Page 82 of V is for Valentine
It wasn’t going to happen, which left him to decide whether he was going to fake it when she returned home or avoid her. His parents would be back, and he’d made an offer on a new house only a quarter of a mile from his warehouse. He had no reason to see her unless they bumped into one another.
Or she sought him out.
He turned away from the window and was on his way to the kitchen when his doorbell rang. He didn’t get many visitors at his parents’ house. Sandra and no one.
It was indeed no one.
A doorbell ditch?
Danny looked up and down the street, then noted the tracks in the snow heading around the back of his house. He stepped out to investigate, then saw the bright red envelope lying on the stoop. After shooting a glance in both directions, just in case snowballs were involved, he picked up the envelope and headed back into the house.
When he opened it, he found note cards, the kind the English teachers had tried to get him to use in the good old days to outline thoughts before writing an essay.
He turned the cards over, and his heart jumped when he read “A is for Awesome.”
Frowning a little, he flipped to the next card. “B is for Been Thinking About My Next Move.”
The frown cleared and his mouth began curving up at the corners. “C is for Compromise.”
He hoped so.
The next card read “Steel yourself. I’m going to skip letters.”
His smiled widened as he read the last card. “W is for Warehouse…see you there?”
*
Felicity wrapped herarms around herself. Danny’s warehouse was startlingly clean—the debris piles, the office framing, the protruding pipes were gone—but the place could still use a heating system. The propane heater she’d set up was doing its job, but once she stepped out of the heat zone, it was freezing.
The sound of an engine brought her head up, and she, who’d spent the last several days convincing herself that this was old territory, surprising Danny, had to fight to hold ground. She’d never hung herself out there like this before, with her heart on the line along with everything else.
Trust that he loves you.
She did. He did. There was nothing to worry about.
So why was her heart about to beat its way out of her chest?
Because nothing was easy with Danny?
Or because she just wanted everything over and done so that she could settle into spending time with the guy she’d loved for a lot longer than she’d suspected.
The keys rattled in the door, and she moved closer to the table beside the glowing heater.
Danny stepped through the doorway, then stopped as he took in the scene—the folding table covered with her mother’s good tablecloth, the china, a vase of red roses, red napkins. Polished silverware. A large take-out hamper from Le Petite Holly.
His gaze met hers across the concrete floor. “Okay. I wasn’t expecting this.”
“What were you expecting?” she asked as she stepped away from the table.
“You had me stumped.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I don’t recall that happening very often during our long and checkered past.”
“Only every day for the past few weeks.”
She moved a few steps closer, literally breathing easier, but there were things to address before she could relax. “You didn’t act stumped. Not until the end.”
“When you stubbornly held your just-friends ground.” He shifted his weight. “Where are we on that issue?”
