“I don’t remember anything like this mirror in inventory, and I think I would. But I’ll check.”
“I did; it isn’t. But I saw it, and my father saw it. So…” She shrugged. “I can’t explain it.”
“Collin never mentioned it, or anything like the room on the third floor. At least not to me. I’ll ask my father.”
He closed the sketchbook.
“Got any plans for dinner?”
“Dinner?” She glanced at the time. “Oh, this has taken a while, hasn’t it? I could toss something together—not like Cleo does, but I can toss something together.”
“So can I, but let’s try this. Let’s go out.”
“Out?”
“You know, to dinner. Where someone with a lot more skill cooks food that you get to pick off a menu. When’s the last time you went out for dinner since you moved in?”
“That would be not at all.”
“Eating out alone can suck. Don’t make me eat alone. Let me take you to dinner. You can meet my friend who cooks at the Lobster Cage. She’s got mad skills.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Let me take you to dinner,” he repeated. “You look too good to toss something together.”
And the iPad on the table played Childish Gambino’s “Heartbeat.”
“Stop that,” Sonya muttered. “Honestly, I don’t know about leaving the dog alone in the house.”
“Why don’t we give them dinner—if Mookie can join in there. I’ll take them out for a walk before we go, and Mookie will hang with Yoda until we get back. Take a break.”
Why be stupid? she asked herself. Why be stubborn?
“I could use one. Thanks.”
Not a date, she told herself as they went downstairs to feed the dogs.
Just two people going out to dinner after a shared scary experience, she thought as she excused herself to dash upstairs and check her makeup and hair.
She supposed she had the sexy red dress ghost to thank for inspiring her to do better than jeans.
When she came down, Trey slipped his phone back in his pocket while the dogs played tug. “Got us a table.”
“Great.”
“I’m going to grab my coat, take these guys out.”
“Oh, I’ll go with you. I’m keeping Yoda on a leash outside until I’m sure he won’t run off.”
“He looks like a boy who knows when he’s got it made. And he loves you.”
“He does.” Knowing it made her heart swell a little. “It was pretty much love at first sight, on both sides.”
“You got him from Lucy, right? Lucy Cabot,” he said as the dogs trailed them to the front of the house.
“I did. She’s terrific.”
Another cold, clear night, she thought as they went out. Maybe the calendar said spring was creeping closer, but it sure didn’t feel like it.
“You don’t leash Mookie?”
“In town. He accepts it’s the law inside town limits. Otherwise, he doesn’t need it. He’s a good dog.”
“Did you get him from Lucy?”
“I wasn’t so much as thinking about getting a dog, and one day she brought him into the office. She’d just taken him in. She told me, ‘This is your dog, Trey.’ And he was.”
“She knows you well then.”
“I dated her niece back in high school. You’ll meet her tonight. Bree’s head chef at the Lobster Cage.”
“Oh. You go back.”
“We do.”
“And still friends after the high school sweetheart era?”
“Friends after that, and the drama of the breakup, the very brief reconnect the summer of our junior year in college, and the far less dramatic parting. And her marriage to a restaurant guy in Portland, her divorce.”
“Divorced. Could lead to another reconnect.”
“No. Too much friends now. Friends who know they really don’t suit otherwise. I’d say this is mission accomplished out here.”
They went back in, and she unleased Yoda.
“You listen to Mookie, and be a good boy. No third floor. I’ll be home soon.”
Since the tablet played “How Can I Miss You If You Don’t Go Away,” and the dogs were back on the tug rope, she decided everyone would be fine.
“I already appreciate you talking me into this.”
He opened the truck’s passenger side door for her. Of course he did.
“I do go into town,” she continued when he got behind the wheel. “But maybe not as often as I should. Still, priorities.”