“Oh.” Gloria felt her cheeks heat up. “Okay.”
Franklin reached for the doorknob. From the set to his jaw and the way he narrowed his eyes on the younger man heading toward Gloria’s front door, she was sure that he wasn’t about to be friendly or neighborly to the deputy.
“Hey, wait a second.” She grabbed the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “Leave it alone. He’s just a kid. You don’t have to go out there.”
“Mmm.”
Okay. So maybe Mason Walsh wasn’t so much a kid as he was a good couple of years younger than Gloria. He was barely on the same side of twenty as she was—so at least four years younger—and there was no denying that his “friendly” act crossed the line into persistent a couple of weeks ago. He wasn’t the only one, either, which was another one of the reasons why she much preferred spending time in her new home with Franklin rather than being bothered by a good chunk of the Hamlet bachelors.
Still. She could handle them.
Only it didn’t seem as if Franklin was on board with that plan.
With a gentle grip, he slowly eased Gloria’s fingers off of the edge of his sleeve. He patted her hand. “Stay right here, okay? I’ll be right back.”
And then, before she could grab the back of his shirt instead, Franklin moved away from the window and headed toward the front door.
“Franklin,” she hissed after him.
He kept going.
“Frank!”
“What?” Franklin glanced over his shoulder. Shrugged. “If he crashes the cruiser because I sent him speeding off the mountain, it’s fine. I’ll fix it and only charge him double for not listening to me when I told him you were off limits last time.”
Gloria opened her mouth to say something, blinked when she realized what Franklin had just admitted, then let out a short peal of laughter.
“Last time?” she echoed.
He ignored her. Jaw set and eyes hard, he grabbed the doorknob, yanked the door open, and stepped out onto the porch.
Gloria swallowed the last of her laughter and dashed after him.
Christmas was in four days and Gloria still didn’t know what she was going to do.
She liked to think that she put off picking out a present for Franklin because she wasn’t sure exactly what their budding relationship would look like by Christmas. Add that to Franklin’s horrible experience with the holiday, and she didn’t think buying him a present was a step in the right direction while she was convinced he was throwing her stuffed toys away.
Then there was how mad he got at her after she spoke to Bailey…
Of course, those were all excuses. She knew that. Now that the two of them had finally admitted that something was there between them, Gloria had a pretty good idea where they stood at the moment.
In fact, things had been going great between Gloria and Franklin ever since he scared Deputy Walsh off, basically claiming her as his girl for all of Hamlet at the same time as he told the deputy to back off.
They were making an honest go of things. Instead of just hanging out as friends, she started to refer to their nightly dinners as dates; it took Franklin a couple of nights before he did, too. Now that she came clean with how she felt about him, he was trying hard to be the man he thought she wanted.
And that meant going all in for Christmas.
He never mentioned his mother again. Learning from her mistakes, Gloria knew better than to bring her up. She was happy he was trying to enjoy the last of the holidays, especially si
nce she knew he was only doing it for her.
It took a little convincing but she even managed to get him to sit through Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with only the tiniest of groans that Saturday evening. After he got home from the garage last night, he came over and helped her make her grandmother’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Sure, he drew the line at wearing an elf hat, but she did catch him humming “Jingle Bells” under his breath while he was mixing the dough.
He still didn’t like Christmas, but for her? He was trying.
Now it was her turn.
What they had was so new, though, Gloria couldn’t really describe exactly what it was. It didn’t help that half of Hamlet was already taking bets on how long it would take before they were headed down the aisle. She didn’t want to make a big deal of it—it had barely been a week since Franklin had called her his girl in front of Deputy Walsh—but Christmas was quickly approaching.