Page 23 of Once Smitten, Twice Shy

I cave. I always cave with my mother. “Fine, but I’m only telling you this, and then no more questions. Promise?”

Mom crosses her heart. “Promise.”

“I’ve found someone who’s going to…help me…find my person.” It’s the truth, even if it’s incomplete. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Mom’s quiet for a few seconds, and then she smiles, wide and pleased as the barn cats after Miranda sneaks them bowls of cream. “Well,” she says, gathering up the candles and matches, smiling my way. “I like this plan of yours. It soundsverysmart.”

I frown as I pick up the cake. “Yeah?”

“ ’Course,” she says, patting my cheek. “Finding someone to help you findyoursomeone? I had the very same idea.”

An exasperated sigh leaves me as I follow her out of the kitchen.

—

The following morning, I’m frowning at my reflection in my bathroom mirror, inspecting it as I brush my teeth. Celia might be right—I think the beard’s gone from semi-neglected to survivalist guy living in a bunker.

I peer down, where Hector, my rescue blue nose pit bull, lies at my feet, head resting on his paws. “Whaddayoufink?” I ask around the toothpaste foam.

Hector lifts his head, tipping it sideways. Then heharrumphs and drops his head back to his paws.

“Yeah.” I lean over the sink and spit—I’ve got a sensory thing about having too much toothpaste foam in my mouth—then go back to brushing. “You’re right. I’ll trim it a bit.”

The door to my house bangs open, and I startle so badly, I nearly take out a tonsil with my toothbrush. I glare down at Hector. “Some guard dog you are.”

He rolls onto his back and stretches.

“Lazy ass,” I mutter.

“Unca Will!” Eleanor shoves the door shut behind her, then skips her way through my home’s open concept living, dining, and kitchen area, heading toward the bathroom. “Where ya going?”

“Ellie, do Mum and Mommy know you came here?”

While I was having my coffee and walking through my garden this morning, casually inspecting my veggies, pulling stray weeds, I noticed Helena and Demi’s car in the clearing beside my parents’ house.

My childhood home is just a couple of hundred feet from my place, which is a former carriage house that I fixed up and made my own when I moved back after college. Helena and Demi stay over at Mom and Dad’s when they hang around late and have a couple of drinks and driving back to their place in town above their boutique skin-care and soap shop wouldn’t be safe. I’m not worried that Eleanor’s still here on the property, just that she left the house and has a tendency to wander off without telling people where she’s wandering off to.

My niece is walking my home’s floorboards, lost in concentration, her small feet carefully avoiding the cracks. After one more step, Eleanor hops into my bathroom and smiles up at me. Then she crouches, scratching Hector’s stomach. He groans happily and wiggles on his back.

“Ellie,” I say again. “Do Mum and Mommy know you’re here?”

Finally she peers up at me, face scrunched in thought. “Nooo, but they were sleeping. So I couldn’t tell them.”

I give her a look. “You’re not supposed to leave your house without telling someone where you’re going.”

“It’s not my house,” she counters.

I sigh. “The house you’re staying in, I meant.”

“I told Nana,” she says, starting to climb the narrow threshold of my bathroom, hands and bare feet pressed against both sides of the doorframe.

“So Nana’s awake,” I say.

“ ’Course she is.” Ellie gives up on climbing, scrambles onto the toilet, and stands behind me. She reaches for my hair, quickly starting to braid a chunk in the back. “I woke her up. Then we got Hal because he was woke up, too.”

Hal, my nephew, is Ellie’s two-year-old little brother.

“Nana already make you pancakes?”

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