Hometown Cinderella. Victoria Pade
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she said.
Cam nodded toward his front door. “After you.”
Eden went out into the cold again and Cam followed her as she retraced her steps, keeping her fingers crossed that peace might really have been reached between them.
The inside of her house was remarkably cooler than the inside of his and Eden knew she’d made the right choice in asking him for help.
Cam took the lead once the front door was closed behind them, using his flashlight to help navigate around and through packing boxes and debris to get to the basement.
Eden followed, happy not to be going down into the blackness of the basement alone.
The circuit box was under the stairs and one flip of the main breaker set music playing upstairs, letting them know it had worked.
“There’s a light here,” Cam said, pulling a string that turned on a bare bulb under the steps to prove his point.
Eden hadn’t realized until that moment how close they were standing. Or in what position. But they were standing very close in the small space beneath the stairs, and he’d pivoted away from the breaker box to face her.
They were so close that she had to look almost straight up at him, the way she might have tipped her head if they were about to kiss.
Which, of course, they weren’t.
But once more that strange Cam-trance thing happened and she suddenly found herself staring up into his dark eyes, thinking about what it might be like if he did kiss her. If he just leaned down a little and pressed his lips to hers.
Cam Pratt, of all people…
Then it registered that her mind was wandering again and Eden yanked herself out of it, stepping from under the stairs in a hurry.
“I’d better go turn some things off or this is going to trip again,” she said as her exit excuse, dashing up the steps far ahead of Cam.
She had turned off the stereo and some of the lights by the time he reached her, and she could hear the heat switching on.
“I really appreciate this,” she told him as he headed for the front door.
“I keep one of those lights that work on batteries stuck to the wall next to the breaker box down there so when this happens I have that option, too. In case the flashlight isn’t easy to get to for some reason.”
“That’s a fabulous idea,” she said, too effusively because she was overcompensating for calling him stupid all those years ago. She toned it down and added, “Plus I’ll be more careful about how many things I have on at once. But you know how it is when you move—I was going from room to room looking for what I needed in all the boxes so every light was on.”
He merely nodded. There wasn’t anything to say to her ramblings. But he was watching her with those penetrating eyes again as they stood at her door. Eden wasn’t sure what else to say, either.
Cam broke the silence—and the meeting of their eyes—by glancing at her pajama pants again.
“Ducky pants, huh?”
“They were my back-to-the-cold-of-Montana present to myself.”
He sighed. “Well, I guess you’re right, you can’t hate somebody in ducky pants.”
This time Eden smiled. “Does that mean I’ve been granted amnesty?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead he raised his gaze to hers once again and gave her a small, forgiving smile. “Yeah, I suppose it does.”
Eden wasn’t sure if she’d been carrying around even more guilt than she’d realized or if it had something to do with how bowled over she’d been by this guy from the start, but the relief she felt was like a huge, heavy weight lifted from her shoulders. And she was far more pleased than seemed warranted, too.
But she decided to simply enjoy it and smiled back at him a second time. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.
He merely nodded and opened her door to go.
“And thanks again for help with the breaker box,” she called to his back as he walked across her porch.
He didn’t turn around, he just raised the hand that held his flashlight and said, “Anytime.”
And as Eden closed her door to the sight of that man who had so enthralled her already tonight, she was a little shocked at just how tempting it was to turn on every light in the house, hit the microwave start button the way she had earlier and trip the breaker all over again.
Just so she could take him up on that offer and get him back there.
Cam Pratt.
Of all people.
Chapter Four
“Help has arrived. Bearing coffee and doughnuts.”
Eden craned around a stack of boxes in her living room to see her sister Eve come through her front door bright and early the next morning. “I’m saved! I can’t find my coffeemaker.”
Eve went directly to the kitchen to deposit the cups and doughnut box. Once she had, she turned to Eden, who had followed her, and gave her a hug.
“I’m so glad you’re back!” Eve said just before she let go of Eden.
“Me, too. Even if these temperatures are a shock to my system after Hawaii,” Eden responded.
She took the coffee that was intended for her, curved both hands around the cup to warm them and, after a sip, sat on one of the kitchen chairs at the table.
“How was Billings?” she asked her sister as Eve sat across from her.
“It was fine. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here when you got in yesterday. I wanted to be. But the Reverend made an appointment to see his attorney and his headache doctor, and I was the only one of the grandchildren who could take him. And you know you can’t go to Billings and not have dinner with the folks and Uncle Carl and Aunt Sheila, and spend the night or everyone gets upset. So I was stuck. But I’m here now and I’m all yours for the whole day. On one condition,” Eve added.
They’d each settled on a doughnut and Eden chose to ignore the on one condition portion of what her sister had said as she took a bite of hers.
“How are the folks?” she asked after savoring the sweet fried cake.
“Same as always—good,” Eve answered. “They told me to say hi and for you to get to Billings to see them as soon as you can.”
“I will. And how is the Reverend?” They’d never called their grandfather—who had been Northbridge’s reverend until his retirement a few years earlier—anything else. He wasn’t a cuddly kind of man and had never invited anything but formality. From anyone, as far as Eden could tell.
“The Reverend’s the same, too. The man will die the way he’s lived—with a stick up his butt.”
Eden laughed at her sister’s bluntness. “Why was he seeing his lawyer and a doctor?”
“You know the Reverend—no explanations and I certainly wasn’t allowed in on either appointment. I was lucky to get a thanks for taking him everywhere he needed to go.”
“Do you think the renewed interest in the bank robbery and Celeste was why he wanted to talk to the lawyer?”
Eve shrugged elaborately as she sipped her coffee and chose a second doughnut.
“And maybe he’s stressed-out about it and that’s why he’s having his headaches again,” Eden continued to postulate.
“Hard to say. I can’t believe he isn’t stressed-out by having all this old stuff brought up again. You know that stiff-upper-lip-never-talk-about-it thing he does has to be hiding