“I don’t,” Ruby said. “But I’m eager to get started and I don’t have anything else to do.”
“Aren’t you recovering from jet lag?”
“Sort of. But I don’t like being bored. Lydia’s kids are in school so I can’t do anything to help with them.” Ruby felt... Lost then, and she searched Dahlia’s face for answers, which she didn’t find.
“What exactly did you think you were going to do to help Lydia?”
Ruby shrugged. “Just be here. It seems wrong for us all to be separated right now. And anyway, I can help if she needs something.”
“Most people would take the vacation.” Dahlia pointed one chipped nail on the table.
She shrugged. “I love being back here, but what happens when I spend a leisurely morning doing nothing? I start thinking that I see scary men standing outside my window.”
“Well, in fairness you might have.”
“It’sunnerving,” she said again.
The door to the coffeehouse opened, and Ruby fought the urge to slide under the table.
Because it was someone she knew. Very well.
“Well, look who it is,” Dahlia said, following Ruby’s line of sight to the door. “Darling Heath.”
“Please don’t call him that,” Ruby said out of the side of her mouth.
And she hoped, she really did, that he would walk on to the counter and just not see them.
But alas.
“Ruby?” He smiled, which surprised Ruby because there had been no smiling when they had broken up four years ago. Of course, that was four years ago, and undoubtedly as many things had changed in his life as had changed in hers since then. “I heard you were moving back.”
“You heard correctly,” she said.
“Working at the museum?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m going to be an archivist. I’m also going to help with displays in duration and things like that. You know how it is here. Many hats.”
“Of course.”
“Hi, Heath,” Dahlia said, smiling broadly, and Ruby wanted to dump her coffee on her sister.
“Hi, Dahlia,” he said, backing up slightly. He was intimidated by Dahlia. A lot of men were.
Ruby admired that about her sister. That she was indefinably terrifying to the male species. Ruby herself could not claim to unsettle anyone. Not that she wanted to intimidate Heath. She didn’t know if she really wanted to talk to him either.
He was the same. A comforting sort of handsomeness that felt good to look at. Smooth around the edges and just pleasing, without creating any reckless heat in her.
“Are you still working at your dad’s?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s good work. And I don’t mind it.”
Living the cabinetmaking dream, apparently. Not that there was anything wrong with that. It just wasn’t what he had wanted to do when they’d been together. And certainly not what he’d gone away to college for. But Heath’s unrealized dreams were not her responsibility.
You are also back, Ruby.
That wasdifferent. She was working at the museum, with Dana. It was what she’d gone to school for.
“I’d like to have coffee sometime,” he said.