Cheryl Harper - A Home Come True

There were still too many bodies crammed in this space. It didn’t take a math teacher to figure that equation out. Someone should call the fire marshal. She’d do it herself but her phone was in her purse by the door.

“I’ve got to get to the door,” Jen muttered and craned her neck to check to see if she could maneuver between Rebecca’s sparkling quartz-topped breakfast bar and the row of chairs.

The only person who’d managed to sit quietly through dinner, Cole Ferguson, was crammed in the corner next to her. While Rebecca had been buzzing back and forth from the kitchen, he hadn’t taken his eyes off her. For most of the dinner, he’d managed to keep his eyes on his own plate, but it was impossible to miss how he turned toward Rebecca every time she spoke or her arm brushed his.

Sure, it’s sweet now. But all the lovesickness in the room will be gross pretty soon.

Especially for the only single in the room of couples.

When Jen finally got his attention, Cole studied the room. “The door? Impossible.” The big guy leaned back to carefully drape one arm over Rebecca’s chair.

“Impossible, huh?” Jen twisted her chin to crack the tense vertebrae in her neck. “When you say that, it’s like waving a red cape and I’m the bull that’s going to charge right out of here.”

His rough laugh spurred her on, but no matter which direction she looked, there was someone blocking her. Fine. If she couldn’t go high, she’d go low. Very low.

Thankful for her earlier decision to wear the designer jeans that had once belonged to Sarah, but had become Jen’s favorite pair by way of the consignment shop, Jen tried to turn every bone in her body to mush. Slithering out of the chair with this little room wasn’t easy, but once she was on her hands and knees under the table, it was a piece of cake to crawl right down the middle.

“These floors are spotless,” Jen muttered with a shake of her head.

As soon as she reached the end of the table, Jen tapped Stephanie’s knee and waited for her to check below the table. When it took a second tap, Jen started to wonder what sort of life Steph had lived in Peru.

The tablecloth lifted. Stephanie blinked twice at her.

“Scoot. I need out.” Jen waved a hand and waited impatiently for Steph to move.

When an opening wide enough for her to wiggle through opened, Jen slowly stood and brushed off the knees of her jeans before stomping her feet to loosen her pant legs down into her boots. Then she held both arms out and stretched. This was going to work.

When she turned around, all the conversation had paused. Six pairs of eyes were locked on her.

Jen smoothed her hair behind one ear and smiled. Then she pointed at Cole. “He said it couldn’t be done.”

Every head swiveled to study Cole, the ex-convict who’d landed at Paws for Love in desperate need of a job to make good on his second chance. He held up both hands. “That’s not how it went down, but...”

Rebecca grinned as she pressed a kiss against Cole’s cheek. The pink that spread across his face would have been cute if he hadn’t had a glare that could stop a train. That had to have come in handy in prison. Rebecca said, “Mistake. Nobody tells her what she can’t do.”

Cole opened his mouth to argue and thought better of it. Jen was only doing what her friends expected of her. Being the first to bail on a party was her way.

“I guess this means you’re leaving,” Stephanie asked and opened her arms for a hug.

Saying goodbye was almost as hard as enduring one more minute of the noise and total sensory overload that came with crowds, even crowds of people she loved, but Jen hadn’t come this far to quit now.

“Yeah,” Jen said, surprised at the frog in her throat that accompanied the overwhelming emotion. She wasn’t sure when Stephanie would be back in Texas, but June or the end of the school year would be the first chance she’d have to travel to Lima to visit. It was a long way away. “We’ll always have Facebook.” Facebook was filled with annoyances, too, but it was quiet and she did love seeing photos of the work Stephanie and Daniel did with HealthyAmericas.

“Sure.” Stephanie squeezed her hard and fast and then stepped back. This was a tried-and-true goodbye, one that Jen appreciated. “I’m glad you came.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it.” Jen offered Daniel a friendly wave. “Take good care of her.” Jen narrowed her eyes. “Or else.” He was a doctor. It would be a shame to harm him, but she’d do it.

The fact that no one laughed at her threat was reassuring. She might have been the smallest and the poorest, but she’d also always been the one with the toughest attitude.

She’d cultivated that reputation. Years of being afraid had taught her to be fearless, even when she was afraid.

“We’ll walk you out,” Rebecca said quickly and the three men seated between her and the door stood in a gentlemanly fashion to let her pass by.

The heat that dusted Jen’s cheeks was unwelcome. Sure, they would have done the same for her, but she hadn’t needed the help. She’d managed like she always did.

Marching to the door as if she had zero concerns, Jen studied the pile of coats and bags on the floor. “In the next reno, add a coatrack, would ya?”

“If any of you ingrates would put your things in the closet like I’ve asked a million times, we wouldn’t have this problem,” Rebecca answered.

Before Jen could come up with a retort that would make it easier to deal with the sadness of saying goodbye to a friend, someone rang the doorbell.

The sudden peal of bells would have been startling in normal circumstances, but with her nerves rattled, and having been standing so close to the door, Jen clapped a hand over her racing heart before she yanked the door open. “What?”

Then she realized who was standing on the porch. Luke Hollister, Holly Heights’ newest policeman, enemy number one to her friend Sarah, and the topic of at least fifteen minutes of the evening’s conversation. Sarah and Will, Jen’s stepbrother, had recounted how Hollister had harassed them both in the hunt for Sarah’s father, Big Bobby Hillman, causing Jen to file away a long list of grievances against her neighbor.

Until that evening, Jen hadn’t known she had such a good reason to dislike him. Now that she did, it was sweet. There was no need to try to make friends with him and his relatives when she’d been watching from her windows. She’d gotten some of his mail and had sneaked across the road to put it in his mailbox. If she’d known he was so good-looking at close range, she’d... Well, she’d have done the same thing.

“What are you doing here?” Jen asked and tapped her cowboy boot. “Did someone call the cops?” Unless she’d somehow done it with the power of wishful thinking, Jen knew the answer to that. As loud as it was inside, it was that peaceful and quiet in the cool September night.

“I thought small towns were supposed to be welcoming,” Hollister muttered. At least he had the good sense to appear uneasy. “I need to talk to Sarah. Miss Hillman.”

Before she could turn and yell over her shoulder, Sarah, Rebecca and Stephanie stepped up behind her. At this point, she was all too aware of how vertically challenged she was and that was doubly irritating.

“What do you want?” Sarah demanded. “Unless you have something to tell me about my father, I’m busy.” She’d been waiting for answers from Hollister or the Austin Police Department for weeks. Her father, Big Bobby Hillman, had embezzled funds from his car dealerships and disappeared.

Hollister had been certain she was helping Bobby or biding her time until she could disappear and had hounded her for information. Passing on the single clue she had to his whereabouts had been Sarah’s only choice. She deserved to know what was happening.