Laura Miller - By Way of Accident

“Winnie, get down,” she says, pulling at his collar.

Winnie . I stroke the dog’s fur and get a good look at him. It’s the puppy. Hot damn! It’s him. When I look back up, Brooke’s staring at me with a sideways smile on her face. “Do you think he remembers you?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know.”

The dog whimpers and beats his tail against my leg as Brooke tries to hold him back, and I continue to pet him.

“He doesn’t normally act like this around people he doesn’t know,” she says. “He’s usually a little more…guard dog.”

I give Winnie a few more pats.

“But could he still…?” she asks, half-surprised, half-unsure.

“Maybe,” I say, grinning and eventually turning my attention to her. I reach inside my truck, grab the flowers I picked out for her and then hand them to her.

She takes the flowers, looks at them and then at me. “These look familiar.” I watch as she brings the flowers closer to her face, closes her eyes and breathes them in.

I don’t say anything. I just smile. They’re daisies.

“They’re beautiful,” she says, opening her eyes again. “They remind me of a summer I once had a long time ago.” She stares at the flowers for a heartbeat. Then eventually, her stare wonders back to me. I was hoping she’d say something like that. I just shoot her a crooked smile and fix my gaze on her pretty eyes. I’d give anything right now to know what she’s thinking. Her stare is soft and welcoming, and it cuts my heart like a warm butter knife. I’ve missed her. I’ve missed looking into those eyes.

We leave our words for the quiet then before she turns and walks back onto the porch with the flowers in hand. And I watch her find an old milk bottle sitting in the corner. She dusts it off, blows a cobweb away from the bottle’s opening and places the flowers inside the glass. In the meantime, I plant myself on the little concrete stairs and lean my back against the wood porch railing.

“So, this is your place?” I ask it like I’m still not sure because I don’t think I believe it quite yet.

She looks up at me and presses her lips together. I can tell she’s trying her damnedest not to smile.

Hell . It was her. I was bidding against her the whole time. I can’t help but smile too. “I thought you lived in Washington.”

“I do, for now,” she says, pouring water from a water bottle into the makeshift vase.

“Wow,” I exclaim, reaching for the bill of my cap. I find it and squeeze the sides together. I’m still trying to wrap my head around her being here and her buying this house. I nod, and it’s quiet again, until I just can’t take the quiet anymore. “Just tell me one thing.”

She shoots me a suspicious grin. “What?”

“Why’d you pay so much for it?” I ask.

Her smile gradually fades, and a question plants itself on her pretty little face. “How do you know how much I paid?”

I shake my head and just grin. I can’t seem to get the stupid look off my face.

“Wait,” she says, eyeing me closely. “You were the other bidder?”

She looks at me with lips parted, as if she can’t quite believe it herself either.

My eyes instinctively lower to the dirt in the flower bed, and I just nod before I look back up again.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You really were?”

“I really was,” I confirm.

“If I would have known…,” she starts, but I don’t let her finish.

“Brooke, it was your home, not mine,” I say.

She gives me a soft smile. “This whole place was your home, though. You knew everything about these creek bottoms. You loved this place.”

She’s right. I did love this place. But of course, that’s not why I wanted the house.

“It’s yours now. I’m only sorry I bid ya up,” I add.

A laugh escapes her pretty lips. “You sure did,” she agrees. “But part of that was me too.” She looks back at the house. “I wanted this place so bad I’d pay anything for it, no matter how stupid it was.”

She lets out a soft sigh and then plants her gaze back on me.

“But why not just tell me last night — that this is where you’d be?” I ask.

Her lips part again, and she starts to smile. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

I laugh to myself. “Well, it’s a surprise all right.”

She laughs with me, and when our laughter slowly dies, she gestures toward the field next to the house. “You wanna walk? I’d invite you in, but technically, it’s not mine yet. And I’m already trespassing.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I promise.

She looks up at me through those long, dark eyelashes of hers. She still knows how to make me nervous. I nod my head and smile wide — for no particular reason. “Yeah,” I say. “Let’s walk.”

“Come on, Winnie,” she says. She sets the milk bottle full of water and daisies gently onto the porch railing before making her way down the concrete stairs again. Meanwhile, I’m frozen in my spot just staring at her — trying to convince myself that this is all real — that she’s real.

“You comin’?” she asks, turning back toward me. She gives me a puzzled look. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” I say. I try to shake off my stupid grin. “Winnie’s grown up, that’s all.”

She laughs. “Yeah. He’s not the only one who’s grown up.” Her eyes rake me up and down once. I don’t think she tries to be seductive about it. That’s just her way. She’s as sexy as the day is long. And I try like hell not to blush as I grin like a damn teenager.

I really want to take her hand right then, but I’m too damn scared that I’ll realize that this too has an expiration date — or that at any minute, I’ll discover that we’ve not only grown up but grown apart. So, with that thought, I keep my hands to myself.

“Your ring,” I say, pulling off the ring she gave me last night and handing it to her.

“Well, thank you,” she says, taking it and slipping it onto one of her fingers. “But truthfully, I knew you’d show.”

“Oh, that confident, huh?” I ask.

She shrugs her shoulders. “Well that, and I also figured that eventually you’d look at that address, and your mind would go to wondering. I figured you’d want to know why I gave you an ENS number to this old place.”

“The ENS was clever,” I admit.

She lowers her eyes and laughs. “Thanks.”

I just smile and shake my head. Too bad that’s not the reason I showed.

“What? What is it?” she asks, letting her laugh slowly die. Damn, I’ve missed her laugh.

“It’s just…you’re here,” I say.

Her gaze falters to the ground at our feet, but her face quickly lifts again, and she’s wearing a beautiful smile. “I know. It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? How long has it been?”

“Too long,” I say, without hesitation.

Her smile widens.

“What?” I ask.

“You know, you were my hardest good-bye ?” she says.

I can’t help but grin at that. “Your hardest good-bye , huh?”

She nods. “Mm-hmm. And I’ve said a lot of them.”

We’re both quiet then. I think I’m still just letting her words sink in. I’ve said a few good-byes in my life, and she would have been right up there too, if I had ever really said good-bye to her.

“Tell me something about you,” she says, breaking my thoughts. “Tell me something I’ve missed. I feel like I’ve missed so much.”

“Okay.” I pause for a breath and think about it. “I have a cat named Corn now.”

She laughs. “I always pictured you as a dog person.”

“Well, I think I am, but this cat’s okay. It was the neighbor’s, until she realized her little boy was allergic to it. I said I’d take it in, but the little boy had already named it. I guess when you’re two, Corn is a pretty damn good name for a cat.”