If her heart didn’t give a little pang - okay, so it wasn’t so little - at the thought, then it would all be good.
“I hope Cody saw you right,” Tono said bluntly when she’d finished.
“I saw an envelope addressed to meonthe kitchen dresser,” she told him with a shrug.
“You saw?”
“I left it there. I don’t want their money. That’s not what I came here for.”
Tono said nothing for a while. The silence stretched, but not for long.
“So, where you headed? Back to your family?” he asked casually.
Maybe it was because she’d just spilled her guts about everything else that she told him the truth.
“I don’t know. I don’t have any family.”
“None at all?”
“No, my Gran raised me after my parents were killed in a car accident. She died a few months back.”
“So, where do you call home then?”
She looked at him then, through the intermittent, orange light of the streetlamps, now that they’d joined the highway. She was determined not to say ‘nowhere’. She didn’t want his pity, and she was damned if she was going to wallow in her own.
“Anywhere I want, Tono,” she said instead, forcing cheer into her voice. “Anywhere I want.”
It was the early hours of the morning when they got back, and Tono insisted she get a proper night’s sleep before she headed off. It seemed therewasno way he was taking no for an answer.
“I’ve got a spare room and its made up ready. You’ve had a long, emotional day, and it’s not like you’ve got a destination in mind. May as well sleep on it and set off when its light and you’re refreshed.”
She’d tried to argue, but he was adamant. “I don’t want you having an accident on my conscience because you been drivin’ too tired. Not when you’ve got no cell phone to put my mind at rest,” he told her with a note of finality.
She only really protested out of politeness because she didn’t want to put him out. She would only have driven just outside town and parked up to sleep. Might as well have one more night in a comfortable bed. She’d cook him a nice breakfast and maybe a few treats in return, she decided.
Except by the time she got up in the morning, he was gone. It wasn’t late, only just turned eight thirty, but she’d slept longer than usual, undoubtedly from having such a late night.
She found a note in the middle of the table in his kitchen.
‘Had to make a call. Help yourself to breakfast and take the time to plan your trip. I’ll be back by mid-day.’
Well, she couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. That would be incredibly rude after everything he’d done for her. Plus, she didn’t have any keys to lock up his property either. Taking him at his word, she made herself some food and then raided his remarkably well-stocked pantry for baking ingredients so she could at least keep to part of her plan.
There was nothing in the new chapter of her life she was about to embark on, which wouldn’t wait half a day, after all.
Chapter Ten
To say Cody was not in the best of moods would have been an understatement. He’d had a late night, been forced to cook his own dinner - dinner for everyone, in fact, - after a long, tiring day when all he’d wanted to do was come home to a hearty meal, a hot shower and maybe a bit of TLC. Instead, he’d been forced to deal with Ellie’s impertinent behavior - he still hadn’t got to the bottom of that one, but he would - and hand out her marching orders.
He’d hoped everything would settle overnight. He’d even suggested they all sleep in this morning, since he, Syrus and Ezra were going to make a late start. Clearly he’d been taken at his word, because there was no sign of the four girls and there was no sign of breakfast either.
Filling the coffee pot, he leaned against the counter and turned to his brothers.
“Well, it looks like we’re fending for ourselves again this morning.”
There was a perfunctory knock at the back door, while he was talking, before Tono strode in.
“That’ll be because you sent Ellie packing,” he said, without so much as a ‘good morning’.