“I have a list. See?” She held it up. “I know what we need.”
“That’s your list. Do you have salt-and-vinegar chips on it?”
“No. I don’t like salt-and-vinegar flavor. Makes my tongue burn.”
“See? If we sprint through the store, just getting what’s on your list, I won’t have any salt-and-vinegar chips.”
“Maybe if you’d written down a few notes about yourself, I would have put them on my list.”
He shook his head. “I don’t come with an owner’s manual. Sorry.”
She pulled on the end of the cart, trying to make him move a little faster. “The store closes in six hours. You might need to pick up the pace.”
He stopped so abruptly the cart jerked her arm. “You need to relax.”
“No, I need to get the shopping done so I can move on to the next thing.” She glared at him, willing him to shut his mouth and move his feet.
“You know, for a long time I’ve had what Uncle Sam saw fit to issue me and what my family could send in a care package,” he said quietly, and her impatience fizzled and died like a match dropped in a puddle. “When I got back stateside, I bought some necessities, but not a lot because I was on the move. I’d like to browse a little bit.”
“I’m sorry.” She let go of the cart and blew out a breath. “Here you are doing me a huge favor and I’m being all…intense.”
“Bitchy,” he muttered, not quite under his breath.
“I prefer intense.”
“Intensely bitchy.”
Between the amusement lurking at the corners of his mouth and the fact he was right, Emma decided to let it go. Not only his less-than-flattering assessment of her mood, but the stress of her grandmother’s impending arrival. What was the worst that could happen if this didn’t work? Gram would be angry and see this little escapade as proof it was all too much for Emma. She’d sell the house and Emma would rent an apartment and life would go on.
And that thought made her want to cry, so she shook it off and tried to be patient as they very, very slowly made their way up and down the aisles.
“What the hell is this?” Sean picked up a box from the shelf and showed it to her. “It looks like a cheese grater for your feet.”
“Women like having smooth heels.”
“Do you have one of these?”
“Hell, no. It looks like a cheese grater.”
They laughed as he put it back and moved on to the next thing that caught his fancy. Between the department store and the grocery store, they managed to almost fill the bed of his truck but, an hour later when it was all put away, it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
“It still doesn’t look like you’ve lived here for a year.”
Sean shrugged and sat backward on a kitchen chair, folding his arms across the back of it. “She won’t think much of it. Single, former army guys aren’t really known for dragging around domestic clutter.”
“It just seems like you should have more…stuff. Pictures and sports trophies and stuff like that.”
“It’s all in boxes in the attic back home. If she says something, which she won’t, I’ll just tell her I haven’t gotten around to getting them yet.”
She grabbed a couple of sodas out of the fridge and set one in front of him. “Lisa told me a little bit about your family. She said you’re all really close to Leo and Mary, even though you were all in Maine.”
“My mom died when I was nine. It was an aneurism, so we didn’t even see it coming and everything would have gone to shit, including my dad, if not for Aunt Mary and Rosie. Rosie’s the housekeeper at the lodge, but really she’s more than that. She stepped up and raised her own daughter, plus helped my dad raise the five of us. He died nine years ago, but Rosie’s still there, helping Josh run the lodge. But without Aunt Mary backing her up, I don’t know how we would have turned out.”
She loved the way his face softened when he talked about his family. And the way the muscles in his arm flexed as he lifted the soda to his mouth. And the way his throat worked as he swallowed. And…
And nothing, she told herself. She needed to think of him as an employee…kind of. Except for the whole sharing-a-bedroom thing.
“So tomorrow’s the big day,” he said, and she wondered if he was just trying to change the subject away from his family. “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I can be, I guess. I can’t wait to see her, of course. I’ve missed her so much, but a month is a long time.”
“It’ll fly by once we settle in and you two start catching up on lost time.”
She twisted the ring on her finger, watching the stone catch the last rays of the late-day sun. “For something I’ve obsessed about right down to the last detail, I can’t help but think I should have thought it through a little more.”
“You can still change your mind.”
She shook her head. “No, we’re committed.”