Close to Home. Deborah Raney

that if not for the fact Bree had been staying with them, those Marines would have knocked on a different door that day.

      A few months after Tim’s death, Bree had used the inn’s construction as an excuse to move away, get her own place. It had been a good thing for all of them, he knew. But he hated the distance he’d felt from her today. Not a physical distance, but a distance of the heart.

      He edged the truck onto CeeCee’s street, but not toward Cape Girardeau as he’d intended. Instead he turned back toward home. The garage door repairs could wait. Right now, he just wanted to be with Audrey.

      Chapter 4

      4

      Did Grant know too? Bree checked her rearview mirror, half expecting to see him following her. But the road behind her was empty.

      She’d been suspicious at Audrey’s reference to a “hot date”—even if she had been talking about CeeCee. But now, Grant’s comment about it being “time to make some changes” made her feel certain Tim’s parents knew she was going out with Aaron this weekend.

      If Grant had been testing, she’d failed. But how could they know? She hadn’t told anyone. Not even her own parents. Not that there was anything to tell. Or that her parents would ever bother asking.

      So why didn’t she tell? What kept her from simply telling Grant she was going to a movie with a friend from work? A guy. A hot guy.

      And there it was. That was why. Because no matter how many times she told herself it wasn’t a date, she knew it really was. In Aaron’s eyes for sure. But in her own, too.

      But why was that a bad thing? Everyone else got to move on with their lives. Getting married, having babies, buying houses. They couldn’t expect her not to do the same.

      She braked needlessly, as if she could curb the thoughts by slowing the car.

      Stop it, Whitman. Nobody is trying to stop you from moving on. You’re guilting yourself. And she knew it had more to do with Tim than any true guilt about “moving on.” She still loved her husband. Was that so wrong? And Tim’s family had become hers. Maybe even more than when he was alive. They’d been through so much together. She didn’t want to move on from them. And yet, that was inevitable, wasn’t it?

      She wanted to be married again someday. She wanted a family. Babies. The good Lord knew that being around Tim’s precious nieces and nephews made her long for the day she would hold her own baby in her arms. Yet such thoughts were so very complicated.

      Aaron had been flirting with her for months now. At first she’d been too dumb to recognize it, but even Wendy in reception agreed: he was definitely flirting. Bree had to admit she found Aaron attractive. But whenever she tried to wrap her mind around the idea of dating again, Tim’s sweet face would be there. And she’d feel like she’d cheated on him with her very thoughts.

      She wondered what kind of man would tolerate her having such a close relationship with her late husband’s parents—his entire family. Not many. And who could blame them. If she tried to think of the situation in reverse, she knew she would be none too thrilled.

      But thinking about her life without the Whitmans? That just about broke her heart.

      Because the truth was, when she thought about bringing her future babies to Christmas dinner and Easter egg hunts, it was Grant and Audrey she imagined in the background. She frowned. Her children, if she ever had any, wouldn’t call Grant and Audrey Poppa and Gram. Her children wouldn’t even be related to the rest of the Whitman crew. It seemed cruel. One more thing Tim’s death had inflicted on her.

      She entered Cape Girardeau’s city limits and tapped the brakes. She had to get out of this pit of dark thoughts before she walked into the office. Pulling into a parking space on the street in front of Wilkes, she tried to peer through the plate-glass windows to see whether Aaron was at his desk or not. But the glass only reflected the row of stores across the street. And her own reflection. She’d been told she wore her feelings on her sleeve, and she did not need Aaron reading her mind the minute she walked through the door.

      She grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, locked the car, and stepped up the curb to the entry door.

      Before she could reach for the handle, the door swung open, and Aaron strode out and took her by the arm. “Come with me.”

      “What?” She resisted his grasp. “What’s going on?”

      “I have ten minutes to get a hundred chairs moved into the basement of some church out on Lexington.”

      “What? What’s the big rush?”

      “A funeral.”

      She stared at him like he’d lost his last marble. “Aaron, I can’t just drop everything and go to a funeral. Are you crazy?”

      “Don’t worry, I already told Sallie I needed you to go with me.”

      “And who’s going to finish the hair expo stuff? That’s due tomorrow, you know.”

      “I’ll help you with it when we get back.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “As long as I don’t have to actually go to the hair expo.”

      “Hey, if I help you move a hundred chairs, you’ll let a blind first-year student give you a Mohawk if I say so.”

      “Fine. Just come on. We need to take a truck.”

      He took her arm and practically dragged her to the company pickup in the back parking lot. Once she was buckled in the passenger seat, she turned to look at him. “Since when did Wilkes add funerals to our events list anyway?”

      “Apparently since this stiff’s family decided to plan a family reunion around their grandfather’s death. Sallie said the daughter who hired us said something about they had to clean out dear ol’ Grandpa’s house to get it on the market, and suddenly second cousins once removed were coming out of the woodwork wanting to get in on the haul. They lived in one of those huge old houses out by the college.” Aaron gestured in the direction of the Southeast Missouri State campus.

      “That’s crazy,” she said. “So Grandpa’s funeral is suddenly going to be standing room only? When is the funeral?”

      He looked at his watch. “Four o’clock.”

      “Today?” She practically screeched.

      “See why I’m in such a hurry.” He pushed the speed limit for the six blocks to the warehouse where Sallie stored event rentals.

      On the city’s old, uneven brick streets in the downtown area, Bree was jostled and jolted in her seat. “Take it easy, would you, Lightning McQueen?” She clutched the door handle for dear life.

      Looking proud of the cartoon name he’d earned, Aaron parked as close to the warehouse as he could get. They jumped out of the vehicle in unison.

      Forming a two-man “bucket brigade” with Aaron in the bed of the truck and Bree on the ground, they started stacking folding chairs into the truck in tight rows.

      Within minutes, sweat was rolling down Bree’s forehead into her eyes. Not to mention her feet were killing her. “I would have at least changed my shoes if I’d known this was what you were dragging me off to do.”

      “Sorry.” He shrugged and tried to look sheepish, but she wasn’t buying it.

      “How many chairs will this truck hold? You don’t think we can get them all in one trip, do you?”

      “If we stack ’em right, we can.” He took two more chairs from her and lifted them into the bed of the pickup. “Tell you what, when we get to the church, I’ll let you set up chairs in the nice cool basement and I’ll bring them in from the truck.”

      “You’d do that for me?” she teased.

      “As long as I don’t have to do the hair expo.”

      “Wait a minute. You promised—” A drop of sweat