He paused at the gate. “Just so you know, that wouldn’t stop me from enjoying you.”
“Neither would your mess,” she promised.
He gave her one of those soul-jarring, stomach-on-a-roller-coaster looks. “Wait right there.”
She watched him jog up the path, onto the porch, and in through the front door.
The second the door closed, Maggie busted a move on the sidewalk.
That kiss with Silas Freaking Wright had finally dethroned her engagement as the most romantic moment of her life. Which, to be completely honest, only held the top honor by default. Not that there was anything wrong with a drunken, late-night proposal in a Burger King parking lot when both parties were too young to know any better. Or to know if they were both straight. She winced at the memory of her drunk twenty-two-year-old self getting down on one knee next to Dean’s VW Rabbit. She should have known then.
“Maybe we should get married,” she’d slurred, leaning hard to the right.
“Maybe we should,” he had agreed, closing one eye to zero in on which Maggie was doing the proposing.
Looking back, that shiny, sickly expression on his face should have been another neon warning sign. But she’d been caught up in the moment. Not the romance of it. Or her feelings for the cute, nice, dependable Dean. She knew now it was more a by-product of the crushing loneliness she had felt after losing the mother she’d depended on and the father she’d learned not to. It had threatened to swamp her, to pull her under and never let her find her way back to the surface.
She’d put it all on Dean’s barely adult shoulders. Made it his job to save her. To protect her from the loneliness. To give her a place to fit into. And he’d loved her enough to say yes.
Even after he’d found his voice, even after he’d whispered the truth she should have already known, he still loved her. He still protected her.
And she was still using him to keep the loneliness at bay.
“Well, shit,” she muttered to herself. The truth of it hit her like a wheelbarrow handle to the solar plexus. Before she could chicken out, she pulled out her phone, opened her texts, and typed.
Maggie: I really do want you to have the life you want. There’s someone out there who’s been waiting for your surly, snarky ass their entire life. It’s not fair for me to hog your sour disposition all to myself.
His response was quick.
Dean: No one will ever knock you off your shrewish pedestal in my cold, shriveled heart.
Maggie: Love you, shithead.
Dean: Love you back, weirdo.
On a long sigh, she stowed the phone back in her pocket. She felt sad. And turned on. And terrified. Things were changing again, and she had no control over them. Change in her life hadn’t been good. It had been hard. Painful.
She needed to calm the eff down. She didn’t get carried away. No matter how fine Silas’s butt looked in a pair of jeans, she wasn’t about to throw her career away and settle down with the cute landscaper from Idaho.
Shifting gears, she studied Silas’s home.
The professional in Maggie approved of the curb appeal, the whole aesthetic. She hadn’t made a mistake in hiring Mr. Wright. Unless, of course, being able to think about nothing but the feel of his erection grinding against her turned out to be a problem.
Whoops. And there she was thinking about it again. How instantaneous and overwhelming his reaction had been to the kiss. She’d never been pushed up against anything before. Damn if she didn’t like it.
Joyful barking erupted inside, followed by a loud crash.
Then Silas reappeared on the porch in a white hoodie with Kevin on a leash. “I said i-c-e c-r-e-a-m, and he knocked the couch over,” he reported. She wasn’t sure if he was joking.
The dog pranced down the sidewalk to her, shivering with delight.
“Who’s a good boy?” Maggie asked, squishing his giant face between her hands.
“Not Kevin,” Silas said dryly. “You sure you want to walk? That bed in there looks awfully comfortable.”
“Nice try. We’re walking, and you’re feeding us ice cream.”
Kevin made a whimpery moan of delight.
“Hey,” Silas said, his voice suddenly serious. “What’s wrong? Something happen while Hercules here busted up my furniture?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He closed a hand around her wrist and squeezed. “Uh-uh. That’s a hard line for me, Mags. When something’s wrong, you either tell me what it is or tell me you don’t want to talk about it. You don’t lie. And you don’t try to hide it.”