Page 79 of Will Bark for Pizza
“Aunt Kira, will you come to my birthday party?” she asked, hope sparkling in her eyes.
“Absolutely, I will.”
Was Kira . . . staying? Or would she simply make the trip back? Fuck, I shouldn’t care what the answer was. It didn’tmatterwhat the answer was. We could never be anything more than friends.Friends. We could be friends.
“Hey, Grandma Connie wants you,” Kira said to Opal, nodding toward the crowd closer to the house.
“Uncle Beckett?” Opal said, looking at me as she started to walk away.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t overthink it.” With those words, she sprinted toward Connie. I stared after her as she disappeared into a sea of people. Many of them I recognized; several I did not. It was easier to focus on that—on anything else—other than the gravity of what an eight-year-old just said to me.
“I swear, some days Opal is just an old lady trapped in a kid’s body,” Kira said, her gentle laugh uncoiling the tension I’d unknowingly collected in my shoulders. “Speaking of old ladies, I heard you met some of the book club members.”
“This small-town life is sure something,” I mumbled.
“You planning to stay in Bluebell Springs, then?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest, accentuating parts of her I had no right noticing. I focused instead on the gooseflesh spreading across bare arms, wishing I’d brought along the flannel jacket in my truck to offer her. I’d sneak away the first chance I had to retrieve it.
“Yeah, I think I am.”
I followed Kira’s gaze back to the water, to the straggler duckling currently being wrangled by a parent.
“What about you?” I asked, despite knowing better. “You ever consider moving home?”
She flickered her gaze to mine, the setting sun deepening the blue of her eyes, reflecting gold flecks. Shit, when had I moved so close to her? I took a subtle step back to preserve the space between us.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“I’d say I’m good at keeping secrets, but somehow I don’t think that’d go in my favor.”
“You should have told me about the bookstore,” she said, agreeing with my statement. The malice from yesterday was missing entirely in this moment. “But maybe we just agree not to keep secrets from this point on?”
The request felt far more intimate than I think she intended, but I didn’t hesitate to answer. “No more secrets.”
“Good.”
“So?” I asked, scratching Husker’s head now that he was back to leaning against my legs as though anchoring me in place.
“There’s nothing left for me in Omaha, other than Lila.”
“Who’s Lila?”
“My personal assistant.”
“You meanDiana’spersonal assistant,” I corrected.
Her gaze instantly darted around, but no one else was within earshot due to the music and light roar of conversation floating through the air.
“No one heard me,” I reassured her.
She narrowed her gaze at me anyway, but her lips curled into a smile she wasn’t able to fight for long. I liked this. Far too much.
I glanced back toward the grill, but only Connor and Owen were there now. If I had any sense, I’d tell Kira to have a nice evening and seek out my buddies. It wasn’t as though she’d be alone. She had friends, too.
Yet my feet stayed rooted in place.
“Husker hates the apartment.” Her gaze dropped to him, still pressed against my jeans. He looked up at me, those giant bat ears making him look extra goofy. “We go for walks, but it’s not the same as having a yard or trails.”
