Chapter 17: Terms Were Yours

By the sixth week, Rafe had slept on a cot in his own garage for two months, and I had stopped pretending I didn't count them.

The bay doors were open that afternoon, and I sat on a stool by the workbench with Maggie in a sling against my chest.

I had called the number on Krista's napkin the night she wrote it, and it rang out, and I called twice more that week.

Each time a recorded voice said the mailbox was full, and I couldn't tell if that meant Boone had her phone or she had thrown it away.

Rafe drove past the lodge twice and saw only Boone's truck, and we both knew what a quiet week from Boone meant.

We kept the doors locked and the car seat by the stairs, and we waited.

An old man had brought in a lawn tractor and stayed to drink Rafe's coffee.

He had been telling Rafe about his hip for twenty minutes.

"Doc says six weeks of nothing," the old man said, "and I told him, I'm seventy, what am I going to do, run a marathon?"

"Annie's six weeks are Thursday," Rafe said, without thinking, and then went red to the ears.

The old man looked from Rafe to me.

I turned a page of the magazine I wasn't reading.

"That's right," I said. "Thursday the doctor says yes. And Friday morning he's done sleeping on that cot."

The coffee stopped halfway to the old man's mouth.

Rafe put the wrench down very quietly.

"I'll be going," the old man said, and he got up fast for a man with a bad hip.

When the tractor's taillights turned the corner, Rafe said, "You did that on purpose."

"I did."

"He'll tell the whole of Dell Creek."

"Good," I said. "They can start planning the wedding."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Biker Who Drove Her Away from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.