Coming Home (3 page)

He smiled, revealing a set of dimples. “Yeah. It was.”

Leah laughed to herself as she reached into her purse for her keys. “Wow. That was seriously the worst apology ever.”

She heard him chuckle, and when she looked up, he was still smiling down at her with those dimples. “Well, damn. Can I try again?”

She shrugged. “Go for it.”

Daniel reached forward and opened the driver’s side door for her, bowing slightly as he gestured for her to have a seat. “Here you go, milady. My deepest and sincerest apologies for insinuating that you were a stupid asshole.” He straightened. “How was that?”

“Better,” she said through a laugh as she turned to get into the car. Just before she slid inside, her eye landed on the bay window in the kitchen. She could see Catherine sitting alone at the table, cautiously sipping her tea.

As Leah sat in the driver’s seat, she turned to look up at Daniel. “I’m glad she has you,” she said sincerely. “Don’t ever stop taking care of her.”

She watched his dimples fade as his expression fell, and then he nodded.

“It was nice meeting you,” Leah said, reaching to close the car door, and he stepped back, shoving his hands in his pockets again.

“You too,” he said absently.

She smiled as she pulled the door shut and started the car. Daniel held up his hand as he took another step back, and she returned the gesture as she pulled out onto the street.

She liked the idea of him taking care of her. That kind of thoughtfulness was a trait that jumped out at Leah now, because the absence of it should have been the red flag in her last relationship.

Whatever the reason, she couldn’t deny that it was extremely attractive when a guy was as family-oriented as Daniel seemed to be.

And there was something inherently attractive about a guy with manners, too—the way he had apologized for his language, how embarrassed he’d looked at having offended her.

Who was she kidding? There was something attractive about
him
. Period.

The pitch-black hair with the light eyes, the masculine jaw with the boyish dimples. He had the kind of face she wanted to stare at, just to appreciate the way all the pieces complemented each other.

But of course, she hadn’t done it. That would have been weird, and completely inappropriate.

For a second, Leah found herself wishing she knew his last name. After all, if he had a Facebook profile, she could examine his picture as long as she wanted without it being weird—

The second the idea crossed her mind, her cheeks flooded with heat, even though no one was privy to the ridiculousness of that last thought but her.

What the hell was she doing?

Since when was she the kind of girl who stalked guys on the internet? Since when was she the kind of girl who pursued guys
at all
? She’d never been the one to initiate a relationship. Besides, she hadn’t been involved with a guy in two years, nor did she have any desire to be.

Although, if all it took to turn her into a creeper was a pair of dimples and some manners, maybe there was some subconscious part of her that was tired of being alone.

Leah shook her head at that; she wasn’t tired of being alone. She was just tired, and it was making her scatterbrained. She leaned over and turned on the radio, letting the music chase away her thoughts as she pulled up to the intersection.

Giovanni’s was about six blocks from her old house; it was an old-fashioned, family-owned Italian deli that hadn’t changed since she’d first been there with her parents as a little girl. The red awning out front was faded and worn so that it appeared to be almost pink, and the white block letters that spelled out the store’s name were now a murky, grayish color. As Leah pulled onto the deli’s block, she was reminded of something else about the place that never changed: there was a line nearly out the door. It was a popular deli on an average day, but during Christmastime it was borderline legendary.

She began her usual routine of circling the block, looking for an open parking space, and on her second pass, amazingly, she noticed a spot had opened up right in front of the door. She cut the wheel sharply, pulling into the spot without using her blinker and glancing around to make sure she hadn’t just snagged the spot from someone who had been waiting.

No one.

“Wow,” Leah said to herself, cutting the engine and grabbing her purse. In all the years she’d been shopping there, she’d never even gotten a spot on the same block, let alone right out front. “Must be my lucky day.”

She stood in line for almost half an hour, tossing items into her handheld basket as she inched up the aisle toward the counter. When she finally reached it, she placed her order, remembering to include the fresh ravioli her brother loved so much he would often eat them raw before she could cook them.

As the girl behind the counter totaled up her order, Leah reached inside her purse to grab her wallet.

And that’s when she noticed it.

Her stomach lurched as she shook her wrist. “No,” she whispered in a panic, pushing up her sleeve with her other hand. “
Shit!
” she said, rummaging frantically through her purse, hoping it had just slipped off and fallen inside.

“Is something wrong?” the girl behind the counter asked.

“I lost something,” Leah said, stepping up to the counter and abruptly dumping the contents of her purse over the top of it. The girl jumped back, a startled expression on her face as Leah sifted through the change, makeup, and receipts scattered across the counter.

She whipped around in a frenzy, her eyes scanning the floor behind her. “Did anyone see a bracelet?” she asked, nudging her way through the line of people behind her. There were a few mumbled
no
’s and
sorry
’s as she scoured the floor near the shelves, looking for any sign of it.

“Miss, I’m sorry, but there’s a line,” the girl at the counter called.

She continued pushing through the crowd until she had a clear view of the door where she came in. She needed to retrace her steps.

“Miss,” the girl called again.

“Yeah, okay,” Leah said, her voice detached as she walked backward toward the counter, bumping into people as her eyes continued to comb the floor. By the time she made it back to the front of the line, it was clear that any sympathy from the crowd had now transitioned into annoyance.

She swiped everything on the counter back into her purse and absently paid for her things, turning every few seconds to inspect the floor behind her again.

