“Thanks for letting me borrow him,” Elissa called after her, then laughed.
In the next moment, Greg Bozeman pulled her into his arms and began guiding her around the dance floor.
“So, when are you and I going to run off and get married?” Greg asked, a big grin on his face.
Elissa smiled back. “As soon as I can stop seeing you mooning the town from the top of the water tower.”
“Lord, I’m never going to live that down.”
“You are a town legend.” Elissa laughed at the memory from their senior year when after a big win that sent the Blue Falls High football team to the playoffs, Greg and a few other players had convinced someone in Austin to buy them a keg of beer. They’d been relatively fine out on the back of Taylor Binghamton’s family’s ranch. But then Greg had gotten the big idea to moon Blue Falls under the light of a full moon. The only reason he hadn’t been arrested was that the sheriff hadn’t been 100 percent sure of his identity and Greg had hightailed it. By the time the sheriff had found him the next day, Greg was sober. Still, everyone knew it had been him. And despite his protest now, Elissa was pretty sure he liked being the star of that particular story.
“I guess I’ll have to settle for being a swinging bachelor for a while longer.”
“Yes, I’m sure it will be a hardship.”
Over the course of the next three songs, Elissa found herself dancing with three more partners, two friends and one insurance adjuster from Austin in town meeting with policyholders who’d suffered losses from the tornado. Despite his bore-her-to-death job, he was a fun guy. But as soon as their dance ended and she turned to find herself face-to-face with Pete, she totally forgot Insurance Boy’s name.
Pete pulled her into the next song, and she had to fight the totally stupid urge to plant her feet. She had no idea what was going on in her noggin, but if she refused to dance with Pete, she might as well skywrite that she was having odd feelings toward one of her best friends. They’d danced countless times before, just as she always ended up dancing with Greg and a lot of the other regulars at the music hall. Why it suddenly felt different didn’t make one lick of sense. But it did. He felt too close, and she was aware of every point at which their hands touched and where Pete’s other hand rested at her waist.
She had gone completely loony.
“Something wrong?”
She met Pete’s eyes and saw genuine concern there. It touched her more than it should. Pete was just a nice guy, one who cared about everyone.
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I’m more tired than I thought.” She stopped dancing and gradually extricated herself, trying not to be obvious about it. “Honestly, I think I just hit the wall.”
Pete nodded toward the door. “I don’t have a lot of pep tonight, either. What do you say we cut out?”
What she really wanted was some time alone to get her head screwed on right, but she couldn’t say that. She had to ride out the rest of this odd trip on the crazy train until life, and her feelings toward Pete, got back to normal.
“Sure.”
“You’re calling it a night already?” India asked when Elissa told them she was leaving.
“Wow, outdone by the pregnant ladies,” Skyler said.
“Some of us have to rebuild our lives,” Elissa snapped. “Literally.”
Elissa caught the wide-eyed surprise on Skyler’s face and immediately felt like a bitch. “I’m sorry.”
Skyler grabbed her hand. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so hard on you, not now anyway.” She pulled Elissa to her for a hug. “Go get some rest.”
All the way back to her house, Elissa couldn’t stop thinking about how edgy and out of character she’d been acting over the past few days. It had to be stress. Nothing else could explain her mood and actions, the hyperawareness she was suffering around Pete.
Maybe she’d simply lived too long without a guy in the house. She hadn’t lived with her parents for more than a couple weeks at a time since she’d left them to their globe-trotting professions and moved in with Verona at the beginning of her freshman year of high school. So it had been only her and her aunt living in a testosterone-free zone for more than a decade.
“You know we’re back, right?”
She glanced at Pete in the passenger seat. “Huh?”
He pointed out the windshield at the interior of the garage. “You planning on falling asleep in your car again?”
She mentally shook herself and reached for the door handle. “I swear, I feel as if I’ve been losing my mind the past couple of days.”
“You’re not alone.”
Elissa shot a look at Pete, trying to figure out if there was more meaning in his words than what there appeared on the surface, but he was already getting out of the car. Loony. She was completely and utterly loony.
Pete reached the door into the house first and held it open for her. Verona had evidently already gone to bed, because the house was quiet, and only a single lamp was burning in the living room.
“You know what I think will make you feel better?”
Her nerves doing an ill-advised dance, Elissa tried her best to appear normal. “Winning the lottery?”
“Something even better.” He moved into the kitchen and retrieved a lemon meringue pie and two forks.
Elissa glanced toward the hallway before returning her attention to Pete. “Put that back. She made it to take to her poker game tomorrow. She’ll kill us if we touch it.”
Pete gave her a devilish grin she didn’t see very often. “When was the last time we got into trouble?”
She thought about it a moment. “Probably when we filled the entire front yard with Oklahoma Sooners decorations.” Elissa would dare anyone to find a bigger Texas Longhorns fan than her aunt, and the mere mention of the Sooners was enough to make her growl. Having her entire yard “defiled” had made Elissa worry for the one and only time that her aunt might kick her out of the house.
“So what’s a little pie filching compared to the Great Sooner Attack?”
Elissa shook her head. “I’m going to tell her that you ate every bite.”
Pete walked past her, tipping the front of his hat up as he headed for the front door. “Then maybe I will.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said as she followed him onto the porch. “You can’t tease me with pie and then not share.”
He offered her a fork. “Partners in crime?”
She huffed and grabbed the fork.
Pete sat at the edge of the porch at the top of the front steps, and Elissa plopped down beside him. Even with the electricity back on, she could still see the vast array of stars when she looked up at the sky.
“Pretty night,” Pete said as if he were reading her mind. “Hard to believe we all about blew away a few nights ago.” He glanced to the left, toward where his house used to stand.
“Are you going to rebuild?”
“Honestly, I haven’t had much time to think about it.” He stuck his fork in the pie then took the first bite.
Elissa cut a bite for herself and mmmed at the tart taste. Verona Charles never met a type of pie she couldn’t master.
“I’ve got to find somewhere to live, though,” Pete said as he cut another bite of pie. “Or your aunt is going to make me fat. Every time I step in the house, she tries to feed me. I think she believes I can’t feed myself.”
“Sometimes