“Maybe I just missed your charming eye rolls and biting tongue, then,” he said, his eyes settling on her as his eyebrows quirked up, daring her to contradict him.
“If you missed her, then maybe you shouldn’t have left. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to the nursery.”
“Where are we sitting, Sade?” Jake asked, taking Raquel’s snub in stride.
“Over here.” Her shoulders slumped in defeat as she led him to their row.
When they stood for worship, his shoulder kept bumping into hers. She tried to ignore the low timbre of his voice. The way it seeped into her like lavender honey.
When Pastor Jay called for the congregation to greet one another, Jake kept a hand on her shoulder as she begrudgingly introduced him to the surrounding families. She surreptitiously tried to shrug his hand off.
“Sorry,” he whispered, dropping his arm to his side. “It’s weird to be the new guy at a place I basically grew up in. You’re my buffer.”
Buffer. Exactly what she said she’d needed against him. The ember in her stomach with Jake’s name on it pulsed a little bit. She looked up at him, and he was staring down at her. The pulse turned into a glow. She quickly threw dirt on it, to smother it.
When they sat for announcements, the length of his thigh was warm against hers.
Why aren’t these damn chairs bigger?
Sadie tried to listen to the sermon on the meaning behind the seven bowls of God’s wrath in Revelation, but Jake kept pushing his knee into hers.
“If you don’t stop that, you’re going to feel my wrath,” Sadie whispered.
“Your wrath sounds nice,” Jake whispered back, leaning down so his breath tickled her neck. The hairs on her arm stood on end.
She surreptitiously poked him hard in the rib cage, and his chest quaked in silent laughter.
Gigi, sitting to her left, smacked her on the leg.
After that, she kept her hands to herself. As soon as the pastor gave his parting benediction and the congregation broke out in a rumble of conversation, Sadie jumped up.
“I’ve got to get Gigi home,” she said, turning her back on Jake.
As they were nearing the foyer Sadie heard a gingersnap laugh and turned to see that Annabelle had cornered Jake. Annabelle’s grandmother, Mrs. Bennett, was standing near them with a faraway look in her eyes. Sadie had always gotten the impression that Mrs. Bennett’s head was a rabbit hole she’d gotten lost down a long time ago.
Jake looked over at Sadie with pleading eyes, but Sadie only grinned wickedly back.
“I’m just so glad you’re back,” Annabelle said with her sugar-spun voice. “I never had enough time with you back then, did I?”
Sadie knew the smile she would be wearing, so saccharine it hurt her teeth without even seeing it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, trying to inch slowly away from her. “I’m really not that great once you get to know me.”
“Nonsense. Maybe I can convince you to join the town council,” she practically purred, wrapping her red-taloned fingernails around his forearm. “We could use someone like you.”
“Oh, um …” Jake intoned nervously.
“Sugar?” Gigi called from the door.
“Coming!” Sadie answered gleefully.
“Remind me not to do that again for another six months,” Gigi said when they were back home. “Leave the wolves to their feeding.”
Sadie had forced her grandmother to sit so she could make them both a glass of iced coffee. Bambi was lying splayed on the cool floor at Gigi’s feet, eagerly awaiting the bits of heavily buttered sourdough toast she’d drop down for him.
Sadie hadn’t yet had the nerve to tell her grandmother that they’d dognapped Jake’s puppy. Abby sat on Gigi’s lap, staring down at Bambi with what Sadie swore was a look of superiority.
“It’s not that bad, is it?” Sadie asked halfheartedly as she swirled caramel around the inside of the glasses. The kitchen had that stuffy feeling of windows too long closed, and Sadie opened the one over the sink to let in the apple-crisp breeze.
“Pfft, a bunch of holier-than-thou, Bible-thumping, small-town hicks, the lot of them.”
“Some of them might be,” Sadie conceded. “But not all of them. It’s community,” she said offhandedly.
“I know, I know. I’m just being a grouchy old crone. But you’re always doing all the work for everyone. You never stop. If it’s not the café, it’s something for me or the neighbors or that church.”