The woman handed her the box of food, and Leah balanced it precariously in her arms as she rushed out of the deli. It was freezing, but she could already feel a cold sweat breaking out over her back.

She hurried to her car and threw the box inside before turning to examine the sidewalk. The distance between her car and the door to the deli couldn’t have been more than five feet, but she already knew that if she had dropped it outside, it would most likely be gone. Someone would have picked it up and taken it, no doubt. Still, she continued her futile search of the sidewalk for another ten minutes.

By the time she got back in her car, she felt like she might actually be sick. Leah arched her back, struggling to remove her jacket in the confines of the driver’s seat before shaking it out frantically.

“Please,” she said to herself, hoping it would fall out from one of the sleeves.

It didn’t.

She contorted her body, checking under the seats, in between the seats, under the pedals, next to the console.

Nothing.

“Shit,” she said again, gripping the steering wheel with both hands and letting her head fall back against the seat.

It was gone. She had lost it.

She had lost her mother’s bracelet.

Leah’s father had given it to her mother on their eighth wedding anniversary, the same day she had given birth to Leah’s little sister. Embedded in the white gold of the bracelet were three solitary diamonds. One for each baby she had given him, he had said.

Leah had always loved that bracelet, even before it was hers.

With a pathetic sniffle, she started the car and pulled dejectedly out onto the street. She had combed the deli, scoured the sidewalk, torn apart her purse, shook out her clothing, searched the car. Someone must have taken it. There was nowhere else it could be.

She approached the stoplight at the end of the street, still fighting tears, when suddenly it hit her.

Leah bolted upright in her seat. “Oh my God,” she said to herself, slamming on the brake before making an outrageously illegal U-turn in the middle of the intersection. The orchestra of horn blasts only served to amplify her urgency as she sped down the road that would take her back to her old house.

Traffic had started to pick up, making the ride back to the house twice as long as it should have been. By the time she pulled onto her old street, it was already dark. There were still no parking spaces on the road, so she pulled into the empty space in front of Catherine’s driveway again, throwing the car in park and not even bothering to turn it off before she jumped out. She ran to the gate and unlatched it, flinging it open as she bolted across the tiny yard.

Leah knocked on the door, standing up on her toes so she could see in the tiny window along the top of the door. After about a minute of silence, she knocked again, this time a bit more forcefully.

Still nothing.

Desperate and having no shame, she walked to the window on the side of the house, cupping her hands around the side of her face and pressing her nose against the glass. The house was completely dark.

“Damn it,” she whispered, walking back to her car and plopping inside before she slammed the door closed behind her. She reclined the seat and cranked up the heat, fully intending to wait there until Catherine returned.

Forty-five minutes later, she was starving, she had to go to the bathroom so badly she thought she might cry, and it had begun to snow. The lights were still off in the house, and no one had returned. Was it possible that Catherine had already turned in for the night? If that were the case, she would feel like a complete moron waking the poor woman up and dragging her out of bed for something that might be a lost cause anyway.

Whatever the case was, Leah knew she couldn’t stay there any longer.

With a frustrated sigh, she sifted through her purse and pulled out an old receipt and a pen, leaning on the dashboard to scribble a quick note to Catherine.

Catherine,

I think I may have lost my bracelet in your house. It’s really important to me, so if you find it, could you please give me a call?

She signed it with her name and her phone number before throwing the pen somewhere on the passenger seat and exiting the car.

Leah walked quickly through the side yard, blinking back the snowflakes that peppered her vision as she opened the screen door and closed the note inside before running back to the car.

Twenty minutes later, she had just merged onto I-95 when a loud bang nearly forced her heart out of her chest. She gripped the wheel firmly, glancing in her side-view mirror; she couldn’t see anything that she might have collided with, and it definitely didn’t feel like the car took a hit.

Just as her body began to relax back into the seat, the car began to pull awkwardly to the right.

“Oh, you have
got
to be kidding me,” Leah groaned, putting her blinker on and fighting her way through the traffic over to the shoulder. She put the car in park and crawled over the console, opening the passenger door and hanging her head outside as snowflakes clung to her hair and eyelashes. Sure enough, the right front tire was completely flat.

She collapsed back into the car, pulling the door closed behind her and covering her face with her hands.

Lucky day, indeed.

“Christopher, I swear to God, if I see your hand near this plate again, I’m chopping it off and making it the centerpiece.”

“Those are some tough words from someone who can’t even kill a spider,” her brother replied, reaching around her and grabbing another piece of salami off the plate of antipasto Leah was arranging.

She tried to grab his hand, but he was quicker, taking a step back and holding up the stolen piece of meat like Rafiki holding baby Simba in the opening sequence of
The Lion King
.

Leah tried to suppress her smile. “You’re a moron. We’re eating in like twenty minutes. Stop acting like an animal.”

He shoved the salami in his mouth as he leaned toward her, growling rabidly and chewing with his mouth open.

“Oh my God,” Leah said with a laugh, pushing him away. “Alexis! Come get your husband out of the kitchen before I kick his ass!”

A minute later, Alexis appeared in the doorway, folding her arms over her swollen belly and trying to look stern. “Christopher, leave her alone.”

“Yeah, Christopher, leave her alone,” Leah echoed.

“Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender before turning to leave. He darted his hand out quickly, swiping a piece of ham on his way out.