Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Delaney blinked, unsure of how to respond.
Lucas shrugged, adding, “That is, if you could even get the two of them in the same room together. The divorce seemed to draw a firm line there. I think they’ve been face to face maybe twice. You know, once the ink dried.”
She tried to form words.
Even something sarcastic.
A joke, maybe.
Nope.
Delaney settled on a lame, “They sound … lovely.”
“Yeah, some people just suck the good right out of you, I guess.” Lucas laughed darkly. “Let me say, next week should be very interesting.”
“Why?”
Oh.
The second the question slipped from Delaney’s lips, she realized the glaring answer that she missed. She doubted, especially if they were the type of people who cared about appearances, that his parents would miss their youngest son’s celebration of life. Even if their oldest son had been the only one who made sure that memorial would even happen.
“Jacob’s memorial,” she filled in before Lucas did.
He smiled sadly as he turned the engine off and removed the keys from the ignition, but rolled his shoulders indifferently before reaching for the latch on the driver’s side door to shove it open. “Well, I’ll deal with that when I get there, huh?”
Delaney didn’t answer, but Lucas hadn’t bothered to wait for a response before slipping out of the truck, and closing the door behind himself. She couldn’t help but notice that he went with that when-or-if-it-happens outlook a lot. He put things off if they weren’t an immediate cause of concern. Who was she to judge the way he chose to deal with his issues?
Including his parents.
Who the hell was she to talk there at all?
So, Delaney didn’t.
Climbing out of the truck as well, she leaned over the bed of the truck on the passenger side to watch Lucas reposition the bags of groceries further away from the gas cans he’d secured to the far corner with rope. He worked in a sober silence. Even if he wasn’t nervous, as he’d claimed earlier, she couldn’t discount how he might be feeling otherwise.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I can understand why, or if, you would rather not do this today.”
“Sweets,” Lucas grunted, shifting the pack of toilet paper with the bags, “we’re already here, and if I didn’t want to be, we wouldn’t have come. Let’s go inside. My balls are freezing off.”
“Nice,” Delaney muttered as she rounded the front of the truck to meet him at the grill.
She found her way tucked under his arm, close to his side, the second she was within his reach. Lucas dropped a firm kiss that lingered on the top of Delaney’s head as they crossed the snow-packed drive to head up the stairs leading to the wrap-around porch and the front door of the farmhouse.
“Sometimes, you gotta say it how it is,” Lucas told her when she reached out to knock on the glass.
As it were, someone already waited, distorted by the frosted privacy glass designed with etched flowers and vines up the long panes, just behind the door. In fact, he opened the door just as Delaney told Lucas, “Gracen will like that part about you.”
“Gracen will like what, now?”
When it came to his woman, Malachi Anders never missed a click.
Delaney learned that lesson very soon after meeting the man, and thankfully, it was a quality she appreciated about him. She never had to worry about her best friend finding herself heartbroken and alone like she once did because there wasn’t a soul on this earth who loved Gracen the way Malachi did.
“Nothing,” Delaney teased, grinning.
Malachi smiled wide. “Hey, you. Long time, no see.”
“It’s not been that long.”
“Long enough,” Malachi returned.
She couldn’t really argue.
Then, his gaze shifted to the man standing just behind Delaney on the porch, quiet and still but an indisputable presence all the same. Lucas loomed tall at her back, his shadow spilling over her and onto Malachi. She could tell by her position that he had a few inches of height on the man who answered the door.
“And you are …?” Malachi questioned, trailing off but keeping his tone friendly.
“Lucas Dalton,” came her companion’s smooth reply. He leaned around her side to stick out a hand for Malachi to take and shake, which her friend’s fiancé did. “Nice to meet you. I almost felt like I could see this place before we got here. Delaney described it—”
“Delaney?”
The shouted call—clearly questioned—came from deep within the house.
Instantly, Malachi’s stare cut back to Delaney.
A knowing gleam found her there.
“Yeah, babe,” he called back over his shoulder.
The patter of footsteps from somewhere inside came like a herd of elephants getting closer to the front door.
“Delaney!”
Gracen’s background shrieking continued while Malachi only shook his head and opened the front door wider with a gesture inside.
“Come on it, get out of the cold—coffee, tea?”
“Coffee,” Lucas muttered, stepping in behind Delaney in the entry enclave, “would be perfect.”