Page 36 of Almost Home
“It means I’d like that—for you to get to know me.”
She blinked in a way I recognized, a quick double-blink that I remembered signaled nerves and anticipation.
My stomach twisted low. I’d seen that double blink before and good things always came after it. “Good.”
“Here you go, Sarah, love.” The bartender set another thin glass flute with bubbling liquid down in front of her.
“So, what do you want to know?” she asked, toying with the base of the glass now nestled on a Silver Ridge Brewing coaster.
And though I knew it made me seem a jealous jerk, more than an idiot, I couldn’t stop myself from asking the least interesting question possible as a way to ease in. “How about why the bartender’s calling youlove?”
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
Sarah
What on earth?
Was I really hearing that slight twinge of jealousy in his voice? “That’s really what you want to know?”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed his face before he shook his head. “No. But I haven’t talked to many beautiful women lately, so I might be a bit rusty.”
His response had a dual effect. First, my stomach flipped at the compliment. Second, a little streak of jealousy shot through me at the idea that he had, at any point, talked to beautiful women and knew what to say. But of course he had. It’d been twenty years.Twenty. We’d both lived separate lives. I’d had my own relationships and made my own mistakes.
Though so many of those mistakes had been with him. Yes, they’d come after a loss I couldn’t control, but then I’d hurt him. Yet again, the flimsy apology I’d made, the lack of a real conversation about everything that had happened, threatened to crush me.
But Wilder was here. He’d come willingly, if prompted by Bruce. And he’d confessed how difficult this was—being close. Trying.
So I could move past that niggling unfinished feeling and be here, too.
“Well, you don’t have to be anything but you. Rust and all. And in case you’re actually wondering, I’m pretty sure he calls anything remotely femalelove.”
“False. He hasn’t called any of the other women at the barlovesince we sat down.”
“You’ve been listening?”
“I’m trained to stay aware.”
I glanced around, noting a handful of other women at various points across the bar. If the bartender really didn’t call anyone else by the nickname, maybe it was notable. But mostly? No. Not newsworthy. “Kieran is an acquaintance and a nice guy, but there’s nothing going on between us or anything. I haven’t dated anyone since—for a long time.”
And at some point, I’d finish the original sentence there, but not right this minute.
As much as I’d been thrilled to hear him apologize so sincerely and declare his desire to get to know me, I wasn’t ready to lay it all out there.
“How is that possible?”
My mental defense of what I hadn’t told him had distracted me. “What?”
“That you haven’t dated. I’m taciturn and introverted—for me, it makes sense. But you?” His eyes skated over my face from hair to forehead, down over my nose and lingering on my lips before sweeping back up along my jaw and cheek to meet my eyes again. That line of his gaze felt like the drag of his fingertips, barely palpable and yet utterly scintillating. “You’re more beautiful than ever, Sarah. I mean it.”
My stomach swooped low. I thanked the Sarah of an hour ago who’d taken an extra few minutes on her hair and makeup, even though I knew, if he was at all the same man he’d been, those things weren’t what drew him to me.
“Thank you.”
A big ruckus shot up when someone did something over at the shuffleboard tables. I didn’t know the game, so I had no idea what that might be, but I smiled over at them and clapped along with the people who had joined in the applause. It was a good excuse to look away from his intensity and pull in a breath.
Wilder had been studying me, and his eyes didn’t waver when I turned back to the bar and caught him. I’d forgotten what it was like to be the focus of his attention, or maybe I’d never known what it was to be thisman’sfocus. He’d been seventeen the last time we’d been anywhere together like this.
“So Bruce is a character,” I said, hoping to ease the quiet between us.
