lot of good times together.”
“Johnny?” He stepped back and eyed the bike, taking in the pink paint, the wicker basket in front and what looked like fading silver sparkles on the bars. “You named this Johnny?”
“For Johnny Cash.”
“Oh yeah. I see the resemblance.”
“It’s not because of the way it looks, okay?” Her lips twitched. “It’s because the first few times I rode it, I felt like I was sitting on a ring of fire.”
He burst into laughter. She joined in, so free and joyful that he snorted all the harder, sending himself into a coughing fit that had him bent over with his hands on his knees.
“Careful.” She patted his back, once, twice. “Breathe, okay? It wasn’t that funny.”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“Good.” She delivered another whack on his back. “Because honestly, you’re no good to me if you’re dead.”
He wheezed again before glancing up and sideways to catch her eye. He’d meant to simply nod to let her know that he was fine.
Instead, he caught her watching him with something that most definitely wasn’t concern.
And for the briefest of seconds, she ceased pounding his back. Instead, her hand flattened, her palm warming his skin through his T-shirt.
For an even briefer moment, he gave thanks that he was already crouched over.
She jumped back. He thumped his chest and straightened.
“Well,” she said. “Why don’t we get this résumé done so I can, you know, get out of your hair before I use up all of naptime?”
She’s here for Millie. Not you.
“Yeah. Right.” He rested a hand on the bike. “Do you have a lock for Johnny? Or do you want to put it in the garage?”
“Somehow, I don’t think this is high on anyone’s must-have list.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want anything to happen on my watch.” He hefted the bike and nodded toward the door at the side of the garage. “Can you get that?”
She scooted ahead of him, opened the door and stepped back. He deposited the bike beside his car and returned to the sunshine.
“Okay,” he said, brushing his hands together. “Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later, after he’d finished spouting the résumé knowledge bullshit he’d used as an excuse to invite her over, he realized he’d gone through the entire schpiel on autopilot. His body was at the kitchen table, but his mind was stuck outside at that moment when he’d caught her looking.
It didn’t help that she was as unfocused as he was. She kept repeating herself, shaking her head and stopping midsentence. Like she was trying to work up the nerve to say something, but couldn’t quite do it.
He knew the feeling.
Come on, Xander. Résumé. Job. Focus.
He pulled his laptop closer and opened the alternate version he’d created, because yeah, he did have a few recommendations. “What I’d suggest is that you switch things around, set it up like this. See how much cleaner this one looks?”
“Oh, I like that. That font is crisper, and the way you’ve abbreviated the headings—that’s good. You’ve given it a really fresh feel.”
“The other thing is that these days, you have to assume someone is going to end up reading it on their phone.” He grabbed his phone and accessed both her original and his revision. “Check it out. See the difference?”
She leaned his way—so close that if he wanted, he could reach an arm around her and tuck his hand at her waist. Not that he was going to do it, but still.
“You’re right. It’s much cleaner now.” She swiped between the two versions, back and forth, back and forth.
The play of her fingers on the screen was almost hypnotic. He couldn’t look away from the length of her fingers and the careful simplicity of the rounded nails. There was something about them...some anomaly flashing in and out of his vision...
There it was. One nail—the left pinky—bore a faint coat of the palest pink.
“What’s that?” He asked before thinking, his own finger hovering over the nail in question but not quite touching.
“What’s what?”
“You have nail polish on only one nail. I was curious.”
For a moment, she seemed to pull in on herself, like a turtle retreating into its shell. The only sound was a soft sigh from Lulu, asleep in the patch of sunshine coming through the window.
Heather lifted her chin. “That’s something I started with Millie, when I was away. It’s so I always had something on me that I could look at and think of her.” She curled her hand in, running over the nail in question with her thumb. “Not that I needed the reminder,” she said softly. “But Millie loved seeing it on me.”
So why did you leave her?
The question burned on his tongue. It made no sense. Heather was obviously head over heels for Millie, and while he knew that jobs could be hard to find, he doubted that she had needed to go to the other side of the second-largest country in the world to find something.
But along with patience, prison had taught him the value of keeping his questions to himself.
He settled for a light tap on the nail. “That’s a good idea. Kind of makes me wish I could do something like that for Cady. Not that we have the long separations like you had. But sometimes...”
“Sometimes it feels like, even though you’re her parent, you’re still on the fringes of her life?”
Yeah. Heather got it. “Like she’s the Earth,” he said softly. “And I’m a satellite.”
She said nothing. Her dipped head, and the way she held her pinkie told him that they were in complete understanding.
It hit him that at some point over the conversation, one or both of them had scooted their chair closer. They were now sitting at the table, the tiniest width of the corner separating them. It would be so easy to slide his leg forward and bump her knee, so very easy to let his hand move from her fingernail to her hand and then make a slow ascent up her arm. He wouldn’t even have to stretch.
Nor would he have to channel his inner gymnast to lean across the tiny spit of laminate and kiss her. Gently at first, light and casual, slowly feeling his way into this until she decided which way they should go next.
Except that even as the thought tiptoed through his mind, she grabbed her papers and stood up, so fast that Lulu actually opened an eye.
If she was psychic, he was dead.
“Well. Thanks. You’ve given me some great suggestions, and I really appreciate it, but I should probably let you get back to—whatever.” She rose from the table and moved toward the door. All business. On a mission.
“Oh!” She stopped suddenly, three steps before the door. Thank God he’d been hanging back to watch the sway of her cheeks. Otherwise he would have landed flush against her.
Which probably shouldn’t sound as enticing as it did.
“This photo.” Her pink-tipped finger hovered over the glass of one of the few pictures in the room that didn’t feature Cady. “It’s...jeez. It has such a feeling to it. The way that door is covered by the vines, like it’s some dangerous secret.” Her laugh was pure self-deprecation. “It sounds so cheesy, but it’s really mesmerizing.”
“Thanks.”
She twisted around, eyes wide. “Did you take this?”
“Actually,