“Thank you, Laney. It was a pleasure meeting you as well. Now you get back to that hunky man of yours.” She winks and drops back to the couch.
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply, wanting nothing more than to get back to that ‘hunky man’—mine or otherwise—and thank him for this amazing day. He gave something back to me that I love and something I’ve missed, and for that I’m extremely grateful.
I’M ABOUT TWO SECONDS from walking over there and seeing what in the hell is taking so damn long. Laney has been in that house for ten minutes and now I’m feeling like I shouldn’t have let her go alone. We don’t know this woman, and for all I know she could have some psycho grandson living there. Mind made up, I jump from my truck and make my way across the road. Just as my feet hit the front porch, Laney comes barreling out of the door and straight into my arms.
“Are you okay?” Gripping her shoulders, I pull her back to inspect her body, needing to make sure she’s alright.
“I’m fine.” She swats away my wandering hands and throws herself back into my arms. “I want a wall.”
“You what?”
“I want a wall of my life,” she mumbles into my chest.
“Laney, you’re not making sense.” She unravels her arms from around my neck and takes my hand in hers, which is cold despite the warm weather. I bring her hand to my mouth, cupping it so that I can blow hot air over her fingers to warm them up.
“She has a wall full of photos. Everything from her wedding day to the day each of her kids were born to her grandkids’ soccer games. I want that.” Her eyes are misty and I can tell that this really matters to her.
“You’ll have that. Why is this bothering you?” I ask, dropping her hand so I can warm up the other one.
“You don’t know that I’ll have that. It’s not guaranteed. I’m almost thirty, Levi.” Her words are frantic and I can’t help but laugh. She’s worrying about things she shouldn’t be worrying about.
“Laney, I know it’s not guaranteed, but you can’t think like that. Anyone could die at any time from anything and lose out on a lifetime full of happy memories. But you can’t live your life worrying.” She takes a deep breath and nods. “You will have all of those things. I just know it.”
“Thanks,” she says, straightening her back and shoulders as though pulling herself back together. She looks at her hand that’s cupped against my mouth, and she furrows her brow as though she didn’t even realize it was there. “What are you doing?”
“Your hands are freezing. Which is totally odd, by the way, considering it’s nearly eighty degrees.”
“Hmmm. I didn’t notice.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Keeping her hand locked in mine, we walk to the end of the sidewalk, looking both ways before running across the road.
“Can we stop somewhere before you take me home?”
“Sure.” I open the passenger door and help her in before climbing in myself. “Where do you need to go?” I crank the key in the ignition and put the truck in drive.
“Just the grocery store down the road. I won’t be long.” I’m already pulling out of the parking lot by the time she finishes what she’s saying. I drive the three blocks to the closest market, and we both hop out of the truck when we arrive. “You don’t have to come with me.”
“I know I don’t,” I say with a shrug. But I want to. There was something about watching her today that I found extremely sexy. It wasn’t like at work where she is doing a job. No, today I could tell that she was doing something she loved. Her happiness shone through with every meal that she served, and it amazed me how she took the time to talk with nearly every single person there.
We walk into the grocery store and she snags a cart before taking off through the store like she’s a woman on a mission. She grabs a few gallons of milk, some orange juice, canned soup, canned vegetables and enough frozen meals to feed a grown man for a year. “You do realize you’re a chef, right?”
“Yes,” she laughs. She pushes up on her toes to reach for a bag of chips and her shirt rides up, exposing the curve of her waist. Her skin looks silky smooth and my cock stirs. Just thinking about her tight body writhing under me is enough to get me rock fucking solid. I’ve touched a lot of women over the years—women of all shapes and sizes—but no one’s body has ever compared to Laney’s. And as much as I’ve tried over the years, I have never been able to forget the way she felt under the palm of my hand.
“Can you reach that?” She whips around to look at me, and I clear my throat and step forward, hoping to God she doesn’t see my dick throbbing against my jeans.
“Umm . . . sure,” I stutter, mentally bitch-slapping myself for nearly getting caught ogling her—again. Flinging the bag of chips in the cart, I take the handle and follow her through the aisles. She throws in a box of granola bars and a couple boxes of cereal and then makes her way over to the medicine section, tossing in a box of cough syrup before telling me she’s ready to go. We head to the front of the store and get everything loaded on the conveyer belt. “Mind if I throw in some gum?”
“Not at all.” She stretches across the cart, grabbing a pack of my favorite cinnamon gum and throwing it in with the rest of the food.
“You remember that?”
She looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “Of course I remember. It’s ingrained in my senses.” A look of determination falls across her face. “I’ve thought about that taste—your taste—for years.”
My throat grows thick with emotion. Laney is staring at me, her heart one hundred percent on her sleeve, and I have absolutely no words for her.
“That’ll be seventy-six dollars and thirty-one cents.” Laney blinks and twists to face the cashier. Digging in her purse, she pulls out a credit card and slides it through the machine.
“That can’t be right,” she mumbles, sliding it again.