your face off with their sharp little rodent teeth.

“We talked about this,” she said to whatever was living there. It was probably a mouse. A tiny, harmless mouse that was more scared of her than she was of it and had absolutely no interest in chewing on her nose. “You stay in your corner and I’ll stay in mine.”

When a giant rat didn’t leap out and latch on to her face, she figured they had a formal agreement. She pushed herself up to her feet and picked up the champagne bottle as she decided the best way to—

Something touched her shoulder and she whirled around, a scream stuck in her throat, the bottle in her hand swinging out like a club.

And barely missed clipping the large, hairy man in front of her on the side of his fuzzy jaw.

Her eyes widened so much she was afraid they’d pop right out of her head and roll off. “Urban! Oh, my God! I’m so sorry. I thought you were a rat. Come to eat my face off.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“A big rat,” she continued, lifting her arm to indicate height, the bottle arcing up, almost hitting his chin, drops of champagne flying. He stepped back. “You know. Tall enough to tap a woman on her shoulder.” Something about that sentence seemed wrong, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why. Probably because rats couldn’t actually tap someone.

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